The Gateway Pundit, the far-right news website that played a critical role in spreading false information about the 2020 election, has settled a defamation lawsuit with Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers it falsely accused of wrongdoing.
Notice of the settlement was filed in circuit court in Missouri, where Freeman and Moss had sued the site for defamation. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in the filing.
Nearly 20 articles that Freeman and Moss said had falsely accused them of wrongdoing were no longer available on The Gateway Pundit’s website as of Thursday afternoon, according to a Guardian review.
“The dispute between the parties has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement,” the legal team for Moss and Freeman said in a statement. Attorneys for the Gateway Pundit did not immediately return a request for comment.
After the 2020 election, the Gateway Pundit published a series of stories amplifying a misleading video that showed Freeman and Moss counting ballots. The site pushed the false claim that the two women were committing fraud and counting illegal ballots after counting had ended for the night. The Gateway Pundit was the first news outlet to identify Freeman and later identified Moss, who have been cleared of all wrongdoing.
Even after Georgia election officials debunked the video, the site continued to publish numerous articles falsely accusing Moss and Freeman of fraud. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, also attacked the two women publicly. A Washington DC jury ordered Giuliani to pay nearly $150m to the two women last year for libel, a decision the former New York mayor is appealing. At the trial, Giuliani’s lawyer at one point accused the Gateway Pundit of being the basis of the false claims about the two women.
The two women faced vicious harassment, including death threats, and fled their homes and went into hiding after people showed up unannounced at Freeman’s home. Moss’s son received death threats on his phone and fell behind in school. Freeman testified last year that she had nowhere to live. Moss testified to the committee investigating the January 6 attack in 2022, but has otherwise not spoken much publicly.
“I was terrorized,” Freeman said during a trial in Washington DC last year. “I’d rather stay in my car and be homeless rather than put that on someone else.”
The site’s founder, Jim Hoft, had refused to concede that the site said anything false about the women, even though the state quickly debunked accusations of wrongdoing and a longer investigation formally cleared them. Hoft and his twin brother, Joe, also a contributor, held a press conference in Milwaukee during the Republican national convention in July and repeated many of the false claims about Freeman and Moss.
The settlement with the Gateway Pundit is notable because of the influential role the site plays in spreading misinformation. One recent analysis by the group Advance Democracy found that the site is continuing to spread false information about voting and seed the idea that the 2024 election could be stolen.
The two women have already settled a settled suit with One America News, another far-right outlet. The network issued an on-air apology after the settlement.
They are also seeking to collect on the money Giuliani owes them. Their lawyers recently asked a New York judge to allow them to take control over Giuliani’s assets.
The Gateway Pundit still faces a libel suit from Eric Coomer, a former employee of the voting system company Dominion who was falsely accused of subverting the 2020 election.
The site had declared bankruptcy in an attempt to delay the case, but a judge dismissed the effort earlier this year.
The case was one of several libel lawsuits filed against Trump allies and conservative networks that aired false claims about the 2020 election. Nearly all of those cases have settled, which observers have said may underscore the limited role defamation law can have in curbing misinformation.
More details soon …
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
