Gateway Pundit warned by its own lawyer it was using 'a damned fraud' as a source: report
A new filing in a defamation lawsuit filed by Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss against the conspiracy theory website Gateway Pundit reveals that workers at the site feared for their credibility, reported The Guardian — and their own attorney warned them that the source for their claims was not to be trusted.
The site's founder, Jim Hoft, has earned the nickname "The Dumbest Man on the Internet" for years of strange and sloppy claims. Despite this, former President Donald Trump has been reported to be an avid reader of the site.
"Attorneys for Freeman and Moss ... said in their filing that John Burns, a lawyer for Gateway Pundit, had warned the site about relying on Kevin Moncla, a source in Georgia who fed the site information on Freeman and Moss, including their non-public personnel files, according to the filing," said the report.
"'Moncla is a known fabricator. I wouldn’t touch/publish anything he produces,” Burns reportedly wrote, while also calling Moncla “a g-------d fraud."
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As if that weren't enough, Freeman and Moss’s attorneys also unearthed messages from Moncla said in which he said of their clients, "I will help you nail these b----s."
According to the report, Moncla was charged with voyeurism and ordered to pay $3.25 million after filming guests in the bathroom at his house.
Earlier this week, Gateway Pundit filed for bankruptcy amid the litigation against them.
Moss and Freeman, who counted ballots in Atlanta in 2020, have become a focus of numerous MAGA conspiracy theories, spread in part by Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani, who claimed that they were stuffing ballots — based in part on a supposed "flash drive" one passed to the other that turned out to be a ginger mint. Giuliani was found liable for $148 million in a defamation default judgment for his role in these claims.
In addition to the defamation cases, efforts to harass the two workers form part of the election racketeering case against Trump's allies in Fulton County.