• Michael Tracey weighs in on the Epstein Horrors, and tries to minimize the entire controversy by saying that Giuffere is a ‘serial fabricator’ and, therefore, the whole thing is faked, for money, and based on minimal evidence.
• Plenty of evidence in addition to Giuffere’s statements show that Epstein and Maxwell were engaged in espionage, blackmail, and human trafficking.
• Tracey, in interviews with disgraced Richard Hanania, [1] claims that Trump’s supporters are ‘idiots’ and believe in a conspiracy theory that Epstein was acting on behalf of either Israel or the Mossad related to blackmail operations in the United States, despite the significant amount of evidence that shows exactly that.

OUR RATING: Level 1: Journalistic Malpractice, Even Salon.com is ashamed. Total lies.

Indicted Outlet: Michael Tracey | Compact Magazine | Link | Archive | July 10, 2025

The political left has been, so far, largely silent about Jeffrey Epstein and his assorted crimes. Part of that has been due, no doubt, to the large number of left-wing figures and financiers who appear on the various ‘lists’ of associates of Epstein and those who traveled to his infamous island, Little St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. But the left’s silence has also been due to the new party line which prevents the credibility challenge to female sexual assault victims, of which Epstein has many.

So when Michael Tracey wrote this week in Compact Magazine, “The Idiocy of the Epstein Mythology” [2] he had very careful narratives to navigate: he needed to avoid saying dozens of women are lying about their sexual abuse, while also saying that Trump is bad, while also trying to say that there’s little to no evidence of Epstein’s crimes.

Tracey’s interview with Richard Hanania also outlined a great deal of his objections to the current Epstein narrative in the media. [1]

Major Violations:

• Opinion as Fact
• Cherry Picking
• Dishonest Framing
• Missing Context
• Major Misrepresentation of Source Material
• Ignoring Primary Sources
• Fact Suppression

Let’s go through Tracey’s basic arguments about the overall Epstein narrative, and then dissect them piece-by-piece.

MICHAEL TRACEY’S ARGUMENTS:

Tracey’s arguments within his article are, generally:

• The popular “Epstein mythology” assumes he operated a vast child sex-trafficking and blackmail ring for global elites, often allegedly connected to intelligence agencies.

• This mythology is constructed to be unfalsifiable where any lack of evidence is treated as further proof of a cover-up.

• The narrative has bipartisan appeal: right-wing audiences frame it as spiritual or satanic evil, while left-wing audiences see it as systemic elite exploitation.

• Virginia Giuffre, a central figure in the mythology, has been accused of fabrication, and her inconsistencies are ignored or rationalized by myth adherents.

• Giuffre’s civil settlement with Alan Dershowitz, where she admitted falsehoods, is largely disregarded by those promoting the broader conspiracy.

• The claim that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” attributed to Alex Acosta, comes from unverified hearsay and is not substantiated.

• The Epstein Victims Compensation Program, Tracey argues, incentivized claimants to exaggerate or fabricate by offering large sums with minimal vetting.

• The Ghislaine Maxwell trial did not yield evidence supporting the idea that Epstein trafficked girls to powerful third-party elites.

• Political figures like Trump, Kash Patel, and Pam Bondi have used the mythology opportunistically, promising explosive revelations that never materialize.

• The mythology undermines democratic engagement by fostering paranoia, fatalism, and the belief that all institutions are irredeemably corrupt.

Most of this is opinion as fact. When Tracey complains that the challenges to this narrative are refusing to believe contrary evidence, he doesn’t bother citing to what that contrary evidence, he just takes it as a given. He provides some arguments in his piece that could be considered contrary points, but most of them are somewhat speculative and not based on fact.

Tracey’s core points are:

1. Giuffre is not a reliable witness and is a ‘serial fabricator.’
2. Giuffre was financially motivated, as were other accusers.
3. Giuffre was forced to settle a defamation suit with Alan Dershowitz.
4. The Acosta quote is hearsay.
5. The Maxwell trial did not yield evidence of an elite trafficking ring.

This is Tracey using cherry picking and dishonest framing to understand the Epstein saga of horrors.

To really go through these, essentially three key arguments: attacking Giuffre’s credibility, attacking the Acosta quote, and highlighting a detail from the Maxwell trial, it’s important to go through the volume of evidence for the Epstein horrors.

The extent of the evidence is important because it goes directly to these three points: 1) was Giuffre credible, 2) was Acosta’s quote accurate, and 3) is there evidence of an elite trafficking & blackmail ring?

But it also directly combats some of the core foundations of Tracey’s piece.

Tracey says that Epstein-related files are, “…understood to be sitting in a government repository somewhere, shielded from public disclosure by reprobates in the Biden Administration…” And a simple cursory review of the ongoing FOIA-litigation alone, shows a pending suit involving 10,000 unreleased Epstein-related documents held by the FBI, as part of the Radar Online suit. [3] As well, there are at least three million documents the government had and produced to Ghislaine Maxwell as part of her criminal prosecution. [4, 5, 6] So, yes, there are many Epstein-related documents understood to be sitting in a government repository somewhere that have been shielded from public disclosure by reprobates in both the Biden and Trump administrations. Tracey is either lying or being willfully ignorant here.

There is also a reported over 300 gigabytes of Epstein-related data which has so far been prevented from release. [7]

The Epstein saga spans decades and a wide variety of civil and criminal court cases in both state and federal courts. To date, there have been at least 16 major state and federal cases directly involving Epstein and Maxwell.

THE SIGNIFICANT SPAN OF LITIGATION INVOLVING EPSTEIN, MAXWELL, GIUFFRE

So when Tracey complains that there is an “ever-expanding mythology which cannot be falsified” as a way of saying that these facts are being invented by ‘conspiracy theorists’ online, he is again either lying or being willfully ignorant about the enormous amount of litigation involved with these claims. If these claims were all invented by creative online trolls, why aren’t federal judges sanctioning the attorneys bringing all of these lawsuits?

• United States v. Jeffrey Epstein (2008, Florida state court) – Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution with a minor, receiving a controversial plea deal that shielded him from federal prosecution.

• Jane Doe v. Jeffrey Epstein (2008–2010, U.S. District Court, S.D. Florida) – Multiple civil suits filed by anonymous women alleging sexual abuse as minors. Many were settled confidentially.

• Giuffre v. Maxwell (2015, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York, 1:15-cv-07433) – Virginia Giuffre sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation after Maxwell denied Giuffre’s allegations of abuse and trafficking. The case was settled in 2017.

• Sarah Ransome v. Epstein & Maxwell (2017, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York) – Civil suit alleging coercion and sexual abuse by Epstein and Maxwell. Settled out of court.

• Jennifer Araoz v. Epstein’s Estate & Maxwell (2019, New York State Supreme Court) – Filed under the Child Victims Act, Araoz alleged Epstein raped her when she was 15 and accused Maxwell of facilitating the abuse.

• Annie Farmer v. Epstein’s Estate & Maxwell (2019, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York) – Civil suit alleging Epstein and Maxwell sexually abused her as a teenager under the guise of a scholarship retreat.

• Katlyn Doe, Priscilla Doe & another Jane Doe v. Estate of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (2019, N.Y. State Supreme Court, No. 453122/2019) – Three women filed under the Child Victims Act alleging trafficking and abuse by Epstein and co-conspirators, including Maxwell .

• Multiple Jane Doe Lawsuits v. Epstein’s Estate (2019–2020, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York, No. 1:20‑cv‑05678) – A series of lawsuits by numerous anonymous women accusing Epstein of trafficking, abuse, and sexual exploitation as minors.

• United States v. Jeffrey Epstein (2019, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York) – Epstein was federally indicted for sex trafficking minors across state lines. He died in custody before trial.

• U.S. Virgin Islands v. Epstein’s Estate (2020, U.S. Virgin Islands Superior Court) – Civil enforcement action alleging that Epstein ran a human trafficking ring from his private island through 2018. Led to a $105 million settlement with the estate.

• Ghislaine Maxwell v. Estate of Jeffrey Epstein (2020, Superior Court, U.S. Virgin Islands, No. ST‑20‑CV‑00031) – Maxwell sued the Epstein estate to enforce a promise that he would cover her legal defense costs, claiming she acted as his employee and property manager .

• Jane Doe v. Epstein’s Estate & Maxwell (Interlochen Case) (2020, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York) – A woman alleged that Epstein and Maxwell groomed and abused her at the Interlochen arts camp in Michigan when she was 13.

• United States v. Ghislaine Maxwell (2020–2022, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York, 20 Cr. 330) – Maxwell was convicted of federal charges including sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy. Sentenced to 20 years in 2022. Appeal denied in 2024.

• Virginia Giuffre v. Prince Andrew (2021–2022, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York, 1:21-cv-06702) – Giuffre sued Prince Andrew under New York’s Child Victims Act for alleged sexual abuse. The case was settled in 2022 for a reported sum of over $12 million.

• Jane Doe v. Estate of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (2021, Florida, Broward County, No. CACE‑21‑000****) – A Broward County woman alleged Epstein and Maxwell trafficked and repeatedly raped her in 2008 when she was a minor.

• Jane Doe v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (2022–2023, U.S. District Court, S.D. New York, 1:22-cv-10019) – A survivor sued JPMorgan for allegedly enabling Epstein’s sex trafficking operations by ignoring red flags in exchange for business. The bank settled the case in June 2023 for $290 million.

Many of those cases have involved the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who died under odd circumstances in 2025, but many did not. Giuffre’s credibility is important, but there are dozens of other accusers with similar stories. Tracey leaves out that necessary missing context.

GIUFFRE IS ONE OF MANY EPSTEIN & MAXWELL ACCUSERS

Here are the publicly-named Epstein accusers:

• Virginia Roberts Giuffre (d. 2025)
• Maria Farmer
• Annie Farmer
• Jennifer Araoz
• Sarah Ransome
• Chauntae Davies – notably seen in a picture at age 22 giving former President Clinton a shoulder massage.
• Courtney Wild – abused starting at age 14
• Theresa Helm
• Marijke Chartouni
• Anouska DeGeorgiou
• Rachel Benavidez
• Jena Lisa Jones
• At least dozens of ‘Jane Doe’ Plaintiffs – who cited abuse from the mid-1980s through the 2000’s.

These witnesses describe systemic abuse happening at the following locations:

• 34 East 69th Street, Manhattan, New York, NY – Earlier NYC residence (1992–1995) – Before acquiring the 71st Street mansion, Epstein rented and frequently stayed at this townhouse, a former Iranian government building. Maria Farmer worked there in 1996 and described it as the first city home where she experienced his surveillance setup and was shown hidden cameras tied into a monitoring room

• 9 East 71st Street, New York, NY – Epstein’s Manhattan Townhouse – Site of extensive abuse allegations. Multiple victims said they were trafficked here for sexual exploitation. A July 6, 2019 FBI raid found child sexual abuse material inside. This is the raid where the FBI opened Epstein’s safe, and left the contents for the Epstein defense team to intercept and then later return. The FBI claims that nothing was withheld by the Epstein defense team. Maria Farmer has said the contents of the safe included compromising material on elites. [8 @1:58:00]

• 360 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach, FL (previously 358 El Brillo Way) – Epstein’s Palm Beach Mansion – Central to the original Florida criminal investigation. Girls were recruited and abused here over many years beginning in the early 2000s.

• Zorro Ranch, 49 Zorro Ranch Road, Stanley, NM – Epstein’s New Mexico Ranch – Allegedly used to bring underage girls across state lines. Victims have testified to sexual abuse at this location, including Annie Farmer.

• Little Saint James Island, U.S. Virgin Islands (approx. 18.3005° N, 64.8263° W) – Private Island – Known as “Pedophile Island,” this was Epstein’s most notorious property. Flight logs and court testimony detail the transport of minors to this location for sexual exploitation.

• Great Saint James Island, U.S. Virgin Islands – Secondary Island – Owned by Epstein later in his life. Although less prominent in court filings, it was reportedly being developed with additional buildings and docks at the time of his arrest.

• 445 North Parkview Avenue, Bexley, OH – Les Wexner’s Mansion – Epstein lived in this Columbus-area estate while managing Wexner’s finances. Giuffre, Maria Farmer, and others have claimed abuse occurred here, though Wexner denies knowledge of it.

The Justice Department in July 2025 estimated there were over 1,000 victims of Jeffrey Epstein. [9] The memo is not entirely clear as to whether those are ‘in-person’ victims, meaning underage victims who were sexually assaulted, or if those victims are ‘digital’ victims, considering the amount and extent of the child pornography that the DOJ claims were found on Epstein’s devices.

And even though the civil case where Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation was settled and sealed in 2017, litigation by third parties to ‘unseal’ much of the evidence in the case resulted in waves of documents being released to the public.

TRACEY IGNORES GIUFFRE’S LEGAL WINS, IGNORES HER LEGAL WIN ON DEFAMATION AGAINST MAXWELL

As well, there was a prior legal action in 2009 involving a settlement between Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre. In that settlement, later unsealed by the court in 2022, Epstein agreed to pay $500,000 in exchange for Giuffre dropping claims against himself, but also dropping any potential claims against Ghislaine Maxwell, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew. [10] Perhaps Epstein wanted to protect his friends from false claims, or perhaps Epstein knew the full extent of potential liability and wanted his payment to cover all of the prominent abusers.

But it certainly seems odd that Epstein, 10 years before his death, would settle a civil suit with Giuffre with major payouts and gag orders attached, if the suit was entirely frivolous. At a minimum, this is critical missing context for Tracey’s piece.

TRACEY FACTUALLY GETS IRRELEVANT QANON TIMELINE WRONG

It also speaks to the way Tracey attempts to smear those who follow this case, in that he also tries to link the ‘conspiracy theory’ to the QAnon movement from 2016-2020.

Here is what Tracey says: “… Epstein mythology is a successor to the QAnon phenomenon from the first Trump administration…”

This is an example of guilty grouping, and also just not factually accurate. Where Tracey tries to connect the dots between one theory and another with no real causal relationship, but he has his dates wrong. The controversy about Epstein pre-dates the QAnon theories by nearly a decade. There’s no relationship.

Victim Maria Farmer has said in interviews that her abuse at the hands of Epstein and his patron Les Wexner [11] started in 1996. [12]

TRACEY CALLS GIUFFRE ‘SERIAL FABRICATOR’ FOR SETTLING DERSHOWITZ CASE WHERE SHE ADMITTED ONLY MISTAKEN IDENTITY

The Giuffre civil litigation against Maxwell, a defamation suit, was settled in 2017. But Tracey rests almost all of his credibility argument against Giuffre on the basis of the suit she filed in 2019 and settled with Alan Dershowitz in 2022 where she admitted she “may have made a mistake” and both sides dropped their claims against the other, and no money damages were paid by either side. She filed the suit in 2017, the allegations were from 2000-2002.

People settle civil suits for a variety of reasons, not all of them are entirely on the merits of the claims. Giuffre’s statements were somewhat vague: “I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.”

This is the basis for Michael Tracey to call Giuffre a “serial fabricator.” Tracey is misrepresenting the source and presenting an opinion as fact. He’s also cherry picking this one incident to smear Giuffre as a liar about everything else.

There’s no argument that Dershowitz was close with Epstein, he was part of the 2008 legal team that helped Epstein avoid charges in Florida by getting a sweetheart deal from then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta. [13, 14] Dershowitz shows up repeatedly on Epstein’s flight logs. [15]

We may never know the truth of the matter, and why Giuffre dropped the case, but the resolution of the case does not equate to her being a “serial fabricator” as Tracey alleges.

Here is the case information:

• Virginia Giuffre v. Alan M. Dershowitz (2019–2022, U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y., Case No. 1:19‑cv‑03377 (LAP)).

TRACEY THEN IGNORES GIUFFRE’S LEGAL WIN AGAINST MAXWELL FOR DEFAMATION

It is also very dishonest framing and double standards to use a settlement in one defamation case to call Giuffre a ‘serial fabricator‘ when she won a defamation case against Maxwell on similar underlying facts, where Maxwell was forced to make a multi-million dollar payout.

TRACEY IMPLIES THERE’S LITTLE EVIDENCE, EVEN THOUGH COURT CASES HAVE ALREADY PRODUCED SIGNIFICANT EVIDENCE

Simply the history of that third party litigation about one of the 16 key Epstein cases, in the Giuffre v. Maxwell civil case, is complex.

In 2018, The Gateway Pundit, Mike Cernovich, and the Miami Herald with reporter Julie K. Brown moved to intervene in the case, seeking to unseal the records under the First Amendment and common law right of access, citing the extraordinary public interest in the allegations. [16, 17, 18, 19] The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York initially declined to fully grant the request, citing privacy concerns, leading to an appeal to the Second Circuit.

In Giuffre v. Maxwell, 928 F.3d 226 (2d Cir. 2019), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of the Herald, holding that the public’s right to access judicial documents outweighed Maxwell’s asserted privacy interests. The court ordered the unsealing of large portions of the record, including depositions, emails, and internal communications related to Epstein, Maxwell, and various high-profile associates. Following the Second Circuit’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska oversaw the implementation of a phased release process, with redactions allowed only for individuals not publicly accused of wrongdoing. The first wave of unsealed documents—around 2,000 pages—was released in August 2019, followed by additional disclosures in 2020 and 2021.

The most substantial release occurred on January 3, 2024, when Judge Preska ordered the unsealing of over 4,500 additional pages of documents from Case No. 1:15‑cv‑07433. These included previously sealed motions, declarations, emails, contact lists, and excerpts from Maxwell’s depositions, as well as filings referencing over 170 individuals identified as “John Does.”

These releases included, among other items:

• Previously unreleased declarations

• Flight logs

• Witness testimony

• Contact lists and phone books

• Documents involving over 170 “John Does”, some of whom remained redacted

In the criminal prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2020, (Case No. 20‑CR‑330) the government turned over nearly 3 million pages of documents to Maxwell. The government typically turns over only two types of documents: evidence which is ‘inculpatory’ which tends to suggest guilt of what is being alleged, and ‘exculpatory’ evidence which indicates innocence of the crimes alleged. Maxwell had been charged with six counts by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York in July 2020:

• Conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts (18 U.S.C. § 371)

• Enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts (18 U.S.C. § 2422)

• Conspiracy to transport minors to engage in illegal sex acts (18 U.S.C. § 371)

• Transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illegal sex acts (18 U.S.C. § 2423)

• Sex trafficking of a minor (18 U.S.C. § 1591)

• Perjury (2 counts, charged in a separate indictment related to false testimony in a 2016 deposition)

At trial she was not charged with perjury. She plead not guilty, and was found guilty of 5 of the six county, and found ‘not guilty’ on ‘enticement of a minor.’ Maxwell was sentenced on June 29, 2022 to 20 years in federal prison and 5 years of supervised release, along with a $750,000 fine. Maxwell has appealed her conviction to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, (Case No.  22‑1426) where it was unanimously denied. She then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court (Pet. No. 24‑1073) on April 10, 2025, which is still pending.

TRACEY IGNORES MULTIPLE ONGOING “FOIA” LAWSUITS WHICH COULD PRODUCE SUBSTANTIALLY MORE EVIDENCE

There have also been several lawsuits related to Freedom of Information Act, aka (“FOIA”), lawsuits as well, several of which are still pending.

• Radar Online LLC v. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2019–present, U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y., No. 1:19‑cv‑03956; appeal pending, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, No. 24‑1066) – Radar Online filed suit in 2019 seeking FBI records related to Epstein under FOIA. The FBI identified at least 11,571 Epstein-related records as part of this case, and completely withheld over 10,000 pages.[20] After years of partial productions, the district court ruled in favor of the FBI in early 2024, largely upholding its withholdings under privacy and law enforcement exemptions. Radar Online appealed in April 2024; the case remains active at the Second Circuit as of July 2025, with a federal answer due in late July. [Docket: PACER, 2nd Cir. No. 24-1066]
• Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (2025–present, U.S. District Court, D.D.C., No. 1:25‑cv‑01119) – Filed in April 2025, Judicial Watch challenged DOJ’s refusal to release certain Epstein-related files, including FBI interview summaries, under FOIA. The complaint alleges unlawful delay and improper invocation of exemptions. The case is pending in the District of Columbia with briefing underway. [PACER: D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01119]
• Business Insider FOIA Appeal (unlitigated) (2024–present, U.S. Department of Justice, FOIA Appeal No. 2024‑APP‑0421) – Business Insider submitted a FOIA request in late 2024 seeking Epstein-related materials, including photographs and seized electronics. The request was denied by the FBI. An internal appeal was filed in February 2025, citing the DOJ’s public “Phase 1” release. As of July 2025, the appeal remains unresolved, with the agency requesting extensions. [Source: internal DOJ OIP appeal logs]
• DOJ FOIA Logs (Various) (2020–2023, Department of Justice OIP) – Numerous individual FOIA requests were filed with DOJ and FBI for Epstein and Maxwell records. Notable entries include FOIA tracking numbers 14572-22 and 14784-22 (U.S. v. Maxwell trial documents), which were referred or denied in part. These have not led to litigation but establish a pattern of withholding responsive records. [Source: DOJ FOIA Closed Request Logs, July 2022]

Tracey dismisses all of Giuffre’s claims by calling her a “serial fabricator.”

“Perhaps the most glaring omission in the Epstein mythology is any acknowledgement that Giuffre was a serial fabricator.”

The main reason Tracey says this, is because Giuffre settled a defamation suit filed by Alan Dershowitz. Giuffre claimed she was trafficked by Epstein to Dershowitz, which he denied.

TRACEY USES DERSHOWITZ TO INDICT GIUFFRE CREDIBILITY, IGNORES RECENT STATEMENTS WHERE HE CLAIMS TO HAVE SEEN INFAMOUS ‘CLIENT LIST’

It’s interesting that Tracey cites to Dershowitz and his case, when Dershowitz has recently been publicly saying that as part of his suit he saw the infamous “Epstein client list” and, from the names he saw on it, understands why it will never be made public. [2, 21, 22]

Yet even the Dershowitz case Tracey cites was not settled on terms where she admitted being a “serial fabricator.”

In Alan M. Dershowitz v. Virginia L. Giuffre, Case No. 1:19-cv-03377-LAP (S.D.N.Y., filed 2019), Dershowitz sued Giuffre for defamation, alleging that she falsely accused him of sexually abusing her as part of her broader claims against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre filed a counterclaim for defamation, maintaining that her statements were truthful and protected. The case involved extensive discovery and public litigation over credibility, intent, and privileged communications.

In 2022, the parties reached a confidential settlement in which Giuffre acknowledged that she may have been mistaken in identifying Dershowitz and formally withdrew her allegations.

Giuffre was not found to have been a ‘serial fabricator’ she reached a settlement where she said there may have been mistaken identity. This is a major misrepresentation about the source material.

And not only is Tracey misstating the settlement in the Dershowitz case, he is also ignoring recent Dershowitz comments effectively confirming that Epstein was running an elite blackmail ring. In other words, Tracey finds Dershowitz useful when indicting the credibility of victim Giuffre, but not relevant when Dershowitz disproves Tracey’s central thesis that there’s no evidence of a systemic elite blackmail operation.

TRACEY REDUCES GIUFFRE’S MOTIVES TO ONLY MONEY

Tracey says Giuffre “eventually got in on the act” by also implying that her non-profit organization [23] to help trafficked women was false. It is notoriously difficult to properly gauge the effectiveness of a non-profit, [24, 25] but Tracey says that all he can find online is a ‘bare-bones’ website. Yet the absence of evidence here is not evidence, and it’s another situation of Tracey presenting opinion as fact and also assuming bad faith on the part of Giuffre.

It’s also worth noting that many of the accusers, in interviews such as this one with victim Maria Farmer [26], were very careful to separate themselves from whom they suspected were bad faith accusers such as Alicia Arden.

Tracey describes the Prince Andrew legal settlement in the Giuffre case as a “donation” from the Queen, as it relates to her claims against Prince Andrew. He hedges when saying Giuffre’s non-profit “appears to have done little…” which just means he has no evidence either way, and can’t find anything easily online.

This is a major bias and prejudice of most reporters: they assume that everything that happens in the world is documented online. They think that every success by a group or person is written about and well-documented. Lazy journalists want to engage in a superficial investigation by doing web searches.

SOAR board member Dini Von Mueffling was contacted for this piece, [27] but did not respond.

TRACEY IGNORES THE EVIDENCE CONNECTING EPSTEIN TO INTELLIGENCE

Israel has denied that Epstein was connected to either the Israeli government or to its intelligence service, Mossad. [28] The former Israeli Prime Minister has denied Epstein was an Israeli spy. [29] The American government has also denied that Epstein was connected to the American intelligence services, though Pam Bondi’s recent statements are up for interpretation. [30]

Tracey contends [31 @3:45] that the only source for Epstein being linked to intelligence is one article from journalist Vicky Ward in the Daily Beast. [32] Yet this is not the only source for this information.

In Rolling Stone reporter Vicky Ward named a source who was conned by Epstein, Steven Hoffenberg, as having said Epstein confessed to him that he was engaged in intelligence and espionage. [33] Tracey completely ignores this. 

There is also a wide number of credible allegations, circumstantial evidence, and patterns that suggest that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell was an intelligence agent for multiple countries, including Israel, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, claimed in his memoir Profits of War (1992) that Maxwell had a long-standing relationship with Mossad and used his publishing empire to support Israeli interests, including helping to place intelligence assets in foreign newsrooms. Journalist Seymour Hersh, in his book The Samson Option (1991), claimed Maxwell was involved in Israeli arms deals and acted as a conduit for information. After Maxwell’s death, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir attended his funeral, an unusual gesture, and he was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem with honors. This level of respect suggested strong ties to the Israeli state. The 2003 book Robert Maxwell: Israel’s Superspy by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon argues in detail, based on interviews and intelligence sources, that Maxwell was a key Israeli asset for decades, and that his ties to Mossad were both deep and ongoing and may have been involved in his suspicious 1991 death at sea.

Epstein also had ‘piles of cash’ and multiple passports issued by other countries, some of which were obviously fake. This isn’t proof of intelligence connections, but it is certainly odd and suspicious behavior which is more in line with intelligence practices. [82, 83]

Maria Farmer, one of Epstein’s accusers, has claimed Epstein and Maxwell told her explicitly that both Epstein and Maxwell work for intelligence. She described Ghislaine Maxwell as one of Israel’s most dangerous espionage assets. [34] Farmer has also said on social media that she believes Epstein’s patron Les Wexner was connected to Mossad, and that Ghislaine Maxwell reported to him. [35]

The pattern of high-level, elite, social access exceeds what would be expected of someone merely tied to a wealthy financier, suggesting possible use in an influence or kompromat operation. Ari Ben-Menashe, in interviews and writings, has claimed Ghislaine was a Mossad asset and helped her father and Epstein in operations designed to gather compromising information on Western elites.

TRACEY IGNORES THE EVIDENCE THAT EPSTEIN WAS CONNECTED TO BLACKMAIL OPERATIONS

Rolling Stone’s Vicky Ward also related that Hoffenberg admitted that Epstein utilized blackmail as part of his standard procedure of defrauding the rich while making it impossible for them to retaliate. [36]

Epstein accuser Maria Farmer has also described the series of cameras and taping equipment that she personally observed at multiple Epstein residences. [37] Farmer also described that the video recorded was meant to be compromising blackmail. [38 @1:59:00]

Journalist Whitney Webb has written two books [39, 40], and has written numerous articles on, Jeffrey Epstein and his extensive history and connections. [41] Webb claims that Epstein is best understood as being connected to a global organized crime syndicate that utilizes blackmail in its operations, and not just one individual national intelligence community.

It’s generally believed that the former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, utilized compromising information and blackmail [42, 43, 44, 45] in order to get larger budgets for the Department. It’s also believed by some [44] that Hoover, himself, was also being blackmailed with photographs of him engaged in sex with his subordinate Clyde Tolson. This information took decades to emerge and come out, even though it was widely known among DC elites in its time. If there were current blackmail operations against the nation’s elites, would it be reasonable to expect an easy documentary trail to prove it? Of course not.

It will likely take years if not decades for all the related files to come out and be declassified. The Kennedy Assassination files are still not all publicly-available after 63 years by comparison. Tracey calls this the kind of tautological reasoning and says that the absence of evidence does not prove the theory, but there is already a considerable sum of evidence showing the basic claims about Epstein to be well-sourced and well-documented.

In the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, there were over three million pages of documents given to Maxwell’s legal defense team. [46, 47] Radar Online asked the FBI for Epstein-related files in 2017, before his 2019 prosecution and death, and the department related to the court that it had over 11,500 documents related to him, of which, over 10,000 were never released. [48] The government has acted extremely odd and suspicious in both cases, refusing to turn documents over.

TRACEY LIMITS THE EPSTEIN ALLEGATIONS TO SEX, WON’T MAKE OBVIOUS CONNECTIONS TO TRAFFICKING, ESPIONAGE, BLACKMAIL

Tracey limits Epstein’s wrongdoing to “…procur[ing] teenage girls for his own perverse gratification.” This statement completely deflects from the coercion used by Epstein, according to allegations. In particular, Maria Farmer specifically talks about Filipino maids in several Epstein homes who complained about being ‘stolen’ and held hostage against their will. [49] That’s not a matter of simply ‘procuring’ girls who happen to be ‘teens,’ it’s sex trafficking and kidnapping.

Giuffre was not the only one who made claims that Epstein and others were engaged in sex trafficking to elites. She was the most prominent accuser, but far from the only one.

Giuffre accused, among others, these elites of having been involved in using Epstein to have sex with underage girls: Prince Andrew, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, billionaire Glenn Dubin, billionaire Jean-Luc Brunel who also brought girls as young as 12 to the island and ‘farmed them out’, billionaire Thomas Pritzker, MIT scientist Marvin Minsky.

Maria Farmer specifically claims that she witnessed Bill Clinton, on Epstein Island, being “given children” during his stay and she alleges that she has reported these crimes to the FBI, which has chosen to do nothing. [50 @1:15:00]

Epstein consorted with a variety of suspect individuals, including several who were individually, separately, accused of child abuse and molestation. One, profiled recently by the Gateway Pundit, was Tyler Grasham. Grasham, who appears on the Epstein flight logs and whom Hollywood Executives report were aware of both his connection to Epstein and his serial abuse of young boys whom he was representing. Grasham, Hollywood Executives report, was not a particularly successful film agent, but he was close friends with Epstein. [51] Out of 20,000 estimated film agents, one who was a child predator seems to be close to Epstein. It certainly suggests, but does not prove, that Epstein was interested in people who could procure underage boys for sex with others.

TRACEY IGNORES EVIDENCE OF OTHER ‘ELITE PEDOPHILE NETWORKS’

Tracey says in his piece, “Belief in the ubiquity of elite pedophilia networks is a constant in the right-wing imagination…”

Yet there is considerable evidence and accusations of elite pedophilia and underage sex networks spanning the past 40 years.

In the 1980s, there was an allegation that a child prostitution ring involved local and national elites, as part of what was called the Franklin Credit Union scandal. [52] Witnesses gave grand jury testimony but the claims were dismissed as a hoax.

In the 1990s, in Belgium, Marc Dutroux [53] was convicted of abducting, raping, and killing young girls, some as young as 8. 20 witnesses in the case died under suspicious circumstances. Dutroux gave an interview after the allegations were made public where he openly mocked the idea that he would ever be caught or sentenced because, he said, of his social and political connections to powerful individuals. The police searched Dutroux’s home and heard the yelling and voices of young girls, but did not investigate where the voices were coming from, the girls, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, later died of starvation. The extreme leniency given to him sparked nationwide legal reforms in Belgium due to public outrage.

In 1993, Heidi Fleiss was charged in state court, and federal charges followed a year later, for running a sex trafficking ring that catered to elites. [54] Fleiss was convicted of trafficking minor girls to elites. [55]

In 2008, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned and was nearly prosecuted for engaging the services of an Israeli-owned escort agency that catered to New York’s elites. [56] One of the girls involved, who went by the name “Kristen” and whose real name was Tania Nicole Bann, age 23, told at least two friends she was worried about being killed and it made to look like suicide. She was later found dead and her case file was sealed.

In 2012 in the United Kingdom, British media personality Jimmy Savile was accused of sexually abusing hundreds of children, some as young as 5, over decades, and was protected due to his status and relationships with the nation’s elite. [57]

Another such network was operated by Keith Allen Raniere, [58] who from 1998 through 2018 operated the “NXIVM” network, [59] which had 700 members at its height, including celebrities and financial elites. [60, 61]

In 2020, near billionaire Peter Nygard [62, 63] was prosecuted and ultimately sentenced to over 11 years in prison. Nygard was accused of running a sex trafficking ring for elites.

In 2022, the Larry Ray / Sarah Lawrence cult was prosecuted. While most victims were college-aged, some of their underage friends and relatives were underage and forced into prostitution. [64] Ray was convicted in the Southern District of New York of 1) Sex trafficking of a minor, 2) Forced Labor, 3) Extortion, and 4) Racketeering conspiracy, [65] and sentenced to 60 years in prison. [66, 67]

In 2023, details about “SNCTM”, an elite high-end sex club, [68] emerged where the founder, Damon Lawner, was banned from his own group after admitting President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member. [69] Allegations from 2018 claimed that Lawner wanted staff to procure underage performers for this elite, $75,000 per year, club. [70]

In 2025, Sean “Diddy” Combs was indicted by federal prosecutors for operating an elite network with “freak-off” parties, drug-fueled orgies, which allegedly included celebrities, [71] underage participants, [72] from the 1990s through the 2020s. [73]

Most of these allegations have certain commonalities as well: elite membership, and at least the tacit allowance from local and federal law enforcement who decline to prosecute prostitution, trafficking, assault, charges against these powerful individuals and organizations.

TRACEY MISSTATES EVIDENCE, IGNORES CONTEXT, OF ACOSTA STATEMENT ABOUT EPSTEIN BEING ‘OF INTELLIGENCE’

Tracey identifies that the source of this specific quotation is one article from the Daily Beast. And while the Daily Beast is a noted left-wing fabulist on many issues, on this, the story has never been challenged on the record. Simply indicting the credibility of the outlet because the significance of the story is not compelling. As well, the Daily Beast used specific quotations, not paraphrasing, again suggesting that the quotation was from a source with knowledge.

But Tracey says this is “pure hearsay” and that the entire claim “falls apart” upon scrutiny. For support, he points to the Department of Justice’s internal OPR report on the Acosta plea deal with Epstein from 2007.

Tracey also spins his own conspiracy theory that Steve Bannon is the source for Vicky Ward’s quotes in the Daily Beast about Epstein and Acosta’s quotes. [74 @4:18] His basis for this was because Ward was writing a book trashing the Kushners at the time. Tracey claims [75 @5:09] that Acosta denied by the Justice Department’s investigators as part of the Office of Professional Responsibility’s investigation into the matter.

What Tracey leaves out, and what Megan Kelly has noted, is that Acosta was questioned by journalists in 2019 about this quote, and gave a non-answer answer. [76] Given the chance to correct the record, Acosta remained mum and deflected.

The ‘sweetheart deal’ that Acosta gave Epstein in 2007 [77] as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Florida makes no sense otherwise. Why would Epstein be given such incredible leniency in the face of multiple credible accusers? All of this is ignored by Acosta.

To recap, the Department of Justice’s OPR report makes clear that the original 60 count potential indictment was reduced to pleading guilty to only two state crime violations of prostitution, a 2 year sentence which was reduced to 18 months in the County Jail, where he was on ‘work release’ for half the time volunteering at a non-profit he created and operated out of his attorney’s office, the “Florida Science Foundation,” and was given “gain time” so that he served less than 13 months. In addition, Acosta gave immunity to his co-conspirators, including Ghislaine Maxwell, and that blanket immunity agreement is the basis from which Maxwell appealed her 2022 conviction to the Supreme Court three months ago.

The OPR report [78] does not clarify that it asked Acosta about his alleged quote that he was told to back off of Epstein because he “belonged to intelligence” but, instead, makes quite clear that it thinks Acosta utilized “poor judgment” [79] in dealing with Epstein’s defense team. This is far from the exoneration Tracey contends it is. Tracey is misrepresenting a source to say that Acosta’s alleged statement that Epstein is connected to intelligence is disproven by the OPR report.

Tracey also contends that, when asked, Alex Acosta denied that Epstein was connected to intelligence. That question came from the Associated Press at a July 10, 2019 press conference, [80 @46:15, 81] and here is the exchange:

Richard Lardner from The Associated Press: Mr. Secretary, will you ever made aware, at any point your handling of this case, that Mr. Epstein was an intelligence asset of some sort?

Then-Labor Secretary Alex Acosta: So so so so there has there has been reporting to that effect and and let me say there’s been reporting to a lot of effects in in in this case… not just now but over the years… and and again I would I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact this was a case that was brought by our office it was brought based on the facts and and I look at that reporting and others, I can’t address it directly because of our our guidelines, but I can tell you that that a lot of reporting is just going down rabbit holes.

Acosta isn’t denying anything. He’s saying effectively… nothing. He says reporting isn’t all to be taken as fact. He doesn’t deny a link to intelligence, he says all reporting is suspect on this case. Again, Tracey is wildly misstating the record and is misrepresenting a source.

It is very hard to explain why a U.S. Attorney would give such preferential treatment to someone for whom they had multiple allegations of sexual crimes, in addition to evidence to support a 60 count indictment.

CONCLUSION

Michael Tracey’s boldest claim is that Giuffre is a “serial fabricator.” That claim is entirely false, though it is true that Giuffre dismissed her claims against Alan Dershowitz while claiming it was a case of mistaken identity. Giuffre’s other claims hold up across large amounts of litigation, civil and criminal, state and federal.

Tracey ignores the other accusers, but dismisses them all as financially-motivated. Yet the justice system does not have a remedy to give litigants other than the pursuit of financial awards. This indictment of their motives, because they sought financial compensation, is not valid. Tracey knows this, he’s just trying to smear them by indicting their motives.

Tracey also points to a lack of named elites, yet the Epstein accusers have been quite clear in accusing very high-level elites as having been part of the operation. Tracey is either ignoring these people altogether, or being willfully ignorant here.

Michael Tracey is using a wide variety of selectiveness, cherry picking, and sophistry, in order to defend a well-known sexual trafficking operation involving underage children. His article is trash, his reasoning is unsound, and his methods are obviously bad.

OUR RATING: Level 1: Journalistic Malpractice, Even Salon.com is ashamed. Total lies.

Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETr5GaWIWy0
2 ] https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-idiocy-of-the-epstein-mythology/
3 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/no-more-epstein-documents-release-yet-11571-epstein/
4 ] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ghislane-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein-evidence-b1827610.html
5 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/epstein-horrors-official-sleight-hand-about-millions-pages/
6 ] https://www.newsweek.com/ghislaine-maxwell-prosecution-reveals-nearly-3-million-pages-jeffrey-epstein-evidence-1581342
7 ] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9qxd2exqgno
8 ] https://www.bitchute.com/video/XSvF9JxZuu7J
9 ] https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1407001/dl
10 ] https://www.npr.org/2022/01/03/1069887001/jeffrey-epstein-virginia-giuffre-settlement-deal
11 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Wexner
12 ] https://www.bitchute.com/video/MGtDj8drWvE
13 ] https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/30/20746983/alan-dershowitz-jeffrey-epstein-sarah-ransome-giuffre
14 ] https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-01-17/alan-dershowitz-named-to-trumps-impeachment-legal-team
15 ] https://nypost.com/2024/01/03/news/alan-dershowitz-defends-associates-on-jeffrey-epsteins-list/
16 ] https://randazza.com/wp-content/uploads/TGP-Opening-Brief.pdf
17 ] https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1%3A2015cv07433/447706
18 ] https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/62f5db5fc2281c7ac2f5a8e0
19 ] https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/tgp-commc-ns-v-936240691
20 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/no-more-epstein-documents-release-yet-11571-epstein/
21 ] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5395597-dershowitz-says-he-knows-epstein-client-list-names-but-im-bound-by-confidentiality/
22 ] https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/dershowitz-epstein-client-list-trump-b2786911.html
23 ] https://www.speakoutactreclaim.org/about-us
24 ] https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2021/12/29/we-need-a-better-way-to-measure-nonprofit-effectiveness/
25 ] https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/running-nonprofit/fundraising-and-resource-development/evaluation-and-measurement-outcomes
26 ] https://www.bitchute.com/video/MGtDj8drWvE
27 ] https://www.dvmcpr.com/about-us
28 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/former-israeli-prime-minister-furiously-responds-allegations-that/
29 ] https://nypost.com/2025/07/14/world-news/former-israeli-pm-naftali-bennett-denies-conspiracy-linking-epstein-to-mossad/
30 ] https://nypost.com/2025/07/08/us-news/donald-trump-swats-aside-jeffrey-epstein-question-at-cabinet-meeting/
31 ] https://youtu.be/ETr5GaWIWy0?si=jxbWtXHQJiyA42na&t=225
32 ] https://archive.ph/I1OGw
33 ] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffrey-epstein-steven-hoffenberg-intelligence-agencies-spy-1197708/
34 ] https://www.bitchute.com/video/MGtDj8drWvE
35 ] https://www.instagram.com/p/B76tNqXnbMK/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=YTlnZ2IxcTZkYThv
36 ] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffrey-epstein-steven-hoffenberg-intelligence-agencies-spy-1197708/
37 ] https://www.bitchute.com/video/MGtDj8drWvE
38 ] https://www.bitchute.com/video/XSvF9JxZuu7J
39 ] https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-Blackmail-Intelligence/dp/1634243013/
40 ] https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-Blackmail-Intelligence/dp/1634243021
41 ] https://unlimitedhangout.com/author/whitney-webb/
42 ] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_II.pdf
43 ] https://books.google.com/books?id=KSXcfeGWooQC
44 ] https://books.google.com/books?id=f5PaAAAAMAAJ
45 ] https://books.google.com/books?id=QrWSTeJbPXAC
46 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/epstein-horrors-official-sleight-hand-about-millions-pages/
47 ] https://www.newsweek.com/ghislaine-maxwell-prosecution-reveals-nearly-3-million-pages-jeffrey-epstein-evidence-1581342
48 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/no-more-epstein-documents-release-yet-11571-epstein/
49 ] https://www.bitchute.com/video/MGtDj8drWvE
50 ] https://www.bitchute.com/video/XSvF9JxZuu7J
51 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/doj-says-no-epstein-client-list-indictments-just/
52 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_child_prostitution_ring_allegations
53 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux
54 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Fleiss
55 ] https://lamag.com/crimeinla/heidi-fleiss-brothel-network-client-list-epstein-ghislaine-maxwell-exclusive
56 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer_prostitution_scandal
57 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scandal
58 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Raniere
59 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXIVM
60 ] https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a33658764/what-is-nxivm-sex-cult-celebrities-stars-the-vow-hbo-true-story/
61 ] https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/us/nxivm-sex-cult-key-players
62 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Nyg%C3%A5rd
63 ] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/canadian-fashion-executive-peter-j-nygard-charged-sex-trafficking-and-racketeering
64 ] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/larry-ray-sarah-lawrence-students.html
65 ] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/lawrence-ray-sentenced-years-long-predatory-crimes-against-students-sarah-lawrence
66 ] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64351672
67 ] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/02/larry-ray-sarah-lawrence-sex-cult
68 ] https://www.businessinsider.com/sex-club-hollywoods-elite-bans-member-attacking-12-year-old-2018-1
69 ] https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/snctm-sex-club-founder-banned-005429329.html
70 ] https://nypost.com/2018/01/23/sex-club-says-bunnyman-booted-for-contacting-owners-daughter/
71 ] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c628r6q0n4vo
72 ] https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2025/05/01/sean-diddy-combs-parties-accusations-abuse/83112480007/
73 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diddy_parties
74 ] https://youtu.be/ETr5GaWIWy0?si=VAslvfZrMZzrQ3cn&t=258
75 ] https://youtu.be/ETr5GaWIWy0?si=Be8xs59vDqWswhM0&t=309
76 ] https://x.com/megynkelly/status/1944768211951497534
77 ] https://archive.ph/a6qCS
78 ] https://www.justice.gov/opr/page/file/1336471/dl
79 ] https://apnews.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-florida-e2a4431f7319afd037023d9a586aa291
80 ] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I1SRNYDwbw
81 ] https://www.c-span.org/clip/news-conference/user-clip-acosta-on-whether-epstein-was-an-intelligence-asset/4891243
82 ] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jeffrey-epstein-used-foreign-passport-fake-name-enter-saudi-arabia-n1031046
83 ] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-news.html
84 ] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10713688/?ref_=nm_knf_t_1

OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.

Indicted Outlet: Emily Cahn Singer | Daily Kos | Link | Archive | July 11, 2025

Left-wing opposition to the Trump agenda typically relies on half-truths and outright lies. Left-wing individuals often, personally, do not believe in fundamental truths, so their efforts at dishonesty, sophistry, are seen as tactical concerns.

There’s no good faith interpretation of how Emily Cahn Singer misquoted Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan. When you compare what Homan really said, with how Singer quoted you, you see fundamental journalistic dishonesty at work.

Major Violations:

• Dishonestly describe claims
• Decontextualization
• Major Misrepresentation of Source Material
• Manipulative editing
• Smearing
• Misrepresentation

Singer’s article, “Trump’s racist ‘border czar’ admits ICE is breaking the law,” relies on a brief comment that Homan made on FoxNews.

The 1:26 video clip that they use is here:

From the video clip, you can see that Homan said this:

HOMAN: “Look, people need to understand ICE officers and border patrol, they don’t need ‘probable cause’ to walk up to somebody and briefly detain and question them. They just need the ‘totality of the circumstances’ right, they just go through their observation, you know, get ‘articulable facts’ based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions, like if a uniformed border patrol agent walks up to them at, for instance, a Home Depot, and they got all these articulable facts, plus a person walks away or runs away. Agents are trained what they need to detain somebody temporarily and question them. It’s not ‘probable cause,’ it’s ‘reasonable suspicion.’ We’re trained on that. And every agent, every six months, gets get Fourth Amendment training over and over again. These officers are really good what they do, and if this judge is going to make a decision that’s against what these officer trained what the what the law is based upon, then they’re going to shut down operations I think that’s, that’s their end game. They want ICE to stop doing this, but if they base it on the rule of law, they’ll find out border patrol and ICE are doing exactly what they’re doing in accordance with the law.”

Here is how the Daily Kos misquotes Homan:

“People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol, they don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” Homan said on Fox News, adding that he says ICE agents can detain people “based on … their physical appearance.”

Here’s a screengrab from within the article in case they try to edit or update the article:

You’ll notice the ellipsis here hides the relevant context that the writer Singer is leaving out.

Let me rewrite the full Homan statement again and put in bold the way the Daily Kos quoted Homan from their own clip.

This is how Singer at the Daily Kos quoted from the full excerpt of Homan’s statement, with the quoted part bolded:

HOMAN: “Look, people need to understand ICE officers and border patrol, they don’t need ‘probable cause’ to walk up to somebody and briefly detain and question them. They just need the ‘totality of the circumstances’ right, they just go through their observation, you know, get ‘articulable facts’ based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions, like if a uniformed border patrol agent walks up to them at, for instance, a Home Depot, and they got all these articulable facts, plus a person walks away or runs away. Agents are trained what they need to detain somebody temporarily and question them. It’s not ‘probable cause,’ it’s ‘reasonable suspicion.’ We’re trained on that. And every agent, every six months, gets get Fourth Amendment training over and over again. These officers are really good what they do, and if this judge is going to make a decision that’s against what these officer trained what the what the law is based upon, then they’re going to shut down operations I think that’s, that’s their end game. They want ICE to stop doing this, but if they base it on the rule of law, they’ll find out border patrol and ICE are doing exactly what they’re doing in accordance with the law.”

By comparing the real quote to the quote they used, you can see an example of decontextualization and also major misrepresentation of source material.

The original point Homan is making is the accurate legal standard for law enforcement operating in the United States.

Here is the legal definition of the concept of “probable cause”: [1]

Although the Fourth Amendment states that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause”, it does not specify what “probable cause” actually means. The Supreme Court has attempted to clarify the meaning of the term on several occasions, while recognizing that probable cause is a concept that is imprecise, fluid and very dependent on context. In Illinois v. Gates, the Court favored a flexible approach, viewing probable cause as a “practical, non-technical” standard that calls upon the “factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men […] act”.[fn] See Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 232 (1983).[/fn] Courts often adopt a broader, more flexible view of probable cause when the alleged offenses are serious.

And while that definition is vague, the important thing to remember is that it is the standard for police making an arrest. The legal standards are used to review whether law enforcement, in a particular situation, had enough reasoning in order to arrest someone.

This is in contrast to the standard for law enforcement to approach someone and simply ask them questions, this standard is known as “reasonable suspicion.”

The definition of “reasonable suspicion” is: [2]

Reasonable suspicion is a standard used in criminal procedure. Reasonable suspicion is used in determining the legality of a police officer’s decision to perform a search. When an officer stops someone to search the person, courts require that the officer has either a search warrant, probable cause to search, or a reasonable suspicion to search. In descending order of what gives an officer the broadest authority to perform a search, courts have found that the order is search warrant, probable cause, and then reasonable suspicion.

These two legal standards are what Homan is discussing in the news clip.

One of the key court cases relevant to this concept is Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), [4] the court case which initially defined ‘reasonable suspicion.’

The media is repeatedly focused on the “probable cause” standard, which is used to make an arrest, and is stricter. Homan is pointing out that law enforcement’s ability to start investigating an individual illegal immigrant, by walking up to them and talking, is, instead, based upon the “reasonable suspicion” standard.

And Homan is going through the list of things that give a basis for “reasonable suspicion.”

Homan lists out suspicious things that illegal immigrants might do in a given situation, and his list is:

• Things the ICE agent generally observes
• Whether the location is suspicious
• Whether the occupation of the individual is known to have a lot of illegal immigrants
• Whether their physical appearance is similar to that of a typical illegal immigrant
• Whether their actions are suspicious, such as running away when an ICE agent approaches

This is the correct legal standard. Homan also clarifies that the ‘totality of the circumstances’ matters. This is also deliberate phrasing, based on legal precedent. Law enforcement is allowed to use common sense as long as their reasons are ‘articulable’ meaning that they can be clear about their reasoning and rationale.

Homan’s words are a little mumbled and his grammar is a little off in the response, but his legal analysis is spot on.

So in their article, Singer at the DailyKos relies on their low-information left-wing activists not to check the actual quote for context, not understand the relevant law, and not know the full context here, which matters a great deal.

The legal standard for police to stop and talk to someone on the street, and the standard to make an arrest, are two different legal standards.

Homan is talking about the legal standards his agents are using to simply go up and talk to people, to conduct an investigation, to determine if a law is being broken.

But because one legal standard is more well known, “probable cause” and another is much less known, “reasonable suspicion,” the article selectively misquotes Homan to make its point.

Law enforcement rightly uses the variety of outward signals that Homan identified in order to make those initial stops short of an arrest.

And since 1975, the sole reason for a stop cannot be the perceived ancestry of the individual being questioned. That case was United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975). [5] Law enforcement can use a combination of factors to justify their ‘reasonable suspicion’, but race cannot be the only factor. Homan’s reference to multiple “articulable facts” is consistent with that ruling.

Homan is not inventing new laws here, he is simply using the proper formulation and quoting the accurate law. Homan has been in law enforcement for decades, [3] and so it should come as no surprise that he accurately cites to the law. The idea that, on national television, Homan would say that he’s going to only approach illegal immigrants based on their race and skin color, is ridiculous.

It’s left-wing fantasies masquerading as journalism.

To recap, the Cahn Singer at the Daily Kos committed serious journalistic malpractice by:

• Misquoting Homan in the first place
• Not understanding the relevant legal standards, or misstating it on purpose
• Removing the context and larger list that Homan was providing
• Misquoting Homan to make him look like a racist, which is without any basis

But of course this all reveals what the DailyKos’ real motive is: to paint Homan as a racist. They are simply smearing Homan.

The goal is not to properly quote Homan and make good faith arguments, they are simply trying to smear Homan by misquoting him. By looking at what parts of the quote were quoted, you can see the agenda at work.

OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.

Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/probable_cause
2 ] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/reasonable_suspicion
3 ] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/us/politics/trump-border-czar-thomas-homan.html
4 ] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/392/1/
5 ] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/422/873/

• Trying to ‘storm’ the building, or
• Trying to ‘intimidate’ election workers, or
• Violating the ‘privacy rights’ of election workers, or
• ‘Threatening violence’

These various left-wing lies rely on a lack of available video evidence that shows the truth of what happened.

The mainstream media also adds in their own lies about this moment by claiming, without evidence, that:

• Democrats were also kicked out – NOT TRUE
• Democrats weren’t let back in – NOT TRUE
• The Republican group was dangerous – NOT TRUE
• The building was ‘at capacity’ – NOT TRUE
• There were valid reasons to ban the Republicans because of COVID – NOT TRUE

We have patiently gone through all of these lies and memes to debunk each of them.

But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

These two videos were shared with the Gateway Pundit in response to our fact check about the claims made by Twitter leftist Phil Schneider lying about the incident, claiming Republicans were lying that the goal of the pizza boxes were meant to obscure the view of Republicans.

The first video shows the “Stop the Steal” chant. It is 2:00 minutes long. It shows that the group was being loud but not dangerous. It also shows the police presence at all times, disproving the claim that the group was violent or instigating violence:

The second video is 4:00 long and shows that the people assembled were peaceful and not being let in, even though plenty of other individuals were being let in and out. You can see a wide variety of mainstream media present who were solely focused on the Republicans and ignoring the vote count happening all around them.

These videos are an important part of debunking the continuing left-wing lies about election night 2020 and the Big Steal.

OUR RATING: #FakeNews. This is what you’d expect on CNN playing to an empty airport.

Indicted Outlet: Phil Schneider | Twitter | Link | Archive | 11/4/23

UPDATE: In response to this story, two videos were given to us by an eyewitness, further debunking and disproving Phil Schneider’s claims. You can view them here.

Typically TGP FactCheck does not fact-check random leftists on Twitter.

But when people hold themselves out as independent fact-checkers of a sort, when they bring themselves into a number of conversations making fake and false statements and accusations, they promote and amplify a set of lies that they ought to know better than to repeat.

Here is what Twitter’s Phil Schneider said about election night 2020 in Detroit at the TCF Center:

So here is what he writes:

“Today is the three-year anniversary of one of the most enduring 2020 election myths– that elections officials in Wayne County (Detroit) Michigan covered up windows to keep Republican election challengers from observing ballot counting. It was a lie.”

This statement by Schneider is a complete and utter lie.

The truth is that the windows were covered up to prevent Republicans from observing the counting of ballots.

It’s disproven by the people who were there, and it’s disproven by the recorded audio of the Detroit election officials prior to the event, it’s disproven by the eyewitness statements of the people who were at the TCF Center, and it’s disproven by the facts that have come out about the incident.

Phil Schneider is a liar.

Major Violations:

• Ignoring Primary Sources
• Lying
• Misrepresentation
• Fact Suppression
• Government Genuflect

Republicans in Michigan were concerned about new rules in 2020 that threatened to prevent election observers and poll challengers from doing their job. A lawsuit filed by political candidate Steve Carra, who shortly afterwards became a state representative, filed suit against Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to force her to rescind rules that would prevent poll challengers from watching vote counts. Democrat Benson wanted them to be 9 feet away, while other election officials could mingle standing right next to one another. Benson and Democrats wanted to exclude only poll challengers from watching the vote, and fought hard in court to prevent Republicans from observing the vote. [5][6]

Michigan litigant, and later State Representative, Steve Carra

For reference, at least in Michigan, poll challenging is typically a Republican exercise and not a Democrat one.

According to the courts who ruled for Republican Carra and against Democrat Benson, Republican poll challengers in 2020 were supposed to be able to observe the vote counting process even if it violated COVID standards.

Prior to election night 2020, Shane Trejo, a reporter at Big League Politics broke a major story in Michigan. Trejo had a whistleblower who came forward and had recordings of the trainings for election workers in Wayne County. Trejo styled this series of stories as “#DetroitLeaks” The account was suspended on Twitter. [1]

In the recordings, one can hear Detroit election officials specifically talk about keeping Republican election observers from being close enough to observe what’s happening. The elections officials specifically said to keep them so far away that “they would need binoculars.”

They laughed as they explained they were going to abuse social distancing rules in order to prevent Republicans from observing vote counts. [4]

The authenticity of the recordings were inadvertently verified by Michigan’s far-left Attorney General Dana Nessel when she threatened to prosecute Trejo for reporting the recordings. [7]

The #DetroitLeaks whistleblower, Adam DeAngeli, eventually came forward and spoke with the Gateway Pundit about what he saw. [8]

Much of the #DetroitLeaks investigation was purged from the internet after threats from prosecutors. Reporter Trejo told TGP FactCheck that after it was banned on Twitter, and after Nessel started making threats from her position as Michigan’s Attorney General, many outlets deleted their stories and reporting on the topic. Even Big League Politics succumbed to the pressure and removed several stories. The story was “scrubbed from most major platforms” according to Trejo. The remaining evidence survives almost solely on BitChute according to Trejo. [9]

Reporter Trejo would end up being one of the key witnesses to Detroit’s voter fraud in 2020. [2][3]

Shane Trejo, reporter for Big League Politics

So before election night, there was already a plan in place by Democrats to prevent Republican poll challengers from observing the vote count, and there was litigation that came down on the side of letting Republicans observe the process normally.

So what happened on election night 2020 at the TCF Center according to eyewitnesses?

Republicans were systemically precluded from being election workers. Witnesses said that Wayne County officials even gave the Republican applicants a separate application process that went nowhere. Virtually none of the Republican applicants were hired, whereas every Democrat election worker spot was filled.

Contrary to the court ruling, Republicans were systemically prevented from observing the vote count process at the TCF Center.

If Republican poll watchers or election workers left the immediate area of the TCF Center, they were not allowed re-entry. This was done for the excuse of the facility being ‘at capacity’ due to COVID rules. Trejo confirms this detail noting that, “By the time I left on election night and came back, they had already banned people from getting into the building altogether unless you were an approved-journalist. They didn’t let any Republicans back in once they left.”

If one talked to any of the Republicans who were present, they all confirm the details of the situation and confirm that the motive was to prevent Republicans from being able to witness the ongoing voter count, contrary to state law.

The left-wing excuses and sophistry to try and create alternative motives for this action all fall flat.

Some of the more common left-wing lies about this incident include:

• The Republicans were threatening violence.
• The Republicans were about to “storm” the building. This is the kind of idiocy that Buzzfeed promoted. [14]
• The Republicans were ‘violating the privacy’ of election workers.

These lies are promoted because it’s too simple to admit the obvious: the ongoing voter fraud was being removed from view.

There were no violent threats because there were scores of police present. There was no attempt to ‘storm’ the building, as the protesters were already in the building. There was no privacy to invade, because all the election workers were named on sign-in sheets, being paid by tax dollars, and short-term public servants. They had no right to avoid being photographed in public performing a public duty. All of the left-wing media’s narrative frames are ridiculous.

All the media reporting also notably relies on the government genuflect: meaning that even though there are known eyewitnesses, the media relies solely on the word of self-interested government officials.

It also shows that the left-wing media refuses to use primary sources. Ignoring primary sources is a hallmark of left-wing disinformation campaigns like this: they just refuse to examine the best, easiest, evidence that might challenge their preferred narratives. This is also a form of fact suppression.

Shane Trejo was at the TCF Center on election night 2020 and told TGP FactCheck: “They have since claimed that they were ‘protecting the privacy’ of the Detroit election workers, which was complete nonsense, and that they were ‘protecting Democracy’ by their actions, but they were engaged in a clear as day cover-up. They were covering-up the counting of illegal ballots brought in late, whom eyewitnesses said were suspicious in many ways such as not being folded and all having the same suspicious markings.

Trejo continued, “If they were truly protecting privacy, why didn’t they ban the media from taking pictures? The media was inside the room taking pictures, so the excuse that they needed to protect privacy is just a lie. The problem is that there’s no reason to block the windows except to cover up what they were doing. No one wants to admit the obvious: they were literally covering-up ongoing voter fraud.”

“Their excuses have made no sense,” Trejo adds. This is what shows that Schneider is lying: the excuses are nonsense.

Meshawn Maddock, another witness present at the covering of windows by pizza boxes, confirms all the same details.

Meshawn Maddock is visible in many of the photographs from the incident by the mainstream media.

Meshawn Maddock tells TGP FactCheck: “Republicans were standing at the windows begging to be let in, and they were completely ignored. These were people who were on the list to be poll challengers and poll workers, and they were simply being denied. The way Wayne County was operating they were only going after the Republicans. I guess in their minds only Republicans got COVID? Anyway, they put up poster board and then used pizza boxes when they ran out of posterboard. I don’t know what else to say other than to say why else would you poster up the windows. They didn’t say anything as they were doing it, it’s clear that they just made up an excuse later to justify it.”

Even the left-wing Detroit Free Press said that chaos erupted because Republicans were disallowed re-entry because the building was “at capacity.” [11][15] They were told this by the government, and apply zero skepticism to the claim. This is a form of fact suppression and government genuflect since the witnesses all relate that Democrat operatives were being let out and back in again without any trouble.

Here is the story from Nov. 4, 2020:

A chaotic scene erupted outside the vote tally room at TCF Center in Detroit on Wednesday as election officials informed dozens of challengers that they could not reenter the room due to it being at capacity. 

People gathered outside the ballot-counting area pounded on the doors and windows, shouting, “Let us in” and “Stop the count” as only about a half-dozen tables continued to count ballots on the day after Election Day.

Police had to push back the crowds as they argued to be allowed in the vote-counting area. Republican counters shouted that they were unfairly being kept out, but Democratic challengers countered that it was not true because they were also being kept outside.

Witnesses say that no Democrats were excluded from re-entry, and that only Republicans were barred. When the windows were later covered-up, only Republicans were being prevented from seeing what was going on.

“There was no reason to cover up the windows. I was there. I saw them doing it. I was looking out of the last window when they covered it up. It was to stop our view,” said Maddock.

“We weren’t disruptive or threatening anyone. They could have kicked us out of the building if we were being disruptive. They could have had the police come over if there was a problem. There were plenty of police around. But they didn’t because their only goal was to cover up the big steal.”

Maddock quickly listed off seven other individuals who were around her who could verify the same information: only Republicans were being excluded, and the pizza box cover-up had no purpose other than to obscure their view.

“It’s amazing to me that there’s any dispute about this. Of course they covered up the windows to cover up what they were doing. It was the literal and figurative definition of a cover-up,” said Maddock.

Even left-wing journalists who were present said that the purpose was to “to obstruct [the] view” of the protesting Republicans. [13]

#BREAKING: Large, animated crush of “stop the count” protestors trying to push their way into TCF hall in #Detroit where ballots are being counted.

They’re being blocked by guards at the door.

Pizza boxes are pushed against the window to obstruct view. It’s tense. @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/zFhzd88skX

— Steve Patterson (@PattersonNBC) November 4, 2020

Maddock continued, “There weren’t any Democrats that were outside the arena. The Democrats could easily come and go. Republicans got put into seats at a table and if they left the area for any reason, even to just use the bathroom, they were denied re-entry. Only the Republicans were treated this way. They had Democrats and outside left-wing organizations on site who could roam freely. There were obvious Antifa, school union, UAW, among other left-wing groups roaming around.”

“Wayne County actually credentialed entire organizations, we didn’t figure this out until 2022 — that groups claiming to be a non-partisan group could register. We were outnumbrered 10-1 by hard-left Democrats. When our people would get up, they’d never let them back in. Our people got ground down and pushed out by endless harassment. Our people inside started realizing that people weren’t being let in and were being forced out. So our people stayed and wouldn’t leave. There was a lot of physical intimidation underway by the left inside the TCF Center: they only wanted us to leave. None of this was captured on video because you weren’t allowed to have a phone out and the media inside were all mainstream sources. The pics from the inside were all from the media. Inside the room, there was a row of tables for media, but they weren’t out walking around,” said Maddock.

Several TCF witnesses corroborate Maddock’s statements. One was Elizabeth Forlini, who was ejected after she saw suspicious ballots and challenged ballots. [10][12]

Another witness was Bob Cushman, who related to the Gateway Pundit that he was ejected from the TCF Center illegally because he observed too much voter fraud. [16] Articia Bomer related the same information to the Gateway Pundit: there was an active campaign of harassment. [17] Kristina Karamo told the Gateway Pundit that the intimidation against Republicans was so bad, “they were like a pack of wild dogs.” [18]

TGP FactCheck even spoke with another individual who was there, who asked to remain anonymous because of the threat of retaliation and lawsuits by far-left Attorney General Nessel and others, who confirmed all the key details. The individual said, “I was there and the Detroit officials did everything to stifle us. I swore out an affidavit to this effect as did many others. All of this is easy to find. And I mean, of course they were trying to obstruct our view.”

The witness continued, “They used COVID to stifle us from monitoring the election. It’s quite obvious why: they were trying to rig the election. I was there from early in the morning to late all night, literally all day. We were a group of Republican volunteers. There wasn’t a single Democrat out there, despite what the media says. Everyone who worked on Michigan Trump Victory [the 2020 Trump campaign] had it as part of our contract to monitor the election.”

“There was no violence by Republicans, no threats by Republicans, and we were upset that they were illegally kicking out Republicans. They gave us no other option, so we got loud.”

No witness related that they saw any violence by pro-Trump people against the left-wing officials. Besides, police were present everywhere at the TCF Center. So the fake claims about Republicans planning to ‘storm’ the building or other suggestions of violence, are just nonsense statements.

So in this instance, 1) the far-left Secretary of State was litigating in court to try and prevent Republicans from observing the vote count process, 2) Wayne County election officials were caught bragging about denying Republicans the ability to view the vote count process, 3) scores of eyewitnesses relate that Republicans were systemically blocked from viewing ballot tabulations, 4) every witness whose view was blocked says that they were being blocked.

But someone Phil Schneider just blithely calls this a ‘lie.’

The left has no answer for key voter fraud claims, so they content themselves at knocking down their own cherry-picked straw men. They often ‘debunk’ claims by focusing on claims not being made, or other irrelevant claims.

But at least as it relates to the cover-up of Detroit’s election processes during the 2020 election, the evidence is clear.

Detroit covered up the windows to prevent Republican poll challengers and election workers from observing the voting process.

Phil Schneider is wrong and a liar.

OUR RATING: #FakeNews. This is what you’d expect on CNN playing to an empty airport.

Bibliography:
1 ] https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=detroitleaks
2 ] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03wJ2oVB8Dg
3 ] https://bigleaguepolitics.com/biggest-scandal-in-u-s-history-reporter-shane-trejo-describes-detroits-election-night-chaos-to-one-america-news/
4 ] https://web.archive.org/web/20201117193853/https://www.nationalinsiders.com/leaked-audio-proves-voter-fraud-big-tech-hides-it/
5 ] https://michiganadvance.com/blog/state-settles-lawsuit-allows-poll-challengers-to-stand-within-6-feet-of-workers/
6 ] https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/10/poll-challengers-can-be-within-6-feet-of-michigan-election-workers-state-agrees-to-in-settled-lawsuit.html
7 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/huge-exclusive-michigan-ag-dana-nessel-sends-cease-desist-order-journalist-demanding-erase-detroitleaks-video-showing-voter-fraud-training-face-criminal-prosecution/
8 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/michigan-witness-saw-detroit-plan-destroy-provisional-ballots-hurt-republicans-video/
9 ] https://www.bitchute.com/channel/TH9yJAeYpVcr/
10 ] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1JrKZ-7t1M
11 ] https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/04/tcf-center-challengers-detroit-michigan/6164715002/
12 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/stunning-testimony-michigan-witness-saw-active-military-ballots-71-year-old-people-canada-video/
13 ] https://twitter.com/PattersonNBC/status/1324086177885003778?
14 ] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/addybaird/michigan-republican-vote-challengers-detroit
15 ] https://archive.ph/OHeDZ – https://www.crainsdetroit.com/elections/chaos-tcf-center-crowds-election-challengers-shout-stop-vote
16 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/saw-voter-fraud-michigan-election-observer-witness-fraud-kicked-tcf-started-recording-fraud-video/
17 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/michigan-witness-former-us-congressional-candidate-speaks-saw-biden-ballot-dump-4-witnessed-officials-tampering-tabulators/
18 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/like-pack-dogs-detroit-voter-fraud-witness-describes-election-night-chaos-video/

OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.

Indicted Outlet: Yaron Steinbuch | New York Post | Link | Archive | Oct. 20, 2023

For decades the left complained that the media was too nice to the police, too deferential in stories where a dead body resulted from a traffic stop. A whole litany of left-wing memes were willed into existence on this point, all calling into question the degree to which police inappropriately acted during traffic stops.

Through the 2010’s, however, the use of police body cams have become near-universal, especially for front-line officers regularly interacting with the public. By 2003, 72% of highway police had at least a dashboard camera. [3] The cameras have reduced a lot of the risk of self-interested testimony about how hostile incidents transpired.

Here, the video evidence makes clear that when Sheriff’s Deputy Buck Aldridge pulled over Leonard Cure in Georgia, he was merely defending himself. Cure’s family has retained an attorney notorious for pushing false legal claims of a racial nature in order to force municipalities to pay millions of dollars in settlements. [4]

Major Violations:

• Lying Headline
• Creating False Connections
• Misrepresentation
• Financial Conflict of Interest

During a traffic stop in Georgia, Camden County Sheriff’s Deputy Buck Aldridge pulled over former convict Leonard Cure. Clearly visible on the dashcam, Cure started fighting Deputy Aldridge and at one point had choked him and clearly had the physical upper hand. At this point Deputy Aldridge shot Cure in the stomach, and Cure later died.

The media is trying to lionize the deceased, Leonard Cure, while it is also trying to demonize the police in this situation: Deputy Aldridge.

The media is hyping up an employment termination from six years ago for Deputy Aldridge, and are hyping Leonard Cure’s exoneration in 2020 for armed robbery. [5] The ‘exoneration’ of Cure was not a proof that he was innocent, however.

The media keeps focusing on trivial, unprovable, details that help Cure’s case: that he was visiting a ‘sick mother’ and that he was an ‘exonerated man.’ The relevant fact is that Cure was not exonerated of this crime. That confusion makes this a lying headline.

Evidence of prior bad acts are inadmissible in most criminal proceedings because they tend to prejudice the viewer rather than have them look at the evidence at hand and judge it impartially. While this is not a courtroom, the media is clearly including this information and focusing on it in an entirely unbalanced way.

The video speaks for itself. Whether Cure was an angel and Aldridge was a devil, the video makes clear who instigated the fight and also shows the multiple steps that Aldridge took to subdue Cure short of shooting him.

The available video evidence [1] could not be clearer.

Here’s the opening sentence by Yaron Steinbuch at the New York Post:

“The Georgia deputy who fatally shot a black man who had served more than 16 years in prison on a wrongful robbery conviction was previously fired from a police department for excessive use of force during a traffic stop, according to a report.”

The victim’s or officer’s race is irrelevant to this story. There’s no credible allegation that race had anything to do with this incident. The number of years that Cure spent in prison is also irrelevant, as is most of the details of his exoneration. Similarly, Aldridge’s prior termination from a police force for an ‘excessive use of force during a traffic stop’ is missing critical context: that it was six years ago.

A reader could reasonably think this stop was about race, that Cure was an innocent man, and that the Deputy was fired last week for excessive force. This is creating false connections in the readers’ mind.

Without the critical details presented to readers, they will fill in the blanks with the most likely answer based on their own prejudices.

Yet if someone watches the full video, Leonard Cure is trying to either snap the neck of Deputy Aldridge or choke him to death, and he keeps saying “Yea, Bitch” repeatedly as he’s choking Aldridge. You can see it on the full video [1] of the encounter posted at the YouTube channel PoliceActivity [2].

This gives you a good idea of what Leonard Cure’s state of mind was during the encounter. He knew he had the upper hand literally and figuratively, and he was going to be able to kill the Deputy either by choking him to death or pushing him into highway traffic.

In the video you can watch as Deputy Aldridge tries to use a Taser on Cure, and then uses a collapsible baton to try and subdue him. When neither of those tactics work, the Deputy resorts to a gunshot to Cure’s ribcage. Even then, you can see Cure on the ground still angrily contemplating continuing the fight.

Earlier in the video you can even see Aldridge keep backing up trying to de-escalate the situation, only to have Cure pursue him and initiate the fight and keep it going.

Despite Aldridge brandishing his Taser, Cure lunged at him repeatedly:

The next two paragraphs create a false moral equivalence between the two:

Camden County Sheriff’s Deputy Buck Aldridge was identified by News4JAX as the officer who fatally shot Leonard Cure, 53, during a violent struggle after the cop stopped him for speeding Monday.

Distressing footage showed him tasing and shooting Cure, who had been out of prison for three and a half years following his exoneration.

Saying there was a “violent struggle” fails to identify that it was Cure who caused the fight. This is missing context.

Writing “after the cop stopped him for speeding” ignores the rate of speed which was a felony charge in every state. Doing more than 20 mph over the speed limit is usually considered “reckless” and subject to an arrest and felony charge. In the video, Deputy Aldridge even mentions this when Cure says that the stop should just result in a ticket and citation. Again, this is missing context.

When Steinbuch writes that it is “distressing footage” notably he does not link to it, denying his readers the ability to decide for themselves after watching the footage. The way Steinbuch then writes as though Deputy Aldridge simply tased and then shot Cure, without explaining that Cure resisted the arrest with violence and nearly killed Deputy Aldridge. This is a misrepresentation of what happened.

Almost every sentence in this New York Post article is dishonest, deceptive, and deceitful.

This next paragraph is more extreme deceitfulness on the part of Steinbuch:

“I see a police officer being way too aggressive to start with,” a fellow officer who was at the scene said of Aldridge, according to the outlet, which cited an internal probe.

“He had no business picking her up and throwing her on the ground.”

The writing leaves the reader unclear as to who is being referenced. And lazy readers might not notice that Steinbuch is quoting an officer from the prior 2017 complaint about excessive force. By being unclear and vague, Steinbuch is making it seem as though that’s a comment another officer who was at the scene with Leonard Cure was saying about Deputy Aldridge.

It’s also devoid of any context or argument in favor of the officer. Surely the report isn’t that he just suddenly came upon a woman and picked her up and threw her to the ground. There is necessary missing context here that Steinbuch refuses to provide.

The only intent in providing this information is to smear Deputy Aldridge.

Buried near the bottom of the article is the admission from Cure’s mother that he suffered from mental illness.

Cure told the Messenger that her son had suffered psychological harm from his years behind bars.

“I’ll say if you spent that much time in prison, it’s going to be hard. I don’t care who you are,” she told the outlet.

If the story had been honestly written, it would have been that mentally ill man started a fight with police after being pulled over for driving 100mph and the fight ended with his death.

That would have given readers the relevant information about the incident, and would have been an objective frame to the story. It wouldn’t be feeding into the financial conflict of interest for the family seeking money alongside their attorneys. It wouldn’t involve finding any bit of information to smear and malign the Trooper.

The framing of this story is wrong and represents serious and systemic journalistic malpractice.

OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.

Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GrcptVf8Yk
2 ] https://www.youtube.com/@PoliceActivity
3 ] https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/bwc/pdfs/iacpin-carcamerareport.pdf
4 ] https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/10/20/civil-rights-attorney-ben-crump-responds-police-video-showing-killing-of-exonerated
5 ] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12652301/Georgia-cop-shot-dead-exonerated-man-traffic-stop.html
6 ] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12653893/Mother-exonerated-man-Leonard-Cure-shot-dead-cop-traffic-stop-says-didnt-deserve-die-road-tearfully-says-hate-Georgia-demands-justice.html

• The Gulf of Tonkin is the central claim for a ‘false flag’ used to start an unpopular war. This isn’t a small matter, the political importance of the actual details of the battle are critical and there’s no excuse a reporter like Risen and an outlet like the Intercept, missed them.

Our Rating: Major Negligence. MSNBC-level basic journalistic negligence

Indicted Outlet: James Risen | The Intercept | Archive | Link | Oct. 7, 2023

So if this fact sounds familiar, it’s because we previously fact-checked Mr. Bald on the wonderful “Bald and Bankrupt” for getting this fact wrong. [1]

Whereas Mr. Bald, aka Benjamin Rich, is a Travel Vlogger and perhaps our fact check was a bit harsh given that he doesn’t hold himself out to be a historian, James Risen at the Intercept certainly holds himself out as someone who wouldn’t make a critical factual mistake like this.

I’ve updated this piece to reflect the response from Mr. Risen, where he indicates that he didn’t clarify the two different attacks. While this is true, it’s still not really an acceptable answer given the context provided here. Saying that the attack was faked, when you acknowledge the first attack was real, is still a significant error. In any case, I’ve posted his entire response at the end of this piece.

Major Violations:

• Misrepresentation

Let’s start by being absolutely clear what was said and what is factually incorrect about what is being said.

In this article from October 7, 2023, titled, “The Secret History: How Neil Sheehan Really Got the Pentagon Papers”, [2] Risen says:

“In August 1964, when U.S. Navy ships ventured into North Vietnamese territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, President Lyndon Johnson and the Pentagon lied about the North Vietnamese response, falsely claiming the North Vietnamese had assaulted the ships. Johnson then used the trumped-up incident to win congressional passage of what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which became Johnson’s justification to dramatically escalate the war by sending in conventional combat forces.”

It’s notable here that Risen refuses to date when the ships ventured into “North Vietnamese waters” in August. He does so to purposefully obfuscate that there were two incidents, the first attack and the second attack.

There is no dispute that the North Vietnamese attacked the U.S.S. Maddox on August 2, 1964. There is dispute about whether or not there was an attack two days later on August 4, 1963.

Even the Vietnamese admit that the first attack happened on August 2, 1964.

So when James Risen says that LBJ “falsely claim[ed] the North Vietnamese had assaulted the ships” it is a major misrepresentation.

When Risen says that “U.S. Navy ships ventured into North Vietnamese territorial waters” he is taking the 12 mile Vietnamese interpretation of their political jurisdictional limits and not the 5 mile limit claimed by the U.S., another major misrepresentation.

As well, and I hate to give that monster LBJ any credit, but the surviving record shows that he genuinely thought that the second attack was legitimate. They may have been play acting for the phone and experts may have known better, but in the heat of the moment it does appear as though Johnson genuinely thought that there was a second attack.

Johnson may have over-used the attack to suit his political purposes, may have recklessly overridden his commanders and subordinates who suspected this was not real, he may have cynically understood this as a way to expand his power, but on the night of August 4th 1964 it does appear he thought there was a second attack. [3][4]

As well, the question of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution being used to “dramatically escalate the war by sending in conventional combat forces” is also up to reasonable debate and not a settled fact. There were advisors in South Vietnam sent there by Kennedy. There were already 23,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by 1964.[5] There wouldn’t be a large scale battle involving U.S. troops for over a year.

This is one fact in a longer historical piece. On some basis, I can see why it might be considered cherry-picking to focus on this one fact.

But this one fact is perhaps the most critical and crucial one to the story. Getting this fact wrong clouds and colors all subsequent U.S. involvement. Whether a war was started on a cynical lie or an unfortunate series of naval attacks and encounters, are two very different versions of what comes next.

This is a mistake that someone like James Risen shouldn’t make, and his readers shouldn’t have to second guess. Therefore, we’re rating this as major negligence.

This has become such an article of faith on the political left, it has become an unquestioned shibboleth that perhaps started as half true (that there is dispute about the August 4th attack), but sloppiness and left-wing arrogance has allowed the meme to evolve like a historical cancer. You can take the reporter out of the New York Times, but you can’t take the NYT out of the Reporter, apparently.

We contacted James Risen and here was his response:

It’s true I didn’t distinguish between the first and second purported attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in the brief description of it in my story. But the significant event was the second purported attack, which is what Johnson used to go to Congress to get the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. There is a consensus today that the second attack didn’t happen, and that Congress was misled about it at the time.  Here are some relevant links, including one showing that Johnson went to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright about getting Congress to act only after the second purported attack. The other stories go into detail about how the second attack didn’t occur, and that Congress was misled..

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/senate-stories/chairman-fulbright-and-the-tonkin-gulf-resolution.htm

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2008/february/truth-about-tonkin

https://www.history.com/news/the-gulf-of-tonkin-vietnam-war-johnson

Risen is correct that there’s major dispute today about the second attack and most historians believe it didn’t happen. But there’s similarly no good faith dispute that the first one did happen. The two attacks combined were used to pass the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, but to omit and ignore the first attack is not a minor thing in his article.

Our Rating: Major Negligence. MSNBC-level basic journalistic negligence

Bibliography:

1 ] https://tgpfactcheck.com/major-youtuber-gets-basic-vietnam-war-facts-wrong-repeats-left-wing-lies/
2 ] https://theintercept.com/2023/10/07/pentagon-papers-daniel-ellsberg-neil-sheehan/
3 ] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/tapes.htm
4 ] https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/t/tonkin-gulf-crisis/tonkin-gulf-incidents-of-2-4-aug-1964/uss-maddox-report-of-tonkin-gulf-action-of-4-aug-1964.html
5 ] https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=11&psid=3844

OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.

Indicted Outlet: Debbie Elliott | National Public Radio | Link | Archive | Aug. 12, 2022

Even though this article is a year old [1], it’s important to challenge the left-wing narrative and lies about Charlottesville’s 2017 “Unite the Right” rally.

The Gateway Pundit obtained, in May 2021, drone footage from Charlottesville that showed that the violence was almost entirely one-sided at Charlottesville by the militant Communist left against the pro-Lee protesters on the political right.[2]

But the power of that basic premise, the basic false narrative from Charlottesville, is combined with repeated lies, distortions, and major misrepresentations by reporters like Debbie Elliott at National Public Radio.

Major Violations:

• Unbalanced
• Dishonest Framing
• Ignoring Primary Sources
• Scapegoating
• Opinion as Fact
• Not Objective
• Assuming Bad Faith
• Guilty Grouping
• Creating False Connections

The lead of the article starts out with some extremely dishonest narrative framing and omissions. Elliott says that taking the Lee statue down was “…part of the town’s reckoning with a fraught racial history.” But Elliott leaves out the fact that across America statues were being torn down, often illegally, in the aftermath of the Dylann Roof shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

Supporters of historical preservation and those within Confederate ancestry groups were outraged by the destruction of the statues of their history, which had no connection to Roof’s murders of eight black men and women at a Charlestown church on June 15, 2015. [3]

Almost none of the reporting ever mentions that rally organizer Jason Kessler was feuding with Wes Bellamy on the City Council, where Kessler alleged that Bellamy was racist against whites, and passing policies that discriminated against whites and was out to tear down the Lee Statue illegally. Kessler even filed a recall petition against Bellamy prior to the rally. [4]

Elliott utilizes guilty grouping to make all the people at the Unite the Right rally equivalent to one another with this sentence, “On the night of Aug. 11, 2017, Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus bearing torches and terrorizing students with chants of “Blood and soil” and ‘Jews will not replace us.’” No one bothered to survey the Charlottesville rally participants, since there was no registration and it was a public event, so there’s no telling if they were all ‘neo-Nazis’ or if none of them were. It’s just an assumption without evidence, what we call opinion as fact.

Also, about the “Jews will not replace us” chant, Kessler has claimed in interviews that it is a common issue in political movements that, in a form of black humor or maybe gallows humor, change words that sound alike to be more edgy and controversial than they otherwise would be. In this way, Kessler maintains, the media continually takes this infamous chant out of context and uses it as a way to smear the rest of the people present. The crowd was chanting “you will not replace us” is thus turned into an anti-Jewish statement. In any case, with little research, one can find that this chant and claim is in dispute, and its applicability to the entire group, and the associated smear that the entire group shared those views, is likely false.

When a key fact in a story is reasonably in dispute, and a reporter doesn’t even acknowledge that there’s a dispute about the fact, it’s a major omission and a major journalistic crime.

The entire story gets framed through a far-left perspective, a very unbalanced and ungrounded report. The framing allows the demonization of everyone who attended the rally as a Nazi, fascist, bigot, racist, etc., it empowers and enables every far-left statement to be taken as true, it presents opinion as fact.

The reporter then connects David Duke, Donald Trump, and Richard Spencer. The three have little in common, but the reporter deceitfully links the three, and what she is doing is creating false connections.

Elliott then makes it seem as though the pro-Lee protesters were the ones instigating violence. This is not borne out by the drone footage, which shows the exact opposite: leftists and Communists flying the Soviet flag, regularly and repeatedly striking pro-Lee protesters and instigating violence.[2]

In fact, video from the rally shows Corey Long using a makeshift flamethrower on participants entering and exiting the event, with no reaction or involvement from the police. [5] Long was later charged with assault and battery, charges that the prosecutor later dismissed. Long is also on video launching rocks and projectiles at rally participants, but was never charged for those or other incidents, Long would serve 20 days in jail. [6]

Here’s how Elliott handles this in the story:

Gathers was there and says it quickly turned violent.

“They lobbed all manner of things – rocks, soda cans filled with concrete and cement, water bottles filled with urine, tear gas and smoke grenades.”

Gathers says police didn’t intervene until then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and shut down the rally.

She puts 100% of the blame squarely on the pro-Lee protesters.

Elliott also ignores the “stand down” order given to the police on the day of the rally, police who were ordered not to engage and to allow the two warring sides to fight. This material was all covered by former U.S. Attorney Tim Heaphy [7] who was hired by the City of Charlottesville, reviewed the evidence, and produced the Heaphy report. [8] The Heaphy report highlighted repeated failures and purposeful actions by the Democrat Governor, the Democrat-run City of Charlottesville and Police force, to encourage and push the two sides to fight.

It seems clear in retrospect considered the Heaphy report that, since the left-wing forces were losing court battles to prevent a protest at the Lee Statue, that they, instead, used violence as a pretext to shut down the protest and event. The violence was pushed and promoted by the left-run governmental bodies as a way to constructively deny the freedom of speech rights of the pro-Lee protesters that they had lost in federal court.

Attorney Timothy Heaphy

Elliott continues editorializing with facts not in evidence when she says, “As demonstrators were pushed from the park, they dispersed through town, leading to pockets of violence and ultimately the deadly attack on a group of anti-racists.” What she’s omitting is that many pro-Lee protesters approached police and asked for help getting out of town and were rebuffed.

Many of the pro-Lee protesters were actively trying to avoid a confrontation and were forced to flee and were assaulted anyway. The fights were not caused by the right attacking the left as much as they were chased and assaulted with the official sanction of a police force that was ordered to stand down.

The reader won’t find out about any of this, because Elliott and NPR purposefully keep this and omit it from their stories about the rally.

Elliott continues, “Two state police officers monitoring the scene died in a helicopter crash.” This is so egregiously false that it shows what a dishonest reporter Elliott is. The two officers who died when the helicopter crashed, Henry John Cullen III and Berke Morgan Matthew Bates, were tasked with following Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe’s motorcade when they crashed. Yet for some reason their deaths are continually blamed on half of the rally protesters whom they were observing.

The estates of the two men have repeatedly sued the State of Virginia for negligence. Even though the pro-Lee protesters have publicly been repeatedly blamed for their deaths with no evidence and for no reason, the State of Virginia originally said the crash was due to faulty maintenance on the helicopter by state officials. Then the excuse for the crash changed to pilot error when faced with a complicated wind pattern. The state insists on the latter because it absolves them of civil liability to the families, and the families insist on the faulty maintenance explanation because it provides a path to financial reward. [9][10]

But no one alleges that anyone at the rally did anything to the helicopter or did anything to cause the helicopter crash. There was no indication of foul play. [11] Their deaths had zero relation to the ‘Unite the Right’ rally but the media keeps hyping their deaths regardless of the available evidence.

NPR then makes a connection between Unite the Right rally and January 6th, sloppily comparing the two, “Racial justice advocates see the terror here as a turning point for the country – one that encouraged far right political violence, including the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year.” There’s really no way to connect the two. Of the thousand people indicted for January 6th, none of them have been accused of being Charlottesville rally members or organizers. This is opinion as fact.

The NPR reporter then complains that only James Fields was the one arrested in the aftermath of Charlottesville, “And she grew increasingly frustrated that Fields was the only person arrested in the immediate aftermath of the Unite the Right violence.” Yet there has been almost endless litigation against the rally organizers since then. The reporter then quotes a left-wing rally participant as saying “they had permission to wreak havoc, and that is what they’ve done” yet that is exactly what the Heaphy report addresses: if anyone had ‘permission to wreak havoc’ it was the left-wing counterprotesters.

The NPR Reporter then misstates James Fields’ extreme sentence by misstating that it is just ‘life in prison’ when she writes, “Fields was sentenced to life in prison on state murder and federal hate crime charges.” The truth is that James Fields was sentenced to a life term at both the state and federal level, and was also sentenced to 419 years on top of that. [12]

The evidence of Fields being motivated by ‘hate’ was circumstantial and prejudicial against the views that he held. It mainly derived from one text message Fields sent prior to the rally to his mother. Fields’ mother said that he should be careful when going to a controversial political event, and Fields responded to his mother by saying it’s the other side that should be careful and included a picture of German Dictator Adolf Hitler. Fields’ actions resulted in the death of Heather Heyer and injured 35.

UVA Professor Ian Solomon

NPR quotes a left-wing law professor at the nearby University of Virginia, Ian Solomon, to then say this was all a referendum on democracy itself, “Are the pro-democratic forces and pro-democracy movements going to prevail or not?” This is a matter again of dishonest framing and imaginary monsters. It also presents Solomon’s opinion as fact about abstractions like democracy.

Interestingly, Solomon is a Politics professor and not a law professor, and is currently Dean of the politics department. Also not mentioned in the piece is that Solomon used to work for Barack Obama, which might be relevant in a piece that is as political as this one.[15]

NPR then repeats and amplifies one of the major media malpractice moments in Donald Trump’s term, the ‘very fine people’ hoax and meme.

Here’s what NPR said:

Days later as reporters questioned his response, Trump declared that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

This is completely dishonest as to what Trump actually said. The media spent years dishonestly claiming that Trump said Nazis were ‘very fine people’ when, in fact, he had in the sentence prior specifically excluded them from that group. [13]

Trump was fighting back against the smear campaign against all the pro-Lee protesters. Trump was attempting to undo the media trick of guilty grouping when they smear the entire crowd with the statements, actions, or views of one person in the crowd.

NPR then misstates the evidence in the case further, by claiming that Heyer, who died that day, was ‘run over’ by James Fields.

Here’s NPR/Elliott:

“It was certainly a wake-up call for Susan Bro, who was forced in the most painful way imaginable to understand the consequences of hate when her daughter Heather Heyer was murdered. She comes regularly to the memorial at the spot where Heather was run over, removing dead flowers and making sure the sidewalk is clear.”

Heyer was not “run over” and the injuries she sustained, as evidenced in her autopsy, are unclear and inconclusive. She was not ‘run over’ and that has never been alleged. She may have been hit by the car, or made contact somehow and then died of a heart attack as a result of the melee, but she was not ‘run over.’ This is misrepresenting a source and lying.

It’s important for the militant left to lie on this point, because telling the truth that Heyer died from a heart attack, and was morbidly obese at the time of her death, is not as politically salient and powerful as the false images put forward about Heyer. Heyer, according to the autopsy, died from ‘blunt force trauma’ to her chest. [14] So Heyer, if Fields killed her, made impact with the car but was not ‘run over.’

Heather Heyer, 32, died following a rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Heyer’s autopsy makes it clear that she died from a transected aortic artery caused by trauma, not from being ‘run over.’ Most of her other injuries were minor or largely cosmetic.

NPR has done everyone a major disservice by continuing to lie about even the small details in this case. Some of the lies could be explained by laziness or simply not caring enough about having high journalistic standards, but other lies told are clearly particular and deliberate, evidencing that NPR desires its readers to only know some things that suit their political agenda, and avoid other facts that do not advance their agenda.

Elliott’s reporting matches NPR’s other programming: unreliable, dishonest, disinformation, trash.

OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.

Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1116942725/the-charlottesville-rally-5-years-later-its-what-youre-still-trying-to-forget
2 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/exclusive-never-seen-drone-footage-charlottesville-2017-protests-reveals-enormous-extent-media-lies-propaganda/
3 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting
4 ] https://wina.com/news/064460-blogger-activist-jason-kessler-submits-recall-petition-of-vice-mayor-wes-bellamy-to-charlottesville-circuit-court/
5 ] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/us/charlottesville-arrests-corey-long.html
6 ] https://dailyprogress.com/news/local/corey-long-convicted-of-disorderly-conduct-sentenced-to-20-days/article_a51f9012-6b34-11e8-9d0a-7358221b4a40.html, also here: https://archive.ph/DL07S
7 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_J._Heaphy
8 ] https://www.policinginstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Charlottesville-Critical-Incident-Review-2017.pdf
9 ] https://www.courthousenews.com/virginia-sued-over-fatal-charlottesville-helicopter-crash/
10 ] https://www.policemag.com/point-of-law/news/15314541/families-of-va-troopers-killed-in-helicopter-crash-sue-state-police
11 ] https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2017/08/13/troopers-killed-charlottesville-helicopter-crash-had-ties-tennessee/563084001/
12 ] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-alex-fields-jr-charlottesville-car-attack-sentenced-life-plus-419-years-today-2019-07-15/
13 ] https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662
14 ] https://wset.com/news/local/medical-examiner-heather-heyer-died-of-blunt-force-injury-during-unite-the-right-rally
15 ] https://batten.virginia.edu/people/ian-solomon

OUR RATING: #FakeNews. This is what you’d expect on CNN playing to an empty airport.

Indicted Outlet: Alex Kasprak | Snopes | Link | Archive | March 27, 2023

Joe Biden has an infamous son named Hunter. Hunter is a full-time criminal who enjoys hookers, cocaine, guns, dressing up as a cop, cocaine, hookers, billion-dollar deals. Needless to say, Hunter is the flashy one of the family.

Ashley is not as well known. She has a series of make-work jobs that don’t trade on her famous father nearly as shamelessly as her brother.

Ashley rented a condo in Florida. When she moved out, she left things behind. One of the things she left behind, was her personal diary. The landlord found the abandoned property and sold it to Project Veritas for a little bit of money. Project Veritas declined to publish the diary, which highlighted ‘inappropriate showers with Dad’ in one of the entries, among other mental problems such as sex addiction, depression and ongoing counseling and struggles suffered by her as part of being in a famous family. Ashley blamed her father for sexualizing her at a young age causing her a variety of problems in life.[8]

Nevertheless, the Biden Department of Justice has been trying to indict various figures from the supposed ‘theft’ of the Biden diary since 2020.

The media, so as to avoid reporting on the contents of the diary, has said that it was ‘unverified’ even though the DOJ was trying to prosecute people for taking possession of the diary. The media’s gaslighting operation to keep the diary’s contents out of the news has been steady and non-stop, and entirely unreasonable.

The diary has been, and is obviously confirmed, in a variety of different ways.

Major Violations:

• Government Genuflect
• Decontextualization
• Ignoring Primary Sources
• Collective Guilt
• Missing Context
• Superficial Investigation

The most glaring major violation here is, of course, the ‘government genuflect‘ and that is when a reporter refuses to believe something unless the government specifically confirms that fact.

Everything else indicate that something is wrong or that an answer is one way? If the government says otherwise you just trust the government.

For modern journalism this mindset and attitude is ridiculous. And to be fair, the left doesn’t believe this either: they weren’t taking guidance from the Trump or Bush administrations in the past generation. But they act this way when it suits their purposes and when the people in power share their predilections.

If I like the people lying to me in power: they must be telling the truth.

Just to be clear that this is exactly what Alex Kasprak at Snopes is doing, let’s quote him liberally:

SUBHEADLINE: “Plenty of evidence and reporting suggests it is likely real, but that doesn’t mean the government has publicly stated an opinion on it.”

“While there is circumstantial evidence and reporting that strongly suggests a diary allegedly belonging to Ashley Biden is authentic, no law enforcement or government agency has “confirmed” its authenticity, or its contents.”

“Claims that a court or special master have made statements that confirm the diary’s authenticity are a misreading of legal documents.”

LEAD PARAGRAPH: “On Oct. 26, 2020, obscure right-wing outlet National File published what it alleged to be the entire contents of a diary kept by U.S. President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, when she lived in Delray Beach, Florida. Purportedly left behind in the apartment she was staying in, the diary was quickly passed around among some anti-Biden activists, where it has become the source of claims of abuse and trauma she endured by the president, among other things.”

“The government, in other words, has not stated a view on the authenticity of the diary published by National File, and the lawyer representing Ashley Biden has declined to confirm its authenticity. Simply put, nobody in a position to officially “confirm” the authenticity of that document has made such a declaration.”

Here are the critical two paragraphs at the end of the article justifying their rating that these claims that the Diary is authentic are “false” in their words:

“This is ultimately how the alleged Biden diary ended up in the hands of the federal government in the first place. All of these relevant facts aside, though, no government official, prosecutor, or judge has explicitly “confirmed” that the diary published by National File is authentic.

These claims are regularly raised whenever there is movement in the criminal case against Project Veritas. Such opportunities allow for short-lived virality and new attention to a story whose publicly known facts have not changed for at least a year, but they are never accurate. For these reasons, we rate this claim as ‘False.'”

Let’s go through all the reasons why this position is just ridiculous for Snopes to take:

1. The government is proposing to indict people for stealing a fake diary? Of course it’s real if the DOJ is threatening to prosecute people for possessing a diary.
2. There’s an obvious chain of custody that shows how the diary was obtained and where it went. There’s a logical story that connects from Ashley Biden to the purported diary.
3. No serious person is doubting the authenticity of the diary.
4. The political debate is not over whether or not the diary is accurate, it’s whether it should be prosecuted or not.
5. A court filing isn’t the same as an idle conversation. Attorneys have a ‘duty of candor’ to the court, meaning that they cannot put forward false or deceptive positions, statements, or factual assertions. If someone was asserting the diary was true, they would be subject to sanctions if they were caught lying to a judge.
6. In the summer of 2023, Project Veritas released voicemails from Ashley Biden further confirming the diary’s authenticity. [1]
7. The diary was leaked in fall 2021 to the National File [3], who then published the document. Is it reasonable to think that they were duped into publishing a fake document? No.
8. Left-wing outlets accused Project Veritas of ‘extorting’ Biden for an interview by holding the diary hostage.[4] Would the President be fooled into an interview by a fake diary? No.
9. The FBI and DOJ took the very extreme step of raiding James O’Keefe’s residence and those of other Project Veritas journalists.[5][9][10] Would they have done so for the sake of a fake diary? No.
10. People plead guilty as part of a plea deal in the summer of 2022[6][7], whereas Snopes is ‘debunking’ this story in March of 2023. Would people take plea deals to fake diaries? Would the court accept a plea deal from someone pleading guilty to ‘stealing’ a fake diary? No.

Snopes says that simply reading the court documents isn’t enough and it’s confusing since the Project Veritas attorneys are possibly lying or not being fully candid. But of course this is just being willfully ignorant of how the court operates, which precludes one side’s attorneys from lying this much about a critical issue. [2][11]

There’s also no evidence to support his position that the diary’s authenticity is even in reasonable dispute. He infers a controversy where there isn’t one, by claiming that since the government hasn’t confirmed it, it must be true.

This is a way of saying that everything must be verified by the government to be considered accurate, an impossible standard. If a government agent refuses comment or declines to comment, does that mean the subject is in dispute? Of course not. This is an outrageously extreme position to take.

What’s going on here is that Snopes is a key leader in the ‘fact check industrial complex’ and their ratings are used by social media companies to both suppress the links and stories from being shared and highlighted, promoted, amplified on social media, but the promotion of ‘disinformation’ is also then used to punish outlets that report the truth. Enough ‘false’ ratings from Snopes gets a publication on an advertising blacklist that prevents them from getting more ad revenue, punishing them in their pocketbooks for daring to tell the truth.

Snopes is dishonestly fact checking this article because it wants to suppress this story and it wants to financially punish the outlets that dare to report it.

Snopes is the posterboy for fakenews, and the way in which they operate to perpetuate it is disgraceful and shameful. The Biden diary’s authenticity was never reasonably in doubt.

OUR RATING: #FakeNews. This is what you’d expect on CNN playing to an empty airport.

Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.projectveritas.com/news/ashley-biden-confirms-diary-is-hers
2 ] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_3_3_candor_toward_the_tribunal/comment_on_rule_3_3/
3 ] https://theintercept.com/2022/09/07/project-veritas-ashley-biden-diary-leak/
4 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/12/okeefe-trolls-rachel-maddow-claiming-veritas-request-comment-ashley-bidens-diary-reads-like-extortion-attempt-joe-biden-video/
5 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/fbi-raids-project-veritas-ashley-bidens-diary/
6 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/fbi-use-ashley-biden-diary-guilty-plea-turn-screws-james-okeefe/
7 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/breaking-two-plead-guilty-scheme-sell-ashley-bidens-diary-talks-showering-dad-creepy-joe-biden/
8 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/biden-shares-creepy-kiss-daughter-he-took-inappropriate/
9 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/project-veritas-releases-video-unconstitutional-fbi-raid-pv-journalists-home-armed-agents-ransack-home-biden-dojs-order-video/
10 ] https://nationalfile.com/bombshell-new-york-times-fbi-confirm-legitimacy-of-ashley-biden-diary/
11 ] https://nationalfile.com/ashley-biden-diary-confirmation-totally-vindicates-national-file-reporting/

OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.

Indicted Outlet: Juliana Kim | National Public Radio | Link | Archive | Jan. 6, 2023

On January 6th, 2021, tens of thousands of pro-Trump protesters came to the U.S. Capitol upset about voter fraud in the 2020 election and the way in which their elected officials weren’t taking the issue seriously. The Capitol Police started using excessive force to disperse the protesters, which caused the crowd to react and violence resulted.

In the resulting violence, several officers were injured, and at least two protesters were murdered from excessive force and unlawful violence: Rosanne Boyland and Ashli Babbitt. Boyland was trampled and then clubbed to death, where her death was later blamed on prescription medication she was taking at the time. Babbitt was shot when she tried to go through a broken window and was shot by a plainclothed Lt. Michael Byrd who gave no warning before shooting and was likely out of view of Babbitt when he took the fatal shot.

Against that chaotic backdrop, the New York Times began alleging that Officer Brian Sicknick of the Capitol Police was injured by both ‘bear spray’ and also had a bleeding ‘gash’ on his head caused by contact with a fire extinguisher lobbed by a pro-Trump protester. Sicknick died the next day from a stroke. The NYT thus began a long disinformation chain that continues to this day, amplified by left-wing media outlets that crave a January 6th martyr for their cause.

The autopsy makes no doubt that Sicknick did NOT die from an injury or from chemical spray. There was no injury present on the body, and the lining of the lungs did not show any inflammation consistent with being sprayed with a chemical irritant. [1]

Major Violations:

• Lying
• Misrepresentation
• Opinion as Fact
• No Evidence to Support
• Missing Context
• Creating False Connections
• Wilfully Ignorant

To recap the chain of relevant events, the January 6th protest was followed by the New York Times original report on the death of Sicknick on January 8th, [2][6] a longer puff piece followed. [4] By February 3rd, Sicknick was one of the few Americans to have the honor of his body lying in the Capitol Rotunda. [3] On Feb. 12th, the Sicknick narrative was already falling apart and the NYT was openly questioning the story they were being told by the Capitol Police, namely that Sicknick had a ‘gash’ on his head caused by a fire extinguisher, so they instead shifted to the ‘chemical irritant’ theory of his death. [6][14][16] By March 24th, 2021, the NYT was admitting that Sicknick’s death was likely not from injuries [4] even as they were publishing videos meant to aid in the prosecution of his attackers. [5]

By April 19, 2021, the NYT was admitting that Sicknick’s death had nothing to do with the protest or with fire extinguishers or chemical irritants. [1][13] Even the Capitol Police were forced to admit that Sicknick died from “natural causes.” [7]

The coroner looked for injuries that would have caused death, and looked for irritation on the lungs and air pathways that would have suggested reactions from irritant sprays. [8] Instead, the coroner found that he died from a stroke caused by a blood clot.

The DC Medical Examiner, the U.S. Capitol Police, and the FBI, all of whom were investigating this case, [9] had no reason to lie or cover up this crime. If anything, they had an enormous motivation to say that Sicknick did die from alleged violence on January 6th.

Brian Sicknick

Here’s the dishonest way in which NPR Reporter Kim deals with the inconvenient fact of the autopsy:

“Although Washington D.C.’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Francisco Diaz, ruled that Sicknick died of “natural causes,” he further stated that the events on Jan. 6 “played a role in his condition,” the lawsuit said.”

So let’s examine what she’s doing: she’s acknowledging that the medical examiner contradicts the entire rest of her story, but then in the same sentence discounts and dismisses his findings.

This is lying. It’s a misrepresentation so egregious given the available facts that there’s no other way to view it. There is no evidence to support the contention that Sicknick died from anything other than natural causes.

It was a major scandal when it emerged that Sicknick’s death was not from injuries from protesters. Two men, Julian Khater and George Tanios, were charged with and sentenced to 6 years in prison for ‘assaulting’ Sicknick, and were facing murder charges. [15] It would have been very easy for the Medical Examiner to fake the autopsy results and those two men would have spent the rest of their lives in prison.

The system also let the autopsy results lie in secret for weeks while the false narrative emerged and coalesced in people’s minds helping to set a false narrative. Correcting that false narrative in the public’s mind, then, requires more than half a sentence of NPR’s article.

The journalistic malpractice around the death of Brian Sicknick, where reporters used the common government genuflect to defer to authorities when skepticism is warranted, is a major part of the story and NPR glosses right over it. It’s ultimately major missing context.

There are also eyewitness reports that January 6th protesters were trying to help Sicknick on January 6th in the middle of a stroke, but were discouraged by Capitol Police. [12]

The political power of Sicknick’s death is so potent that it continues to be misused and abused by left-wing political actors [11] and litigants seeking to capitalize on the disinformation narrative spawned by the New York Times. The government resisted releasing the autopsy results for months. [10] NPR is guilty here of keeping their readers ignorant on this issue by avoiding the truth: Sicknick died of natural causes and his death has little if anything to do with the events of January 6th.

OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.

Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/us/politics/brian-sicknick-death.html
2 ] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/politics/a-capitol-police-officer-dies-from-injuries-sustained-during-the-pro-trump-rampage.html
3 ] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/us/politics/brian-sicknick-capitol-riot.html
4 ] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/police-officer-killed-capitol.html
5 ] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/24/us/officer-sicknick-capitol-riot.html
6 ] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/brian-sicknick-police-capitol-dies.html
7 ] https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/medical-examiner-finds-uscp-officer-brian-sicknick-died-natural-causes
8 ] https://archive.ph/20210421150320/https://www.wsj.com/articles/officer-brian-sicknick-what-we-know-about-his-death-11619010119
9 ] https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/loss-uscp-colleague-brian-d-sicknick
10 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/judicial-watch-sues-autopsy-capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-reportedly-died-stroke-jan-6-riot/
11 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/11/absolute-ghouls-democrats-drag-mother-brian-sicknick-lie-kari-lake-vicious-ad-blaming-kari-death-back-reporter/
12 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/breaking-news-capitol-police-responsible-officer-sicknicks-death/
13 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/just-capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-suffered-two-strokes-died-natural-causes-medical-examiner-rules/
14 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/cnn-even-admits-still-no-evidence-capitol-officer-sicknick-killed-blunt-force-head-january-6th/
15 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/breaking-two-men-arrested-charged-assault-officer-sicknick-died-stroke-jan-6-riots/
16 ] https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/the-times-corrects-the-record-on-officer-sicknicks-death-sort-of/

• Vice Reporter Merlan misstates and mischaracterizes the debate and dispute on most of the topics, but arrogantly dismisses them anyway

OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.

Indicted Outlet: Anna Merlan | Vice | Link | Archive | June 16, 2023

Vice sucks, almost as much as Vox. It’s as pretentious as Vox, but with a lot more tryhard. Vox is the honor society kids trying to be liberal and seem smart, Vice is a bunch of spoiled rich kids trying to seem hip while barfing out uninformed ahistorical neoliberal positions from 80 years ago.

Anna Merlan is a writer at Vice who is a Brooklyn-based expert on ‘conspiracies’ that she all discounts. She’s the grunge season 2 Dana Scully with tattoos and piercings you don’t want to see. She wants to girlboss us all on how we shouldn’t like Joe Rogan and/or Robert Kennedy Jr. because they challenge the left-wing echo chamber that is the mainstream media.

Here’s the headline of a recent article from June, “Spotify Has Stopped Even Sort of Trying to Stem Joe Rogan’s Vaccine Misinformation” [1]

Major Violations:

• Opinion as Fact
• Superficial Investigation
• Misrepresenting a Source
• Willfully Ignorant
• Fact Suppression
• Begging for Censorship

Here’s the second paragraph of Merlan’s article on RFK Jr.,

“The conversation was an orgy of unchecked vaccine misinformation, some conspiracy-mongering about 5G technology and wifi, and, of course, Rogan once again praising ivermectin, an ineffective faux COVID treatment.”

I’m not sure what an ‘orgy of misinformation’ looks like, but it reads like the kind of lazy writing I expect from Vice. Maybe this is the unique way to refer to a group of so-called journalists? Like a murder of crows, a group of Vice reporters is an ‘orgy of misinformation.’

pictured: some Vice staffers, aka an ‘orgy of misinformation’

Whenever the establishment media like Vice complains about a ‘conspiracy theory’ you know it’s either something that’s obvious and true, or it’s something they’re viciously trying to suppress and will be proven later. Because when it’s not a ‘conspiracy theory’ it’s usually just ‘wrong.’

Here are the statements and beliefs by RFK that Merlan complains about:

1. Vaccine ‘misinformation’
2. Concerns about 5G technology
3. Use of Ivermectin to treat COVID
4. That the Kennedy brothers were killed by the CIA
5. A vaccine-related link to autism

Now, Merlan can’t be bothered to, you know, actually list out the specifics that RFK is wrong about. She just says he’s so wrong that it’s tiresome to even list it all out.

Here’s her formulation of that idea:

“What followed was a detailed survey of Kennedy’s most dangerously incorrect views, a far too extensive list to outline in full, all of which Rogan accepted uncritically, his mouth quite often literally agape in awe. “

A ‘far too extensive list to outline in full’ is another way of saying, “you’re so wrong that I don’t even want to take the time to list it all out” as though it’s so self-evident and obvious.

This is the kind of logical reasoning and argumentation from spoiled, entitled, teens. Merlan has a platform and instead of educating readers, instead of actually engaging much of the argument, she instead coddles her readers by suggesting they are so much smarter and morally better than Kennedy and he’s just wrong about everything.

It’s the height of arrogance and laziness. It’s her opinion as fact.

Merlan says that there’s no connection between vaccines and autism.

Yet science isn’t sure what’s causing the huge increases in autism. The official line is that it’s simply being diagnosed with better precision than before. [2] The rates of autism have basically tripled in just the last 16 years, but we’re told that it’s better diagnosis causing the increase. [3]

And it’s dishonest to mischaracterize the ‘anti-vax’ crowd as claiming that ‘vaccines’ cause autism. They don’t claim this and they don’t believe this. What they claim is that some vaccines might contribute to some autism. This is what we call extreme view slide, where dishonest reporters reframe and reword claims by marginalized political actors to be the most extreme view possible so that it’s easier to discount and dismiss.

On the normal ‘schedule’ of vaccines, meaning the advised schedule of vaccines to inject into children, there are currently 30+ vaccination shots recommended by the CDC.[4] The number of recommended vaccines for children in the 1980 period was seven. [5] There has certainly been an incredible increase in the number of vaccines administered to children.

The one vaccine that gets the most scrutiny is the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine administered at ages 12-15 months and the second dose between age 4 and 6. [6] The anti-vax claim is that when the MMR was administered close in time to one another, and in combination with other vaccines, that it resulted in a substantially increased risk of autism.

What has been studied is the simple link between vaccines and autism.

So when pro-vax folks say that “vaccines don’t cause autism” they aren’t really honestly addressing what the anti-vax folks are even claiming. It’s a complete misrepresentation of the argument and, ultimately, a superficial investigation.

Merlan then lightly complains about RFK complaining about the rollout of 5G wireless technology, but there are good faith concerns by authorities that the technology might not be safe. [7][8] This is a kind of superficial investigation common to liberal reporters with a high degree of arrogance who, when they reach a political conclusion they like, loudly declare the ‘science is settled’ and then attempt to enforce that conclusion to discourage any additional skepticism.

Merlan also refers to Ivermectin as a ‘faux’ treatment but then later admits that the scientists who discovered its uses were awarded the Nobel Prize.

Merlan writes, relevant to Ivermectin, quoting Kennedy at first:

“…they had to destroy ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.” This is, plainly, bullshit, a Conspiracy 101 claim that has been, again, roundly and easily debunked. Kennedy also claimed that ivermectin studies were “designed to fail,” which is, once again, incredibly not true.

So according to Merlan, Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine’s use fighting COVID is ‘bullshit’ and has been ’roundly and easily debunked’ while the Ivermectin studies being sabotaged is ‘incredibly’ not true.

The two citations that she uses to support her claims are links to an AP story about Ivermectin and a second link to another Vice story talking about Ivermectin’s studies claiming it doesn’t work.

Of course there’s another side to this argument though and evidence that these effective treatments are being purposefully suppressed.[9] There have now been 67 Ivermectin COVID-19 controlled studies [10] that show a 67% improvement in COVID patients. There have been 298 Hydroxychloroquine studies [11] that show a 64% improvement in patients for COVID-19 patients.

It should at least be fair to say there’s active dispute on this question. Yet the political left is militantly convinced once again that “the science is settled.”

Merlan’s claim that the Kennedy brothers being killed by the CIA is a curious one, since that theory largely comes out of the political left. A vast majority of the American public believes there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. [12][13] Even higher majorities want all documents related to the assassination to be released, indicating they don’t believe the official government narrative. [14]

Here’s how Merlan relates this ‘conspiracy theory’,

There was also a casual aside near the end in which Kennedy, who believes his uncle, JFK, and his father were both assassinated by the CIA, suggested that he himself may be targeted by the organization. 

The entire JFK Assassination narrative was further complicated this summer with the revelation by a Secret Service agent that he planted the infamous ‘magic bullet’ on the gurney at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. [15]

Merlan is careful not to reveal what she actually believes here, but it’s safe to say that she’s comfortable in a position of social and political power so she will dismiss and suppress conspiracy narratives because they challenge the dominant power structure.

Merlan wrote a book called “Republic of Lies” [16] where she castigates conspiracy theories and attempts to connect them to the existing power structure, arguing for increased censorship. It’s a breezy and winey whiney tome where Merlan is careful not to clarify her own beliefs and is simply an observer highlighting those whom she thinks are simple rubes.

This literary genre should be called arrogance tourism.

She remains willfully ignorant of the claims and evidence that might challenge her conclusions, and engages in fact suppression while also begging for censorship.

One would think that if you don’t like Joe Rogan, you just wouldn’t watch his podcast. If you dislike RFK Jr., you’d simply not listen to him. But to modern leftists, they have to be the final veto on any speaker on every platform. They have total knowledge on all topics, on all subjects, and cannot be bothered to tolerate a single solitary voice slightly out of tune to the party line.

Merlan evinces a toxic mindset, a corruption of the mind fostered by pride. What old-timey folks used to consider a vice.

OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.

Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7zz9z/spotify-rogan-rfk-vaccine-misinformation-policy
2 ] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/autism-rates-in-children-reach-new-highs-experts-explain-why
3 ] https://www.statnews.com/2023/03/23/autism-epidemic-cdc-numbers/
4 ] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html
5 ] https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-history/developments-by-year
6 ] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#:~:text=CDC%20recommends%20all%20children%20get,through%206%20years%20of%20age.
7 ] https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/5g-bad-your-health-its-complicated-say-researchers
8 ] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037842742030028X
9 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/bombshell-veritas-documents-reveal-dc-bureaucrats-evidence-ivermectin-hydroxychloroquine-effective-treating-covid-hid-public/
10 ] https://c19ivm.org/
11 ] https://c19hcq.org/
12 ] https://news.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx
13 ] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-one-thing-in-politics-most-americans-believe-in-jfk-conspiracies/
14 ] https://www.axios.com/2022/12/06/jfk-assassination-records-cia-poll
15 ] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66792977
16 ] https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lies-Conspiracy-Theorists-Surprising/dp/1250231272