Michael Katz took the WorldNetDaily approach to smearing an organization in a Jan. 22 Newsmax article:
A group of left-wing activists that allegedly assisted in the manipulation of the election system in favor of Democrats in 2020 is reportedly trying to skirt prohibitions against the private funding of election activities.
The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) is holding a webinar Thursday with a national federal grants expert to use $700 million in Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) funding to help state and local election officials improve election operations, The Federalist reported Friday.
Elections are typically funded by state and local budgets — with occasional federal assists. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, private and philanthropic funding for local election offices to the tune of $332 million was made available by the CTCL, with donations from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
CTCL money financed the takeover of city and county election offices by left-wing activists, The Federalist reported, and made those a platform to implement preferred practices, voting methods, ballot harvesting efforts, and data-sharing agreements that were favorable to Democrat [sic] candidates.
As we pointed out when WND promoted this same story, the Federalist is lying (or at least Katz’s interpretation of it). He offers no evidence that CTCL is filled with “left-wing activists,” nor does he offer proof that the money given to election offices constituted a “takeover.” In fact, the money was available to any election office regardless of political leanings. He also offered no evidence that CTCL money funded activities that were “favorable to Democrat [sic] candidates”; he simply parroted the Federalist’s similarly evidence-free claims.
Katz concluded his article by rather lamely stating that “Newsmax reached out to the CTCL for comment.” We can assume that CTCL knows better than to deal with such a bad-faith writer as Katz.