WorldNetDaily sure loves to reprint stories from the highly discredited far-right blog Gateway Pundit, particularly those that dishonestly whitewash the crimes of Capitol riot participants. That means WND will never tell its readers just how bad and dishonest Gateway Pundit really is. Thus, WND completely censored the story of the defamation lawsuit two Georgia election workers filed against Gateway Pundit and publisher Jim Hoft for spreading lies about them after the 2020 election.
Hoft’s lawyers filed numerous procedural motions in an effort to gum up the works and delay the case. When those failed, Gateway Pundit filed for bankruptcy in another delay tactic; that got tossed as well when the judge pointed out that Gateway Pundit is quite solvent given that is assets are 22 times greater than it liabilities, Hoft drives a Porsche owned by Gateway Pundit, and he lives a Florida condo bought with an undocumented, interest-free loan from Gateway Pundit.
After that scheme failed, it seems that only then was Hoft suddenly interested in settling the case — a smart move given that those election workers succeeded in getting a $148 million judgment against Rudy Giuliani for making similar claims and that the workers also reached a settlement with right-wing One America News. Indeed, it was announced in early October that Gateway Pundit and the election workers reached a settlement to end the lawsuit (though, weirdly, it won’t be completely settled until next March). Terms of the settlement are confidential — a typical demand from tight-wing media organizations and activists caught defaming people — though Gateway Pundit published a statement that somehow refused to actually admit Hoft lied about the workers:
Georgia officials concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud by election workers who counted ballots at the State Farm Arena in November 2020. The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct while working at State Farm Arena on election night. A legal matter with this news organization and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement.
That was joined by a video from Hoft in which he laughably claimed that “we are trusted for our accuracy.” That was followed by several minutes of what he claims were things his website allegedly got right, and to play victim because his website was been accurately identified as an extremist operation. He concluded by touting the website’s alleged popularity. He refused to apologize to the election workers for lying about them.
This was a juicy story with legitimate news value in which an argument could be made that Gateway Pundit got a victory of sorts by not being forced to confess all its lies in a way that allowed to continue to portray itself as a victim. Still, WND insists on hiding this story from its readers.
Gateway Pundit still faces a lawsuit by Eric Coomer, a former executive with voting-tech company Dominion after it promoted a bogus conspiracy theory that he was engaging in election fraud in 2020. That would be the same person WND columnist James Zumwalt similarly defamed with the same conspiracy theories, though WND has so far evaded being sued over it. (Coomer had previously obtained an out-of-court settlement with Newsmax.)