The Gateway Pundit is known as a source of viral falsehoods and hoaxes. It has been described by the
Harvard Journal of Law & Technology as one of the websites that "primarily propagate
fake news", and by
CNN as a website "prone to peddling
conspiracy theories". In August 2019, journalism professors Erik P. Bucy and John E. Newhagen observed that "the most aggressive fake news sites and associated
YouTube channels, such as
InfoWars,
The Gateway Pundit, and
The Daily Stormer, are routinely sued by victims of these published reports for
libel and
defamation." Hoft said that he believed the lawsuits were "part of a multi-pronged effort to attack media outlets on the right". due to it "publishing hoax articles and reporting conspiracy theories as fact". In July 2021, a spokesperson for
Google said that the company had demonetized
The Gateway Pundit homepage and some of its articles: "We have strict publisher policies that prohibit content promoting
anti-vaccine theories,
COVID-19 misinformation, and false claims about the
2020 U.S. presidential electionand our enforcement can be as targeted as demonetizing a specific page. We already actioned the majority of pages shared from this report back in 2020 or early 2021 and similarly stopped serving ads on the site's homepage last year. We will continue to take appropriate action if new content is uploaded that violates our policies." In September 2021, Google demonetized the entire site. Specifically, rumors of Hillary Clinton's poor health were disseminated via
The Gateway Pundit articles entitled, "Breaking: 71% of Doctors Say Hillary Health Concerns Serious, Possibly Disqualifying!" and "Wow! Did Hillary Clinton Just Suffer a Seizure on Camera?"
Misidentifying shooters and terrorists The Gateway Pundit has a record of misidentifying perpetrators of shootings and terror attacks. Shortly after the 2017
white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, in which a person
drove a vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one,
The Gateway Pundit falsely identified a young man from Michigan as the driver. After the misidentification took place, the family received several
death threats and went into hiding. The Michigan man and his father filed a defamation lawsuit against the publication and other related parties.
The Gateway Pundit asserted that
New York Times reporter
Rukmini Callimachi had reported that
ISIS may have evidence that it was behind the shooting, but Callimachi denied that she had ever made such an assertion.
The Gateway Pundit promoted conspiracy theories about the
Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. In February 2018,
The Gateway Pundit published an article erroneously stating that school shooter
Nikolas Cruz was a registered Democrat, citing a registered Broward County voter with a similar name. The website later corrected its mistake. Later that month,
The Gateway Pundit was one of a number of far-right websites that pushed the claim that at least one of the teenage survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting was a
deep state pawn, alleging that
David Hogg's
gun control activism was being coached by his retired
FBI agent father. In July 2018,
The Gateway Pundit falsely claimed that a man arrested with bomb-making equipment and illegal weapons had been a "leftist
antifa terrorist". The individual in question was however a conservative whose Facebook profile was littered with pro-
Second Amendment memes. In August 2018,
The Gateway Pundit falsely identified a
Reddit user as the perpetrator of the
Jacksonville Landing shooting. In December 2020,
The Gateway Pundit falsely claimed that Georgia Secretary of State
Brad Raffensperger's brother "Ron" worked for a Chinese tech firm. Raffensperger's brother's name was not Ron and he did not work for a Chinese company. In August 2021,
The Daily Beast reported that according to a senior Trump White House official, Trump was seen holding printouts of articles from
The Gateway Pundit during his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and on one occasion gave an official an article from the site which alleged massive fraud in favor of Biden and told the official to act on it. In October 2021,
The Gateway Pundit used a study by the
Poor People's Campaign to falsely claim that Democrats had used low-income voters to steal the election; the study had found that about 35% of the 2020 presidential electorate had household incomes below $50,000.
PolitiFact rated the claim "Pants on Fire", finding that
The Gateway Pundit had conflated voter outreach with voter fraud. Analysis conducted in 2022 by researchers with the
University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public and the
Krebs Stamos Group found
The Gateway Pundit was the second-most prolific purveyor of election misinformation on Twitter during the late months of 2020.
Defamation lawsuits In December 2020,
The Gateway Pundit was named as one of the defendants in a
defamation lawsuit filed by
Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer. Coomer asserted that the defendants had characterized him as a "traitor" and that as a result he was subjected to "multiple credible death threats". In May 2022, a Colorado district court judge rejected a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, writing that
The Gateway Pundit's allegations "incited threats of real violence against Coomer, including posting an article advertising a million-dollar bounty on Coomer." In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter
Wandrea' ArShaye Moss, sued
The Gateway Pundit for defamation, alleging that the site and its owners had knowingly published false stories about them that "instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety". In response, the website doubled down on its false claims with an article titled "Ruby Freeman and Daughter Sue Gateway Pundit for Posting Video of Her Shoving Ballots Through Voting Machines Numerous TimesPLEASE HELP US Fight This Latest Lawsuit". The website and its owners filed a counterclaim alleging the lawsuit was intended to drive it out of business; the counterclaim was dismissed in 2023. The Hofts said their articles about Freeman and Moss were "either statements of opinion based on disclosed facts or statements of rhetorical hyperbole that no reasonable reader is likely to interpret as a literal statement of fact." In April 2024, Hoft announced that the TGP parent company, TGP Communications, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to the defamation lawsuits against it. TGP attributed the action to "progressive liberal lawfare attacks against our media outlet". That month, a court filing from the lawsuit revealed that the website's employees had expressed concern about
plagiarism and the credibility of the website's contributors, including that of Jordan Conradson. Conradson had written stories for the website falsely accusing Freeman and Moss of fraud. The election workers alleged the bankruptcy was a delay tactic and that TGP is not in financial distress. The bankruptcy case was dismissed in July 2024, with the judge finding it had been filed in
bad faith to avoid the lawsuits against the site. In October 2024, the parties reached a settlement; the terms were not disclosed, but the
Associated Press reported that nearly 70 articles were no longer available on the Gateway Pundit website after they had been included in the lawsuit as being defamatory. In October 2024, the following "Note from the Editor: Legal Update" was posted to the site: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.
COVID-19 misinformation A 2020 study by researchers from
Northeastern, Harvard,
Northwestern and
Rutgers universities found that among Republicans and older people
The Gateway Pundit was the most shared fake news domain in tweets related to COVID-19, significantly outperforming other fake news domains such as
InfoWars,
WorldNetDaily,
Judicial Watch and
Natural News. The study also found that
The Gateway Pundit was the 4th and 6th most shared domain overall, in August and September 2020 respectively. In February 2021, a
Gateway Pundit article claimed without evidence that the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had "illegally inflated the COVID fatality number by at least 1,600 percent". The fact-checker Health Feedback noted that evidence indicated that the deaths due to COVID-19 were being undercounted. In August 2021, the British anti-
disinformation organization
Logically found that 30% of referral traffic to
OpenVAERS, a website which promotes
misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, came from
The Gateway Pundit.
Other The Gateway Pundit has promoted the false claim that
Barack Obama was not born in the United States. On March 9, 2017, almost 50 days after Obama left office, a
Gateway Pundit article highlighted a tweet by Obama's half-brother
Malik Obama with an image of a Kenyan birth certificate with Barack Obama's name. The image had been circulating since 2009 when it was originally posted by
Orly Taitz, but its authenticity has been debunked. According to Kenyan journalist
Salim Lone, then-spokesman for Kenyan Prime Minister
Raila Odinga, "It's a forgery. Kenya only
became a Republic in December, 1964. Other arguments could also be marshaled, but they are not needed." The redditor behind the post later said that the post was intended "as an obvious troll". In April 2018,
The Gateway Pundit falsely claimed in a headline that two prominent African-American conservative video bloggers
Diamond and Silkhad been censored by Facebook. In July 2018,
The Gateway Pundit falsely claimed that then-senator
Kamala Harris had lied about her school's integration history. The article was cited by radio host
Larry Elder and others in June 2019 after Harris confronted then-presidential candidate
Joe Biden over his opposition to
busing during the first Democratic
presidential debate. In September 2018, after psychology professor
Christine Blasey Ford alleged that
U.S. Supreme Court nominee
Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when they were teenagers,
The Gateway Pundit published an article erroneously claiming that Kavanaugh's mother, a district court judge in Maryland, had once ruled in a foreclosure case against Dr. Ford's parents, creating what
The Gateway Pundit called "bad blood" between the two families. On October 30, 2018,
NBC News and
The Atlantic published articles detailing a scheme to falsely accuse
Robert Mueller of sexual misconduct in 1974. The articles reported involvement by
Jack Burkman and
Jacob Wohl, the latter a writer for
The Gateway Pundit. Hours after these reports,
The Gateway Pundit published on its site "exclusive documents" about a "very credible witness" to support the accusations against Mueller. Each document had in its header the phrase "International Private Intelligence", the business slogan of Surefire Intelligence, a firm created by Wohl. The site removed the documents later that day, stating they were investigating the matter, as well as "serious allegations against Jacob Wohl". The men accused Mueller's office of "leaking" the eight year-old
Post story to discredit their allegations. The purported accuser, a Carolyne Cass, did not appear at the press conference, with the men asserting she had panicked in fear of her life and taken a flight to another location. Soon after the press conference, Hoft announced that
The Gateway Pundit had "suspended [their] relationship" with Wohl. == Staff ==