The Gateway Pundit has filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal court in southern Florida as it faces what could be a massive defamation judgment stemming from their maligning of two Georgia election workers in the wake of the 2020 election.
Founded in 2004 by brothers Jim and Joe Hoft, the St. Louis-based website has never let facts get in the way of throwing red meat to their far-right audience.
This lack-of-scruples approach won the site a big audience in the Trump years, during which they had a credentialed White House correspondent who the New Yorker described as more interested in trolling other media outlets than breaking big stories.
Aside from politics, they have also regularly misidentified perpetrators of mass shootings, including in the case of the October 2022 CVPA shooting here in St.Louis.
Their heavy ideological bent combined with a general sloppiness seems to have led directly to the bankruptcy.
In December 2021, the site was sued by Georgia election workers Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and Ruby Freeman, who erroneously became central characters in the “stop the steal” election fraud narrative that took hold among Donald Trump supporters following his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
A Gateway Pundit article placed the two women as having played a role in a bizarre conspiracy involving grainy surveillance video, an overflowing urinal at the arena where the Atlanta Hawks play, and "suitcases" full of illegitimate ballots.
In addition to suing Hoft and the Gateway Pundit in St. Louis, the election workers also filed a similar defamation suit against Rudy Giuliani in Washington D.C., resulting in a $148 million judgment against “America’s mayor.”
With Hoft’s attempts to prevent the suit against him from going to trial coming up short, he’s now declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Hoft said in a statement that bankruptcy had been made necessary by “the progressive liberal lawfare attacks against our media outlet.”
His statement continued: “This is not an admission of fault or culpability. This is a common tool for reorganization and to consolidate litigation when attacks are coming from all sides. It allows TGP to consolidate this lawfare in one court for ultimate resolution.”
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