Conservative website settles defamation lawsuit with election workers

The Gateway Pundit, a conservative news website, has settled a defamation lawsuit with two former Georgia election workers it falsely accused of wrongdoing in the 2020 presidential election, according to court documents.

Lawyers for the election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, told The Associated Press (AP) on Friday that the lawsuit against The Gateway Pundit, its owner Jim Hoft and his brother Joe Hoft “has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement.”

Freeman and her daughter Moss sued over false claims made by The Gateway Pundit that the pair committed fraud in the 2020 election and counted illegal ballots after counting had ended for the night. The website was also the first outlet to publicly identify Freeman and Moss.

The court filing didn’t include terms of the settlement but actions under the agreement are due to be completed by late March.

Almost 70 articles on The Gateway Pundit website labeled as defamatory in the lawsuit were no longer available Friday.

The company that owns The Gateway Pundit previously filed for bankruptcy, but the case was dismissed in July after it was found that the company was solvent, or able to pay its debts, and had filed for bankruptcy in a bad faith effort to frustrate Freeman and Moss’ lawsuit.

Freeman and Moss have also sued One America News Network and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, arguing they pushed former President Donald Trump‘s fraudulent claims that the election was stolen and they received death threats as a result.

Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud have been widely debunked and no evidence to support such claims has been found.

In December, Guiliani, who was Trump’s personal lawyer in the wake of the 2020 election, was ordered to pay Freeman and Moss $148 million.

One America News settled with the mother-daughter duo in 2022 and posted a video saying state officials “have 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.”

For Trump’s part, he is currently facing charges in Fulton County along with over a dozen of his allies for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. The 2024 GOP presidential nominee pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and claims the case is politically motivated.

What Happened to Freeman and Moss?

In December 2020, a member of Trump’s legal team, Jacki Pick, showed a Georgia Senate committee video from the room in Fulton County where ballots were counted. Pick claimed election workers counted hidden, fraudulent ballots there.

While Pick didn’t identify the election workers by name, she “said ‘one of them had the name Ruby across her shirt somewhere,'” according to Freeman and Moss’ lawsuit. Later that day, The Gateway Pundit published Freeman’s full name and identified Moss in a subsequent story, the suit claimed.

Freeman received emails, text messages and threatening phone calls, the lawsuit said, and strangers showed up at her house. As for Moss, her teenage son was sent threatening messages from people who found her old phone number, which he was using, and strangers showed up at her grandmother’s house where she previously lived, according to the suit.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.