This Week in Misinformation: Defamation, Organized Subversion, Insider Threats, Poll Workers, QAnon Crypto
23 June 2022
This Prism newsletter strives to be the paper of record for all that’s happening in misinformation in the United States. For any citizen whose life is impacted by misinformation, it helps you see how storylines evolve from multiple, sourced angles on important stories in one place. For amateur and professional misinformation watchers, it is your go-to resource for updates on peers, platforms, propagandists, and politicians. Learn more about Prism and our other products on our Substack page, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook!
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Now, on to our top stories.
Surprise! It’s election machine company defamation lawsuits first tonight.
A judge told Newsmax (18.33), serial purveyor of election disinformation in the “Stop the Steal” heyday that the case brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems may proceed (The Hill, 43.59). Dominion found out that it can keep its suit against Fox News (26.17) going as well (Forbes, 43.36), even to the point of potentially holding News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch and his family liable for damages.
The suit that Smartmatic has been pursuing against One America News (13.17) is also going forward (Insider, 43.16) this week over the company’s objections.
To round things out, yet another judge ruled that “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell will not have the case against her dismissed (Forbes, 43.36) at this time, and so she remains at risk of being disbarred for filing bogus election lawsuits in bad faith.
The latest January 6th Committee hearings, 4 and 5, were this week, with the bottom line being Trump knew he was lying and just kept going anyway.
At the risk of repeating things you’ve surely seen by now, in substance the hearings covered the scheme to have Pence recognize fake electors from several states (CBS News, 46.07) and Trump’s attempts to install an Attorney General willing to call the election corrupt (New York Times, 43.00). He didn’t because DOJ leadership told Trump they'd all resign (Axios, 44.40) if he tried. But still.
Highlights for us were Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers calling out Rudy Giuliani (Politico, 43.21) for not having evidence of fraud, a new revelation in which Representative Andy Biggs calls Bowers on January 6th (The Hill, 43.59) to transmit some kind of annulment letter to the Electoral College, that Biggs and others asked the White House for pardons (Reuters, 47.92) for crimes unspecified, and the enduring value of Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue’s handwritten contemporaneous notes throughout it all (Reuters, 47.92). Also: Trump was into some very B-side conspiracy theories about the election in November 2020, including the ”pure insanity” that was the Italian satellite vote-switching yarn (MSNBC, 36.00).
What effect are these hearings having, you ask? First, the Department of Justice seems to be picking up on the truckloads of evidence of criminal activity the Committee is making public, for example in a raid on the home of Jeffrey Clark (CNN, 42.40), the man Trump wanted to put in as his wartime Attorney General, and in a flurry of new grand jury subpoenas for Republicans who aided the fake electors scheme in Georgia (CNN, 42.40), Arizona (AZ Central, -), and elsewhere. Trump has taken to fighting GOP stalwarts including Pence and McCarthy (Washington Post, 40.09) and anyone who might be to blame (Insider, 43.55) for there being no one to defend him in the hearings. The Committee has done a good job of making it all watchable (NPR, 44.48) but shifting public opinion, if it’s on the cards, is slow going for now (Columbia Journalism Review, -). There is much left to be written, though, with new evidence incoming and encore hearings being planned (Axios, 44.40).
The fourth hearing also featured the abuse suffered by election workers as collateral damage of the election lies that swirled in late 2020.
A mother-daughter election worker duo in Georgia, Ruby Freeman (MSNBC) and Shaye Moss (New York Times, 43.00), testified about threats they received when Trump targeted them, and how they came to feel that nowhere was safe for them anymore.
The first glimmer of consequences for the widespread harassment of people like Ruby and Shaye that went on appeared, with the Justice Department securing first guilty plea (Washington Post, 40.09) for such threats.
We all have an interest in not making it terrible to be a poll worker, for reasons that should be obvious (The Hill, 43.59).
Phew! Let’s do the grab bag and get outta here: the inevitable collapse of a QAnon-themed crypto trading; the Republican Party of Texas officially labels Biden "illegitimate"; the QAnon House freshman can't easily hide who she is; how the January 6th Committee learned TV magic; Trump’s COVID task force people speak out about the crud he apparently fell for and that the official messaging at the time was harmfully misleading; Meta apparently kills CrowdTangle for reals; and perhaps to the shock of no one we learn that social media misinformation leaves people with less empathy.
That, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin