Right-Wing News Site Recruits Election Deniers to Cover the 2024 Election
The right-wing news site, the Federalist, has taken a curious step in its coverage of the 2024 election, actively recruiting election denial activists to write for the publication under the guise of journalism, Rolling Stone and American Doom have learned.
The ensuing coverage falls in line with the publication’s commitment to being a propaganda arm of an increasingly extremist American right, parroting Donald Trump’s baseless, anti-democratic talking points about elections being unfairly rigged against conservatives, based on his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.
The Federalist’s funding sources have long been opaque. However, according to The New York Times, one of the Federalist’s major backers is Dick Uihlein, a billionaire cardboard box magnate who has bankrolled election-denying candidates and nonprofits, as well as a Super PAC that’s spending millions to elect Trump.
The Federalist’s efforts to recruit election deniers to aid the publication’s coverage began as far back January, when it advertised that it was hiring for contributors at an online meeting of the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition, a loose network of conservative county election officials, local Republican party chairs, and election denial activists.
“The Federalist,” a flier for the coalition’s January meeting noted, “is hiring freelance writers (no experience needed) and potential full time reporters.” More details would be provided at the meeting.
The flier was shared by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections, in her official role as a field organizer for Tea Party Patriots Action, an organization that helped organize the rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that preceded the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. Adams is also a regional director for the Election Integrity Network, one of the country’s most prominent election denial organizations.
Election certification has long been a ministerial, non-discretionary task, according to Democrats and election law experts. But in her role on the Fulton County board, Adams has refused to certify election results twice in recent months — part of a broader trend among pro-Trump election officials. She’s launched a lawsuit — with help from a pro-Trump think tank — demanding the judiciary grant her the authority to reject election results.
Adams sent the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition flier to David Hancock, an election denier who serves as a member of the Gwinnett County election board. The email is among many communications that Hancock released in response to a public records request from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which shared the records with Rolling Stone and American Doom.
The emails shed further light on the behind-the-scenes efforts to enact denier-based policies and sow distrust in Georgia elections among activists — some of whom currently serve as county and state election officials. The records also provide insight into coordination between election denial activists and sympathetic right-wing media, with the Federalist expressly soliciting from these networks to not just inform its coverage of so-called election integrity efforts — but to create that content.
A source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity, tells Rolling Stone and American Doom that the Federalist’s elections director, Elle Purnell, has appeared on Election Integrity Network calls in Georgia and Michigan to recruit writers and stories.
Adams and Hancock did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Purnell.
The Federalist’s efforts to recruit local election denial activists as writers appears to be bearing fruit. The outlet has been publishing articles by Kristine Christlieb, an election denier who is a “senior correspondent” for Michigan Fair Elections, the Michigan arm of the Election Integrity Network.
Christlieb recently penned a story about Democrats’ efforts to garner support from Americans living abroad — a completely legal effort aimed at a voting bloc that includes members of the military and professionals living as American citizens in other countries. Christlieb’s piece was topped with the salacious headline, “Democrats’ Plan To Harvest Millions Of Overseas Ballots Is A Threat To Fair Elections.”
Christlieb did not respond to a request for comment.
The nexus between election denial networks and right-wing media outlets like the Federalist was further exposed in an April email from Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots. “Avoid fake news this election season,” Martin wrote, encouraging Tea Party Patriots members to support a new website, ElectionBriefing.com, “brought to you by the Federalist.”
“The mainstream media is probably going to use even more extreme measures to stop Donald Trump than they have already used,” added Martin. “As a freedom-loving American, it is critical that you have accurate information to share with others, and … a place you can send them for more information.”
The ElectionBriefing.com website aggregates stories that reinforce beliefs of the election denial movement, including many stories from the Federalist, such as one unironically headlined, “The Left Is Attempting To Take Over Local Election Offices,” complete with a picture of liberal donor George Soros as its lead art. (As Rolling Stone and American Doom have reported, local election offices across the country have been infiltrated by election deniers in recent years.)
In the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss, right-wing media rallied behind his lies about election fraud, breathlessly reporting unfounded and often bizarre allegations coming from the former president and his lawyers, such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
Some of those media outlets and election deniers paid the price. Fox News settled with the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million last year. One America News Network reached a confidential settlement with another voting machine company, Smartmatic. The Gateway Pundit has sought bankruptcy protections as the website defends itself from multiple election-related defamation lawsuits. And prominent election deniers like Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell have been forced to pay damages to election workers and others they defamed.
But the Federalist has soldiered on, repeating election denial talking points and false fraud claims in its support of the former president’s clearly obvious plan to claim that 2024 was stolen from him, just like 2020. The publication has called the term “election denier” the “dumbest rhetorical smear in modern politics,” and has advised its readers on “how to talk to your normie neighbor about election integrity.”
Recently, as the battle over election rules has taken center stage in Georgia, thanks to the new MAGA majority of election deniers on the State Election Board, the Federalist has published articles credulously quoting election denial activists and officials in the state.
The publication has accused Democrats of waging an “intimidation campaign” against the board members, whom Trump praised at an Atlanta rally on Aug. 3 as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”
The Federalist has criticized Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) for refusing to probe double-counted ballots in Fulton County in 2020 — even though the matter was already investigated and the county was punished for minor vote-counting errors that did not affect Biden’s win in the state.
The outlet has also weighed in on controversial rules passed in recent months by the State Election Board, designed to grant more power to local election officials to arbitrarily refuse to certify results. The Federalist has repeatedly dismissed the idea that certification is a mandatory, ministerial task as a “rubber stamp” that could allow for fraud to occur. “Left-Wing Media Malign GA Election Rules In Bid To Make Certification Nothing More Than A Rubber Stamp,” the outlet wrote in one headline.
At least three Federalist stories have mentioned or quoted Salleigh Grubbs, chair of the Cobb County GOP in Georgia. Grubbs has spoken at meetings of the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition, where the Federalist advertised its opening for freelance writers.
She also successfully petitioned the State Election Board to pass a rule that allows county election officials to examine a virtually unlimited number of election-related documents before certifying results, and prohibits them from approving certification until the number of ballots cast and voters checking in at each precinct are compared. (Election experts say that the number of ballots cast and voters in a precinct often don’t add up due to machine errors routine in polling locations with large populations, such as in large cities where voters tend to skew toward Democrats, according to ProPublica.)
Grubbs claimed to the Federalist that county election directors in Georgia are “withholding documents needed for people to certify the election.”
Her election denier activism began in earnest on Election Day 2020, when she tried to chase down a shredding and recycling truck that she believed was carrying shredded paper ballots. It was not.
This story is being published in partnership with American Doom, a newsletter that focuses on right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy.
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