True Pundit

Last updated

True Pundit
True Pundit logo.png
Type of business Limited liability company
Type of site
 Fake news website [1]
Available inEnglish
Founded2016
Key peopleMichael D. Moore
URL truepundit.com
Advertising Yes
CommercialYes
Current statusInactive

True Pundit is a far-right [9] fake news website [1] known for publishing conspiracy theories. [20] According to The Atlantic , True Pundit had "a well-known modus operandi, perfected during the 2016 U.S. election: running baseless stories and then asking leading questions". [21]

Contents

True Pundit was "fluent in the paranoid language of 2016 social media" and often credited false stories about the FBI and Hillary Clinton to anonymous sources and claimed the mainstream media was covering it up. The website helped spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and the Plandemic conspiracy theory. It was often promoted by partisan and conspiracy websites and prominent pro-Trump figures, including Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. [2] [16] [17] [22] [23]

True Pundit earned revenue by selling merchandise and advertising with Revcontent, a service that monetized fake news sites, and briefly worked with the ad firm Intermarkets. [2] [24] In 2018, True Pundit was accused of stealing content for articles and their YouTube channel was terminated for "spam, deceptive practices and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations". [2]

Notable conspiracy theories

In October 2016, True Pundit was the source of the false claim that Hillary Clinton asked, "Can’t we just drone this guy?" about Julian Assange. The conspiracy theory was amplified by WikiLeaks, InfoWars, RT, Heat Street and Fox News. WikiLeaks sent a private message to Donald Trump Jr. asking him to "comment on/push" the story. Trump Jr. replied that he "already did that". [2] [22] [25] [26]

In November 2016, True Pundit contributed to the creation, spread and revival of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The article was the website's most popular story on Facebook. The website also published false stories about Hillary Clinton wearing an earpiece at a debate, using hand signals with debate moderators, and being drunk before a campaign rally. [2] [17] [27]

In 2016 and 2017, True Pundit promoted conspiracy theories that mass shootings in Las Vegas and at the Orlando Pulse nightclub involved FBI cover-ups and a conspiracy theory related to Trump Tower wiretapping allegations. [2]

In February 2018, True Pundit promoted conspiracy theories about the Parkland high school shooting. [28] [29] [30] In August 2018, True Pundit was the first to imply a link between a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist's death and the Clinton family. [16]

In 2020, True Pundit played a key role in boosting the Plandemic conspiracy theory. [23]

History

The website for True Pundit was registered in March 2016 and launched that June. True Pundit was created by Michael D. Moore using the pseudonym Thomas Paine and managed by True Pundit Media LLC. [2] [17]

In 2017, Moore said True Pundit was "flattered to be accused of participating in disinformation campaigns" for Russia and implied that mainstream media do the same for other governments. [31]

Thomas Paine pseudonym

Michael D. Moore had a background in journalism, a criminal record from an FBI investigation, and a history of illegal business practices when he created True Pundit in 2016 using the pseudonym, Thomas Paine. Moore's autobiography as Thomas Paine says he won the Gerald Loeb Award, and falsely claimed he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting twice and a George Polk Political Reporting award once. On Twitter, he falsely claimed he won a Polk award. In YouTube appearances Moore has praised Infowars conspiracy theorist and QAnon proponent Jerome Corsi. [2] [23]

In 1996, Moore won a Gerald Loeb Award with two colleagues and reported about TWA Flight 800. Moore said that in the late 1990s he left journalism to work in "intelligence" and started the company "Dig Dirt" with the tagline "investigative intelligence". When Moore's newspaper learned about Dig Dirt, they opened an internal investigation. The paper's editor said it "very clearly created the appearance and potential for a conflict of interest" but Moore was cleared of wrongdoing. Moore resigned from the newspaper and said he was mistreated because he was investigated by colleagues. [2] [32] [33]

In 1999, Moore sued Steptoe & Johnson for $10 million alleging they had launched a "cyber war" and hacked into Dig Dirt's websites and posted defamatory messages about him "and tried to cover it all up by doing their evil deeds under an e-identity swiped from an Alexandria, Virginia, furniture store owner". Moore alleged that the firm attempted to penetrate his systems using a domain he had been cybersquatting on. The lawsuit was dismissed in August 2000. Later that year, he was ordered to pay $25,000 in damages for squatting on six domains of law firms names. When the law firms contacted Moore and objected to the cybersquatting, he asked for money. [2] [34] [35]

References

  1. 1 2 Sources describing True Pundit as a fake news website: [10] [11] [12] [13]
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Silverman, Craig (August 27, 2018). "Revealed: Notorious Pro-Trump Misinformation Site True Pundit Is Run By An Ex-Journalist With A Grudge Against The FBI". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  3. 1 2 Gibian, Rebecca. "Pro-Trump Blogger Revealed To Be Ex-Journalist Who Hates FBI". InsideHook. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  4. ↑ Smith, Allan. "The far right thinks there's a massive FBI-linked conspiracy around survivors of the Florida school shooting". Business Insider. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  5. 1 2 Rothschild, Mike (December 10, 2018). "What life is like inside the right-wing Twitter bubble". The Daily Dot. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  6. ↑ Farhi, Paul (February 23, 2018). "What is Gateway Pundit, the conspiracy-hawking site at the center of the bogus Florida 'crisis actors' hype?". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  7. ↑ Garcia, Arturo (February 20, 2018). "Far Right Blogs, Conspiracy Theorists Attack Parkland Mass Shooting Survivor". Snopes. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  8. ↑ Emery, David (August 11, 2018). "Was the Father of the Man Accused of Training School Shooters the Keynote Speaker at Obama's Democratic National Convention?". Snopes. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  9. ↑ Sources describing True Pundit as far-right: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
  10. ↑ Cruickshank, Iain; Ginossar, Tamar; Sulskis, Jason; Zheleva, Elena; Berger-Wolf, Tanya (December 3, 2021). "Content and Dynamics of Websites Shared Over Vaccine-Related Tweets in COVID-19 Conversations: Computational Analysis". Journal of Medical Internet Research . 23 (12). doi: 10.2196/29127 . PMID   34665760 . Retrieved February 2, 2026.
  11. ↑ Horne, Benjamin; Adali, Sibel (May 3, 2017). "This Just In: Fake News Packs A Lot In Title, Uses Simpler, Repetitive Content in Text Body, More Similar To Satire Than Real News". Proceedings of the Eleventh International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. Vol. 11. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. p. 761. doi: 10.1609/icwsm.v11i1.14976 . Retrieved February 2, 2026.
  12. ↑ Wong, Queenie (January 9, 2019). "Facebook and fake news: Elderly more likely to spread misinformation". CNET . Retrieved February 2, 2026.
  13. ↑ Cain, Patrick (September 1, 2018). "Why you can't trust cable news screenshots (however funny)". Global News . Retrieved February 2, 2026.
  14. ↑ Wilson, Jason (February 21, 2018). "Crisis actors, deep state, false flag: the rise of conspiracy theory code words". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  15. ↑ Borchers, Callum (November 25, 2021). "Hillary Clinton earpiece speculation conjures the ghost of George W. Bush's back bulge". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  16. 1 2 3 Sommer, Will (August 23, 2018). "Conspiracy Theorists Try to Turn Pizzagate Pusher Into New Seth Rich". The Daily Beast. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Silverman, Craig (December 5, 2016). "How The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory Behind "Pizzagate" Was Spread". BuzzFeed. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  18. ↑ "True Pundit". Media Matters for America. October 23, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  19. ↑ Palma, Bethania (July 30, 2019). "Was the Death of FBI Agent Sal Cincinelli Linked to the Clinton Foundation?". Snopes. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  20. ↑ Sources describing True Pundit as a publisher of conspiracy theories: [2] [3] [5] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
  21. ↑ Lewis, Helen (June 12, 2020). "The Mainstream Media Won't Tell You This". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  22. 1 2 Singal, Jesse (October 3, 2016). "Explaining the Rumor That Hillary Clinton Wanted to Drone-Strike Julian Assange". Intelligencer. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  23. 1 2 3 Breland, Ali. "After a conspiracy site boosted the debunked "Plandemic" video, Trump pushed its take on Joe Scarborough". Mother Jones. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  24. ↑ Vo, Craig Silverman, Jeremy Singer-Vine, Lam Thuy (April 4, 2017). "Fake News, Real Ads: Fake News Publishers Are Still Earning Money From Big Ad Networks". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved October 29, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  25. ↑ LaCapria, Kim (October 3, 2016). "To Silence Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton Proposed Drone Strike on Julian Assange?". Snopes. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  26. ↑ Ioffe, Julia (November 13, 2017). "The Secret Correspondence Between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks". The Atlantic. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  27. ↑ Kaplan, Alex (June 25, 2018). "Return of Pizzagate: Pro-Trump media use FBI IG report to revive conspiracy theory". Salon. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  28. ↑ Smith, Allan. "Some of Trump's most fervent supporters have started to criticize a school-shooting survivor who has made a flurry of media appearances". Business Insider. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  29. ↑ Smith, Allan. "The far right thinks there's a massive FBI-linked conspiracy around survivors of the Florida school shooting". Business Insider. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  30. ↑ Smith, Allan. "The conspiracy theory around one of the Florida school-shooting survivors is getting even more insane". Business Insider. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  31. ↑ Dorell, Oren. "Breitbart, other 'alt-right' websites are the darlings of Russian propaganda effort". USA TODAY. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  32. ↑ "Asbury Park Press Clipping On TWA Crash Story". www.documentcloud.org.
  33. ↑ ""On the Record: Top Reporter at N.J. Daily Resign" by Giobbe, Dorothy - Editor & Publisher, Vol. 129, Issue 50, December 14, 1996 | Online Research Library: Questia". September 15, 2018. Archived from the original on September 15, 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  34. ↑ Bicknell, Craig. "Strange Corporate Hacking Saga". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  35. ↑ "The Cybersquatting of Law Firm Domain Names: Think Before You Squat". April 18, 2017. Archived from the original on April 18, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
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