- A new lawsuit shows the toll of disinformation and online harassment on election workers.
- Two Georgia election workers are suing the right-wing website the Gateway Pundit for defamation.
Ruby Freeman was among the tens of thousands of Americans who helped serve the need for more election workers in her community in 2020, joining her daughter Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a full-time employee in the Fulton County, Georgia elections office, to process and count absentee ballots in the November election.
Just two months later, Freeman was the target of a relentless online harassment campaign over the election lies perpetuated by former President Donald Trump and his allies.
Freeman and Moss, represented by the nonprofit group Protect Democracy and their co-counsels, are now suing the popular right-wing website The Gateway Pundit, its founder Jim Hoft, and his brother and Gateway Pundit writer Joe Hoft, for defamation and intentional inflection of emotional distress.
As Trump invoked her name over a dozen times on the January 2 phone call pressuring Georgia officials to "find" enough votes to win him the election, Freeman fled her home on the advice of the FBI at the beginning of January, staying in Airbnbs and avoiding using credit cards that could be used to trace her.
The lawsuit outlines how online conspiracy theories can upend the lives of relatively low-level election workers. The suit also highlights how little protection besieged election workers currently receive from law enforcement, and how few people have been held accountable for threatening
The complaint, filed on Thursday, details how the website and Hoft were the first to identify Freeman and Moss to its millions of readers, singling the two out from surveillance footage of the Atlanta venue where officials were counting ballots that had been selectively edited by Trump allies.
The lawsuit argues the Gateway Pundit and the Hofts defamed Freeman and Moss by attacking them as "crooks" and "political operatives" and directing readers to their social media pages in stories that baselessly accused them of being at the center of a sweeping, nefarious conspiracy to steal the election.
"Ruby's purse was a hit and several fans wrote her on her LinkedIn page after they saw her and her purse on TV. They then commented on her LinkedIn page," Hoft wrote in one article. "Note: Please do not confuse this with a similar business in Snellville!"
The Georgia Secretary of State's office and multiple news outlets thoroughly debunked the theories that Freeman, Moss, or anyone else counting votes, pulled ballots out of suitcases, scanned ballots multiple times, or were "crooked" political actors. Two recounts affirmed the outcome of the presidential race. But none of that could undo the flood of violent and racist harassment directed toward both women, who are Black, described in the lawsuit.
In a Thursday post on the Gateway Pundit's website, Hoft doubled down on the outlet's previous baseless claims that Freeman and Moss were involved in improper election activity and asked readers to give money to "PLEASE HELP The Gateway Pundit defend ourselves from this latest assault." Hoft did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Freeman and Moss aren't the only election workers to receive harassment spurred by The Gateway Pundit's writings.
A recent Reuters investigation identified 100 messages sent to 25 election officials that cited The Gateway Pundit's false claims. Five of the messages were threatening enough for the officials to report to law enforcement, the outlet said.
But law enforcement has not yet made any arrests in connection to the threats against Freeman or Moss, Reuters reported, part of a nationwide pattern of those who threaten towards election officials not facing accountability or consequences.
"Lord Jesus, where's the police?" Freeman pleaded in a December 6 call to 911 obtained by Reuters after strangers showed up at her house. "I don't know who keeps coming to my door. Please help me."
Attacks on election officials are 'domestic extremism,' expert says.
Rank-and-file, nonpartisan civil servants like Freeman and Moss usually don't have the resources to protect themselves or the access to law enforcment afforded to higher-profile, public-facing elected officials.
Both women continue to suffer personal and financial consequences from the violent harassment.
Freeman had to shut down her small business. After people began showing up at her home on January 6, she bought 11 security cameras and three motion sensors, the lawsuit said.
Moss still works in elections, but is afraid to say her name to callers to the Fulton County elections office and has "largely retreated from public and social life," per the lawsuit.
The threats have also exacted an intergenerational toll. Moss' elderly grandmother called her "in a panic" when intruders tried to break into her home to conduct "a citizen's arrest" of Moss, the lawsuit says. And her teenage son, who was using one of his mothers' old cell phones as a wifi hotspot to do his virtual schoolwork during the COVID-19 pandemic, kept it turned off because of the onslaught of harassing calls and failed multiple classes.
Jared Davidson, counsel at Protect Democracy, told Insider on Friday that such threats are not isolated incidents, but amount to "domestic extremism."
"We have seen an upsurge of this over the past year, as made evident by January 6th," he said. "And I fear that some individuals may think that these are lone wolves. But it's part of a really concerning pattern of individuals inspired by right-wing extremism. And that has to be a priority of the Department of Justice and the FBI."
The Justice Department is prosecuting the hundreds of defendants charged in connection with the January 6 insurrection, when a mob of rioters sought to violently halt members of Congress from carrying out their duty to affirm President Joe Biden's election victory.
But, as Reuters has detailed, federal authorities have taken little action against the hundreds of threats targeting local election officials performing essential elections work every day in their communities, despite a DOJ new task force dedicated to combatting such threats launched in July. Few prosecutions have been brought by officials at any level of government.
"They should be analyzing these threats and zealously pursuing them," Davidson said. "And it's not the case that there isn't an infrastructure to investigate and prosecute. The fact that it's a nationwide problem, that is really an existential threat to the functioning of our democracy, means that the Department of Justice, the FBI, state and local law enforcement should be investing a commensurate amount of resources."
Free speech concerns and lack of prioritization by law enforcement are hindering accountability.
Davidson listed several factors also identified in Reuters' reporting that may explain the low number of prosecutions over the violent threats. They include law enforcement failing to prioritize such threats, insufficient coordination between federal and local law enforcement, inadequate communication between law enforcement and election officials, and law enforcement officials perhaps too hastily deeming certain threats to be protected speech.
"One thing we're really concerned about is that both prosecutors and the FBI and local law enforcement might be making the wrong judgment call about whether some of this about whether this conduct and these threats are protected under the First Amendment," Davidson told Insider.
In one case documented by Reuters, state police in Nevada determined that a series of threatening calls to a Nevada election official where the caller told her she was going to "fucking die" qualified as "protected" political speech and thus did not warrant prosecution.
"In some instances, law enforcement agencies who aren't really qualified to make a legal determination about what constitutes legally protected speech are not not pursuing these claims because they're making the wrong judgment call," Davidson said. "And so it's really crucial that the Department of Justice and state and local prosecutors provide clear guidance."
In another case reported by Reuters, state police in Vermont decided that voicemails to the Secretary of State's office telling workers, among other things, that "all you dirty cocksuckers are about to get fucking popped" weren't explicit or clearly threatening enough to rise to the level of a crime.
It's also possible, Davidson said, that "some of these prosecutors or law enforcement agencies aren't viewing this as their problem, or they're not viewing it as a priority."
In the case of the Vermont man, state law enforcement determined his number to be "essentially untraceable." But Reuters journalists successfully tracked down the caller — and eight more who had threatened election officials.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Insider that in addition to better enforcement of the laws on the books, he supports Congress considering even stronger federal protections for election officials. This fall, Senate Republicans blocked debate on two Democratic voting rights bills that included enhanced federal penalties for harassing and intimidating election officials.
"I think they should do that in a bipartisan nature, absolutely," Raffensperger told Insider in late October. "What would you do if you showed up to vote in person and you couldn't because there was no poll workers there because they all quit because they feared for their lives over these intimidation tactics?"
Are you an election official who has experienced harassment or threats since the