Two election workers accused of manipulating presidential election ballots by a number of pro-Trump news outlets filed a lawsuit Thursday against a right-wing site that they say published dozens of defamatory stories about them. Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, became targets of a right-wing misinformation campaign after they processed ballots last year in Atlanta. The suit is one of the first filed by individual employees targeted by the wacky world of conspiracy-mongering news sites that continue to claim Donald Trump had the election stolen from him.
Beginning in December last year, Gateway Pundit began churning out pieces on the two women, calling them “crooked Democrats.” It claimed the pair “pulled out suitcases full of ballots and began counting those ballots without election monitors in the room.” Rudy Giuliani weighed in shortly after, comparing Freeman and Moss to drug dealers. In a Jan. 3 call with the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump invoked Freeman’s name 18 times. Raffensperger’s office concluded that Freeman and Moss, both of whom are Black, had done nothing wrong. But the women, according to their filing, received a litany of death threats and harassment anyway.
Last December, Trump supporters turned up on Freeman’s doorstep. She had to flee her home for two months in January after a crowd surrounded it. “I want the defendants to know that my daughter and I are real people who deserve justice,” Freeman said in a statement, “and I never want them to do this to anyone else.”
Read it at The New York Times
