Georgia poll workers settle defamation lawsuit against conservative website

ATLANTA– Two Georgia election workers have reached a settlement in their defamation lawsuit against a Missouri-based conservative website that falsely accused them of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, according to a court filing earlier this week.

The lawsuit against The Gateway Pundit, its owner Jim Hoft and his brother Joe Hoft “has been resolved to the parties’ mutual satisfaction through a fair and reasonable settlement,” attorneys for Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss said Friday.

The filing Monday in St. Louis City Circuit Court did not specify terms of the settlement, but said actions under the agreement are expected to be completed by March 29. Both sides have asked a judge to delay the case until then, when they expect to request a dismissal.

Hoft’s lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Nearly 70 articles cited as defamatory in the lawsuit were no longer available on The Gateway Pundit’s website Friday, The Associated Press found.

The company that owns The Gateway Pundit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, but a judge dismissed the case in July because the company was solvent and filed the lawsuit in bad faith to thwart Freeman and Moss’ lawsuit.

Freeman and Moss, who were poll workers in Fulton County, sued over The Gateway Pundit’s repeated claims that the mother-daughter pair introduced suitcases of illegal ballots while working as a voter at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta in November 2020.

Freeman and Moss also sued others, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and One America News Network, saying they spread Donald Trump’s lies about the election being stolen, which led to death threats that left them fearing for their lives.

Freeman and Moss are seeking to recover a $148 million defamation judgment they won against Giuliani over his false claims of election fraud.

OAN reached an agreement with Freeman and Moss in 2022 posted a video State officials “concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud by election workers who counted ballots at the State Farm Arena in November 2020. The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss did not engage in voter fraud or criminal misconduct while working at State Farm Arena on election night.”

Freeman and Moss came into the spotlight on December 3, 2020, when a representative of Trump’s legal team, Jacki Pick, showed Georgia Senate committee surveillance video from the room where ballots were being counted. Pick said Republican observers were asked to leave and when they left, poll workers counted hidden, fraudulent ballots.

Pick did not name the poll workers, “but said, ‘One of them had the name Ruby somewhere on her shirt,'” the lawsuit says. Later that day, The Gateway Pundit became the first media outlet to publish Freeman’s full name and also identified Moss in a later story, the lawsuit says.

The claim that “suitcases” containing ballots had been retrieved from under tables and hidden from view of observers was almost immediately debunked. But Gateway Pundit and the Hofts continued the narrative by publishing and promoting stories after they knew the claims had been debunked, the lawsuit says.

In a phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, Trump urged the Republican official to “find” votes for him, mentioned Freeman by name and called her “a voter fraudster, a professional voter fraudster and agitator.”

Freeman was a temporary poll worker in 2020. Moss has worked for the Fulton County Elections Department since 2012, overseeing absentee voting.

As the allegations spread, Freeman received emails, text messages and threatening phone calls, and strangers began showing up at her home, the lawsuit says. The FBI concluded on January 6, 2021 that she was unsafe at home and moved for two months. She gave up her business of selling clothes.

Moss’ teenage son was bombarded with threatening messages after harassers found her old phone number, which he used, the lawsuit says. Because she previously lived with her grandmother, the lawsuit says, strangers showed up at her grandmother’s house on at least two occasions and tried to get in to make a “citizen’s arrest.”