The Gateway Pundit, the notorious far-right blog and prolific publisher of conspiracy theories, said Wednesday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection as it grapples with litigation related to its coverage of the 2020 election. (CNN)
Those lawsuits include one from Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who sued the organization in Missouri, where it is based, after the website perpetuated false claims that the two had been involved in election fraud in Georgia. (The Guardian)
Since its launch in 2004, the site has become a prolific clearinghouse for conspiracy theories about the election, school shootings and other topics, helping to funnel such flimsy stories from the fringes of the internet to the broader pro-Trump right thanks to its substantial audience. (WaPo)
In January 2020, The Gateway Pundit had some 1.7 million unique readers going into election year. In January of this year, that number had dropped some 54% to 813,000 users, according to Comscore data. TGP refutes the ComScore data, saying that the site no longer shares its traffic data with ComScore and instead uses an internal StatCounter, which registered 24 million users in January 2020 and 55 million in January 2024. (Mediaite)