After I wrote about her unwittingly linking to bizarre conspiracy websites on Facebook, Rep. Jenny Graham called me a "cocksucker," a "lying piece of shit," "disgusting," "hateful" "sleazy" and accused me of an " attack on human trafficking victims."
Check out my SoundCloud of Graham calling me a "lying piece of shit" and telling me "It's on. If you think for one minute you're going to pull this crap and you're going to walk away from it, you're nuts."
Obviously, I take being accused of being a liar -- or even getting something wrong -- very seriously. Which is why I tried to reach out to Graham by phone and text message, and asked her to have a conversation about her concerns.
She did not respond.
In fact, even when asked by two others on her page -- both people I've previously had tough interviews with -- what was false about the article, she refused to identify anything specific.
Instead, she challenged me to post the raw audio recording of my interview with her.
In one of her Facebook attacks on me, meanwhile, she linked to *another* conspiracy theory site, one brimming with posts about vaccines, QAnon, the Illuminati, 9/11, chemtrails, Wayfair furniture sales, COVID-19 and, yes, reptilian-human hybrids.
Graham both accused me of trying to "silence" and "intimidate" her, and also said she was seeking a lawyer to sue me/The Inlander for libel.
The original Graham piece was just intended to be a sidebar to this piece about 4th WA Legislative District Candidate Rob Chase, who much more knowingly promotes QAnon, even if he doesn't describe himself as an outright believer in the theory: inlander.com/spokane/matt-s…
If you're wondering whether Graham called me a "cocksucker" (or, in daily newspaper speak, "a profane term often used by saloon owner Al Swearengen on the hit original HBO drama 'Deadwood'") someone noticed that she quietly mutters that on the voicemail.
My robot co-writer and I are coming for your job, @Weinbergrrrrr
@Weinbergrrrrr "Of course, changing the way we talk about these spiders will not solve all of the problems of patriarchal and pro-natalist bias in society. However,"
I have some follow-up reporting about Reilly's crew's connection to Idaho political advertising. KCRCC chair Brent Regan says he talked to someone named "Matt" with Idaho Dynamics, but refused to give his last name. But who? That was bugging me.
Well, I've since learned, there was a *third* Reilly-connected North Idaho political advertising media company started since Nov. 2021: "Red Shield Media," public docs show, was started by Matthew Colligan AKA "Millennial Matt" of Charlottesville fame. inlander.com/spokane/musks-…
Red Shield Media was incorporated by Colligan, according to Idaho Secretary of State documents. (I've redacted the address -- it's a business address but it's residential.) Colligan was an anti-Semitic alt-right star known for the catchphrase "Hitler did nothing wrong."
There's something called the "Ideological Turing test." Basically, can you pretend to be somebody on the other ideological side convincingly? This "Rat City Music" account that Ammon Bundy interacted with-- supposedly a Democratic activist in Boise -- gave a bunch of🚩🚩🚩
Beyond the clumsy ideological mimicry, it was supposedly a new account created because the old account had been banned. Except... why had it been created in 2011? Why were there @ replies to it in 2011?
Basic Twitter trick to figure out if someone is trying to switch an account's purpose. twitter.com/search?q=to%3A…
"Sgt. Carver seized Myers’ laptop from a room at the courthouse used by journalists reporting on the trial."
Yiiiikkkes.
I can't tell a source "go out and make this illegal recording for me." But if a source gives me illegally obtained information I *can* use it for reporting, and for good reason!