Thread by @lhfang

So columnist Jason Johnson (@drjasonjohnson) just made up a bunch of stuff to smear me, so I guess I'll respond here.

For context this is about the GA Dem gov primary. Stacey Abrams vs Stacey Evans, both interesting, viable candidates.

Abrams is the more conservative candidate on a range of issues. Abrams voted w/the GA GOP to scale back early voting, a bill Evans opposed.

Abrams also worked w/ GOP to cut the HOPE Program, Georgia's very progressive program to give full rides to public college. Evans opposed.

But on other issues there aren't too many stark differences, Evans isn't a democratic socialist, both candidates support charter schools.

I noticed a column from Jason calling for people to back Abrams, claiming the only support for Evans (who is white) was based on racism

Moreover, in his endorsement column, Jason made a brazen claim that Evans was pushing a smear campaign to call Abrams a lesbian.

Jason had no direct evidence or reporting to back up this claim. Only an anonymous Democratic consultant that heard of it & gave him a text

You can read Jason's "black Stacey vs. white Stacey" column here theroot.com/black-stacey-v…

We've covered this race before, I file FOIAs as many as ten times as week on everyone. I filed one to see what was going on.

That's about it. I file these all the time to see if there's a story worth covering. Never wrote about the column.

In response, yesterday, Jason flips out and writes a falsehood-filled second column alleging a grand conspiracy and calling me a racist?

Here's the column Jason wrote yesterday: theroot.com/hey-i-can-play…

Jason says we called him a liar and wrote about him. Uhh we've never written about him once this is just made up.

Because Zaid tweeted once that Jason had a factual error in his first column, Jason freaks out and says Zaid should call him before tweeting

I've never met Greg Bluestein (AJC reporter who fact checked his lesbian smear), so this is made up. Never interned w/Zaid, also made up.

Next Jason makes a bigoted smear that Zaid is an antisemite ... because Zaid's a brown person who criticized Israel I guess

Jason goes on to post some pretty nasty, untrue links about me from a right-wing site, calls us "smug, racist trolls."

In sum, a columnist wrote a fairly tabloidesque piece, we filed a FOIA, he melts down and makes an error-filled screed & says we're racist

One other ridiculous lie Jason's fact-checkers need to look at, I haven't yet written about Kamala Harris or Abrams. Again he's making it up