St. Louis judge sets trial date for Gateway Pundit defamation case • Missouri Independent

A judge in St. Louis this week set March 10 as the trial date for the defamation suit against the owners of the far-right conspiracy website Gateway Pundit. The lawsuit involves false accusations of voter fraud against two election officials in the US state of Georgia.

While trial dates can be changed at any time, Judge Elizabeth Hogan's August 26 decision appears to finally bring clarity to the question of when St. Louis will be the scene of a high-profile First Amendment trial.

It is also a setback for Jim Hoft, owner of the Gateway Pundit, who had hoped for an indefinite delay in the proceedings.

The lawsuit pits the two campaign workers' claims that the Gateway Pundit's “more than 100-article campaign” against them resulted in death threats and other harassment against Hoft's claims that he was merely acting as a journalist exercising his right to free speech.

March 10 is the date requested by attorneys for mother and daughter election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. It is also the date recommended by a court-appointed “special counsel” in the case and set by the court itself earlier this year.

But lawyers for Hoft and his co-defendants – his identical twin brother Joe Hoft and TGP Communications LLC, the company behind the website Gateway Pundit – requested a stay of proceedings while they appeal a Florida bankruptcy court's July 24 dismissal of TGP's bankruptcy petition.

In an Aug. 22 motion, Hoft's lawyers argued that the St. Louis court should extend the automatic stay imposed when the company first filed for bankruptcy in April. That strategy, they said, would avoid potential “stops and starts” that could result from a reopening of the bankruptcy case and another automatic stay.

The election officials' lawyers took this into account when requesting a hearing date of March 10.

They wrote that since the case was first filed in December 2021, Hoft and his lawyers have “used every opportunity to delay justice,” “including 1) wrongfully transferring the case to federal court; 2) filing a counterclaim for defamation against trial counsel for repeating facts and opinions contained in the relevant petitions; 3) failing to produce many relevant documents until more than a year after they were requested; and 4) failing to announce dates for the defendants' testimony until an order to that effect is made in April 2024.”

They also wrote that Hofts' lawyers had been “unresponsive” to their numerous attempts to meet and discuss how to meet the schedule set by the special counsel for taking evidence and testimony in the case.

In a similar lawsuit filed by Freeman and Moss against former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a jury in Washington, D.C., awarded them more than $148 million in compensatory and punitive damages last December. Giuliani's lawyer in that case argued that the Gateway Pundit – whom he called “Patient Zero” of the election fraud conspiracy theory – bore more responsibility for the lies than his client.

The trial in St. Louis will also take place before a jury.