Congresswoman Lauren Boebert promoted antisemitic alt-right conspiracist Jack Posobiec in a taxpayer-funded email to reporters.
Yesterday’s official press release announced that Boebert had reintroduced her bill, the Protecting Free Speech Act, that she first proposed last year in response to a Dept. of Homeland Security project called the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB). Intended to monitor and counter the spread of disinformation online, the group was attacked by numerous right-wing figures, including Posobiec, who is one of the nation’s most prominent disseminators of fake news.
Best known for promoting the QAnon precursor conspiracy Pizzagate, which led to a man firing an assault rifle in a Washington, D.C. pizza shop, Posobiec has also pushed election denialism and anti-vaccine conspiracies. Posobiec, whose antisemitic tweets and promotion of white supremacy have been extensively documented, is also well-known for working with white supremacist Richard Spencer and Neo-Nazis.
More recently, Posobiec attacked the Colorado Springs veteran who stopped the Club Q shooter from killing many more people. Soon after the news broke, Posobiec tweeted, “Are we just not supposed to talk about the US Army Major taking his family down to the local drag club for a night out?”
Posobiec also used another Colorado mass shooting, the Boulder grocery store massacre, to promote false anti-immigrant sentiment. He falsely claimed on Twitter that the man who murdered ten Coloradans including a police officer immigrated to America as part of an Obama-era refugee program. Politifact debunked his statement.
The DHS program was ultimately canceled after an avalanche of aggressive misinformation campaigns Posobiec and other right-wing personalities waged against the entity and its director.
Boebert’s bill died last year in the Democratically controlled House, but has a better chance of movement now that Republicans control the chamber.
Reached for comment, a spokesman for Congresswoman Boebert’s office identified the other people (besides Boebert & Posobiec) depicted as pallbearers in the image. The three men behind Boebert from left to right are U.S. Reps. Mike Johnson (R-LA), August Pfluger (R-TX), and Scott Franklin (R-FL). Johnson and Pfluger spoke at last year’s press conference announcing the bill, while Franklin led a congressional oversight letter that Boebert signed.
The spokesman did not respond to questions as to whether Boebert has any concerns about using taxpayer money to promote an extremist like Posobiec.
To create the image, Boebert’s office Photoshopped her face, along with Posobiec’s and the other legislators, onto a photo of Black pallbearers from Ghana who became well-known following a 2017 BBC story.
According to the release, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert again introduced the Protecting Free Speech Act to permanently terminate and defund any efforts by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to revamp the failed, unconstitutional Disinformation Governance Board.
“The Disinformation Governance Board was a terrible idea to begin with, and my Protecting Free SpeechAct ensures that it stays where it belongs: the ash heap of history,” Boebert says in the release. “I killed this Board with my public pressure campaign last year, and my bill will change the law to make sure it stays dead. Such an egregious attack on free speech should never again be proposed by the government of a free people.”
