Topic: WorldNetDaily
Leo Hohmann has been allowed back at WorldNetDaily in recent months where he has continued to practice the dishonest, hateful journalism that (near as we can tell) almost got WND sued for falsely defaming a yogurt maker. He served up more dishonesty in a Nov. 22 article:
An FBI SWAT team raided the home of an activist mother of four in Colorado on Tuesday, Nov. 16, knocking down her door, bursting into the house with guns and handcuffing her while she was homeschooling her children.
This is the first known case of the federal government making good on its promise to not only intimidate but actually carry out a raid on a mom who was involved in her local school board politics, said Brannon Howse, who interviewed Sherronna Bishop at Lindell TV Wednesday night.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an Oct. 4 memorandum directing federal, state and local law enforcement to look for parents to prosecute nationwide who may have made “threats” and made “harassing” phone calls to school board members nationwide, equating such parents to domestic terrorists.
Now a mother, Sherronna Bishop of Grand Junction, Colorado, has felt the brute force of the FBI’s heavily armed SWAT unit used against her family.
She was at home with her three children about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday when she heard someone pounding on the front door, then using a battering ram to break it down. She said the officers “manhandled” her 18-year-old daughter, pulling her up the stairs by her hoodie, while another officer put her in handcuffs and ushered her out of the house. They proceeded to search the entire house.
Hohmann is lying by linking the raid to the Department of Justice memorandum (and he's leaning into the false narrative about the memo pushed by WND and elsewhere in the right-wing media). It wasn't until the 10th paragraph that Hohmanngot around to hinting that other factors were involved.
She said the agents would not tell her why they were searching her home. They did leave behind documents related to the search warrant, saying they entered her home because she was suspected of causing “intentional damage to a protected computer, wire fraud and conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer.”
“I don’t know anything about this. They couldn’t explain any of this,” she said. “I will tell you why: they were at my home to intimidate me, to shut me up, because I was using my First Amendment rights to advocate for [Mesa County Clerk] Tina Peters on the issue of Dominion [voting machines] and the damage done in our election. And they’ll never be held accountable. Instead they will criminalize this woman who has stood up.”
Instead of elaborating on that, Hohmann continued to push the bogus school link and portrayed Bishop as a victim, a "suburban housewife and mom" being "targeted" by the government, going on to rant: "Now, an activist mom has been targeted, raising the question: Has the FBI become the political shock troops for the White House, seeking to harass and intimidate anyone who speaks out against its policies?"
Hohmann is censoring the truth about the raid. Bishop is an associate of Tina Peters, the county clerk who gained notoroiety by taking part in a "cyber symposium" held by MyPillow guy Mike Lindell last august with the goal of uncovering election fraud (which didn't happen).She brought with her what she claied was proof that county election data was altered -- which turned out not only to ber not true, but also resulted in her getting fired from her job for allowing an unauthorized person to copy election-related hard drives and shutting off security cameras to hide that unauthorized copying.
On top of that, Bishop's story about a battering ram being used to enter her house -- treated as fact by Hohomann -- appears not to be true either. The Colorado attorney general and the local district attorney responded: "At no time was force used on Ms. Peters or her home. Ms. Peters was allowed to move around her home and fix herself breakfast while agents gathered items before departing....We are issuing this statement to clear up inaccuracies about what occurred during yesterday’s enforcement action."
Hohmann also failed mention that Bishop is a former campaign manager for Lauren Boebert, the far-right extremist who is now a congresswoman from the state. (It appears, however, that Bishop was unhappy with Boebert praising the district attorney's approach to the Peters investigation, so they're on the outs right now.)
It's clear that Hohmann couildn't be bothered to fact-check anything Bishop said -- bad move on his part. The fact that WND invited Hohmann back to write this dishonest piece demonstrates bad judgment on its part, and it proves yet again why nobody believes WND.
