Topic: Newsmax
Matt Palumbo is the author of a upcoming book pushing the right-wing narrative against fact-checkers for committing the offense of fact-checking right-wingers (a narrative the Media Research Center also likes to peddle). We had a little dust-up with him on Twitter a couple weeks back, in which Palumbo responded to our snark with lame insults. His apparent day job, according to his Twitter bio, is "content manager," whatever that is for right-wing radio host Dan Bongino (who is publishing Palumbo's book under the Liberatio Protocol imprint).
But it turns out that Palumbo has another side gig: shilling for Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui (a.k.a. Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok), the moneybags keeping far-right activist Steve Bannon afloat who was recently indicted for fraud.
As exposed by fellow right-winger Lawrence Sellin, Palumbo is among a group of writers Guo and/or his affilates are paying to write nice things about him, then paying to have those articles published at websites such as Newsmax and the Gateway Pundit. The posts at Gateway Pundit are listed as being sponsored by something called "NewNoah," which Sellin suggests is a consulting firm controlled by Guo. A couple of these articles recently popped up on Newsmax, under gray-box "SPONSOR" posts on the front page, both of which are listed as being sponsored by "Token Team," which we can presume is another Guo-controlled company.
Palumbo huffed in defense of Guo in one paid article:
On March 15th, Miles Guo was arrested by the DOJ just before he was scheduled to testify in the trial of Pras Michel. Is The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) making every effort to prevent that testimony - because they know it’ll pull back the curtain and further expose the CCP’s infiltration of the U.S. government?
Another paid writer, Kelly John Walker, ranted in the second article:
The "fox hunt" for prominent Chinese dissident, Mr. Miles Guo reads like a Cold War-era spy novel. Indeed, the U.S. is in a high-stakes cold war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the tendrils of their malign influence pervading our legal system like a cancer. That infiltration raises the question as to whether or not some defendants are being denied due process or have instead become victims of the CCP’s “lawfare” strategy.
[...]
Why, in light of these foundational legal principles, is prominent anti-CCP dissident Mr. Miles Guo being held in custody without bail and without due process? Has the CCP exercised undue influence and pressure on the DOJ? Are there conflicts of interest and bias in the prosecution of Guo?
As Sellin has noted, neither Palumbo nor Walker promote their Guo work to their own readership even as it's being spread in pro-Guo circles.
Getting caught shilling for a shady foreign billionaire, and a recently arrested one to boot, is not a good look for a guy with a new book to plug. We wonder if any of Palumbo's interviewers will raise this shady connection with him as he promotes his new book.Perhaps he can shed light on why he's doing this.
UPDATE: Sellin found a newly published Guo propaganda piece by Palumbo at Gateway Pundit (that he is not otherwise promoting).
