Charles Carlisle Johnson (born 1988)

Wikipedia 🌐 Charles C. Johnson

ASSOCIATIONS

Saved Wikipedia for "Charles C. Johnson"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_C._Johnson

2026-01-11-wikipedia-org-charles-c-johnson.pdf

Charles C. Johnson

Born

Charles Carlisle Johnson

October 22, 1988 (age 37)

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

Education

Claremont McKenna College

Occupations

Political activist, tech entrepreneur/investor, federal informant

Years active

2013–2019

Charles Carlisle Johnson (born October 22, 1988) is an American political activist who was a public figure in the years 2013 to 2019. A self-described "investigative journalist",[1] Johnson is often described as an internet troll and has been repeatedly involved in the proliferation and spread of multiple fake news stories.[2][3]Johnson was owner of the alt-right websites GotNews.com, WeSearchr.com, and Freestartr.com, all of which were short-lived.[4][5][6][7] He wrote two books, both published by Encounter Books in 2013.

Johnson, whose family served in the intelligence services and the U.S. Navy [citation needed], indicated he was a federal informant, as reported by Business Insider, and through a federal lawsuit against Clearview AI.[8]

In 2025, Johnson was found liable for civil racketeering and ordered to pay at least $40 million to the plaintiffs. They accused Johnson of falsely portraying himself as a U.S. intelligence asset with the aim of extorting them for large sums of money and equity.[9]

Education

Johnson attended Milton Academy high school on scholarship. He attended Claremont McKenna College from 2007 to 2011.[5] At college he was awarded the Eric Breindel Collegiate Journalism Award and the Claremont Institute Publius Fellowship.[10][11] In 2016, Johnson wrote a memo encouraging Claremont Institute alumni to help elect Donald Trumpas president.[12] In 2021, Johnson told Rolling Stone he had broken with his past and supported Joe Biden.[13]

Controversies

Peter Thiel

Johnson has a long-standing relationship with Silicon Valley financier and Trump backer Peter Thiel,[14] including collaboration on strategy against Gawker and work for the Trump campaign, as outlined in detail in the book The Contrarian.[15]

Johnson both recruited and outed Thiel as a federal informant to Business Insider.[8]

Bob Menendez

Johnson was involved in the creation of a Daily Caller story that accused U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) of soliciting underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.[14] A criminal investigation of the case found no evidence, and the women making the allegations later admitted she had been paid by a local lawyer to make the claims.[16]

Cory Booker

On October 14, 2013, Johnson published an article in The Daily Caller claiming that Newarkmayor and then senatorial candidate Cory Booker never lived in Newark. The article cited neighbors of Booker's alleged address as evidence. Booker's campaign provided a reporter from BuzzFeed with rental checks and other documents for the address going back several years, and Booker's communications director dismissed Johnson's allegations as "laughable". According to Booker's campaign, he lived there from late 2006 to shortly before he was elected Senator in 2013. Johnson stood by his reporting, claiming that Booker may well have paid rent but did not live in Newark.[17][18]

David D. Kirkpatrick

In January 2014, Johnson published an article reporting that The New York Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick was arrested for exhibitionism and had previously posed for Playgirl. Johnson's source for the Playgirl claim was a January 22, 1990, article in The Daily Princetonian, which was later revealed to be satirical.[19] Johnson apologized to Kirkpatrick.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Johnson told the ABC news affiliate in Fresno that he knew where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370was. The airplane disappeared on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. "I just need the funding to go there," he told news reporters.[20]

2014 Mississippi Republican primary election

On June 30, 2014, Johnson published a story on GotNews accusing Mississippi senator Thad Cochran of bribing African Americans to vote for him in the Mississippi Senate Republican primary.[21] The story came days after Cochran had defeated Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel in a run-off election. Johnson claimed that a black pastor named Stevie Fielder had told him he was paid by Cochran's campaign to bribe black Democrats into voting for Cochran. Johnson paid the pastor for his statements, a controversial practice sometimes known as "checkbook journalism".[21] Fielder later partially recanted his story, saying that he had been speaking hypothetically, that he had turned down the offer, and that Johnson's recording of his interview had been selectively edited, a claim Johnson denies.[22]

During the election, Johnson also accused the Cochran campaign of being responsible for Mississippi Tea Party leader Mark Mayfield's suicide and encouraged his Twitter followers to flood a Cochran campaign conference call.[21][23]

Ferguson

During the Ferguson unrest, Johnson published the Instagram account of Michael Brown and stated that the account "shows a violent streak that may help explain what led to a violent confrontation with Police officer Darren Wilson".[24] Johnson also filed a lawsuit to have Brown's juvenile records released. In Brown's home state of Missouri, the records of minors are private, but Johnson argued that the matter was of pressing public interest under the state's sunshine law. The county court disagreed.[25] Further appeal attempts by Johnson to unseal the records went as far as the State Supreme Court of Missouri, which denied his request.

In a separate incident during the unrest, Johnson published the addresses of two The New York Times reporters, claiming that they published the known addresses of Darren Wilson.[26]The New York Times has said the reporters only revealed the street on which Wilson once lived.[26]

University of Virginia rape article

In December 2014, Rolling Stone columnist Sabrina Erdely published an article entitled "A Rape on Campus" about the alleged gang rape of a University of Virginia (UVA) student named "Jackie" in 2012 at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at UVA. The article was later found to be fabricated.[26] Johnson publicly identified Jackie, but in the selection of photos he used had the wrong photo of Jackie.[27]

Banning from Twitter / X

On May 24, 2015, Johnson sent a tweet asking his followers for donations to help him "take out" Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson. McKesson shared the tweet and took the tweet as a threat. Johnson was permanently banned from Twitter after several users reported him for harassment.[2] In 2018, Johnson sued Twitter for banning him on the grounds that Twitter violated his First Amendment right to free speech. The California Superior Court in Fresno struck down Johnson's lawsuit on June 6.[28] In a December 31st, 2024 post on his Substack, Johnson wrote a post explaining how he felt about being banned by Twitter (now known as X) for a third time. The alleged reason was for making a post related to Elon Musk’s family mining business.[29]

Jeff Giesea

In 2014, Johnson met over Twitter with Jeff Giesea, Peter Thiel's former employee, who founded MAGA-X3 with Mike Cernovich who was involved in promoting the Pizzagate hoax. “When I met Chuck I wondered why we weren't weaponizing people like him,” Giesea recounted. “He led me on this intellectual journey."[30]

In 2017, Giesea wrote an article inspired by his association with Johnson titled “It's Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare,” for the Defence Strategic Communications, an official journal of NATO's Stratcom. In the article, Giesea recommended the adoption of memetic warfare to combat ISIS. “The best way to counter ISIS is to unleash an army of trolls on them,” Giesea recalls Johnson joking. “I could totally mess with their recruiting and propaganda.”[31] That conversation led Giesea to conclude: “Warfare through trolling and memes is a necessary, inexpensive, and easy way to help destroy the appeal and morale of our common enemies... Trolling, it might be said, is the social media equivalent of guerrilla warfare, and memes are its currency of propaganda.”[30]

Johnson broke with Jeff Giesea over Giesea's involvement with the January 6th United States Capitol attack.[citation needed]

Katie Walsh

In February 2017, Johnson's website GotNews.com claimed that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Walsh was "the source behind a bunch of leaks" in the White House without offering any evidence.[32]

Charlottesville Rally

In August 2017, Johnson's website GotNews was one of several right-wing websites that falsely accused a Michigan man of being responsible for the car attack on August 12, 2017 that killed one anti-racist protestor and injured others in Charlottesville, Virginia.[33] The Michigan man was subsequently harassed, and was advised by police to flee his home following a slew of death threats.[33][34] Together with his father, the Michigan man filed a defamation lawsuit against 22 corporate and individual defendants, including Johnson.[35][36]On June 1, 2018, Johnson and GotNews agreed to pay a total of $29,900 to settle the lawsuit.[37]

Trump campaign WikiLeaks liaison

In September 2016, Johnson published a story on GotNews about a soon-to-launch anti-Trump website called PutinTrump.org.[38] WikiLeaks forwarded the story in private to Donald Trump Jr. before publicly tweeting it. Business Insider speculated that Johnson's story in September on GotNews may have marked the beginning of Donald Trump Jr.'s—and the Trump campaign's—back-channel contact with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. (Johnson wrote after Wikileaks tweeted the story, "About 2 hours after our original article, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks repeated our discoveries. Guess which big leaks organization reads GotNews & WeSearchr on the downlow! Come on Julian, let's work together. WikiLeaks & WeSearchr is a match made in heaven. We can take down Hillary together.")[39] In August 2017, Johnson brokered and attended a meeting in London between GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Julian Assange to discuss a presidential pardon for Assange.[40]

Fraudulent sexual harassment claim against Senator Charles Schumer

On December 11, 2017, Johnson wrote on his Facebook page, "Michael Cernovich & I are going to end the career of a U.S. Senator." Johnson claimed to have uncovered a sexual harassment lawsuit against Senator Charles Schumer. The lawsuit, however, turned out to be a forgery. Moreover, language in the forged lawsuit was copied verbatim from a real sexual-harassment complaint filed against Rep. John Conyers. Schumer referred the matter to Capitol police for investigation.[41][42]

Holocaust denial

In 2017, Johnson posted on a Reddit Ask Me Anything "I do not and never have believed the six million figure" (referring to the number of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust) and "I agree with [Holocaust denier] David Cole about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real."[43] When Rep. Matthew Gaetz brought Johnson to President Donald Trump's 2018 State of the Union Address as a guest of Florida, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League cited these statements—along with Johnson's website WeSearchr having raised more than $150,000 for the legal defense of neo-Nazi propagandist Andrew Anglin and other actions—in urging Gaetz to "discontinue any association with Johnson and to publicly repudiate his views immediately".[44][45]

Sarah Unsicker

Missouri state representative Sarah Unsicker, a Democrat, was stripped of her committee assignments in 2023 after she repeatedly posted a photo on social media of herself posing with Johnson.[46]

Point Bridge Capital Lawsuit

In October 2024 Semafor reported that Point Bridge Capital had filed a lawsuit against Johnson for civil racketeering.[47] The lawsuit states that “Johnson is running a fraud and extortion scheme under which he [will] falsely present [himself] as intelligence agents or assets of U.S. government agencies. Johnson and Greenwill seek investments in upstart technology companies operating in the defense and intelligence sectors, which heavily rely on government contracts. If a company or investor doesn’t give in to their demands for equity or favorable investment terms, Johnson [will] threaten to sabotage the companies’ contracts or funding under the guise of their false claims to be government agents.”[47] Johnson denied the validity of these claims, characterizing them as lawfare.[48]

On July 29, 2025, Johnson was ordered to pay $71,000,000 in damages plus costs to the plaintiffs. On November 20, 2025, he was found to be in civil contempt of court, with the court ordering for his arrest for repeated failure to engage in post-judgment discovery in good faith, and a $1000 fine for theft of government property (a mug and water bottles) during his deposition.[49]

Books

Johnson has written two books published through Encounter Books:[50] Why Coolidge Matters, an essay collection encompassing various points in Calvin Coolidge's political career[51] with blurbs by John Yoo, Michelle Malkin, and Ted Cruz,[14] and The Truth About the IRS Scandals. Both books were published in 2013.[52]

Gawker lawsuit

In June 2015, Johnson sued Gawker for defamation in Missouri for $66 million for Gawker's publication of rumours that Johnson defecated on the floor while a student at Claremont McKenna College, and filed a similar suit in California in December.[53] In January 2016, the Missouri suit was dismissed.[54] Johnson settled with the by then-defunct Gawker in 2018.[55]

Work with Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon

On October 18, 2021, more than two years after the death of Jeffrey Epstein, Johnson discussed his Breitbart boss and mentor [Stephen Kevin Bannon (born 1953)]'s relationship with the pedophile and human trafficker in an interview with Rolling Stone reporter Seth Hettena. Steve Bannon met with Epstein multiple times after exiting the White House, including in December 2017. This was while Johnson was being managed by Bannon at Breitbart. Johnson told Rolling Stonethat Bannon viewed Epstein as both a rival and spy, and was deeply interested in emulating Jeffrey Epstein's operation. Bannon also offered to introduce Johnson to Epstein, and Johnson claims he declined but continued to work under Bannon at Breitbart. In addition, Johnson declared in the Rolling Stone piece that he quietly shifted his allegiance from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, likely after the presidential election or sometime in early 2021.[13]

Websites (GotNews, WeSearchr, Freestartr)

Johnson was the founder of three websites, all of which are defunct.

In early 2014, Johnson created GotNews, an alt-right news website.[5] The site went offline with no advance warning on September 17, 2018.[56] GotNews filed for bankruptcy in May 2019. The bankruptcy petition lists GotNews' total liabilities as between $500,000 and $1 million.[57]

In 2015, Johnson created WeSearchr, a crowdfunding website. By 2017, the site became a fundraising platform for alt-right causes, though Johnson claimed that was not his intention. Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, used the website to raise money to defend himself against a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) on behalf of a woman trolled by followers of Anglin.[6] In addition to crowdfunding legal battles, the site was also designed to crowdfund bounties on reporting goals. According to Johnson, he used the site to receive money for information he had already acquired.[7] The site closed in May 2017.[7][58]

Johnson also started the crowdfunding site Freestartr, which collected funds for white nationalist Richard B. Spencer's legal defense,[59] far-right activist Tommy Robinson,[60]Canadian nationalist Faith Goldy,[61] Johnson himself,[62] and others. In mid-2018, Freestartr stopped accepting funds, as the site was banned by Stripe and PayPal, which Freestartr used to process payments.[61][63]

Clearview.AI

Johnson is a cofounder of Clearview AI, as reported by a 2021 New York Times Magazinearticle.[64] He was bumped out of the nascent Clearview initially, but came to an agreement of holding a ten percent interest which would be as a silent partner as he would assist in marketing and wind-down his stake gradually.[65]

References

"About Charles C. Johnson, investigative journalist and author". Charles C. Johnson. Archived from the original on August 29, 2015. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
Hess, Amanda (May 28, 2015). "Chuck C. Johnson suspended from Twitter: Why?". Slate. Archived from the original on August 22, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
Wicentowski, Danny (June 8, 2015). "St. Louis Lawyer Fighting to Reinstate Troll King Charles Johnson on Twitter". Riverfront Times. Archived from the original on August 29, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
Barrouquere, Brett (September 19, 2018). "Once an outlet for conspiracies, GotNews.com now shuttered without explanation". Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on September 22, 2018. Retrieved September 21, 2018.
Murphy, Tim (December 6, 2014) "The Rise and Fall of Twitter's Most Infamous Right-Wing Troll." Archived October 1, 2018, at the Wayback Machine Mother Jones. (Retrieved October 1, 2018.)
Castillo, Michelle (June 24, 2017). "The far right uses this site to fund favorite causes, and its founder aims to be 'very profitable'". CNBC. Archived from the original on August 2, 2018. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
Singal, Jesse (May 16, 2017). "Chuck Johnson's WeSearchr Is Having a Bit of a Meltdown". New York. Archived from the original on August 29, 2018. Retrieved August 28,2018.
Schwartz, Mattathias. "Exclusive: Tech billionaire Peter Thiel was an FBI informant". Business Insider. Retrieved July 21, 2024.
Baragona, Justin (July 25, 2025). "Notorious far-right troll ordered to pay up to $71 million in racketeering scheme where he pretended to be a spy." The Independent. (Retrieved September 3, 2025.)
"Eric Breindel Collegiate Journalism Award". American Media Institute. April 27, 2012. Archived from the original on May 20, 2017. Retrieved May 20, 2017.
"Publius Alumni". The Claremont Institute. Archived from the original on August 20, 2014. Retrieved May 20, 2017.
"The Claremont Institute triumphed in the Trump years. Then came Jan. 6". Washington Post. July 24, 2022. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
"Steve Bannon Thought Jeffrey Epstein Was a Spy". Rolling Stone. October 18, 2021.
Ben Schreckinger (February 2017). "The Alt-Right Comes to Washington". Politico. Retrieved January 16, 2022.
Chafkin, Max (September 21, 2021). The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power.
Lazo, Luz (March 18, 2013). "Dominican police: 3 women paid to make false claims about Menendez". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 19, 2013. Retrieved March 19, 2013.
Cramer, Ruby (October 14, 2013). "Cory Booker: Yes, I Live In Newark". Buzzfeed. Archived from the original on May 30, 2016. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
Weigel, David (October 15, 2013). "Birther director claims Cory Booker does not live in Newark". Slate. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved August 22,2015.
Weigel, David (January 6, 2014). "Daily Caller Cites 24-Year-Old Fake Princeton Newspaper to Attack the NYT's Benghazi Reporter". Slate. Archived from the original on August 19, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
Hoggard, Corin (January 2, 2015) "How the 'Most Hated Man on the Internet' ticks in Fresno." ABC News. (Retrieved April 8, 2020.)
Politics (July 11, 2014). "Charles Johnson And The Mississippi Senate Race". Business Insider. Archived from the original on August 14, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
Pender, Geoff (July 11, 2014). "Meridian man dials back vote-buying claim". The Clarion-Ledger. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
Cogan, Marin (June 16, 2015). "Ugly: The aftershocks of a tea-party suicide". New York. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
Wilstein, Matt (September 5, 2014). "Conservative Blogger Tries to Prove 'Violent Streak' with Michael Brown's Photos". Mediaite. Archived from the original on September 26, 2015. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
Zara, Christopher (August 28, 2014). "Mike Brown Juvenile Record? Lawsuit Seeks Alleged Arrest History Of Slain Missouri Teen". International Business Times. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
Carr, David (December 15, 2014). "Sowing Mayhem, One Click at a Time". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 23, 2017. Retrieved March 1, 2017..
Howell, Patrick (December 7, 2014). "Journalist publishes alleged name and photo of UVA rape victim". Dailydot.com. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
Thomsen, Jacqueline (June 6, 2018). "Court strikes down far-right activist's lawsuit over Twitter ban". The Hill. Archived from the original on June 8, 2018. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
Johnson, Charles (December 31, 2024). "Banned For "Embarrassing Elon": See The Videos Exposing Elon Emerald Mine Lie Which Got Me Booted From Twitter". Charles Johnson's Thoughts and Adventures. Retrieved April 29, 2025.
Bernstein, Joseph (January 19, 2017). "This Man Helped Build The Trump Meme Army — Now He Wants To Reform It". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
Giesea, Jeff (2015). "IT'S TIME TO EMBRACE MEMETIC WARFARE". Defence Strategic Communications. 1 (1): 67–75. ISSN 2500-9478.
"How Trump gets his fake news". Politico. Archived from the original on May 15, 2017. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
Collins, Ben (August 13, 2017). "Alt-Right Media Framed Wrong Person in Car Attack, Labeled Him 'Anti-Trump Druggie'". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on August 13, 2017. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
Darcy, Oliver (August 16, 2017). "Man misidentified as Charlottesville driver had to flee home; plans to sue far-right sites". CNNMoney. Archived from the original on August 2, 2018. Retrieved August 2, 2018.
Palma, Bethania (February 18, 2018). "GotNews and Other Disreputable Sites Sued for Naming Innocent Teen as the Charlottesville Killer". Snopes.com. Retrieved August 2, 2018.
"Archived copy" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on February 18, 2018. Retrieved February 18, 2018.
Barrouquere, Brett (June 8, 2018). "Costly Hate". Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on June 13, 2018. Retrieved August 2, 2018.
Johnson, Charles C. (September 21, 2016). "BREAKING: George Soros-Tied Group Launching Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory Website". GotNews.com. Archived from the original on September 22, 2016. Retrieved September 21, 2018.
Bertrand, Natasha (November 15, 2017) "A notorious far-right blogger may have provoked WikiLeaks' outreach to Donald Trump Jr." Archived November 16, 2017, at the Wayback Machine Business Insider. (Retrieved November 11, 2017.)
Mai-Duc, Christine (August 17, 2017) "Rohrabacher on meeting with WikiLeaks' Assange: We talked about 'what might be necessary to get him out.'" Archived November 16, 2017, at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times. (Retrieved November 16, 2017.)
Sullivan, Eileen (December 13, 2017). "Schumer Files Police Report After Fraudulent Document Emerges". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 7, 2018. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
Weill, Kelly (December 13, 2017). "Alt-Right Hyped Sexual Harassment Hoax to Attach Schumer". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on January 26, 2018. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
Smith, Adam C (February 6, 2018). "Matt Gaetz's State of the Union guest admits he questioned Holocaust". The Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved August 15, 2020.
Greenblatt, Jonathan A. (February 1, 2018) "ADL Letter to Congressman Matthew Gaetz Regarding Charles Johnson." Archived March 3, 2018, at the Wayback Machine Anti-Defamation League.org. (Retrieved March 2, 2018.)
Delk, Josh (January 31, 2018). "GOP rep invited alt-right activist to the State of the Union". The Hill. Archived from the original on January 31, 2018. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
"Missouri Democrat running for AG stripped of committees after photo with Holocaust denier".
Tani, Maxi (October 17, 2024). "Investor sues Chuck Johnson for "falsely presenting ... as intelligence agent" in alleged scheme". Semafor. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
Johnson, Charles (October 17, 2024). ""Last Gasp of A Criminal Syndicate" : Why I Welcome The Lawfare Attacks Against Me". Charles Johnson's Thoughts and Adventures. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69266994/point-bridge-capital-llc-v-johnson/?order_by=desc
"Charles C. Johnson - Encounter Books". Encounter Books. Archived from the original on September 24, 2018. Retrieved September 21, 2018.
"BOOK REVIEW: 'Why Coolidge Matters'". The Washington Times. Archived from the original on September 16, 2018. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
"Remember the IRS Scandal? It was fake news all along". Newsweek. October 10, 2017. Archived from the original on September 17, 2018. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
Sola, Katie (June 19, 2015). "Conservative Blogger Sues Gawker For $66 Million Over Public Pooping Rumors". HuffPost. Archived from the original on August 19, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
Patrick, Robert (January 15, 2016). "Blogger's defamation lawsuit tossed out — of Missouri". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Archived from the original on January 17, 2016. Retrieved January 16,2016.
Randles, Jonathan (August 16, 2018). "Right-Wing Blogger Charles Johnson Settles with Gawker Media". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on December 5, 2018. Retrieved December 4, 2018.
Barrouquere, Brett (September 19, 2018) "Once an outlet for conspiracies, GotNews.com now shuttered without explanation." Archived September 22, 2018, at the Wayback MachineSoutherner Poverty Law Center. (Retrieved October 1, 2018).
Merlan, Anna (May 6, 2019) "Far-Right News Site GotNews Has Filed a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Petition." Splinternews. (Retrieved May 27, 2019.)
Menegus, Bryan (May 16, 2017). "World's Worst Website Goes Down (Again)". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on August 29, 2018. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
Kirkland, Allegra (May 24, 2018). "After Struggle To Raise Funds, Spencer Finally Gets Lawyer In C'ville Case". Talking Points Memo. Archived from the original on August 29, 2018. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
Dearden, Lizzie (August 1, 2018). "Tommy Robinson is richer and has more international support after two-month imprisonment, research shows". The Independent. Archived from the original on August 16, 2018. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
Sommer, Will (August 21, 2018). "Big Finance is Hitting the Far Right in the Wallet". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on August 28, 2018. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
Guynn, Jessica (January 18, 2018). "'Alt-right' escalates war against Silicon Valley, pledges to expose bias against conservatives". USA Today. Archived from the original on August 29, 2018. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
Fisher, Alyssa (July 24, 2018). "Far-Right Organizations Get Banned From PayPal, Beg Followers For Help". The Forward. Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
Hill, Kashmir (March 18, 2021). "What We Learned About Clearview AI and Its Secret 'Co-Founder'". The New York Times.
Luke O'Brien. (May-June 2025) "Clear and present danger". Mother Jones magazine websiteVol. 50, no. 3. P.21. Retrieved 14 April 2025.

EVIDENCE TIMELINE

2012 (Sep 24) - Daily Caller : "Full audio of 1998 ‘redistribution’ speech: Obama saw welfare recipients as ‘majority coalition’"

Charles C. Johnson / Contributor / September 24, 2012 / 4:39 AM ET

https://dailycaller.com/2012/09/24/full-audio-of-1998-redistribution-speech-obama-saw-welfare-recipients-as-majority-coalition/

2012-09-24-dailycaller-com-full-audio-of-1998-redistribution-speech-obama-saw-welfare-recipients-as-majority-coalition.pdf

2012-09-24-dailycaller-com-full-audio-of-1998-redistribution-speech-obama-saw-welfare-recipients-as-majority-coalition-img-1.jpg

The Daily Caller has obtained a complete audio recording of the October 19, 1998 Loyola College forum on community organizing and policymaking during which a future President Barack Obama said he favored the government redistribution of wealth. The audio demonstrates the context of that remark and reveals other far-left positions that Obama held as a state senator.

Those positions encompass issues as wide-ranging as gun control, universal health care and welfare reform. Obama also said he viewed welfare recipients and “the working poor” as “a majority coalition” that could be mobilized to help advance progressive policies and elect their champions.

Last week the liberal Mother Jones magazine published video footage, shot during a campaign event, showing Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney opining that 47 percent of Americans are captive Democratic voters because they receive government benefits without paying income taxes. [...]

Loyola College refused repeated requests from TheDC for a copy of the full one-hour and 42-minute videotape from 1998. But a source in Chicago who gained permission to view it recorded the sound secretly, confirming the accuracy of — and expanding on — initial accounts that featured only a brief audio excerpt.

“I actually believe in [wealth] redistribution,” Obama said in that 96-second excerpt, published September 18 on YouTube. “At least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

The following day, NBC News said it had obtained what it called “the entirety of the relevant remarks,” and complained that Republicans had taken the original lines out of context.

NBC published only 35 seconds of video, however, more than half of which overlapped with the YouTube audio from a day earlier. The news agency claimed the full context demonstrated that Obama only “seems” to support “redistributing wealth.” (RELATED: 1998 audiotape surfaces: Obama urged “trick” to aid wealth redistribution)

“How do we pool resources at the same time as we decentralize delivery systems in ways that both foster competition, can work in the marketplace, and can foster innovation at the local level and can be tailored to particular communities?” Obama asked in the seconds NBC added to the national discussion.

But Obama’s voice is heard during more than 29 minutes of the recording, including his prepared remarks and his answers to questions from the audience. At one point on the tape he suggests that the “working poor” on welfare are a political voting bloc that can be harnessed.

Obama is also heard lamenting Americans’ distrust of “government action”; identifying his political opponents — that is, Republicans — as “the bad guys”; declaring his support for labor unions and community organizers; endorsing the public financing of political campaigns; and staking out liberal positions on gun control, government-run health care and welfare reform.

Many of those positions, he conceded, had “no chance of seeing the light of day in Springfield” — the Illinois state capital — “or in Washington.”

It’s unclear if NBC News had a complete recorded copy including Obama’s unedited remarks.

Listen to the complete 102-minute session: [Note - No link as of Monday Jan 12, 2025]

“I think that what we’re gonna have to do is somehow resuscitate the notion that government action can be effective at all,” he told an audience that reportedly consisted of some 400 people. “There has been a systematic — I don’t think it’s too strong to call it a propaganda campaign — against the possibility of government action and its efficacy,” he said.

“And I think some of it has been deserved. The Chicago Housing Authority has not been a model of good policymaking. And neither, necessarily, has been the Chicago public schools.”

“What that means, then is that as we try to resuscitate this notion that we’re all in this thing together — ‘leave nobody behind’ — we do have to be innovative in thinking.’What are the delivery systems that are actually effective and meet people where they live?’” he said.

It was at this point that Obama launched into his now-famous line about constructing government systems that redistribute wealth.

The full recording reveals that Obama saw welfare recipients and the working poor in Chicago as a “majority coalition” who could be leveraged politically.

“What I think will re-engage people in politics is if we’re doing significant, serious policy work around what I will label the ‘working poor,’” he said, “although my definition of the working poor is not simply folks making minimum wage, but it’s also families of four who are making $30,000 a year.”

“They are struggling. And to the extent that we are doing research figuring out what kinds of government action would successfully make their lives better, we are then putting together a potential majority coalition to move those agendas forward.”

Obama also said he did not support the bipartisan welfare reform Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton hammered out during the 1990s, despite more recent claims that he favored the legislation. In the 1998 recording, he called it a bill that “I did not entirely agree with and probably would have voted against at the federal level.”

“But one good thing that comes out of it,” he conceded, “is that it essentially desegregates the welfare population,” merging urban blacks with “the working poor, which are the other people.”

“Now you just have one batch of folks. … That is increasingly a majority population,” Obama concluded, and one whose policy needs would grow to encompass, health care, job training, education and a system where government would “provide effective child care.”

The recording also shows Obama in 1998 identifying with what he said was an American majority angling for new limits on the Second Amendment.

“The vast majority of Americans would like to see serious gun control,” the future president said, noting that “it does not pass. Why does it not pass? It doesn’t pass because there is this huge disconnect between what people think and what legislators think and are willing to act upon.”

Obama also revealed his early disdain for Republicans, referring to his policy opponents as “the bad guys” who stood in the way of crucial reforms — while progressive activists often failed on their own to protect oppressed minority communities.

“The people who are guilty of disempowering the population are not only the bad guys — I won’t be partisan here and say who the bad guys are,” Obama said. “It’s not only the folks who are representing the special interests, quote-unquote, and the guys with the pinky diamond rings and the fat cats. Sometimes it is also us.”

Some of the mechanisms Obama suggested to create a more engaged voter base included progressive policy prescriptions that would be easily recognizable in his 2012 White House — among them the need to give unions and community organizers more “access” to the political decision-making process.

“How do we think about some of the systemic changes that might be required to reengage the citizenry on these policy issues?” Obama asked. “I would have some suggestions that I would be happy to toss out during the question-and-answer: things like public financing for campaigns. How do we strengthen the mediating institutions like churches, unions, and community organizations and provide them with the resources and access to decision making?”

On health care, Obama laid the groundwork for his eventual government-controlled system.

“In the midst of the greatest economic boom in my lifetime and probably most of yours,” he said, “we have actually record numbers of persons with no health insurance. And yet there is virtually no movement of, ‘How do we provide insurance to these uninsured?’”

“There’s a lot of talk about HMO reform, which looks good, partly because it doesn’t cost that much. It’s a matter of just passing a couple of laws. I support this HMO reform but it certainly doesn’t get at the more fundamental issue of, ‘What do we do with this burgeoning number of people who have no health insurance and are one illness away form bankruptcy or worse?’”

During the question-and-answer session that followed, Obama singled out United Power for Action and Justice, a left-wing community organizing outfit, for high praise for “incorporating unions in the organizing process.”

“It’s that kind of community organizing model that ends up being absolutely vital to connecting policy with actual implementation, and empowering citizenry to make these decisions.”

Obama also said the community-organizing political model held advantages, “particularly institutional-based organizing, church-based organizing, [and] incorporating unions in the organizing process.”

2012 (Sep 24) - Fox News, Megyn Kelly highlight Chuck Johnson work for Daily Caller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocl0Y2Tm49M&t=111s

2012

43 days to election... Nov 6 2012..

So maybe Monday Sep 24 2012 ???

2012-09-24-fox-news-clip-megyn-kelly-chuck-johnson-daily-caller-from-youtube.mp4

2012 (Oct 11) - Daily Caller : "Elections : In 1994, Obama argued for affirmative action, against ‘return to good old-fashioned racism’"

https://dailycaller.com/2012/10/11/in-1994-obama-argued-for-affirmative-action-against-return-to-good-old-fashioned-racism/

2012-10-11-dailycaller-in-1994-obama-argued-for-affirmative-action-against-return-to-good-old-fashioned-racism.pdf

2012-10-11-dailycaller-in-1994-obama-argued-for-affirmative-action-against-return-to-good-old-fashioned-racism-img-1.jpg

Charles C. Johnson / Contributor / October 11, 2012 / 1:43 AM ET

As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could decide the future of racial preferences in college admissions, The Daily Caller obtained one of the oldest known audio recordings of President Barack Obama: an October 28, 1994 NPR broadcast in which Obama described opponents of affirmative action and certain welfare programs as favoring racism.

Obama’s remarks came as part of a broadcast review of American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray’s controversial 1994 book, “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.”

Obama accused Murray of racism, and of not caring enough about early childhood education prevention programs like Head Start. (RELATED: Supreme Court takes up affirmative action in major case)

Murray, Obama said, was “interested in pushing a very particular policy agenda, specifically the elimination of affirmative action and welfare programs aimed at the poor. With one finger out to the political wind, Mr. Murray has apparently decided that white America is ready for a return to good old-fashioned racism so long as it’s artfully packaged and can admit for exceptions like Colin Powell,” Obama said. “It’s easy to see the basis for Mr. Murray’s calculations.”

Americans’ overall opposition to affirmative action, Obama added, was not rooted in its constitutionality but in a declining economy.

“After watching their incomes stagnate or decline over the past decade, the majority of Americans are in an ugly mood and deeply resent any advantages, real or perceived, that minorities may enjoy,” Obama said.

Obama also spoke in terms of “investment,” a word that he still uses to describe government spending.

“Such ladders of opportunity are going to cost more, not less, than either welfare or affirmative action. But, in the long run, our investment should pay off handsomely. That we fail to make this investment is just plain stupid. It’s not the result of an intellectual deficit. It’s the result of a moral deficit.”

Obama’s NPR-broadcast criticism of Murray shifted into a litany of liberal policy justifications for affirmative action.

“Real opportunity would mean quality prenatal care for all women and well-funded and innovative public schools for all children … a job at a living wage for everyone who was willing to work, jobs that can return some structure and dignity to people’s lives and give inner-city children something more than a basketball rim to shoot for,” Obama said

Reached for comment, Murray said he doubts Obama ever read his book.

“It must be the first documented case of Obama spouting off without doing his homework — he obviously hadn’t read The Bell Curve,” Murray told The Daily Caller. “We’ve seen a lot of that in the last four years.”

The existence of the audio has long been rumored, but this is the first time it has been accessible to the general public. NPR archivist Jo Ella Straley made the audio public at one point, only to have the link go dead. Repeated requests by TheDC to obtain a copy of the audio went unanswered. The audio was ultimately found via high-level computer sleuthing.

The White House did not return request for comment.

Obama’s remarks, however, stand in contrast to his other, more moderate, stated positions on affirmative action. He claimed to oppose racial preferences for his own daughters and claimed to eagerly look forward to a time when affirmative action was no longer necessary.

“I would like to think that if we make good decisions and we invest in early childhood education, improved K through 12, if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it, that affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society,” he told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos during a 2008 interview.

Obama’s Department of Justice filed a “friend of the court” brief with the Supreme Court on Aug. 13, arguing in favor of racial preferences in the University of Texas’ admissions process.

Speaking at Columbia University on Feb. 23, Attorney General Eric Holder said affirmative action may never become obsolete. “The question,” Holder said, “is not when does [affirmative action] end, but when does it begin. … When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”

The Supreme Court case is Fisher v. University of Texas. A decision on the case is not expected for several months.

2014 (July 1) - Magnolia Tribune : "YP MEMORY – More historical info on shoddy ‘reporting’ from @ChuckCJohnson #mssen @DailyCaller"

https://magnoliatribune.com/2014/07/01/yp_memory_-_more_historical_info_on_shoddy_reporting_from_chuckcjohnson_mss/

2014-07-01-magnoliatribune-com-yp-memory-historical-info-shoddy-chuck-johnson.pdf

2014-07-01-magnoliatribune-com-yp-memory-historical-info-shoddy-chuck-johnson-img-1.jpg

By: Magnolia Tribune - July 1, 2014

Daily Caller Cites 24-Year-Old Fake Princeton Newspaper to Attack the NYT’s Benghazi Reporter

Two and a half long months ago, reporter Charles C. Johnson teamed up with Joel Gilbert—a birther director who previously claimed that Barack Obama was sired by a communist poet—and talked to a few Newark residents who hated Cory Booker. The resulting Daily Caller story, titled “Neighbors: Cory Booker Never Lived in Newark,” was buzzy enough to generate questions for the New Jersey U.S. Senate candidate in his final press avails before he won the special election. Steve Lonegan, Booker’s opponent, even held a press conference to draw attention to the claims. It didn’t take much for BuzzFeed’s Ruby Cramer to prove that the article was wrong, or to later prove that Johnson had previously (and without declaring it in his journalism) done research for an anti-Booker PAC.

Would that mean “fewer Charles Johnson articles in the Daily Caller”? No, of course not. Three days into the new year, Johnson appeared again in the Daily Caller with an apparent scoop about David D. Kirkpatrick, the New York Times Cairo bureau chief who’d just filed a lengthy corrective history of the 9/11/12 Benghazi attacks. Never mind Kirkpatrick’s reporting; Johnson proved that Kirkpatrick had “show[ed] his naked body to all” while a student at Princeton 25 years ago.

Slate
1/6/14

2014 (August 21) - Daily Caller

https://dailycaller.com/2014/08/21/commentarys-podhoretz-charles-c-johnson-is-a-sick-fck/

2014 (Oct 14) - Dailiy Caller : "Charles Johnson Gets Charles Johnson Thrown Off Twitter"

https://dailycaller.com/2014/10/14/charles-johnson-gets-charles-johnson-thrown-off-twitter/

2014-10-14-dailycaller-com-charles-johnson-gets-charles-johnson-thrown-off-twitter.pdf

2014-10-14-dailycaller-com-charles-johnson-gets-charles-johnson-thrown-off-twitter-img-1.jpg

Betsy Rothstein : Gossip blogger / October 14, 2014 / 6:30 PM ET

Font Size:

“We do not comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons. Our rules outline content boundaries on the platform, which prohibit posting another person’s private information (home address, credit card number, Social Security number, etc.).”

Those are the profound words of Nu Wexler, former flack to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who now works for Twitter as their senior communications manager. He previously worked for Walmart and the South Carolina Democratic Party. Nu was responding to my questions about GotNews editor-in-chief Charles C. Johnson (the C. is now vital) getting suspended from Twitter at around 1 a.m. this morning Pacific Time for tweeting at 10:45 PST that “Nina Pham” was the nurse who got infected with the Ebola virus after caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, who is now dead. This is Johnson’s second suspension.

01:17

03:36

I had a follow-up on why breaking news is out of bounds on Twitter, but Nu appears to be done communicating.

“This censorship is part of a well orchestrated smear campaign against independent journalists led by lefty trolls who don’t want Americans to know the truth,” C. Johnson told The Mirror. “I make a lifelong commitment to open information and I will fight my suspension with everything I’ve got.”

Before Johnson broke the news, news outlets such as Politico and others were not reporting her name. As of last night, however, CNN’s Anderson Cooper began saying it, and this morning, MSNBC was all over it — she’s now the famous Dallas nurse who’s being hailed as a hero for coming down with the Ebola virus. After Yahoo! News national reporter Jason Sickles reported the news, Johnson reached out to ask why he got no credit for it. Sickles claimed they had the name prior to Johnson’s reporting but was waiting on Pham’s family to allow it.

Please note: In actual reporting, it counts when you publish something not when you knew it. And since when do we wait on family to grant permission to the news media to break news?

Enter Charles C. Johnson’s main nemesis: Charles F. Johnson, a.k.a. a guy who writes a blog called “Little Green Footballs.” He says he’s been a blogger for 13 years. He says he’s often confused for Charles C. Johnson, a fact he abhors. Before blogging, this Charles Johnson was a guitarist and played with the likes of Al Jarreau, Stanley Clarke and George Duke.

He adamantly believes Charles. C. Johnson is scum for reporting the nurse’s name.

“My main issue is he didn’t confirm this information before publishing it,” Johnson #2 said in a lengthy phone conversation from LA where he lives. “He got it directly from a tipoff on Twitter.” How does he know how Johnson acquired the information? “I saw it all go down,” he said, referring only to Twitter, which is not exactly a person’s only method of reporting. “That is the difference between what he does and the mainstream media does. They confirmed it with the family. He has a history of being suspended in the past. … It’s just mean spirited.”

But in a public health crisis, shouldn’t the public know what’s happening to better protect itself? “I think it’s kind of outrageous what he’s doing,” Johnson #2 said. “I think there is a public interest but it has to be balanced with responsible journalism. …That’s my main beef with him — I think he’s inaccurate a lot and deliberately inflammatory.”

Johnson #2 claims he feels no glee over fueling the fire that got C. Johnson suspended for a second time in less than a week. “It’s not something that makes me happy,” he said. “I just don’t like seeing inaccurate information spread around.”

Should Charles C. Johnson get tossed off Twitter permanently, Charles F. Johnson says he won’t be jumping for joy.”I guess I’ll be personally gratified, but I don’t take personal joy in it,” he said.

As for the journalistic value of reporting the nurse’s name, Johnson #2 said, “I think it needed to be confirmed with he family. The family begged media to respect their privacy and not release the name of the nurse. Apparently they changed their mind. …Apparently a few journalists agree with that. I think they asked for privacy and when the time came for that to change it was changed. To me, that’s not a bad thing.”

Johnson #2 insists he didn’t report C. Johnson to Twitter this time around. But he did the first time and claims they wouldn’t even read it because he had no direct involvement.

Charles C. Johnson thinks Charles F. Johnson is a joke. “You can use your imagination as to what I think the f stands for,” he deadpanned this morning over text.

“It’s kind of funny,” Charles C. Johnson continued in a later phone conversation with The Mirror. “I don’t get upset about things, which bothers a lot of people. I’m just amused by the whole thing. I beat everyone to the punch so the way they punish me is they shut down my Twitter.”

Still, his attitude is this: “I’m an investigative journalist,” he said, discussing his feelings toward Twitter and for those who don’t think he should have published Pham’s name. “Fuck you. I’ll do what I want.”

Asked if he got a Drudge hit, Johnson replied, “I don’t need one. I got 6,000 page views an hour. I don’t want to build a business on getting Drudge links. I want to build ground level support.”

Will the litigious Johnson sue Twitter? “Five of the people who work with me are people that I met on Twitter,” he said, perhaps mentally plotting how that could work. “How am I supposed to build my business? The thing is, they’re super super rich. I’m going to be that asshole that sued Twitter? Twitter’s rules are really kind of ridiculous sometimes. I hope Twitter stops being jerks and lets me on. I shouldn’t have to constantly be telling Twitter, yo, these people are crazy and making things up.”

Twitter sent Charles C. Johnson what looks to be a form letter:

At 3:34 a.m. Pacific time: “I still don’t understand why I’m being suspended.” At 3:35 a.m, Johnson again reached out. “I am an independent journalist who uses Twitter to inform the public,” he wrote. “I have been following all of Twitter’s rules and have been targeting because of the consequences of the information I have revealed. Please reactivate my account.”

The Mirror reached out to Twitter’s Nu Wexler because a) I thought he might be helpful and b) I wanted him to answer a simple question: Why should a reporter get kicked off Twitter for reporting news?

I was fully wrong in thinking either of those things would happen.

Question: If a Sam Stein (HuffPost White House correspondent) or even a Robert Costa (WaPo conservative-leaning political correspondent) had written Nina Pham’s name on Twitter, would they be suspended? I have a hard time believing they would’ve suffered the same online fate as Charles C. Johnson, who Twitter suspended for the first time last week because he published the address of a woman under quarantine who was caring for Duncan. Twitter reinstated him quickly.

Charles C. Johnson, in a plea to Nu Wexler earlier today, wrote: “Hello Nu, I’m trying to figure out why I was suspended from Twitter. It’s clear that I have violated none of the TOS through my reporting. I broke a significant news story and was targeting for it by people who don’t like my politics. I really hope you guys will restore my Twitter immediately. Thanks, Charles C. Johnson”

So far, silence.

“Still suspended, no response,” C. Johnson said as of 6:10 p.m. EST.

This is a modal window.

The Video Cloud account was not found.

Error Code: VIDEO_CLOUD_ERR_ACCOUNT_NOT_FOUND

Session ID: 2026-01-12:b887e3258d92b43f2f92fe34 Player ID: dc-video-5253047831001

Close Modal Dialog

Tags : charles c johnson nu wexler richard blumenthal robert costa sam stein

2014 (Dec) - Daily Caller : "About The Washington Post’s Romanticizing Profile Of Charles Johnson"

Matt K. Lewis / Senior Contributor / December 09, 2014 / 9:19 AM ET

https://dailycaller.com/2014/12/09/about-the-washington-posts-romanticizing-profile-of-charles-johnson/

2014-12-09-dailycaller-com-about-the-washington-posts-romanticizing-profile-of-charles-johnson.pdf

2014-12-09-dailycaller-com-about-the-washington-posts-romanticizing-profile-of-charles-johnson-img-1.jpg

If you want more bloggers threatening to expose the identities of an alleged rape victims, then you can thank the Washington Post for helping expedite that. Today’s profile of Charles Johnson is enough to fuel Johnson’s narcissism for years to come — and to embolden the delusional dreams of dozens more aspiring conservative Hunter S. Thompsons.

“He represents a new breed of news hound: part troll, part provocateur, part bully for profit, and fully independent. In photographs, he adopts the glower of an anti-establishment rabble-rouser,” writes the Post. I think I’m turned on. Not really. Sickened is more like it. The piece reads like a profile of a celebrity. Consider the lede: “It’s 7:30 p.m. on Monday night, and the day’s most vilified blogger is driving somewhere in California, though he declines to specify where, and with whom.”

Calling someone “vilified” is a badge of honor to the reporter who postures himself a rebel and assiduously cultivates the image of a “bad boy” truth-teller. (And yes, attention from the mainstream media still means more…even to those who ostensibly hate it and celebrate its demise.)

There is, of course, the small problem of the Post romanticizing the work of someone who is threatening to reveal personal details about an alleged rape victim. And make no mistake, that’s the takeaway. Although it seems quite obvious the Rolling Stone’s “Jackie” fabricated much of (if not all of) her elaborate story about a brutal gang rape, we still don’t know everything there is to know.

Now, one could argue that Johnson is, in fact, seeking to discover exactly what actually happened. But while I utterly reject the notion that we ought to automatically believe alleged rape victims (and, by extension, assume the alleged rapist is guilty) this is still a very serious subject. And while it’s quite possible the Rolling Stone journalist is a serial fabulist, it’s also quite possible that something happened to Jackie — that she is disturbed for a reason.

Or maybe not. Maybe Johnson will win this time. When you take huge risks, sometimes they pay off. Johnson can move on when his exploits cause harm, and claim victory when he ends up being right. And then repeat it. That’s fine for him, but the question is whether or not the Post should be in the business of incentivizing this sort of behavior.

But let’s set aside that for a second. In the future, I would ask the Post, and others, to be a bit more specific when it comes to associating Charles Johnson with this outlet. He has written some freelance articles for the Daily Caller — just as he has written for many other outlets over the years. Having actually worked here for nearly four years — I’m sitting in my DC office right now — I think I might have met Johnson maybe twice.

To be clear, he never actually worked at the Daily Caller — nor (as far as I know) has Mark Judge, whom the Post quotes and cites as a “Daily Caller alumnus.” This isn’t a criticism of Judge, but when it comes to delivering big wet kisses to Johnson, perhaps the Post might do a profile of people who actually worked here? Might I suggest RollCall’s Alexis Levinson, CNN.com’s Chris Moody or Yahoo’s Jon Ward. I can probably put you in touch…

2015 (Aug 20) - Daily Caller :

https://dailycaller.com/2015/08/20/shaun-king-challenged-charles-johnson-to-a-fight-to-the-death/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUJFwxjY2Y8

TheNewAmericanMedia

6.42K subscribers

1,176 views Jul 24, 2016

Blake Walley interviews Charles C. Johnson of GotNews.com at Milo Yiannopoulos event; "Gays for Trump." It also evolved into a "Free Milo" rally as he had been permanently banned from Twitter mere hours before. Of special significance because Charles happened to be the first major conservative voice banned from Twitter!

"Milo is a good friend"

"I was the first person to get kicked off Twitter"

He says he will give his life for freedom on the internet

2017 (Aug 18) - Yahoo news : "‘Alt-right’ figure who set up Assange meeting refuses to cooperate with Senate intel probe"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/alt-right-figure-set-assange-meeting-refuses-cooperate-senate-intel-probe-172020121.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFPiejhNT5-Mnt_BL-tnWm5xKaJwFoDi12gJWTatxkOtMgYlcibsSqackuHQvsrfxE12j9Rlx_H_KIW_6YH2G0b6auK-HHazxFo5fCxIhAzEri3z6pgC6GaPru3tbLQx4qlq311McvDb0NWGcqe-PJrd7Nu1wiFNf4e0vglc_5Ak

2017-08-18-yahoo-com-news-alt-right-figure-set-assange-meeting-refuses-cooperate-senate-intel-probe-172020121.pdf

2017-08-18-yahoo-com-news-alt-right-figure-set-assange-meeting-refuses-cooperate-senate-intel-probe-172020121-3.jpg

Michael Isikoff, Chief Investigative Correspondent

Fri, August 18, 2017 at 1:20 PM EDT

Charles C. Johnson with Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, R.-Calif. (Photo: Charles C. Johnson/Facebook)

A controversial “alt-right” journalist and provocateur who met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London this week says he is refusing to turn over documents and emails requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee about any contacts he has had with Russian agents, telling Yahoo News he has no intention of cooperating with the panel’s investigation.

“I’m absolutely not” going to cooperate with the committee, Charles C. Johnson said in an interview after returning from London, where he had set up a meeting this week between Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

“They’re going to have to subpoena me and then they’ll be sorely disappointed,” he added. Johnson said his lawyer would raise journalistic “privilege” issues to resist turning over any communications he might have had with Russian nationals or agents. The committee had requested the material in a July 27 letter it sent him, asking that the documents by turned over by Aug. 10. Johnson has since posted the letter on a website he runs, GotNews.

Johnson’s stand would appear to make him the first figure in the Russia investigation to take such a publicly defiant position — refusing to cooperate in any way with the committee probe. Even prospective witnesses who have repeatedly derided the Russia investigations, such as longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone, have said they will comply with requests from the Senate and House intelligence committees (although Stone in particular has been dodgy about whether he will respond to questions about the identity of a “backchannel” figure who tipped him off to material Assange was about to publish.) Another key figure, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, initially refused to respond to a committee request and requested immunity, but later turned over people sought by the panel. A spokeswoman for committee chair, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., declined any comment about Johnson.

Johnson is an intriguing figure to committee investigators for multiple reasons: He is an inflammatory “alt-right” journalist and entrepreneur who was banned from Twitter two years ago for appearing to threaten a Black Lives Matter activist. Despite this, he maintains apparent ties to some officials in the White House as well as Assange, whose organization, WikiLeaks, has been described by CIA Director Mike Pompeo as a “nonstate hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

The letter Johnson got from the Senate Intelligence Committee came after a Politico article identified him as one of the figures who was in touch with the late Peter Smith, a wealthy Chicago hedge fund executive who last year sought to mobilize hackers from around the world — including Russians — in a quest to find copies of the 33,000 personal emails that Hillary Clinton had deleted from her personal server.

Johnson had told Politico that Smith, with whom he had long been friendly, had asked him last year to put him in touch with then Trump campaign chief (and later senior White House official) Steve Bannon as well as an independent hacker who he believed he could help obtain the Clinton emails. Johnson maintained he demurred on the Bannon request because he didn’t believe Smith’s operation was “sophisticated” enough.

The letter Johnson got from the committee asked that he turn over “all documents, emails, text messages” and any other communications he might have had “with Russians” or “representatives of Russian government, business or media interests.” This should include material about “any attempt to search for electronic information that may have been stolen or compromised by cyber activity.”

Johnson called the committee’s request “a fishing expedition” and “laughably overbroad,” adding, “How am I supposed to know who was Russian who I was communicating with? … I have a friend who is supermodel who was born in Russia. Does it include her?”

Aside from the Smith effort relating to the Clinton emails, Johnson could potentially be of even more interest to the committee as a result of the three-hour meeting he arranged this week (and which he attended) between Assange and Rohrabacher, a Republican who has consistently argued for closer ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.

Johnson said he and Rohrabacher came back from their meeting with a specific proposal that the congressman intends to present to President Trump soon: Grant a preemptive pardon to Assange (who has been under Justice Department investigation for years, although he has never been charged) and the WikiLeaks founder would, in exchange, turn over “irrefutable” evidence that he didn’t get the Democratic National Committee emails from Russia, but from another source.

“Assange wants to have a deal with the president,” Johnson said. “He believes he should be pardoned in the same way that Chelsea Manning was pardoned.” Once Assange turns his evidence over, showing the Russians were not the source of the DNC emails, then the “president could put the kibosh” on the whole Russia investigation being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Johnson declined to say what Assange’s supposed evidence actually is (though he did say it did not include any documents). But he insisted he has spoken to unidentified figures in the White House who have told him the president wants to hear the proposal. “I know the president is interested in this,” he said. “There will be a meeting between Rep. Rohrabacher and President Trump.”

A spokesman for Rohrabacher confirmed that Johnson had arranged the meeting between the congressman and Assange. “My understanding is that there is not yet a concrete proposal, but that Dana does believe that if Assange does turn over the proof he’s promised, then he deserves a pardon,” the spokesman said.

A White House official with knowledge of the Russia probe, who asked not to be identified by name, said he was unfamiliar with the request for a meeting.

2017 (August 25) - WSJ :

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blogger-charles-johnson-pursuing-defamation-claim-against-gawker-1503694915?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeRxKL9t-jMRg87DA0u9wZJcHvzJxPdopJIDtlUKkI_O_5QlThNxDEun1oUwmY%3D&gaa_ts=6964e09e&gaa_sig=2djnJp72Gs-JeN6ApN7_bcyUaUNSzbqGvv57HePqxylMLITEhkkEGMvw_LfWAoOmvIXFUmrjdYZm_R02hhMLAg%3D%3D

2017-08-25-wsj-blogger-charles-johnson-pursuing-defamation-claim-against-gawker.pdf

2017-08-25-wsj-blogger-charles-johnson-pursuing-defamation-claim-against-gawker-img-1.jpg

BANKRUPTCY

Blogger Charles Johnson Pursuing Defamation Claim Against Gawker

The blogger is seeking $1.5 million over articles that criticized his reporting and included rumors about his personal life

By Jonathan Randles

WSJ PROAug. 25, 2017 5:01 pm ET

Gawker Media’s New York offices on the day it announced in August 2016 that it would be shutting operations PHOTO: SACHELLE BABBAR/ZUMA PRESS

Right-wing blogger Charles C. Johnson is pursuing a defamation claim against Gawker Media LLC in bankruptcy for posting articles he claims challenge his credibility as a journalist and contain unsubstantiated gossip intended to malign him.

Mr. Johnson and his news site, GotNews.com, are seeking as much as $1.5 million over articles published in December 2014 that criticized his reporting and included rumors about his personal life. On Monday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein in New York rejected Mr. Johnson’s bid to seek redress against Gawker Media in district court and said the dispute will be heard in bankruptcy court.

Lawyers representing Gawker Media in bankruptcy have defended the articles by arguing the posts express the authors’ opinions of Mr. Johnson’s work based on “the objective untruth of at least some of Johnson’s so-called journalism.” In court papers, Gawker Media said Mr. Johnson has falsely reported that U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) didn’t live in Newark when he was mayor of the New Jersey city and that the New York Times published the address of a Missouri police officer accused in the wrongful shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

Mr. Johnson and GotNews had sued Gawker Media and two writers in California alleging defamation before the media company filed for chapter 11 protection in June 2016. A lawyer for Mr. Johnson said the lawsuit should move forward outside of the chapter 11 case because their articles allegedly caused him “personal injury.”

Judge Bernstein rejected that argument, ruling the alleged harm Mr. Johnson says he has suffered doesn’t meet the legal threshold for personal injury, which the court said is limited to physical trauma or wrongful death. Suffering shame or humiliation isn’t enough, the judge said.

Jay M. Wolman, a lawyer representing Mr. Johnson and GotNews, said in an email that although they would have preferred to have the matter decided in district court, the dispute can be adjudicated in Gawker Media’s bankruptcy case.

Lawyers representing Gawker Media didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Had Mr. Johnson been allowed to pursue his claim against the publisher in district court, the case might have gone to a jury. Instead, his claim against Gawker Media will be adjudicated in bankruptcy court by Judge Bernstein.

Gawker Media has defended its posting of gossip about Mr. Johnson that is unrelated to his journalism. Lawyers for Gawker Media have said these posts were intended to satirize Mr. Johnson’s reporting style and protected because the gossip is presented as questions, not as statements of fact.

At a December court hearing, Judge Bernstein said the posts “didn’t strike me as satire, not in the Jonathan Swift sense of it. But I don’t know,” according to a transcript.

Univision acquired all of Gawker’s blogs, except for its flagship site Gawker.com, for $135 million, last year with the money going to fund the publisher’s plan to exit chapter 11. Representatives of Gawker Media’s estate agreed to reserve $1.5 million until Mr. Johnson and GotNews’s claim is resolved.

In exchange, Mr. Johnson agreed to drop an objection to Gawker Media’s chapter 11 liquidation plan, allowing the publisher to officially exit bankruptcy and to begin paying back creditors. Mr. Johnson also agreed to drop his legal action against the individual writers who wrote the posts, according to court documents.

Gawker Media has settled with others who had sued over its articles. The bankruptcy estate last year agreed to settle defamation lawsuits brought by journalist Ashley Terrill and tech entrepreneur Shiva Ayyadurai for $500,000 and $750,000, respectively. Gawker Media also settled its legal fight with Hulk Hogan, which forced the company into bankruptcy, for $31 million.

Before starting GotNews, Mr. Johnson wrote for several conservative media outlets including The Daily Caller and TheBlaze. Mr. Johnson had a paid internship at The Wall Street Journal in 2011 through the editorial department’s Robert L. Bartley Fellowship program, said a spokeswoman for Dow Jones, which publishes the Journal.

One of the posts Mr. Johnson is challenging in the suit was published on the sports blog Deadspin, a Gawker Media site Univision Communications Inc. acquired last year. At the time of the sale, Univision said it chose to delete the Deadspin story, along with five other posts, because they were subject to pending lawsuits.

Other posts about Mr. Johnson remain available on Gawker Media’s flagship site, Gawker.com, which Univision didn’t purchase. Professionals overseeing the bankruptcy estate are now preparing to sell Gawker and its archive of articles. Gawker ceased operation a year ago.

Write to Jonathan Randles at Jonathan.Randles@wsj.com

2020 (Jan 23) - BuzzFeed N ews : "Clearview AI Says Its Facial Recognition Software Identified A Terrorism Suspect. The Cops Say That's Not True."

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/clearview-ai-nypd-facial-recognition

2020-01-23-buzzfeednews-com-cleaarview-ai.pdf

2020-01-23-buzzfeednews-com-cleaarview-ai-img-1.jpg

Ryan Mac

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Caroline Haskins

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Logan McDonald

BuzzFeed Staff

Updated on January 23, 2020 at 9:35 amPosted on January 23, 2020 at 8:19 am

03:12

Clearview AI, a facial recognition company that says it’s amassed a database of billions of photos, has a fantastic selling point it offers up to police departments nationwide: It cracked a case of alleged terrorism in a New York City subway station last August in a matter of seconds. “How a Terrorism Suspect Was Instantly Identified With Clearview,” read the subject line of a November email sent to law enforcement agencies across all 50 states through a crime alert service, suggesting its technology was integral to the arrest.

It’s a compelling pitch that has helped rocket Clearview to partnerships with police departments across the country. But there’s just one problem: The New York Police Department said that Clearview played no role in the case.

As revealed to the world in a startling story in the New York Times this weekend, Clearview AI has crossed a boundary that no other tech company seemed willing to breach: building a database of what it claims to be more than 3 billion photos that can be used to identify a person in almost any situation. It’s raised fears that a much-hyped moment, when universal facial recognition could be deployed at a mass scale, is finally at hand.

But the company, founded by CEO Hoan Ton-That, has drawn a veil over itself and its operations, misrepresenting its work to police departments across the nation, hiding several key facts about its origins, and downplaying its founders' previous connections to white nationalists and the far right.

As it emerges from the shadows, Clearview is attempting to convince law enforcement that its facial recognition tool, which has been trained on photos scraped from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other websites, is more accurate than any other on the market. However, emails, presentations, and flyers obtained by BuzzFeed News reveal that its claims to law enforcement agencies are impossible to verify — or flat-out wrong.

For example, the pitch email about its role in catching an alleged terrorist, which BuzzFeed News obtained via a public records request last month, explained that when the suspect’s photo was “searched in Clearview,” its software linked the image to an online profile with the man’s name in less than five seconds. Clearview AI’s website also takes credit in a flashy promotional video, using the incident, in which a man allegedly placed rice cookers made to look like bombs, as one example among thousands in which the company assisted law enforcement. But the NYPD says this account is not true.

2020-01-23-buzzfeednews-com-cleaarview-ai-img-2-sub-buzz-1614-1579719794-12

Obtained by BuzzFeed News

Image from Clearview marketing materials sent to the police department in Bradenton, Florida, which claim its technology was used in recognizing the suspect.

“The NYPD did not use Clearview technology to identify the suspect in the August 16th rice cooker incident,” a department spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “The NYPD identified the suspect using the Department’s facial recognition practice where a still image from a surveillance video was compared to a pool of lawfully possessed arrest photos.”

While Clearview has claimed associations with the country’s largest police department in at least two other cases, the spokesperson said “there is no institutional relationship” with the company. In response, Ton-That said the NYPD has been using Clearview on a demo basis for a number of months. He declined to provide any further details.

In the Times report and in documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, Clearview AI said that its facial recognition software had been used by more than 600 police departments and government groups, including the FBI. But in at least two cases, BuzzFeed News found that the company suggested it was working with a police department simply because it had submitted a lead to a tip line.

“There has to be some personal or professional responsibility here. The consequences of a false positive is that someone goes to jail.”

Ton-That would not specify the exact number of paid police partnerships the company has. He declined to comment on his company’s claim to have worked with the NYPD to solve the subway terrorism case, telling BuzzFeed News, “Clearview was used by multiple agencies” to identify the suspect. The New York City branch of the state police and the Metropolitan Transit Authority have denied that their agencies were involved in the subway case. In response, Ton-That subsequently stated it was an unnamed federal agency.

While it’s common for startups to make exaggerated claims, the stakes are much higher for a company building tools used by police to identify criminal suspects. “There has to be some personal or professional responsibility here,” said Liz O’Sullivan, an artificial intelligence researcher and the technology director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “The consequences of a false positive is that someone goes to jail.”

“We had ethical concerns”

Originally known as Smartcheckr, Clearview was the result of an unlikely partnership between Ton-That, a small-time hacker turned serial app developer, and Richard Schwartz, a former adviser to then–New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Ton-That told the Times that they met at a 2016 event at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, after which they decided to build a facial recognition company.

While Ton-That has erased much of his online persona from that time period, old web accounts and posts uncovered by BuzzFeed News show that the 31-year-old developer was interested in far-right politics. In a partial archive of his Twitter account from early 2017, Ton-That wondered why all big US cities were liberal, while retweeting a mix of Breitbart writers, venture capitalists, and right-wing personalities.

“In today's world, the ability to handle a public shaming / witch hunt is going to be a very important skill,” he tweeted in January 2017.

Make more work like this possible: Become a BuzzFeed News member today.

Those interactions didn’t just happen online. In June 2016, Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump personality on Twitter who propagated the Pizzagate conspiracy, posted a photo of Ton-That at a meal with far-right provocateur Chuck Johnson with both of them making the OK sign with their hands, a gesture that has since become favored by right-wing trolls.

“I was only making the Okay sign in the photo as in 'all okay,'” Ton-That said in an email. "It was completely innocuous and should not be construed as anything more than that.

"I am of Asian decent [sic] and do not hold any discriminatory views towards any group or individual," he added. "I am devoting my professional life to creating a tool to help law enforcement solve heinous crimes and protect victims. It would be absurd and unfair for anyone to distort my views and values based on old photos of any sort.”

2020-01-23-buzzfeednews-com-cleaarview-ai-img-3-sub-buzz-1552-1579715946-5

Screenshot via Twitter

By the election, Ton-That was on the Trump train, attending an election night event where he was photographed with Johnson and his former business partner Pax Dickinson.

The following February, Smartcheckr LLC was registered in New York, with Ton-That telling the Times that he developed the image-scraping tools while Schwartz covered the operating costs. By August that year, they registered Clearview AI in Delaware, according to incorporation documents.

“It would be absurd and unfair for anyone to distort my views and values based on old photos of any sort.”

While there’s little left online about Smartcheckr, BuzzFeed News obtained and confirmed a document, first reported by the Times, in which the company claimed it could provide voter ad microtargeting and “extreme opposition research” to Paul Nehlen, a white nationalist who was running on an extremist platform to fill the Wisconsin congressional seat of the departing speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

A Smartcheckr contractor, Douglass Mackey, pitched the services to Nehlen. Mackey later became known for running the racist and highly influential Trump-boosting Twitter account Ricky Vaughn. Described by HuffPost as “Trump’s most influential white nationalist troll,” Mackey built a following of tens of thousands of users with a mix of far-right propaganda, racist tropes, and anti-Semitic cartoons. MIT’s Media Lab ranked Vaughn, who used multiple accounts to dodge several bans, as one of the top 150 influencers of the 2016 presidential election — ahead of NBC News and the Drudge Report.

“An unauthorized proposal was sent to Mr. Nehlen,” Ton-That said. “We did not seek this work. Moreover, the technology described in the proposal did not even exist.”

A disagreement between Mackey and other far-right figures led to his outing as the owner of the Vaughn persona, sweeping Smartcheckr up in the fallout. In April 2018, a white nationalist blogger named Christopher Cantwell posted Smartcheckr’s pitch documents to Nehlen as well as information about Schwartz, inviting a torrent of abuse.

"[Mackey] worked for 3 weeks as a consultant to Smartcheckr, which was the initial name of Clearview in its nascent days years ago," Ton-That said. "He was referred to me by a friend who is a liberal Democrat."

Mackey did not respond to multiple requests for comment. When asked if the company knew about Mackey's Twitter persona, Ton-That responded, "Absolutely not."

By summer 2018, Ton-That and Schwartz were working on Clearview AI and their image-scraping software had begun to take off. The company raised funding from billionaire venture capitalist and Facebook board member Peter Thiel and other investors, and Ton-That applied to XRC Labs, a New York–based startup accelerator focused on retail technology.

Pano Anthos, the head of XRC Labs, told BuzzFeed News that Ton-That interviewed for a spot in an XRC Labs cohort, but Clearview wasn’t the “right fit” for the program because the company was “focused on security.” Ton-That confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the company applied to XRC Labs but did not go through with the program.

Still, Clearview was briefly listed on some materials associated with XRC’s events and presentations. At one event, the company boasted of its “extremely accurate facial identification.”

“In under a second it can find a match in our database of millions of photos,” read a now-deleted blurb about the company for a retail tech event. “It can be integrated in security cameras, iPhone/iPad apps, and with an API. Unlike other facial recognition companies, Clearview AI provides a curated database of millions (and soon billion) of faces from the open-web.”

2020-01-23-buzzfeednews-com-cleaarview-ai-img-4-sub-buzz-1616-1579719544-3

Screenshot via LinkedIn

A view of the ad history for Clearview's promotions on LinkedIn.

By the following year, the company left behind whatever aspirations it had for the retail industry and focused on relationships with law enforcement. Ton-That set up fake LinkedIn profiles to run ads about Clearview, boasting that police officers could search over 1 billion faces in less than a second. "It is possible that the company placed a few ads on LinkedIn," Ton-That said via email.

In January, Ton-That’s name was listed as a speaker for the law enforcement conference ISS World North America, where he was scheduled to speak in September on panels about facial and image recognition, though his name was later removed. When contacted this summer, an event organizer declined to comment to BuzzFeed News about Clearview’s involvement and noted that the event was closed to reporters.

While Clearview operated quietly with a bare-bones website and no social media presence, it tried to raise more than $10 million from venture investors. One potential person who met with the company said they were introduced by Naval Ravikant, a Clearview backer who previously employed Ton-That at AngelList, the angel investing network that Ravikant cofounded.

The investor who took the pitch told BuzzFeed News that Clearview’s demos were slick, with Ton-That taking photos of people in the room and using his tool to find images of them from around the web. And while he compared the software to a Google search for people’s faces, Clearview’s CEO shied away from explaining how those images had been collected, according to the investor.

Ultimately, they did not write a check. “We had clear ethical concerns,” the person said.

Dubious marketing claims

As Clearview has grown, it’s relied on dubious marketing claims to some of the largest police departments in the nation.

Last summer, during a procurement process for facial recognition technology, a law firm representing Clearview AI sent the Atlanta Police Department a flyer touting the startup’s “proprietary image database” and the “world’s best facial-recognition technology.” Claiming that the company’s “mountains” of data were its “secret sauce,” the document, which was obtained through a BuzzFeed News public records request, claimed that Clearview played a crucial role in the capture of a suspect in an alleged assault.

Got a tip? Email one of the reporters of this story atCaroline.Haskins@buzzfeed.com or Ryan.Mac@buzzfeed.com, or contact us here.

“On September 24, 2018, The Gothamist published a photo of a man who assaulted two individuals outside a bar in Brooklyn, NY,” read the flyer. “Using Clearview, the assailant was instantly identified from a large-scale, curated image database and the tip was delivered to the police, who confirmed his identity.”

While the NYPD did distribute a photo of the suspect, who eventually turned himself in, a spokesperson for the department denied that Clearview played a role in its investigation.

Similarly, Clearview did not help in an alleged groping in December 2018 on the New York City subway. In that incident, a woman took a photo of the alleged assailant, which was published in the city’s newspapers. Clearview claims that it ran the picture, discovered the identity of the suspect, and “sent the tip to the NYPD,” after which the suspect was “soon apprehended.” It also claimed that police were then able “to solve 40 cold cases” within a matter of weeks.

In both cases, Clearview responded that it submitted the photos via a tipline. “We ran the photo as a test of our early system and sent in an official tip program with no mention of Clearview,” Ton-That said in an email. “Clearview no longer conduct such tests.”

The NYPD, however, said that it “did not use Clearview to identify the suspects in these cases.” Similarly, the New York Daily News reported the suspect was arrested after officials received a tip from a community anti-crime group, Guardian Angels, whose founder, Curtis Sliwa, “hand-delivered the information to police in the Columbus Circle subway station.” In a call with BuzzFeed News, Sliwa said his group received the tip from an acquaintance of the suspect.

It’s unclear if the Atlanta police dug into Clearview’s marketing claims, but it signed an agreement with the facial recognition startup in September. That $6,000 deal gave the department three licenses, each of which lasted a year, to use Clearview’s software, which was an order of magnitude cheaper than the other bidders, including a $42,000 system from Veritone and a five-year contract for NEC’s NeoFace WideNet that cost $75,000 per year.

A spokesperson for Atlanta police told BuzzFeed News that the department has “been pleased with what we have seen so far.” They did not answer questions about Clearview’s marketing tactics.

“We have cautioned our investigators that simply matching a photo through the software does not meet the requirements for the probable cause needed to make an arrest,” the spokesperson said. “Investigators must then do further work to link the suspect to the crime.”

“Clearview AI is neither designed nor intended to be used as a single-source system for establishing the identity of an individual.”

As it signed deals, Clearview continued to misrepresent its relationship with the NYPD. It used images of the suspect from the Brooklyn bar beating in an October email sent through CrimeDex, a crime alert listserv used by police across the nation. In that email, which BuzzFeed News obtained via a public records request to the Bradenton, Florida, police department, a random man whose image was taken from an Argentine LinkedIn page is identified as a “possible match.” His name, however, does not match the name of the person who turned himself in to the NYPD.

“Clearview AI is neither designed nor intended to be used as a single-source system for establishing the identity of an individual,” Ton-That said.

Though the company claimed to the Times and in marketing emails that it’s used by more than 600 police departments, it’s not clear how many of those are paying customers.

Using government contract database GovSpend, BuzzFeed News identified 12 police department deals with Clearview, including a $15,000 set of subscriptions to Clearview by the New York State Police; $15,000 from Broward County, Florida; and $10,000 from Gainesville, Florida. BuzzFeed News also identified other proposed contracts with the cities of Antioch, California; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Davie, Florida. When asked about these contracts, Ton-That said in an email, “We do not discuss our clients.”

Ton-That declined to say how many of Clearview’s customers were on paid contracts. Given this, it’s possible that most cities are on free trials, like a 30-day test that police in Tampa, Florida, recently took. The department told the Orlando Sentinel last month that it had no plans to purchase the software.

Ton-That declined to comment on specific law enforcement partnerships.

“World-class accuracy”

BuzzFeed News also uncovered several inconsistencies in what Clearview tells police departments about its software.

“Clearview’s speed and accuracy is unsurpassed,” claimed marketing material Clearview AI gave the Atlanta Police Department. “Clearview puts the world’s most advanced facial-recognition technology and largest image database into their hands, allowing them to turn a photograph into a solid lead in an instant.”

In marketing materials to Atlanta police, Clearview claimed that it could accurately find a match 98.6% of the time in a test of 1 million faces. A chart compared Clearview’s supposed score to an 83.3% accuracy rate from Tencent, and 70.4% from Google.

2020-01-23-buzzfeednews-com-cleaarview-ai-img-5-sub-buzz-1625-1579716087-1

Atlanta Police Department

But the publicly available results from the University of Washington’s MegaFace test — a widely used but criticized facial recognition benchmark — do not show Clearview, though there are listings for Tencent and Google algorithms.

When asked, Ton-That did not say if the company ever submitted its results to a third party, only noting that the company had reached an even higher accuracy rate of 99.6% while testing internally. He did not provide evidence.

A MegaFace representative told BuzzFeed News that it’s possible for a company like Clearview to download its dataset to test its software without submitting its results for verification. They added that Clearview AI’s accuracy metric has not been validated by MegaFace.

As of Monday, Clearview’s website had a new FAQ section that stated, “An independent panel of experts rated Clearview 100% accurate across all demographic groups according to the ACLU's facial recognition accuracy methodology.” Ton-That declined to provide details to BuzzFeed News, only noting that it included “a top AI expert” and “a former Democratic NY state judge.”

Clare Garvie, a senior associate at Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, told BuzzFeed News it was unclear whether Clearview could do what it says it could.

“We have no idea how good it is,” Garvie said. “The idea that all information, all people's faces online are currently tagged with their own identity — it's a bit laughable.”

Garvie told BuzzFeed News that there’s also no single way to measure the so-called accuracy of facial recognition technology. Accuracy, in facial recognition, is generally measured as a combination of the correct-match rate, reject rate, non-match rate, false-match rate, and the ability to detect the face in the first instance.

“Whenever a company just lists one accuracy metric, that is necessarily an incomplete view of the accuracy of their system,” Garvie said. “Depending on what the system is designed to do, that may have little or no bearing on the actual accuracy of the system and operation.”

Clearview in the wild

Despite these concerns, Clearview is being deployed in law enforcement investigations. Marketing materials that BuzzFeed News obtained from the Bradenton, Florida, police department show that the software has been used to target sex workers. It’s also been used to identify suspects from group photos, LinkedIn images, and bank security camera footage.

One CrimeDex email said that Clearview was used in the arrest of an alleged pimp, who employed a sex worker advertising “sexual services for prostitution online.” According to the email, Clearview ran an image of the woman’s ad through its software and found her Venmo and Instagram accounts. Through her Instagram handle, police linked her to the alleged procurer on social media, finding his mugshot from a previous arrest.

2020-01-23-buzzfeednews-com-cleaarview-ai-img-6-sub-buzz-1590-1579716222-1

Obtained by BuzzFeed News

Examples from Clearview's marketing materials.

The end of the email included a link for a trial. “Clearview is available to all law enforcement officers to trial for free with no strings attached,” the email said. “Just click the link below.”

CrimeDex has also used Clearview AI to alert law enforcement to possible suspects in ongoing criminal investigations. One email from November shows a photo of a man captured by a security camera at a bank, and a mugshot that CrimeDex claimed was obtained by running the image through Clearview.

Take a look at some of the documents obtained by BuzzFeed News in the reporting of this story here.

The email included the images of the suspect, who allegedly cashed a fraudulent check at a bank, as well as his name, address, height, and other personal information. “We ran the images through Clearview and found a possible suspect,” the email read, before encouraging officers to keep an eye out and to contact an investigator at SunTrust Bank for more information. When asked about this case, Ton-That said in an email, "We do not discuss our cases with the public."

That investigator did not return calls from BuzzFeed News requesting comment. When asked about private company relationships, Ton-That, who said the company pays for marketing on CrimeDex, noted that Clearview has “a handful of private companies who use it for security purposes.”

2020-01-23-buzzfeednews-com-cleaarview-ai-img-7-sub-buzz-1614-1579716447-1

Obtained by BuzzFeed News

Marketing materials from Clearview

Reputation management

Ironically for a company that seeks to erode privacy, many key figures at Clearview have attempted to lower their public profiles. Some began to do so long before the attention from the press.

Since Ton-That and Schwartz started Clearview, their social media and internet presences have been scrubbed. Ton-That deleted his Twitter and Instagram accounts, while Schwartz's LinkedIn profile vanished and his past with Smartcheckr has been obscured across the web.

When asked about this, Ton-That said in an email, "Regarding myself and others at the company, some choose not to maintain social media accounts because they are time consuming."

A search for Schwartz’s name plus "Smartcheckr" leads to results for seemingly nonsensical webpages, which include embedded YouTube videos from an account named “Seo Sgr” — results indicative of the use of a reputation management service to affect search results. BuzzFeed News also found a now-deleted press release referencing Schwartz and Smartcheckr, which linked to a New York Times obituary for a different Richard Schwartz. The company declined to comment on the fake webpages and whether Schwartz had hired someone to game search engine results.

On Monday, a BuzzFeed News reporter called a number associated with Schwartz after locating his contact information in an email to a New Jersey police department obtained in a public records request. A man picked up, denied he was Richard Schwartz, and hung up. BuzzFeed News called back again and got a voicemail recording that stated the number belonged to Schwartz.

Clearview employee Marko Jukic, who signed off on various emails to police departments around the country, also appears to have deleted various social media accounts, while the Facebook profile of customer representative Jessica Medeiros Garrison disappeared from public view following the Times’ story.

Ton-That, however, is leaning into his newfound notoriety. Before the piece, his website remained largely blank, with a photo of him holding an umbrella. Yet, in the hours leading up to the Times’ story, he changed his website — putting up a full biography that notes his work with Clearview, along with a professional picture.

Clearview was also prepared for the Times’ story, putting new information, claims, and promotional material up on its site to replace the sparse page that had existed for at least the last six months. At the top of its new site, a video boasted that Clearview helped capture a terrorism suspect in the New York subway. ●

Joe Bernstein, Kendall Taggart, and Rosalind Adams contributed reporting to this story.

CORRECTION

January 23, 2020 at 9:35 AM

A previous version of this story stated that Hoan Ton-That was photographed with Chuck Johnson and Pax Dickinson at DeploraBall. The photo was taken at a different event.

Charles C Johnson

3720 College Park Dr Apt 7206, Conroe, TX 77384

Save

Monitored

37 years old (Oct 22, 1988)

Age & Birthday

Charles Carlisle Johnson

Alias

Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer at Traitwell

Work

Relatives of Charles C Johnson

We found 5 people related to Charles C Johnson. Relatives may include immediate family members such as mothers, fathers, siblings and spouses, as well as extended family such as in-laws, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.