Your support helps us to tell the story
Around the time Kamala Harris was taking over the reins of the Democratic presidential ticket, a mysterious group reportedly began a smear campaign against her, paying social media influencers tens of thousands of dollars to promote posts, according to reports.
In late July, a network of influencers who had been recruited to push conservative messages about Donald Trump or President Joe Biden throughout the summer, received an email requesting they make colorful sexual insults about Harris, according to Semafor.
In return, they would be paid tens of thousands of dollars via Zelle, a digital payments network.
The email, titled “War Room – Kamala Messaging” was followed by a Zoom invitation from the person who organized the group, a man calling himself James Bacon. On the Zoom call, individuals kept their cameras off and did not identify themselves by name, the report noted.
However, Semafor reports that one person on the call was able to identify an individual who spoke up in protest of making sexual allegations about Harris and later left the call - disgraced Republican congressman George Santos.
The unidentified person who participated in the calls claims Santos broke the usual anonymity to say he disapproved of the messaging which included comparing Harris to the “Hawk Tuah girl” - a woman who went viral for talking about sex - and other crude sexual allegations.
Santos confirmed to The Independent that he was invited to the call and joined out of curiosity but was quickly taken aback by the organizers’ suggestions to call Harris “a hoe” and openly objected to it.
He said the message the organizers provided was “lewd, disgusting and unbecoming of the political process” so he logged off.
“Nothing in this world would make me smear VP Harris or anyone running for office with slanderous sexual innuendos, it’s beneath the standards of what the American people deserve,” Santos said.
“If you’re getting paid, I don’t care how much it is. Nothing justifies calling a person running for President of the United States ‘a hoe’,” he added.
The former New York congressman said the call was the first time he was invited to the group by Bacon.
The Independent has reached out to an email associated with a man named James Bacon for comment. It is unclear if the person behind the social media network is actually named James Bacon.
A man named James Bacon who served as a former aide to Trump and has been an adviser to The Heritage Foundation, told Semafor he was unfamiliar with the social media influencer group. The individual who was on the call claimed Bacon’s voice at public appearance did not match the one on the Zoom calls.
Days after the influencers received the email and call request, Santos said he was so “bothered” by it that he tweeted criticizing the “talking points” of the election, specifying “conservative influencers talking about Kamala’s sex life and race.”
Criticisms about Harris’s sex life and history began swirling on social media around the time she replaced Biden at the top of the ticket. This included allegations of infidelity, using sexual relationships to advance her political career and more.
In late August, Donald Trump reposted on Truth Social an unsubstantiated suggestion that Harris gave sexual favors in exchange for power.
Four people who made posts or videos accusing Harris of sex-related improprieties around the time of the email being sent, denied involvement with the influencer network being paid to push similar rhetoric, Semafor reported.
However, one individual who spoke with the news outlet said they were paid upwards of $20,000 for their work. Zelle receipts viewed by Semafor confirmed their information. This individual claimed the payments were connected to an anonymous, wealthy American, but offered no evidence to substantiate this claim, the report noted.
The participant indicated the payments were connected to an unnamed wealthy American but there was no evidence linking them, per the report.
Besides making sexual smears against Harris, the mysterious group also encouraged influencers to attack Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s New York criminal trial, accuse Biden of being weak and claim Democrats were weaponizing the government against conservatives.
