A New York Post reporter hilariously debunked a false claim shared by Donald Trump that he was the son of fraud trial judge Arthur Engoron.
Despite a gag order in Mr Trump’s civil fraud trial, the former president has taken a liking to conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer’s content and has reshared her tweets bashing the wife of New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron.
Mr Trump turned his Truth Social focus to Mr Engoron’s son after Ms Loomer claimed in a tweet that was sitting in on the trial. She also shared a court photo pointing an arrow to a man, who is so far back his face is blurry.
She made her claim alongside a picture of Ian Engoron, who she believed was a perfect match with the blurry-faced man in the background. Mr Trump in turn reshared it on his Truth Social account.
The far-right activist claimed in her tweet that the judge “has made the Trump trial a family affair” and reserved a seat for his son who “may be financially benefitting from the Trump Trial via his position at an Democrat activist law firm in New York City.”
The problem is that the man is New York Post reporter Ben Kochman.
Trump has not made his court appearances without picking up a few gag order fines along the way— (Getty Images)
Mr Kochman says that he first saw the wild claim in late November when Ms Loomer shared her baseless theory online and decided to pillory it after Mr Trump himself shared it a second time with his 6.52 million Truth Social followers.
He wrote he was not the son of the fraud trial judge in a New York Post article on Tuesday, a few hours before Ms Loomer and disgraced ex-Representative George Santos were due to talk together on her show about the matter.
Mr Santos had also retweeted Ms Loomer’s findings and said he would flag it to his Republican colleagues to see “if there is any misconduct that would result in a monetary benefit to the judge’s son.”
Mr Kochman wrote that he hopes that the one-term president now realises he is not Ian Engoron.
“As for The Donald, it’s unclear if he knows who I am. But hopefully, he’ll soon know who I’m not,” he wrote in the article.
It is not the first time Trump has tied himself up in resharing debunked conspiracy theories during his trial proceedings, as he put up a social media post claiming Mr Engoron’s top law clerk was the girlfriend of a New York senator.
She was not, and Trump was ordered to pay $15,000 in gag order fines.
