The ‘ABC Whistleblower’ Story Unsurprisingly Fell Apart. Those Who Promoted It Don’t Care.

AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib; AP Photo/Richard Drew, File; AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski

Last month, multiple prominent right-wing personalities aggressively promoted conspiratorial claims from a purported whistleblower saying ABC News gave Vice President Kamala Harris the debate questions ahead of time and took other actions to help her prevail against former President Donald Trump . The claims were highly suspicious from the start, originating from an obviously questionable source and wrapped in layers of logical inconsistencies — and they’ve continued to crumble under scrutiny.

Anyone who has paid attention to U.S. politics for a nanosecond will not be surprised to learn those who promoted these “whistleblower” claims have either totally ignored that they’ve fallen apart or belatedly acknowledged how ridiculous they were in the first place.

Our overly-online media environment rewards outrage over facts, shock over analysis, and nonsense over logic. Exercising prudence before rushing to chase the next viral claim is more passé than acid-wash jeans. It’s simpler and quicker to process and angrily retweet “ABC News gave Kamala Harris the debate questions ahead of time and agreed not to fact check her!” — who cares if it’s totally baseless? — than “Here’s an in-depth discussion of the debate transcript and why a candidate who lies a lot more should expect to get fact-checked more.”

To recap, the claims went viral after an account called “Black Insurrectionist – I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS” shared an alleged “affidavit” from a “whistleblower” claiming to work for ABC News. The “affidavit” was originally featured on a questionable-looking website called “County Local News,” which Newsguard described as an “unreliable” and “AI-generated content farm” that peddles in “misinformation.”

This document’s outlandish claims were riddled with typos and blacked out any text that could verify the accusations like the name and identifying details about the “whistleblower” or notary public. The “affidavit” also claimed to have been executed and signed on the day before the debate and included information about Harris’s podium and other details that were not publicly known ahead of time, but since it wasn’t posted until after the debate, there is no proof it wasn’t backdated. (I could have created this exact document with the ancient Mac I used in college and a Sharpie, and I’m old enough to have graduated before Facebook existed.)

The whole tale was insane even before social media posts went viral saying the “whistleblower” was killed in a “fiery car accident” — a claim that even unhinged conspiracy theorist site Gateway Pundit called out as “ a complete hoax .”

Essentially, the only thing this “affidavit” proved was that someone had a little free time and computer access. An ABC News spokesperson emphatically denied Harris was given any questions ahead of time, and reviewing the debate transcript shows the questions covered highly predictable topics. And despite the “whistleblower” claiming to have audio tapes to support the accusations and to have mailed the “affidavit” to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and filed complaints with the FEC and SEC, none of that evidence ever surfaced either.

None of these issues stopped the right-wing fringe from blindly rushing to share the “affidavit,” including Harvard Law-educated Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Chaya Raichik on her @LibsofTikTok account, media personality Benny Johnson , billionaire Bill Ackman , and X owner Elon Musk .

Megyn Kelly embraced the story as well. She wasn’t the most egregious purveyor of this obviously dubious tale, and she does deserve some credit for semi-acknowledging weeks later that she had been duped, but her commentary does illustrate how the conservative ecosphere launders baseless conspiracy theories by just asking questions about the stories the mainstream media won’t tell you!

Kelly, who initially fumed over the ABC debate moderators asking Trump tough questions, hedged somewhat in her initial reporting on the “whistleblower” by saying she had “no clue” if it was real or “some hoax by the Russians,” but she also stated she was “open-minded to it and we are trying to report on the story.”

She also took a customary swipe at the “corporate media” for “laughing” at the story and blasted ABC News for the “generic and empty” statement from a spokesperson, calling it a “non-denial denial” that “cause[d] more concerns than we have yesterday.”

“If any portion of this affidavit is true, it is very damning and this denial from ABC News does not get it done,” Kelly declared .

On her podcast, she called it a “bombshell affidavit” without any qualifiers indicating it might be questionable. The YouTube description for the below clip says her panel is discussing “the explosive claims made by an ABC whistleblower regarding alleged bias and manipulation during the network’s debate last week, what we know and what we still need to find out about it, and more” — not much of a disclaimer.

When Kelly reads through the “affidavit’s” allegations, she puts on her glasses and adopts a serious lawyerly intonation as she offers commentary — “that’s interesting!” to claims ABC News agreed to show split screen views that were more favorable to Harris and “that definitely happened” regarding a smaller podium for Harris, who is significantly shorter than Trump.

Said Kelly about the claims ABC agreed to only fact check Trump and not Harris: “If this guy’s got that on tape, they’re done! They’re toast if they did that!” Again, this was all based solely on a shady anonymous document from a shady website that claimed there were audio tapes that have never surfaced. Over and over, Kelly leaves her audience with the impression that she is taking these allegations seriously and therefore they should too.

I’ve written before about Kelly’s troublesome predilection for promoting conspiracy theories and clinging to debunked allegations , but in this case she was eventually willing to publicly acknowledge that there were “many obvious red flags” connected to the account that promoted these “whistleblower” claims.

Kelly wrote a long tweet on Monday regarding “stuff being peddled” about new baseless accusations against Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz , noting that it was being promoted by the same account that had pushed the “whistleblower” but since then “[t]he whistleblower has not surfaced, nor have his alleged audio tapes been published,” a “person with knowledge” informed her that Speaker Johnson’s office “did NOT receive any such letter,” and she was unable to confirm any complaints being made to the FEC or SEC.

“Bottom line: proceed with serious caution,” wrote Kelly.

Even Kelly’s limited dose of caution was not observed by her cohorts in the angertainment industry.

Ackman was one of the most aggressive in pushing the unfounded “whistleblower” claims, tweeting, “if you are a journalist…when someone releases an affidavit which claims that you were a major player in defrauding the American people in a presidential debate, if you are not guilty as alleged, you have no choice but to immediately issue a statement denying the claims for silence is an admission of complicity.” He complained that moderator David Muir’s silence after the “affidavit” was shared online meant that “[o]ne has to draw a negative inference.”

Musk amplified the claims by responding to one of Ackman’s tweets with a simple “Yes.” Ackman did delete one tweet arguing it was “ looking increasingly likely ” that the “whistleblower” claims were true, but many of his other tweets remain up demanding that Disney CEO Bob Iger “launch an immediate investigation” and declaring that he was going to “alert the @SEC directly” about the claims. (Amusingly, despite Ackman’s self-professed expertise, he tagged the wrong SEC , referencing the collegiate athletic organization, @SEC , and not the Securities and Exchange Commission, @SECgov .)

On Wednesday, Ackman finally admitted the obvious, sharing a link to Kelly’s website and tweeting that it “seems pretty clear that the alleged @abc whistleblower debate story…was a fake” — using the word “alleged” for the first time regarding the “whistleblower” whose very existence was unfounded nonsense from day one.

Cruz at least qualfied his tweet by framing it as “[i]f this is accurate,” but he still declared if it was, “it would constitute one of the gravest violations of journalist ethics in presidential debate history” and “multiple senior people at [ABC News] should be fired” — all punctuated with three flame emojis.

Cruz’s tweet is still up, as is this one from Johnson, who was recently revealed to have been working for a content company that was allegedly part of a multimillion dollar Russian propaganda scheme .

Greene has yet to delete her tweet claiming there were “news reports” that this “whistleblower” had “died in a car crash,” but she did at least post a follow up tweet saying that the “story appears to be false.” Of course, she still clung to the original “whistleblower” claims and declared a “serious investigation” was needed, angrily responding to criticism from CNN anchor Jake Tapper by offering to come on his show and discuss the “ABC whistleblower claims about debate questions.”

“I’m so thankful I found he’s alive by the way,” she added, because she was “[r]eally looking forward to that investigation!”

To be clear about the perverse incentives at play here: Greene’s tweet claiming unnamed news outlets reported the nonexistent “whistleblower” had died in a car wreck got 4.6 million views — over five times more than the 520K views for her tweet admitting the story “appears to be false.” Kelly got over a million views for the podcast clip where she discussed the “bombshell affidavit.”

And when Kelly admitted the “whistleblower” story was falling apart, she blamed her fellow right-wing provocateurs for why she had covered the story in the first place. After the debate, these claims were “lighting the internet [on] fire,” she wrote on her website , arguing that “prominent voices” like Cruz and Ackman were “saying this must be investigated, possibly by the [SEC], if true.” She added that she had not put her “credibility behind this guy,” but “needed” to report on these claims “because it was turning into a story.”

With less than three weeks to go until the election, there will be countless opportunities to profit and promote misinformation by “just asking questions” after enough online agitators amplify the next bit of nonsense that bubbles up from the fetid swamps of the worst and dumbest parts of the internet until it “turns into a story.”