Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) perpetuated the falsehood that Donald Trump Jr. was \u201cthreatening\u201d the family of the judge overseeing his father\u2019s case in New York.
Ahead of former President Donald J. Trump\u2019s arraignment on Tuesday, reports surfaced indicating that Loren Merchan, the daughter of Acting Justice for the Supreme Court in New York County Juan Merchan, is the president and partner of a digital agency that took the \u201cBiden-Harris\u201d campaign on as a client in 2020. Breitbart News highlighted that Loren Merchan\u2019s archived LinkedIn page shows she also worked as the \u201cDirector of Digital Persuasion\u201d for Harris\u2019s 2020 campaign.
Trump Jr. shared the Breitbart News article, which bore a lead image of the father and daughter, to Twitter and Truth Social. Outrage ensued as the likes of Washington Post lead fact checker Glenn Kessler falsely claimed that Trump Jr. and Eric Trump posted \u201cphotos\u201d of Loren Merchan rather than news articles and asserted it was \u201cobviously intended to intimidate.\u201d
Twitter CEO Elon Musk later suggested placing a label on accounts like those of Kessler, stating they are \u201cfrequently posting incorrect information,\u201d as Breitbart News reported.
Ocasio-Cortez shared a similar sentiment to Kessler, using the false framing that Trump Jr. merely posted a picture rather than a news report.
\u201cLet\u2019s be very clear: intimidation and stochastic terror are the core tools of Trump and the fascist movements that support him,\u201d Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
Though Joyce Alene, whose tweet Ocasio-Cortez referenced in her post, initially stated that Trump Jr. \u201cposted a picture\u201d of Loren Merchan, she noted the image was part of a Breitbart News article in a follow-up tweet. Ocasio-Cortez opted only to amplify the post that falsely stated Trump Jr. \u201cposted a picture\u201d of Merchan, even though Alene\u2019s subsequent tweet was already published at the time.
Twitter users were quick to criticize the congresswoman. National Constitutional Law Union Executive Director Natalie Danielsihen highlighted Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s comments \u201cmocking Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after protestors forced him to leave a Washington D.C. restaurant\u201d following the court reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion a matter for states to decide.
\u201cPoor guy. He left before his souffl\u00e9 because he decided half the country should risk death if they have an ectopic pregnancy within the wrong state lines. It\u2019s all very unfair to him,\u201d Ocasio-Cortez tweeted at the time.
David Harsanyi, a senior editor for the Federalist, also fired back at Ocasio-Cortez. He tweeted a New York Post article highlighting her calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign, in part, over comments that his wife made.
\u201cIs going after Ginni Thomas \u2018stochastic terror?’\u201d he wrote.
In response, the Republican Party of Forsyth County in North Carolina quipped, \u201cNo, what she\u2019s trying to say, with words that she doesn\u2019t know what they mean, is that she hopes the same standards are not applied to the Trump judge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n