Laura Loomer

Loomer lost the 2020 United States House of Representatives election to incumbent Democrat Lois Frankel in Florida's 21st congressional district. The district is heavily Democratic, and Loomer's candidacy was considered a long shot.[5][6][7] Frankel has represented the district since 2012.[7] Loomer defeated five opponents to win the Republican primary in August 2020, receiving 14,500 votes out of 34,000 cast (43%).[3][28] Then-President Donald Trump expressed support for Loomer, tweeting after her primary win, "Great going Laura. You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!"[29] She also received endorsements from Florida Representative Matt Gaetz and former Trump adviser Roger Stone.[7] After her primary victory, Twitter reiterated that it would not unban her.[30]

In March 2015, Loomer used a concealed video camera to record her conversations with Barry University officials, discussing the idea of starting a club called "Sympathetic Students in Support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria." The school apparently asked only that the club's name be changed to "Students in Support of the Middle East." The video of her encounter was released by O'Keefe with Project Veritas.[19] He alleged that Loomer's video captured a university official unfazed by the idea of an on-campus organization to support ISIS.[31] Shortly after O'Keefe released the edited video, the university suspended Loomer for violating the student code of conduct rules and a professor shown in the video filed criminal charges against her for recording him without his knowledge.[32] At the time, Loomer was an honors student in her senior year and the president of Barry University's Young Republicans Club.[33]

According to a Clinton campaign official, in July 2015 Loomer and two other women posing as supporters of Hillary Clinton attempted to "entrap" campaign workers into accepting illegal cash donations. The official said that the campaign had complied with the law.[34]

On November 8, 2016, the day of the U.S. 2016 Presidential election, Loomer went to a polling station dressed in a burqa and asked for a ballot under the name of Huma Abedin.[9] On June 10, 2017, Loomer gave a speech to a crowd of "anti-sharia" marchers in New York City and condemned "liberals who aligned themselves with sharia law."[35] She put a burqa on the Fearless Girl statue at Bowling Green in lower Manhattan.[36]

On June 16, 2017, Loomer disrupted a Shakespeare in the Park presentation of Julius Caesar in New York City by walking on stage during the live performance shortly after the title character was assassinated.[37] The Delacorte Theatre production reimagined Julius Caesar as Donald Trump with a Slovenian-accented wife as Calpurnia.[38] Before being escorted offstage by security, Loomer shouted, "This is violence against Donald Trump! Stop the normalization of political violence against the right! This is unacceptable!"[36][39] Loomer was arrested for disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing.[40][41] Earlier in the week, showings of the play had elicited criticism for depicting women and minorities perpetrating the violent assassination of Trump as U.S. president.[42]

Public Theater New York responded by saying although they are "champions" of the First Amendment, the disruption was caused by "social media".[24] On June 19, Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post wrote that she did not believe Loomer was genuinely offended by the play, but was looking for attention and to collect a $1,000 bounty that alt-right social media personality Mike Cernovich had offered to anyone who disrupted the production.[43] Appearing on the Fox News program Hannity a few days after her arrest, Loomer said she knew that disrupting the play would result in criminal charges against her. During the interview, she objected to the depiction of Caesar in the play and accused the left of "systematically and programmatically" using "free expression as a pretext to incite violence."[39][44] A "Free Laura" website soliciting donations for her arrest had been purchased by Loomer's employer, Rebel Media owner Ezra Levant, six hours before the play started.[45] Loomer also promoted a crowdfunding page for donations, which received $12,385 from 241 contributors, more money than the normal penalties for the charges she was facing.[46]

Loomer used press credentials to attend the March 2018 trial of Noor Salman, the wife of the perpetrator of the June 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. Her press credentials were revoked after she harassed Salman's family; she returned to the trial the next day and was removed by a U.S. Marshal.[47] In April 2018, Loomer disrupted an event promoting James Comey's book A Higher Loyalty before being removed from the building by security.[48] In September 2018, Loomer briefly disrupted a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing to accuse Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was testifying before the committee, of censoring conservatives on the platform and of attempting to influence the election in favor of Democrats.[49] Republican Representative Billy Long, who was an auctioneer before joining Congress, drowned her shouting out with an auction chant until she was escorted from the building.[50][51]

On January 14, 2019, Loomer tricked several men she met in a Home Depot parking lot, whom she claimed were undocumented, into jumping the fence at Nancy Pelosi's Napa, California home. The group set up a tent on Pelosi's lawn to protest immigration before being removed by police. They were not arrested.[52][53][54] A few days later, Loomer attempted to interrupt a speaker at the Women's March in Washington, D.C., appearing onstage to call the Women's March a "Nazi" organization. As she was escorted off by security, she shouted "What about the Jews?"[53] On January 30, 2019, Loomer and others jumped the wall surrounding the California Governor's Mansion in Sacramento. They wore Mexican serapes and sombreros, with one wearing a large false mustache, and said they were protesting Governor Gavin Newsom's stance on immigration. They were arrested, given citations, and released within a few hours.[55] The group then provoked a confrontation outside a Mexican restaurant in downtown Sacramento, live-streaming the event.[56]

In February 2019, Loomer was banned from PayPal, GoFundMe, and Venmo.[12][57] In response, Loomer stated that "left wing terrorists and tech tyrants" were "trying to shut [her] down" and said she would "stop at nothing to make sure justice is served for the way Silicon Valley has disenfranchised me, falsely accusing me of being a white supremacist, a Nazi, anti-Muslim, a racist, a bigot, and every other smear in the book."[57] Loomer was one of several right-wing activists banned by Facebook and Instagram in 2019 for using the platforms to spread misinformation and extremism.[14][58]

On November 1, 2017, the day after a terrorist attack in New York City, Loomer tweeted that she was late to a conference because she could not find a "non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver". After it became known that the suspect in the attack was a former driver for Uber, she called for the creation of a new ride-sharing company that did not employ Muslims. Her day-long tweetstorm blamed all Muslims for the activities of radical Islamists such as ISIL. Subsequently, both Uber and Lyft announced that she had violated their guidelines and was banned from using their services.[63][64] She described herself on Twitter at the time as a "#ProudIslamophobe" and called for a complete and permanent ban on Muslims entering the United States.[65]

In August 2018, Loomer disrupted a congressional campaign event for Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, which Rashida Tlaib attended. Loomer shouted questions that implied that Tlaib was antisemitic.[66][67] In November of that year, Twitter banned Loomer from its platform for violating its rules against hateful behavior. According to Loomer, she was banned for a tweet about Omar in which Loomer called her "anti-Jewish" and a member of a religion in which "homosexuals are oppressed" and women are "abused" and "forced to wear the hijab." Loomer denied that the tweet was a violation.[13][68] A week after the ban, she handcuffed herself to a door at Twitter's New York City headquarters in protest while wearing a yellow "Jude" patch.[69] After approximately two hours, police removed the handcuffs with a bolt cutter at her request. Loomer was not arrested.[15][70]

In February 2019, Loomer traveled to Minnesota with Jacob Wohl, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has made false claims about public figures, and Ali Alexander, also a far-right activist.[71] The group said they were investigating whether Omar had married her brother so that he could obtain U.S. citizenship, a conspiracy theory based on unproven claims that has been promulgated by Donald Trump and his supporters.[72][73][74] Vox debunked the conspiracy theory as "largely nonsensical," citing the absence of any evidence that Ahmed Elmi, Omar's ex-husband (whom Loomer and Wohl claimed to be her brother), was related to Omar in any way, and noting that U.S. law permits citizens to petition citizenship for their siblings, voiding the need for marriage, and that Elmi, a British citizen, has never received U.S. citizenship.[73] Loomer had previously accosted Omar with the same false rumor at the October 2018 campaign event.[66] On Instagram in 2019, Loomer uploaded a video about Omar, blaming her and all Muslims for the September 11 attacks and asserting that "Muslims should not even be allowed to seek positions of political office in this country."[65]

Right Wing Watch reported in February 2019 that donations solicited by Loomer were going to the address of The United West, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-Muslim hate group.[75][76][57] The Council on American–Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, has also described The United West as islamophobic.[75]

Loomer has promoted various conspiracy theories, mostly related to mass shootings. She has falsely claimed that school shootings in February 2018 in Parkland, Florida and in May 2018 in Santa Fe, Texas were staged, and that the perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas shootings was affiliated with ISIS.[77][78][79] Loomer claimed on Twitter that crisis actors were used for the Santa Fe school shooting, prompting concerns about the amplification of misleading information and conspiracy theories by troll farms and social bots.[60][79]

In July 2018, Loomer promoted the false narrative that a man arrested with bomb-making equipment and illegal weapons had been a "leftist antifa terrorist."[80] CNN reported that the man in question appeared to be a conservative based on his Facebook profile.[80]

During the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts, Loomer tried to spread the conspiracy theory that the bombing attacks were a "false flag" operation orchestrated by Democrats.[81][82][83]