Daily Beast reporter Roger Sollenberger, who has been writing about the debunked “sex trafficking” allegations against Congressman Matt Gaetz, declined The National Pulse’s request for comment after his partner Kathleen O’Neill tweeted false information about Mr. Gaetz’s spokesman Harlan Hill. Ms. O’Neill deleted her entire Twitter account early Tuesday.
On Monday, August 2nd Ms. O’Neill posted a tweet shared over a thousand times, alleging that Matt Gaetz spokesman Harlan Hill had been evicted from multiple apartments. She attempted to conflate Mr. Hill’s support for ending the COVID-19 eviction moratorium with his own rental history.
The only problem? Her allegations weren’t true, despite her slew of comments about the public figure.
Mr. Hill has never lived in nor leased the apartments Ms. O’Neill claimed he had been evicted from. The building management confirmed no record of Mr. Hill nor the claimed actions against him.
The incident followed months of false, partisan news reports by Ms. O’Neill’s partner Roger Sollenberger, who at first told The National Pulse that the pair were “work[ing] out our individual responses,” before declining to comment a few minutes later.
Ms. O’Neill – who has worked on stories with Mr. Sollenberger at both Buzzfeed at the far-left Salon magazine – removed her tweet, and then deleted her entire account at some point between the afternoon of August 2nd and the morning of August 3rd.
The pair have peddled anti-Trump stories, while Mr. Sollenberger recently took an intense interest in the debunked Congressman Gaetz “sex trafficking” story which a CNN director admitted was Democrat Party “propaganda.”
In a video-taped admission, CNN’s Charlie Chester admitted, “If the agenda say, is to like get, like Matt Gaetz right now, he’s like this Republican. He’s a problem for the Democratic Party because he’s so conservative and he can cause a lot of hiccups in passing of laws and what not. So it would be great for the Democratic Party to get him out… So we’re going to keep running these stories to keep hurting him and make it so that it can’t be buried and just like settled outside court just and like, you know, if we keep pushing that, it’s helping us.”
The National Pulse understands Mr. Sollenberger has been reluctant to run full Gaetz spokesman quotes in his stories, leaving out critical context. Mr. Sollenberger even once floated a wild conspiracy theory that Mr. Hill was funding a press conference by hoaxster Jacob Wohl, who made heinous allegations against Mr. Gaetz, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and National Pulse staff.
More recently, Mr. Sollenberger wrote to Mr. Hill alleging that one of his Instagram stories showed Brexit leader Nigel Farage shooting in the United States. The picture was of a different white man, who looks almost nothing like Mr. Farage.
UPDATE: Last week Sollenberger took this image off Harlan’s Instagram and claimed it was of Nigel Farage at a shooting range in America. This isn’t Nigel, lmao. @thedailybeast isn’t sending its best. pic.twitter.com/ySWOnOGK4j
— Raheem. (@RaheemKassam) August 2, 2021
The National Pulse understands Mr. Hill is seeking legal counsel for what he believes to be defamatory and false statements designed to cause material harm to him and his business.
The initial allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz came five months ago, and as yet the Congressman from Florida’s 1st Congressional District has no named nor on-the-record accusers. No charges have been filed.
Mr. Sollenberger declined to comment.
Disclosure: The National Pulse declares an interest in this story due to the friendship between Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam and Logan Circle Group chief Harlan Hill.
