(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Insiders confirm that the media bias present at last week’s debate between GOP nominee Donald Trump and Democrat stand-in Kamala Harris went beyond garden-variety Trump Derangement Syndrome. It may have involved active collusion between the Harris campaign and debated host ABC News/Disney.
According to an ABC News whistleblower who filed an affidavit under penalty of perjury on Sept. 9, one day before the debate, the so-called news organization conducted multiple secret telephone meetings with Harris’s handlers, about which the Trump team was neither present nor aware.
Breaking – Here is the ABC whistleblower affidavit stating how ABC arranged a bias, anti-Trump debate. There are several pages after the verification page that were specifics about the job the whistleblower did and a transcript of the recordings he had made. pic.twitter.com/JM9vvXbxok
— Thera (@Tamor12) September 15, 2024
“The Harris campaign received particular accommodations, including, but not limited to, the providing of a podium significantly smaller than that used by Donald Trump, and assurances regarding split-screen television views that would favorably impact Kamala Harris’s appearance relative to Donald Trump,” said the document , which circulated on Sunday via X with the name of the witness redacted.
“It was agreed that Donald Trump would be subjected to fact-checking during the debate, while Kamala Harris would not face comparable scrutiny,” it continued.
The individual, who identified as an ABC News employee of more than 10 years in “various technical and administrative positions” residing in New York, said it was widely known throughout the company that the fact-checking double-standard would occur.
“In fact, Harris campaign required assurances that Donald Trump would be fact checked,” said the whistleblower.
“This was done via multiple communications with the Harris campaign whereas the Trump campaign was not included in the negotiations,” the affidavit said. “To my understanding, [although] any rules negotiations and conversations pertaining to the debate should have had both the Trump and Harris campaign involved, the Harris campaign had numerous more calls regarding the debate rules without the Trump campaign aware or on the call.”
Indeed, Trump received five “fact checks”—some of which themselves proved false or lacking substantiation, while Harris received none.
The hostile conduct of the two moderators—David Muir and Linsey Davis—put Trump on the defensive for most of the evening and unable to press Harris on her record.
Although the two asked loaded questions about Harris’s race, the outcome of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 uprising, among several other topics perceived as favorable to the Democratic talking points, the witness said significant stipulations were put limiting what they could ask Harris about:
- “No questions regarding the perceived health of President Joe Biden,” which Harris was complicit for months—if not years—in covering up as he pursued the presidential nomination, only to have party elites force him out of the race
- “No inquiries related to her tenure as Attorney General in San Francisco”—ostensibly the whistleblower was referring to both her terms as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California. Harris has boasted of both of these, making the restriction on questions about her record seem particularly perplexing.
- “No questions concerning her brother-in-law, Tony West, who faces allegations of embezzling billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and who may be involved in her administration if elected”—shockingly, West’s name has not appeared thus far in any notable media reports despite the seriousness of the allegations.
The witness went on to note that they had sent a certified letter to House Speaker Mike Davis and a FedEx package to their own house, delivered on Sept. 10, which “will remain unopened for potential investigative purposes” to confirm that the affidavit was issued prior to the debate.
Moreover, “I have secretly recorded several conversations that will prove that the Harris Campaign insisted upon not only the Fact Checking of Donald Trump, but also insisted on what questions were not to be asked under any circumstances or else the Harris campaign would decline to participate in the debate.”
The individual indicated that they were not a Trump supporter, but that the culture of bias and corporate influence on news coverage had grown toxic over the past two decades, since ABC News was first acquired by Disney.
“It is my belief that contemporary news organizations, including ABC News, no longer adhere to impartiality,” said the affidavit.
“The influence of commercial interests and substantial donors appears to affect news presentation, resulting in selective reporting and biased narratives,” it continued. “I have personally witnessed news stories being cut from programming and not reported at all due to the influence of certain corporations linked to our parent company…”
Several conflicts of interest involving key players in the debate have previously been noted.
For instance, top Disney executive Dana Walden, who oversaw the debate, was identified as a major Harris donor and longtime friend.
Reports also indicated that Davis, who bitterly scowled at Trump while delivering questions, was a fellow sorority member with Harris in the Alpha Kappa Alpha organization.
While the two attended different universities and at different times, Davis has remarked in the past on the bond of sisterhood between them, noting the symbolism of the jewelry that Harris wore to the 2021 inauguration.
Debate conflict of interest with ABC moderator Linsey Davis CONFIRMED. She is a sorority sister of Kamala Harris, and even confirmed it on a live broadcast 3 1/2 years ago. pic.twitter.com/eoJihVpZp1
— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) September 12, 2024
Moreover, a picture that showed Walden and Davis posing with Harris gives the perception of unseemliness, sufficient to be considered a violation of journalism ethics under the circumstances and to cast aspersions on the independence and objectivity of ABC News even without the affidavit to confirm the obvious.
Davis earlier acknowledged that the two-tiered fact-checking was predetermined and that newsroom operatives had been dispatched specifically for the purpose of undermining Trump’s claims in advance of the debate, Fox News reported.
While several polls—also from biased media outlets, such as CNN—suggested in the immediate aftermath that Harris has “won” the debate and received a significant polling boost as a result, the distrust in the media, which had already aroused significant suspicious about the authenticity of the Harris campaign, is likely to be the more enduring effect.
Harris has regularly refused interviews, and has put severe limitations on media access. Nonetheless, she was said to have bombed her first major sit-down interview, admitting among other things that her values had not changed since the 2019 democratic primary debates, when she proudly espoused views deemed too radical even for Democrats.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
