Parler, the pro-social media site Donald Trump that served as a sort of brainwashing buffet in recent years, is being sued by its own co-founder and former CEO.
After the January 6 riots at the Capitol, which was partially organized at the site laden with death threats with Parler violence, Amazon Web Services has started Talking from its servers and Apple and Google they launched it in their respective app stores. The site has returned despite failing to convince any of the other companies to let it return, but CEO John Matze did not return in the second leg of the trip. He was forced to engage in some sort of internal dispute with GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, one of the main investors banking personally the site, and far-right NRATV expert and also investor Dan Bongino, whose role seems at least in part to be to urge his millions of Facebook followers to migrate to a place where he has a personal financial stake.
The start did not go well, with Bongino accusing Matze of trying to exhaust the original mission of the site as a utopia of freedom of expression where almost anything legal happens, exactly what it achieved company in trouble first — and Matze telling the media Mercer had turned a blind eye to doing anything about the deluge of QAnon conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, fascists, racists, and other nasty fanatics taking the place. Now Matze claims his 40% stake in the company was stolen in an “extravagant and arrogant robbery … represented by oppression, fraud and malice.” according to the Las Vegas Sun..
Matzo wrote in court records alleging breach of contract and defamation that Parler was “kidnapped to advance the defendants’ personal political interests and personal advantages rather than serve as a platform for free speech as originally conceived.” Both Mercer and Bongino are named defendants in the lawsuit, along with Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Wernick and Parler’s new interim CEO, Tea Party activist Mark Meckler.
Matze wrote on the suit that the company was initially founded with a holding company designed to overshadow Mercer’s stake and quarreled over financing (according to its account, Mercer characterized its 60% stake as a loan that should be repaid). He added that Mercer seemed to lose interest in the site until November 2020, it is not clear exactly when, but it would have been sometime around when Registration for conversations they were growing amid Trump’s claims, the election was stolen and he subsequently refused to commit to the proposals for stricter moderation in the wake of the riots. For NPR:
“Matze’s proposal met with a dead silence, which he considered a rejection of his proposal,” according to the lawsuit.
Matze says in the lawsuit that Mercer brought allies, including Wernick, to “force him out of the company.”
Wernick allegedly threatened Matze with an “avalanche of legal claims and costs if he dared to challenge Mercer,” the lawsuit says.
Wernick, according to the lawsuit, told Matze not to consult his own lawyer and threatened to “get hurt” if he did.
G / O Media may receive a commission
Matze pretends to be himself as a kind of innocent petanque of the dress. Judicial documents state that when he met with his eventual replacement, Meckler, “it became clear to Matze that Meckler’s efforts were not to grow Parler as a platform for free speech, but to redirect him to to what Meckler called the “tip of the conservative spear.” for a mark of conservatism in accordance with Mercer’s preferences. ” Considering the obvious of Speaking ideological pandering, who allegedly tried to entice Trump to register an account at promises of a stake in the summer of 2020, and with what Matze boasted banning liberal “trolls” all over the place, it’s hard to take for granted that Matze had no idea his place would be used to move seriously on the right-wing agenda.
Finally, Matze alleges in the lawsuit that Parler’s management soiled him with suggestions of misconduct and breach of his obligations as a manager, when in fact the site was still recovering in line with the technical game plan he developed, in a very deficient way. (Because Meckler “did not have the technical expertise to run such a social media platform, and his real role was simply to drive a political agenda, implementation was more than absent,” Matze added.) He also writes that as part of the shakedown, Mercer’s people determined that the “fair market value” of their 40 percent stake was petty three dollars.
Maybe in this, we can agree: Talking is worth about $ 7.50, give or take a few dollars depending on whether it helps to successfully provoke another failed insurrection.
Matze, however, says his involvement in the hell of the Internet is actually worth millions, and that in internal discussions, he and Mercer had valued the site at $ 1 billion or more.
The former general manager “hopes to file his claims in court and be vindicated,” a Matze lawyer, James Pisanelli, told Sun.