The CEO of Parler, the conservative app for social media, and his family have been hiding due to death threats and harassment, according to a new court report.
The documents, obtained by Fox News, show that John Matze and his family were targeted by people who published his street address and threatened to enter his front door.
Parler, who is a favorite among Trump supporters, was fired from Apple and Google’s platforms after the riots in Capitol and Amazon removed it from its cloud hosting service, Amazon Web Services.
In response, Parler filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. According to Amazon, Parler’s case had no valid legal basis and claims Amazon employees were threatened and harassed, Fox News reported.
Parler’s attorneys acknowledged some of Amazon’s claims in court documents, but said they were not just Amazon employees under fire.
“Although AWS ‘motion to seal only on its own employees, Parler’s employees were similarly harassed and threatened,” the documentation reads. “Parler CEO John Matze, Jr., stated in his statement in support of Parler’s TRO motion that many Parler employees experience harassment and hostility, fear for their safety and that of their families, and in some cases out of fled their homeland after escaping persecution.
“Matze, while the CEO of the company AWS continues to slander, had to leave his home and hide from his family after receiving death threats and intrusive personal security violations,” the documentation reads.
Matze described his situation to Fox News last week.
“There is a group called UGNazi that is targeting me,” Matze said, referring to hackers who disclosed many of his passwords and personal information online. “They published my street address and threatened to come through my front door.”
Matze said he is worried enough to take refuge with his family and is not sure when he will return home. But he said there was a silver lining to his predicament.
“It probably made me right,” Matze said. “If I were home now, I think my stress levels would have been three times higher … there is at least the saving grace.”