Parler, Donald Trump’s social media site that has been serving as an everyday buffet for brainworms for the past few years, is being sued by its own co-founder and former CEO.
Following the January 6 riots at the Capitol, which was organized in part at Parler’s violent death threat, Amazon Web Services started Parler from its servers and Apple and Google kicked off their respective app stores. The site is now back despite not being able to convince any of the other companies to return it, but CEO John Matze did not return for the second part of the trip. He was forced into a kind of internal dispute with GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, a major investor reportedly personal bankroll the website, and former judge-expert NRATV and co-investor Dan Bongino, whose role is at least in part to encourage his millions of Facebook followers to migrate to a website in which he has a personal financial interest.
The departure did not go well with Bongino accuse Matze to try to sell out the original mission of the site as a utopia about freedom of speech, where almost everything is legal – exactly what the company in trouble in the first place – and Matze tell media Mercer has turned heads to do something about the avalanche of QAnon conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, fascists, racists and other unpleasant zealots taking over the site. Now Matze claims that his 40 percent stake in the company was stolen in a ‘strange and arrogant theft … imagined by oppression, fraud and malice’. according to the Las Vegas Sun.
Matze wrote in the court documents and alleges breach of contract and defamation that Parler was “hijacked to further the personal political interests and personal benefits of the accused rather than to serve as the free platform of expression as originally conceived.” Both Mercer and Bongino are named as accused, along with chief operating officer Jeffrey Wernick and Parler’s new interim CEO, Tea Party activist. Mark Meckler.
Matze wrote in the suit that the company was initially set up with the help of a holding company designed to disguise Mercer’s involvement, and disputes over financial money (in his account, Mercer characterized her 60 percent shareholding as a loan that would have to be repaid). He added that it appears that Mercer lost interest in the site until about November 2020 – it is not clear exactly when, but it would have been sometime Parler logins was rising amid Trump’s allegations, the election was stolen – and that she subsequently refused to act on proposals for stricter moderation following the riots. Per NPR:
“Matze’s proposal was sworn to death, which he considered a rejection of his proposal,” according to the lawsuit.
Matze says in the lawsuit that Mercer brought in allies, including Wernick, to “get him strong out of the company.”
Wernick allegedly threatened Matze with an “avalanche of legal claims and expenses if he faced Mercer,” the lawsuit reads.
According to the case, Wernick told Matze not to consult his own lawyer and threatened that ‘he would be destroyed’ if he did.
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Matze plays himself up to be an innocent patsy in the pack. Court documents allege that it became clear to Matze’s ultimate replacement, Meckler, ‘that Meckler’s efforts were not to grow Parler as a free expression platform, but to trace it back to what Meckler called’ the point of the conservative spear ‘. for a brand of conservatism that matches Mercer’s preferences. Consideration of Parler’s obvious ideological pandering, that it is allegedly trying to entice Trump to register an account promises of an equity stake in the summer of 2020, and what Matze boasted about ban on liberal “trolls” across the site it is difficult to accept the allegation Matze had no idea that his website would be used to seriously advance the right-wing agenda.
Finally, Matze alleges in the lawsuit that Parler’s management smeared him with proposals of misconduct and breach of his obligations as a driver, when the site actually continues to come online again using the technical game plan he developed, just very bad. (Since Meckler “did not have the technical knowledge to operate such a social media platform – and his real role was to simply drive a political agenda, the implementation was not too short,” Matze added.) He also writes that as part of the In Shock, Mercer’s people rated the ‘fair market value’ of its 40 percent stake as a meager one. three dollars.
Maybe about it, we can agree: Parler is worth about $ 7.50, give or take a few dollars, depending on whether it helps provoke another failed uprising successfully.
However, Matze says his share of the internet hellhole is actually worth millions, and that he and Mercer have valued the site at $ 1 billion or more in internal discussions.
The former CEO “looks forward to presenting his claims in court and executing them,” Matze’s attorney, James Pisanelli, told the Sun in a statement.