“Legal BS aside, that election was as crooked as a corkscrew, and everyone with a measurable IQ knows it” – Top comment on the Gateway Pundit statement headlined “Note from the Editor: Legal Update,” in which founder Jim Hoft admits he lied and defamed former Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss when the site claimed they were part of an elaborate conspiracy to steal the 2020 election from the two, almost certainly as stipulated in the otherwise undisclosed terms of the settlement the mother-daughter duo reached with the far right propaganda site on Friday.

“Georgia officials concluded that there was no widespread voter fraud by election workers who counted ballots at the State Farm Arena in November 2020. The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct while working at State Farm Arena on election night. A legal matter with this news organization and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement,” Hoft wrote in the statement, which doesn’t sound anything like an apology or otherwise an expression of regret so much as an acknowledgement that they lost.

Hoft also posted an emotional video monologue on Rumble, titled “A Statement From The Gateway Pundit Founder and Editor Jim Hoft on Recent Developments” in which he did not in any way at all address the settlement so much as list off all the lies and bullshit over the years that he and his site have not been sued for. It’s nine minutes and 33 seconds long. We sat though the whole thing waiting for something, anything about the Freeman-Moss settlement and it did not come, lol.

On one hand the commenter might as well be saying “Legal BS aside, George Santos is innocent of fraud.” Real defiant and noble there bro, as if this legal outcome wasn’t the whole fucking point. On the other we’re stuck hoping that this absolute bare minimum of a non-apology came with an extremely hefty price tag within the terms of the settlement, like Freeman and Moss dinged Hoft for an extra $5 million in exchange for allowing him to duck any direct expression of regret in his “legal update,” plus another million or two for indefinite confidentiality for the terms themselves.

But all we can do is hope. We have no idea what the wages of sin were for Hoft. Just that Freeman and Moss won is going to have to suffice for now. They’re stuck arguing with alcoholic shitbrain Rudy Giuliani over whether four Yankees world championship rings belong to him or if they were gifted to his stupid son and to get him to acknowledge that convicted felon former President Trump owes Rudy $2 million in legal fees so they can collect it as part of the $148 million judgment they won last December. The point is they have a lot going on and it’s not their job to shut Gateway Pundit’s lights off, so nobody should be blaming them for accepting Hoft’s surrender quietly, especially after all the harassment and hateful shit they went through to get to this point.