The Daily Beast has uncovered the man responsible for posting a video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that had been altered in a way that suggested that she was slurring her words. The video sparked a heated debate over what certain social media sites would and would not allow to be posted, and was denounced by Hillary Clinton as “sexist trash.”
The poster, this new report reveals, is a Bronx man who pled guilty in 2017 to a misdemeanor domestic battery charge.
Shawn Brooks, who posted the video to several channels, denies being the creator of the actual clip. He does, however, manage two websites where the video first appeared — Politics WatchDog and AllNews 24/7 — where the likes of Rudy Giuliani and James Woods first noticed it, helping it to go viral.
As the article notes, some details certainly suggest that whoever posted the video was also involved with its creation:
Fifteen minutes after that, the same doctored video appeared on a second Facebook page Brooks manages, AllNews 24/7. This clip was identical to the Politics WatchDog video on every way, except that it didn’t carry the Politics WatchDog branding that was superimposed over the earlier video. Whoever posted it had access to the director’s cut.
While Brooks is passionate about both conservatism and his New England Patriots fandom, the article cites another possible motivation for his handling of this viral video: “In the first hint at a possible motive for the Pelosi smear, Brooks volunteered that the video brought in nearly $1,000 in shared ad revenue.”
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