I Read Stochastic Terrorist Laura Loomer's Deposition
How a Trump insider justified targeting me.
A newly filed deposition in a Florida defamation case reveals that when self-described white nationalist Laura Loomer targeted me on August 12 of last year, she was operating with the privileged access of a campaign insider, flying on Donald Trump's private plane and functioning as a key, if unofficial, media surrogate.
The testimony comes from Loomer's own sworn deposition in her lawsuit against comedian Bill Maher. While the case centers on Maher's on-air comments, the discovery process has forced Loomer to detail, under oath, the precise nature of her relationship with the Trump campaign.
According to the deposition, which was briefly visible on the public docket prior to being sealed, and additional reporting from The Independent, the 228-page transcript paints a picture not of a rogue influencer, but of an operative working in parallel with the campaign's highest levels.
From the deposition, we learn that on August 12, 2024, Loomer was not a formal employee but something more complex and, in many ways, perhaps more useful. Legally, she was an independent journalist operating through her company, Illoominate* Media, Inc. This status, as she confirmed under oath, provided the Trump campaign a crucial layer of legal distance.
Politically, however, the relationship was clearly symbiotic.
The campaign granted her extraordinary access, which she used to generate exclusive content that amplified her own brand.
In return, she has functioned as what The Telegraph has just described as Trump's unofficial "purity enforcer." Her role is to act as a "one-woman wrecking ball," targeting anyone she deems insufficiently loyal to the MAGA movement. She uses her social media platform to create dossiers on her targets, publicly questioning their loyalty and taking credit for multiple firings, thereby pressuring the administration to purge its own ranks. She was, in effect, an external arm for targeted harassment, an integrated actor in an information warfare ecosystem that thrives on plausible deniability.
This was her status on August 12, 2024. The day before, I had posted a pastiche of a WWII-era propaganda poster on X:
For “hatefluencers” like Loomer and Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok, whose brands are built on stoking outrage, attacking a former opposition campaign staffer is a low-risk, high-reward way to generate engagement and signal loyalty to their base. Being a former staffer for Joe Biden's 2020 campaign and a vocal advocate for democratic norms made me a natural target for her purity tests.
The next day, Loomer, from her position as a trusted media ally, reframed my post to her 1.5 million followers accompanied with a screenshot of my account bio as a literal call for violence.
The attack was not isolated; Raichik targeted me and my post on the same day from her Libs of TikTok account (4M+ followers) and coordinated with another individual to link me to Hunter Biden, a continued target of right wing conspiracy theories.
The near-simultaneous signaling from two major right wing influencers suggested a level of coordination intended to amplify the pile-on while maintaining the appearance of disconnection. As with many of her tweets, Loomer's clearly intentional communication was a textbook example of stochastic terrorism.
First, she identified a target, explicitly naming me and my X handle.
Then, she leveraged the vast power imbalance between her follower count and mine to unleash a digital mob. Finally, she demonized me, reframing my symbolic post as a literal and direct threat—a call "to be stabbed"—transforming me from a political opponent into a dangerous individual inciting violence against her followers. In the current political climate, the outcome was foreseeable: a torrent of online harassment, doxxing, and credible death threats. Loomer’s action was not a counter-argument; it was the deliberate creation of a threat environment.
The deposition confirms her access continued at this level for another month. She testified she traveled with Trump and his staff to the presidential debate in Philadelphia on September 10 and to the 9/11 memorial ceremonies in New York and Shanksville on September 11.
Her access was only severed in mid-September 2024.
It wasn’t because of her history of targeted harassment or her attack on me, of course. According to her testimony, Trump's campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, called her and explicitly revoked her access to the plane due to the "media frenzy" and "optics" that followed Bill Maher's on-air segment about her on September 13. As The Independent reported, Loomer claimed in her deposition that Maher's joke—in which he suggested she was in an "arranged relationship" with Trump to "affect the election"—is what ultimately "torpedoed her chance at a White House job." She had become a different kind of PR liability.
The death threats that flooded my socials that week didn't come from a vacuum.
They were the predictable result of a signal from a powerful political actor. The deposition makes clear that the Trump campaign was, at that time, willing to provide the platform and access that made such attacks possible. She was cut loose only when her own PR problems made her a liability. My safety, and the safety of others she targeted, was never part of the calculation.
As a security researcher investigating influence operations, I have observed how these unpredictable, distributed harassment campaigns have the potential to inflict devastating psychological trauma, creating chronic fear, anxiety, and hypervigilance in victims. Through my work documenting these phenomena, which I've written about in pieces like "From SLAPP to SAAPP: Evolving Tactics in Strategic Attacks Against Public Participation," I have seen how these campaigns systematically silence civic engagement by making the personal costs of public involvement unbearably high.
I have witnessed victims experience cascading impacts including professional reputational damage, social isolation, and financial instability.
They are often forced into lifestyle changes, such as relocating or completely withdrawing from online spaces where democratic discourse occurs. What particularly concerns me is how these attacks often extend to family members and associates, creating a chilling effect that deters not only the primary target but also witnesses from participating in essential public discourse. The persistent, searchable nature of these online attacks creates lasting trauma that continues long after the initial campaign, fundamentally undermining a person's ability to participate in the digital civic spaces that are increasingly central to modern democracy.
This is the story of countless individuals in the Democratic ecosystem.
These attacks disproportionately target individuals who represent one or more minority communities, a tactic designed to maximize intimidation. This methodology has become the near-exclusive domain of far-right actors. Subsequently, when observing these tactics in this day and age, it is fair to assume sympathies or alliances with the far-right are at play.
In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Loomer embraced a loaded historical comparison, noting that a friend now calls her "Trump's Rasputin." The choice is revealing. Grigori Rasputin was the mystical faith healer whose personal influence over Russia's last Tsarina was widely seen as a corrupting and destabilizing force that hastened the downfall of the Romanov dynasty. For Loomer to proudly adopt this moniker is a tacit admission that she sees her power not in formal roles or policy, but in her personal, almost mystical, influence over the leader, bypassing and often subverting official structures.
Americans should understand her comparison for what it is: a warning. It signals a comfort with chaos and an aspiration to be the shadowy power behind the throne—a role that, historically, has led to the erosion of formal institutions and sown profound instability. Further, I strongly suspect both Laura Loomer and Chaya Raichik to be unreported agents of a foreign government who should have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) years ago.
The deposition, in the end, is more than just a legal document; it is a partial field manual for modern political warfare.
It shows how a campaign can outsource its dirtiest work to operatives who are kept close enough to be effective but far enough to be deniable. Laura Loomer wasn't cut loose because she was a threat to me, or anyone else; she was cut loose because she became a threat to the campaign's image. The calculation was never about safety or decency. It was about optics.
In that cold calculus lies a severe set of risks to a functioning democracy.
*An earlier version of this story misstated Loomer’s company name as “Illuminate” due to an inaccurate transcription within the deposition.
The correct name is “Illoominate Media, Inc.” This has been updated.
She is Trump's Rasputin and I am sorry she has you in her crosshairs.