In messages released Thursday by CBS News and the Washington Post, Thomas urged then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to consider the allegations made by Steve Pieczenick, a little-known conspiracy theorist whose ideas are often very far-fetched. and for Alex Jones. . Thomas seemed to have fully embraced Pieczenik’s claims in her writings, including the idea that Trump’s election defeat was indeed a ploy to trap Democratic voter fraud. “If you believe what Steve Pieczenik has to say, you have completely lost touch with reality,” said Jordan Holmes, a comedian who follows InfoWars and his guests, including Pieczenik, on the Knowledge Fight podcast. Thomas and Pieczenik did not respond to a request for comment. Pieczenik has a history of lying and often claims to have worked in the entire national security bureaucracy — including secret positions, which make it difficult to discern what is true about his identity. He appeared in the media in the late 1980s as a specialist in hostage psychology. In the 1990s, Pieczenik released a series of novels with national security thriller author Tom Clancy. Whatever Pieczenik had in control began to slip away decades ago when he first appeared on InfoWars. Pieczenik became known for claiming that a tragic event, often a mass shooting, was in fact a false flag event or even a completely fake one. He has claimed that the 9/11 attacks, the shootings in Sandy Hook and Pearl Harbor were all fake flags. Among other allegations, Pieczenik insists he once arrested Pope Francis. His stories were so wild that they became too much for Jones. After claiming that the mass attack in Las Vegas in 2017 that killed 60 people was fake, for example, Jones appeared to temporarily prevent him from plugging in. All this has given him the reputation of a loose cannon even with the already outrageous standards of InfoWars green room. “Pieczenik keeps hitting the ball out of the fences every time, which means he sometimes goes too far,” Holmes said. “And when that happens, he ends up wearing the backburner for a while.” While Jones distanced himself from Pieczenik following allegations of shootings in Las Vegas, Pieczenik reappeared a few years later as a “vector” to advance QAnon claims on InfoWars, according to Holmes. He also became a key figure in the show in the 2020 election, ready to launch the kind of crazy optimism for Trump supporters that Ginny Thomas later repeated to Trump’s chief of staff. Two days after the election, Thomas texted Meadows a video of Pieczenik appearing on InfoWars’ “War Room.” While the YouTube video he sent to Meadows has been deleted, other copies posted on far-right YouTube alternatives reveal that the video was about Pieczenik’s claim that the election was a ploy to catch Democrats. In the video, a Hawaiian Pieczenik dressed in a shirt tells InfoWars host and future Jan 6 defendant Owen Shroyer about how secret watermarks will be used on ballots to find fake ballots and arrest top liberals. Pieczenik predicted that the arrests would begin within days. “You see a complicated sting operation started by Trump,” Piezenik said. “I’m just a humble villager in this game.” Thomas seems to have found solace in Pieczenik’s claim that Trump did not really lose the election. “I hope this is true. “I have never heard anything like this before, or even a hint,” Thomas wrote to Meadows. “Possible???” Thomas echoed Pieczenik’s other claims, telling Meadows that military “white hats” – a QAnon term for pro-Trump forces in the federal government – had been deployed in key states. It is not clear how Thomas first encountered Pieczenik’s work. But her praise for his apparently ridiculous allegations demonstrates the power of conspiracy theories in Trump’s inner circle. “It’s so funny how crazy this guy is,” Holmes said. “But at the same time it pulls these weird people [psychological operations] for the last 50 years, and it seems to have had a huge impact on people. “
