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Scammers Dupe Billionaires Seeking Access to Trump

January 20, 2026 at 1:30 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Bloomberg: “In a post on the venue’s website, the organizers of USA House warned against the purchase of so-called VIP access packages and said the fraudulent sales appear to be widespread this year.”

Filed Under: Dirty Tricks

FBI Scours Its Records to Discredit Trump Opponents

January 18, 2026 at 7:06 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The FBI has had many missions in the more than half-century since its founding director, J. Edgar Hoover, died. It has chased spies, foiled terrorist attacks, ushered in a modern era of innovation and decreased crime rates,” the New York Times reports.

“But under its current chief, Kash Patel, the bureau has added payback to its portfolio. Agents now scour the FBI’s vast holdings to root out negative information about President Trump’s perceived political enemies.”

Filed Under: Dirty Tricks, White House

Prince Andrew to Give Up All Titles

October 17, 2025 at 1:30 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Prince Andrew is set to give up all of his titles, including the Duke of York,” the Telegraph reports.

“The development follows a string of new scandals concerning his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.”

Filed Under: Dirty Tricks, Foreign Affairs

Women Lawmakers More Likely Targets of Deepfake Porn

December 17, 2024 at 4:14 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Women in Congress are more likely to be victims of deepfake pornography than their male counterparts,” USA Today reports.

Filed Under: Dirty Tricks

The GOP False-Flag Effort to Turn Off Democratic Voters

November 15, 2024 at 11:00 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Muslims in Michigan began seeing pro-Israel ads this fall praising Vice President Kamala Harris for marrying a Jewish man and backing the Jewish state. Jews in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, saw ads from the same group with the opposite message: Harris wanted to stop U.S. arms shipments to Israel,” the Washington Post reports.

“Another group promoted ‘Kamala’s bold progressive agenda’ to conservative-leaning Donald Trump voters, while a third filled the phones of young liberals with videos about how Harris had abandoned the progressive dream. Black voters in North Carolina were told Democrats wanted to take away their menthol cigarettes, while working-class White men in the Midwest were warned that Harris would support quotas for minorities and deny them Zyn nicotine pouches.”

“What voters had no way of knowing at the time was that all of the ads were part of a single $45 million effort created by political advisers to Tesla founder Elon Musk who had previously worked on the presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).”

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

Video of ‘Voter Fraud’ in Georgia Linked to Russia

November 1, 2024 at 2:44 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“A video purporting to depict voter fraud in Georgia is fake and the work of ‘Russian influence actors’ determined to undermine faith in the integrity of next week’s presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday,” the AP reports.

“The announcement that the video was fake represented an effort by the FBI and other federal agencies, four days before Tuesday’s election, to combat foreign disinformation by calling it out rather than letting it spread for days unchecked.”

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

Dirty Tricks in Pennsylvania

October 29, 2024 at 5:44 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Thousands of Pennsylvania voters received a text message this weekend that falsely claimed that they had already voted in the Nov. 5 election,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

Viral Video of Destroyed Ballots Is a Hoax

October 25, 2024 at 9:01 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The Bucks County Board of Elections has asked state and federal law enforcement to investigate a fake video that circulated on social media Wednesday afternoon falsely suggesting county election workers were destroying ballots,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Said the board in a joint statement: “This video is fake.”

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

Dark Money Group Created Fake Kamala Harris ‘Manifesto’

October 24, 2024 at 5:14 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“A Republican organization with ties to Elon Musk has produced an apparently fake manifesto meant to look like Vice President Kamala Harris’ version of the conservative policy initiative Project 2025,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

“The document, called Progress 2028, contains contradictions and distortions of Harris’ positions on issues such as gun control, fracking, and immigration.”

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

Disinformation Has Never Been Worse

October 23, 2024 at 9:00 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “Smears, lies and dirty tricks — what we call disinformation today — have long been a feature of American presidential election campaigns. Two weeks before this year’s vote, however, the torrent of half-truths, lies and fabrications, both foreign and homegrown, has exceeded anything that came before, according to officials and researchers who document disinformation.”

“The effect on the outcome on Nov. 5 remains to be seen, but it has already debased what passes for political debate about the two major party candidates, Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It has also corroded the foundations of the country’s democracy, undermining what was once a shared confidence that the country’s elections, regardless of who won, have been free and fair.”

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

New Jersey Republicans Planted Listening Device

October 21, 2024 at 5:16 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Prosecutors today charged two Readington Township women connected to a faction of the local Republican Party with planting a recording device at a local restaurant to record a private meeting of two elected officials who were their political opponents,” the New Jersey Globe reports.

One of the women was “captured on a security camera placing and retrieving the device near a table” at a local restaurant.

Filed Under: Crime and Punishment, Dirty Tricks

Crunchtime for Election Interference

September 26, 2024 at 5:59 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Federal officials battling foreign interference in the coming election say they are entering what may be the most perilous period of the campaign: October, when the prospect for mischief runs high and the time to react runs short,” the New York Times reports.

“While the Russians make little attempt to hide their support for former President Donald Trump, the Iranians — among Moscow’s most important suppliers in the war in Ukraine — desperately want to stop him from returning to office, and are busy hacking into his campaign and dumping whatever they find, as well as plotting to assassinate him.”

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos

September 7, 2024 at 3:13 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “While the once-staid think tank has received attention recently for Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a future Trump administration that the group funded, it has also made its mark with an aggressive effort to shape public opinion, seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.”

Filed Under: Advocacy, Dirty Tricks

Tennessee Police Department Raided by State Agents

September 5, 2024 at 10:25 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Millersville Police Department on Wednesday, executing a search warrant as the criminal investigation into the troubled agency enters a dramatic new phase,” WTVF reports.

The raid is likely part of a probe into “the possible use of sensitive law enforcement data to dig up dirt on potential political enemies.”

Filed Under: Dirty Tricks

The Hacking of Presidential Campaigns Begins

August 11, 2024 at 7:45 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“For the third presidential election in a row, the foreign hacking of the campaigns has begun in earnest,” the New York Times reports.

“But this time, it’s the Iranians, not the Russians, making the first significant move.”

Washington Post: Experts warn of election disruptions after Trump says campaign was hacked.

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

The Shitpost Election

July 30, 2024 at 7:40 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Casey Newton: “Sharing weaponized misinformation in the form of lazy jokes has quickly come to define the developing presidential campaign between Harris and Donald Trump. Across social networks, Democrats and Republicans are flooding the feed with obviously untrue statements about one another and calling it a joke.”

“Welcome to the shitpost election.”

“To shitpost, of course, is to attempt to derail online discussions by posting fake, outrageous, and often low-quality material. And it is not new to this election. Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey funded a group dedicated to creating shitposts about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. In 2019, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom had to deny that she killed squirrels for fun after a shitpost on the subject went viral.”

“And if the past few days have made anything clear, it’s that political shitposting is not exclusively a province on the right. Anyone who has opened X over the past few days has likely seen dozens of posts ‘joking’ that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance had sex with a couch.”

Filed Under: Dirty Tricks

Sign Snatchers Beware

July 4, 2024 at 6:36 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Political candidates have a new campaign expense: Apple AirTags,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The button-size geotracking device has become a popular tool in the rough-and-tumble world of local elections, where lawn signs often end up stolen, vandalized or run over. Candidates who have grown tired of dirty tricks are hiding AirTags in their signs, leading to digital dragnets when they go missing.”

“Tracking the device’s pings has led to the doorsteps of alleged sign snatchers and, in some cases, candidates’ opponents. The stings have left snatchers dumbfounded. Some have faced charges of theft, criminal mischief and receiving stolen property.”

Filed Under: Dirty Tricks

Misleading GOP Videos Go Viral

June 18, 2024 at 8:16 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“More Americans may think President Joe Biden tried to sit on a nonexistent chair the other day than know the boring truth that there was, in fact, a chair,” NBC News reports.

“The chair-that-was-there was just one of many quick video clips the conservative media ecosystem willed into virality over the past two weeks, leaving fact-checkers and Biden’s team with little chance to catch up.”

“The Republican National Committee, major conservative media outlets and right-wing influencers have succeeded in blasting out videos that they claim show ‘proof’ of Biden’s wandering off, freezing up or even filling his pants with a substance commonly represented by a brown swirl emoji.”

Filed Under: 2024 Campaign, Dirty Tricks

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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