A Nevada Congressional GOP candidate is suing his former opponent, claiming he’s responsible for creating deepfaked audio of him and calling him a “sexual predator and deviant” who “seeks out incestuous relationships” with women and their teenage daughters on a website set up to smear him in the run-up to the election.
John Lee filed the complaint on Monday, one day before the election, accusing his primary election opponent and far-right politician David Flippo and political blogger Lou Colagiovanni of defamation, as first reported by the Nevada Independent. The complaint claims that Flippo’s campaign representatives approached Lee’s in December 2023, and Flippo’s campaign admitted that they listened to the audio file. Lee’s complaint goes on to claim that Colagiovanni approached Flippo’s team with the file, and offered to sell it to them for $20,000.00. Flippo then used the file to create and publish “the false and offensive Website,” Lee claims.
As the Independent notes, Colagiovanni helped uncover Anthony Weiner’s sex scandal.