Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist, provocateur and self-described investigative journalist, reportedly had her media credentials to cover the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) revoked Saturday after harassing several journalists.
Ms. Loomer, 25, shared video of her surrendering a laminated CPAC media badge to a security official shortly before President Trump spoke on the final day of the annual event near Washington, D.C.
“CPAC banned me from watching @realdonaldtrump’s speech and revoked my media credentials,” Ms. Loomer said on social media.
Representatives for the conference did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Previously associated with Rebel Media, a Canadian far-right media outlet, and Project Veritas, the hidden-camera investigative outfit operated by conservative activist James O’Keefe, Ms. Loomer has staged a series of recent headline-grabbing stunts targeting the likes of Twitter and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, among others.
Ms. Loomer famously handcuffed herself to Twitter’s offices after being banned from the platform in November 2018, and in January she hopped the fence outside a home belonging to Ms. Pelosi, the speaker of the House, to protest her stance on immigration.
More recently, Ms. Loomer repeatedly caused scenes at CPAC in the conference’s first couple days. She co-hosted a press conference on Thursday at CPAC to publicly accuse Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat, of marrying her own brother as part of a purported fraud scheme prior to her career in politics, and on Friday she was spotted repeatedly confronting and heckling several credentialed reporters seriously covering the event.
“Loomer was chasing him around and trying to yell at him but because she was in the press area she couldn’t yell super loudly,” writer Molly Jong-Fast told Washingtonian about an incident she witnessed involving Ms. Loomer and a CNN reporter. “She really did come after him and did not go away.”
“She started following me around and accusing me of slandering her for calling her an anti-Muslim extremist, which she is,” added HuffPost reporter Christopher Mathias.
Ms. Loomer was suspended from Twitter late last year after smearing Ms. Omar, a Somali-American and Muslim, as anti-Semitic and supportive of Sharia law and female genital mutilation. She was banned by ride-sharing platforms Uber and Lyfy in 2017 after ranting on social media against Muslims, and last month she as punted from PayPal for, according to the payment processing serving, clashing with its “core values.”
She did not immediately return a message seeking further details.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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