Sinclair Broadcast Group aired live interview of a conspiracy theorist it previously scrubbed from its programming

Sinclair anchor Jan Jeffcoat failed to inform viewers of Larry Klayman's extremist history

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

Updated

Sinclair Broadcast Group anchor Jan Jeffcoat interviewing Larry Klayman

Update (7/7/21): The National Desk aired another report on July 7 about Klayman’s event, misleadingly portraying the attendees as mainstream conservative political figures and downplaying the extremism of its agenda. For example, the event’s mission statement included a proposal to “clarify that there is no legal right to an abortion or for ‘gay marriage’ embodied in the Constitution.” This call to strip rights from women and LGBTQ+ Americans went unmentioned during the report.

From the July 7, 2021, edition of Sinclair Broadcast Group's The National Desk

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s morning news program The National Desk aired an interview with racist conspiracy theorist lawyer Larry Klayman almost a year after the conservative local TV giant had removed an episode of one of its other programs featuring him. Anchor Jan Jeffcoat withheld that information from Sinclair’s audience and also ignored the discredited lawyer’s decades-old history of filing frivolous lawsuits or pushing conspiracy theories -- from ridiculous claims against the Clintons to his embrace of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory against former President Barack Obama.

According to a Sinclair press release, The National Desk is broadcast on 68 Sinclair-owned or -operated local TV stations. This misbegotten interview, aired on June 29, was also posted on dozens of Sinclair station websites and shared on the program’s Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Klayman has had such a long and disreputable career of failed legal actions, attention-seeking behavior, and promotion of conspiracy theories that it’s difficult to summarize. But this 2015 Media Matters article captured many of the lowlights:

Klayman is the founder and head of Freedom Watch. He also previously led the conservative group Judicial Watch. In his capacity as a “legal crusader,” the Washington Post described his “record in public interest cases” as “incalculably terrible.”

In the 1990s, Klayman reportedly filed at least 18 lawsuits against the Clinton administration, accusing them of various conspiracies, and has filed “hundreds of lawsuits against federal agencies, White House officials, Cabinet secretaries, judges, journalists, former colleagues, foreign governments, dictators, presidents,” his own mother, and The Washington Post.

The Week explained in 2013 that Klayman, “implied the Clintons orchestrated the murders of several of their associates in the 1990s, a prime reason he has argued Hillary is unfit to be president.”

As reported by The Washington Post, in 2014, Klayman premised a lawsuit on the concept that “The Ebola virus is secretly a biological weapon allowed into the country by the Obama administration to further terrorist interests against Americans of the ‘Caucasian race and Jewish-Christian religion.'” Klayman described President Obama in a lawsuit as “not even a naturalized U.S. citizen and thus is in the United States illegally,” and described Obama's birth certificate as a “fraud.” In order “to maintain the confidence of the American people and for the benefit of the country's democratic system,” Klayman subsequently petitioned the government to “initiate removal and deportation proceedings” against the president. Klayman has referred to President Obama as “mullah in chief” and accused “Obama and his Muslim friends” of “literally ‘making love' with each other.” He called Obama “our first ‘Muslim' president” who “has joined with Palestinians to now knock off Israel.”

In a 2013 protest at the White House, Klayman told the audience that President Obama should “put the Quran down,” “get up off his knees” and “come out with his hands up.”

A month later, Klayman held the “Second American Revolution” rally in Lafayette Park across from the White House, which sought to force the resignation of President Obama and other top Congressional leaders.

Besides Klayman’s embrace of bigoted conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and is a Muslim, he’s also demonstrated a pattern of bigotry against judges involved in his cases. He was once sanctioned and barred from practicing law in New York City after he accused a judge of ruling against him because of the judge’s Asian American heritage. He was also sanctioned in California after “he accused a federal judge of being anti-Semitic toward him and anti-Asian toward his a client.” Klayman also accused a Jewish magistrate in Ohio of being bigoted against him. And in just the past year, he was at least temporarily suspended from practicing law before two different courts in Washington, D.C., due to ethical violations.

Last summer, Klayman was interviewed on the twice-weekly Sinclair program America This Week. But after Media Matters and several news organizations reported on the appearance by Klayman and his COVID-19 conspiracy theorist client, both of whom spread lies about the pandemic, Sinclair announced it would remove the entire episode from its local TV stations and scrubbed the interview from all of its stations’ websites.

Jeffcoat, of course, mentioned none of this history during her interview with Klayman. Instead she gave this deranged conspiracy theorist free rein to promote his extremist anti-government views -- which include creating farcical “citizens grand juries” seeking indictments of government officials based on conspiracy theories. And during the interview, Klayman twice portrayed his “Third Continental Congress” -- which, unlike the genuine historical Continental Congresses, is devoid of official state delegates, instead featuring other bigoted conspiracy theorists and worse -- as the only alternative to political violence.

That Sinclair Broadcast Group anchor Jan Jeffcoat would publicize Klayman and his event -- for which he very politely thanked her -- especially while hiding his discredited history represents either an incredible lapse of judgment or a desire by Sinclair to mainstream even the most far-right fringe ideas.

From the June 29, 2021, edition of Sinclair Broadcast Group's The National Desk

JAN JEFFCOAT (ANCHOR) Exactly 245 years after America's Founding Fathers declared independence from Great Britain, one organization is marking the event by hosting a Third Continental Congress right on Independence Hall in Pennsylvania. Joining us right now to share more about this event is the chairman and general counsel of Freedom Watch, Larry Klayman. Larry, welcome to The National Desk. Good morning. 

LARRY KLAYMAN (FREEDOM WATCH): Jan, thank you. It’s my honor.

JEFFCOAT: So your organization is hosting this in Philadelphia on July 5 and 6. What inspired you to create this event? 

KLAYMAN: The state of the nation. We've seen rank corruption in all three branches of government. We’ve seen the judiciary -- I'm a trial lawyer of 44 years, Jan -- and the judiciary doesn't represent the American people anymore. They couldn't even resolve the last election in a way that satisfied most Americans. It was Thomas Jefferson who said that judges would become -- particularly federal judges -- despots and tyrants, causing us to shed the blood of patriots and tyrants yet again about every 20 years. We don't want to see that. We want to see a peaceful and legal revolution.

And I've written a book, It Takes a Revolution: Forget the Scandal Industry, which you can get at all major booksellers, and I'm pointing out ways that we can take our country back to the vision of our Founding Fathers. And that's the reason for this Third Continental Congress. It was the Second Continental Congress 245 years ago, on July 4, that implemented our Declaration of Independence. We're going to have delegates from most states. We have speakers like Alan Keyes, the great Alan Keyes; vision of a founding father, of Pat Boone; of Joe Arpaio -- Sheriff Arpaio. And we're going to sit down and talk about how we fix this country and actually take action, not just words. We're tired of words. We want to see action. 

JEFFCOAT: And Larry, you believe the majority of citizens in this country are not being represented by those who hold power in government. So what are you hoping to accomplish during this? 

KLAYMAN: What we're going to accomplish is start a groundswell. If you go back to 1776, the years leading up to it, there weren't that many people who wanted to secede from the Crown. Now, we're not asking for secession or anything to that effect, but we need to mobilize the people, we need to educate them, and we need to show them that they can move forward on their own. For instance, the legal system -- we have to take our own legal system back. If you go to Freedomwatchusa.org, we have citizens' grand juries, which are legal, which in fact Justice Scalia in 1992 in a case United States v. Williams, said the grand jury belongs to the American people. We don't have a justice system that really metes out the law. We don't have judges who are neutral and independent. We need to elect them, not have them put in place through campaign contributions, which is what happens now. We need a Justice Department which is independent from the other three branches of government. These are the kinds of things that we need to move forward on. And we're going to talk about cleaning up some loopholes in our Constitution that we can certainly do to clear things out with regard to the Supreme Court, because they don't represent us anymore either. 

JEFFCOAT: Larry, can you talk us through why it's important to have this forum where people can openly express their thoughts to share changes they wish to see within our own government? 

KLAYMAN: Well particularly because, you know, the so-called cancel culture, that's a word that came out that’s being used -- it’s worse than that. It's total censorship. It’s everything from Big Tech to large corporations that will not allow people to speak. If they do, such as with Major League Baseball, you know they harmed a city like Atlanta. You've got companies and labor unions and all aspects of societies that are working against allowing the American people to speak. It's now time for us to speak out, and that's the reason for this.

And these speakers and delegates, they’re courageous people. Because people are afraid to come forward now because of retaliation. You see, an FBI which is being used to intimidate the people -- most of the people in January 6 were there peacefully and legally, yet they're fanning out now, they've arrested over 500 people, they are indicting some. I have some clients that are at risk. And the American people feel afraid to even express themselves. And this Third Continental Congress gives them that opportunity. 

And, you know, if you go back to 1776, July 4 -- the event is July 5 and 6, I hope people will come. You can go to Freedomwatchusa.org. It will be live-streamed, if you’re a veteran or student you get in free. But if you go back to that time -- and it was the printing press, it was the ability to communicate, to unite, which caused the colonies to rise up to take on a despot king. And if you look at where we are today, that king was far less radical than the people who have seized control of our so-called government today. We're in a socialist mode. We’re heading towards potential communism, rise of atheism. These are the things that need to be discussed because the majority of Americans will not accept this. 

JEFFCOAT: All right, very quickly, Larry, July 5 and 6 as you mentioned in Philadelphia. If someone’s interested in going, again, where can they get the information? 

KLAYMAN: You go to Freedomwatchusa.org. We hope you’ll come. It's also going to be livestreamed at Freedomwatchusa.org, if you can't come, or Crowdsourcethetruth.com. And I really thank Sinclair for giving me the opportunity to get the message out, and you too, Jan, for giving me that chance to communicate with the American people with something which is so important.

JEFFCOAT: All right Larry, and we appreciate you joining us this morning right here on The National Desk. Have a good one.

KLAYMAN: You too.