Laura Loomer in Des Moines, Iowa on January 10, 2024 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
The Washington Post reports it has nailed down confirmation of MAGA influencer Laura Loomer getting paid to make posts, with the help of a former campaign aide to President Donald Trump and three other people familiar with her arrangements.
“The allegations were made by Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign, and three other people who spoke on the condition of anonymity,” reports the Post. “Two of the three people said they had paid Loomer directly to post political messages on her X account, where she has 1.9 million followers. The third said they had overseen clients who paid her to post on the account. The three spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
Additionally, the Post reviewed bank transaction emails and a wire transfer statement that appeared to show four payments totaling more than $60,000 sent to Loomer and a Florida-based company registered in her name, King Breaker Media, since May of last year.
The documents do not specify the purpose of the payments, but two sources confirmed they were for political posts.
“Loomer, one of Trump’s best-known online acolytes, denied to The Post that she is paid to post on social media. She instead described herself as a journalist and activist and disputed the idea that she is an influencer paid to promote any political cause,” The Post explained.
However, the new claims and documentation about the transactional shape of Loomer’s influence business could “add fuel to a growing debate about the little-regulated industry of political messaging on social media, where influencers on bothsides of the aisle have operated in a legal gray area between advocacy and advertising.”
Bruesewitz told the Post that he paid Loomer for tweets last year, saying the money had been sent through his political consulting firm, X Strategies, for posts related to policy issues. But Loomer disputed Bruesewitz’s account and said that his firm contacted her last year offering to pay her for research.
“He paid me to make a one-page research document for him, and then he wanted me to distribute the information. And that’s what I did,” said Loomer, explaining that she was expected to distribute the research either through X “or maybe an article.”
But when asked how that was different from being paid to tweet, Loomer argued that she had been told to create the research document and that Bruesewitz claimed he would be the one to arrange circulating it.
But two of the people speaking with the Post confirmed that Loomer does indeed charge $3,000 to $5,000 per tweet, and sometimes more. Loomer denied the claim.
“The four people who had paid or oversaw payments to Loomer for posting political statements on social media said she is an effective, if sometimes unpredictable, messenger and a key way of trying to get a line directly to Trump,” reported the Post.