Maryland’s GOP AG nominee called 9/11 an 'inside job': report

01 August 2022

Sunday, September 11 will mark the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Long before far-right conspiracy theorists were promoting outlandish conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, George Soros or President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, they were promoting conspiracy theories about 9/11 — and one of those conspiracy theorists, according to CNN, was Michael Peroutka, the Republican nominee for Maryland attorney general.

Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN’s KFile report that in October 2006, the month after 9/11’s fifth anniversary, Peroutka pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories on “The American View,” a show he co-hosted at the time. Peroutka told listeners, “What happened on 9-1-1, I told you that I had been doing some research and watching some videos. I said that if the buildings in New York City, the World Trade Center buildings, came down by demolition charges — that is to say if there was this evidence that there was that something was preset there — then the implications of that are massive.”

Peroutka also told “American View” listeners, “The other thing that just is so striking to me, I can’t get it out of my brain, and that is the vision of Building 7 falling faster than the speed of gravity, right? Building 7, which no plane hit. And all of a sudden, Building 7 falls, very consistent with what they call-controlled demolitions or controlled charges because that building, from the top down, falls faster than if you had thrown a hammer off the top of the building.”

Peroutka claimed that 7 World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001, had been wired with explosives — a conspiracy theory that others on the far right have promoted — and told his audience, “That begs the question that if there are preset charges in Building Seven, what’s to stop there (from) being preset charges in Buildings 1, 2 8, 9, and 27? Are there charges in every building in New York City? Is everyone ready to be brought down whenever some elite bureaucrat decides that he’s gonna pull it?”

In 2004, Peroutka was the Constitution Party’s presidential nominee, and he was endorsed by the ultimate far-right conspiracy theorist: Infowars’ Alex Jones. During the George B. Bush years, Peroutka wasn’t shy about claiming that 9/11 was an “inside job.”

One Republican who clearly isn’t happy that Peroutka has received the GOP’s Maryland attorney general nomination is Gov. Larry Hogan. Commenting on the October 2006 recordings that CNN has unearthed, Hogan — a moderate conservative and non-MAGA Republican — visited Twitter on July 31 and posted, “We know who was responsible for 9/11. Blaming our country for Al-Qaeda’s atrocities is an insult to the memory of the thousands of innocent Americans and brave first responders who died that day. These disgusting lies don’t belong in our party.”

Peroutka is now running against Rep. Anthony Brown, the Democratic nominee for Maryland attorney general — and Brown will have plenty of information to use against him, including his involvement in the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has slammed as a hate group.

Maryland’s GOP attorney general primary wasn’t the only race in which a far-right conspiracy theorist prevailed. The state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee is “Stop the Steal” candidate Dan Cox, who Hogan has been railing against. Hogan has also slammed the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) for promoting Cox in the primary; the DGA believed that in a state as blue as Maryland, Cox would be easier to defeat.

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