As a general rule, I like to keep my journalistic nose out of politics. I often let talking heads be talking heads and decide whether I want to listen (or not), since I have my political convictions, and few — if any — things will change them. Privately, of course, I’ll share my opinion with those I respect and trust, but publicly, I tend to not even bother.

But after listening to Louise Mensch this morning, I have to break my own protocol and speak out.

For those of you who don’t know who or what I’m talking about: Louise Mensch is, according to the New Republic, good at three things: chick lit, marrying music managers, and quitting a political career. Under her maiden name, Louise Bagshawe, she wrote a series of novels with such hilariously awful titles as A Kept Woman, Glitz, and Glamour (complete with the tagline “an irresistibly juicy novel about three powerful women — once best friends, now deadly rivals”).

After she finished insulting the collective IQ of the world’s female population, Louise Mensch founded a conservative political blog, Heat Street, quit her job as a member of British Parliament (representing the district of Corby), and married Peter Mensch, a music manager whose best known client is Metallica.

And all of this, standing alone, is good and fine. However, when she starts to make unverified claims about the Trump administration, we — as members of The Resistance — need to pause and think about what she’s doing, why she’s saying it, and how her words can have terrible consequences for our movement, especially after it has already achieved so much.

it is no surprise that an anti-Semite and cop killer, @lsarsour, also hates FGM victims. Hate is hate is hate. I stand with @NYPDnews pic.twitter.com/rN23pTxoj2 — Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 19, 2017

When I first heard the name Louise Mensch, I decided to visit her Twitter to see what, precisely, she was going on about. And while some of her claims had a basis in fact, there were more than a few that either drew a false conclusion or — to put it mildly — were bald-faced lies.

When I questioned her on these claims, she accused me of being a “Russian spy” (I then countered about her well-documented drug addiction that, by her own admission, messed up her brain), causing members of The Resistance whom I’d respected dearly to suddenly pile on me, accusing me of not doing my research on the wonderful things that Louise Mensch did for “the movement” and was basically made to feel as though my voice wasn’t valued.

The only people who believed me were a few close friends that I knew in real life. They promised to hear me out because they knew my judgment about political figures was rarely, if ever, off. I then informed them that if I was wrong, I would gladly apologize publicly and privately to all involved — but if I was right, I would publish a story of my findings.

Wow @Jaketapper thank you for exposing this to anybody who thought cop-killer @lsarsour was a feminist. Sorry @ayaan pic.twitter.com/uRxzhhStwK — Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 19, 2017

The New Republic, as I mentioned earlier, was the first to call out Louise Mensch on her ridiculous nonsense.

Simply put, the respected political outlet questioned why someone who isn’t a journalist — and someone who, up until that point, had no credits to her name that merited her voice to be one worthy of respect — would suddenly have access to all of this highly sensitive political information.

“Louise Mensch doesn’t know anything about the Russia investigation. No one sane would leak any valuable information to a person who isn’t a journalist and whose only moment of public self-awareness occurred in 2012, when she appeared on the BBC’s Question Time and announced: “I did serious drugs and it messed with my head.”

I read the implication of this screenshot natsec tweeps send me as "dnc system designers provided a back door"? pic.twitter.com/t67WvOVhaT — Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 16, 2017

As she became known as a serious voice in The Resistance, the Atlantic also started calling out Louise Mensch and, by extension, The Resistance itself, claiming that the left had “lost its mind.”

“People like Mensch, Claude Taylor, Andrea Chalupa, Eric Garland, and Leah McElrath feed their followers a steady diet of highly provocative speculation, rumor, and innuendo that makes it sound as if Trump’s presidency—and, really, the entire Republican Party—is perpetually on the verge of a spectacular meltdown. The most prolific of the conspiracy-mongers tend to focus on the Russia scandal, weaving a narrative so sensationalistic and complex that it could pass for a Netflix political drama. Theirs is a world where it is acceptable to allege that hundreds of American politicians, journalists, and government officials are actually secret Russian agents; that Andrew Breitbart was murdered by Vladimir Putin; that the Kremlin has ‘kompromat’ on everyone, and oh-by-the-way a presidency-ending sex tape is going to drop any day now.”

And then, of course, came the photo of Louise Mensch getting chummy with Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right provocateur whose “career highlight” included defending pedophilia.

The kicker to it all: The photo was taken inside Trump Tower in New York City after Trump won the election. Shortly after this, Louise Mensch started coming up with her ridiculous conspiracy theories about the Republican Party and Donald Trump.

And this is to say nothing of the various times she’s doxed people (that is, disclosed their private information without their permission) whom she feels are “Russian spies” (but are actually ordinary Americans who simply point out her hypocrisy and lies).

Anime Right News has been pointing out this horrifying trend by Louise Mensch, and also pointing out that Twitter — ever the bastion of intelligence — is doing absolutely nothing about it.

“Louise Mensch has been directing targeted harassment against a multitude of users on Twitter, bringing her friends into the fray alongside her. This activity has not been dealt with by the platform’s staff despite it being against the Twitter Rules, a blatant double standard, as well as a continuation of the mockery of any remaining legitimate investors by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.”

Conveniently, the accounts who reported Louise Mensch for doxing and targeted harassment are now suspended, while Mensch is still free to continue her campaign of harassment unchecked and unabated.

This guy was at the #altright rally with @Cassandrarules of Russia's @SputnikInt yesterday. Left with her. anyone recognize him? pic.twitter.com/NdxMGAdF9u — Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) April 10, 2017

Those who defend Louise Mensch cite the fact that she was right about the FISA warrant situation (in which, according to the New York Times, the Justice Department obtained a court-approved wiretap of Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, after he was suspected of being a Russian spy), but as an astute British Twitter user remarked, “a broken clock is right twice a day.”

Her latest “pinned tweet,” issued today, is all the more reason to speak out against her because she is not a legitimate voice of The Resistance.

My sources say the death penalty, for espionage, being considered for @StevenKBannon. I am pro-life and take no pleasure in reporting this. — Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 19, 2017

Note how carefully Louise Mensch worded this tweet. She starts out with “my sources,” using the so-called “journalism shield” as a weapon to frame the statement as though it was coming from a third party (even though it likely, as was proven above, didn’t) so she didn’t have to be responsible for the content. And, if ever brought up in a court of law, she didn’t have to disclose the origin of the information because, by virtue of Heat Street and that ridiculous Patribotics blog, she can easily claim to be — and, infuriatingly, succeed in being determined as — a journalist.

Then she went on to talk about espionage charges against Steve Bannon, which is punishable by the death penalty. This is another trick she employed to make you believe that she was speaking the truth: take a true statement, conflate it, and prey on the ignorance of people to believe something that is patently false.

Yes, it’s true that, if convicted of the charge of espionage, you can face the death penalty. However, the scenario presented is not true in the least: Trump and his team are currently being investigated for collusion, not espionage. The two, by definition, are not one in the same: espionage is “the obtaining of information considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information.” The accusation of collusion, also by definition, suggests that there is knowledge on both the giving and the receiving end about the information.

“Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage.”

As sane human beings, we all want nothing more than to have Donald Trump be brought to justice for the crimes he committed against the American people. With the assistance of a foreign power — a hostile foreign power, no less — and aided by gerrymandering and a disinformation campaign spread by Bernie Sanders & his “Bernie Bros” (no supporter of Sanders, to date, can explain why Tad Devine, Sanders’ campaign manager, and Paul Manafort were in Russia at the same time — and neither can they explain the droll little coincidence of why, right after Devine’s visit to Russia, Sanders began knee-capping Hillary Clinton — though it is divine retribution that Sanders and his wife are currently under FBI investigation for fraud), he undermined the sovereignty of the United States to steal an election. He then used the office of the presidency for his own personal gain, to fill the pockets of his rich benefactors at the expense of the American people (so much for “draining the swamp”), while flagrantly ignoring the will of the people, the rule of law, and the Constitution of the United States of America.

All of this is 100 percent true, and a matter of fact. All that’s left is to prove it in a court of law, and Robert Mueller — an attorney who has earned respect from both sides of the political aisle — is working overtime to make that happen.

But there can be no gain in listening to Louise Mensch and her ilk. Stop making Louise Mensch, and other conspiracy theory voices, a part of The Resistance.

We, as members of The Resistance, are better than Louise Mensch. Let’s act like it.

[Featured Image by Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images]