The past few years have seen a surge of very online grifters among both liberals and conservatives. In fact, there's an entire roster of self-styled activists and reporters who are eagerly trying to make a name for themselves by going all in with the alt-right. This includes rubes like Jacob Wohl and Laura Loomer. If you're lucky, you'll have never heard of Loomer before—so far, her best-known claim to fame involved handcuffing herself to the door of Twitter's office for a couple hours to protest getting banned from the platform for constantly posting rank anti-Muslim comments. Most recently, she climbed the fence of Nancy Pelosi's California home to prove that the U.S. needs a border wall because...the fence didn't keep her out?

In a lengthy story on social-media platforms and right-wing groups last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter's decision to boot Loomer was actually due to pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In the Journal's words, CAIR executive director Zahra Billoo led a campaign of complaints and "behind-the-scenes discussions" with Twitter after Loomer claimed that newly elected representative Ilhan Omar wanted to implement sharia law in the U.S.

After that, the conservative-media ecosystem took over. Breitbart and Gateway Pundit ran the story, usually with variations on the theme "Muslim group forces Twitter to ban Jewish woman," and aforementioned rubes like Jacob Wohl and Jack Posobiec did the same, all citing the Journal. The report seemed to confirm long-held fears among online conservatives, namely that when social-media companies moderate or remove hate speech and white supremacist content and conspiratorial nonsense like Infowars, it's all part of a shadow campaign to silence people on the right.

There's one small problem, though. It looks like the story is bunk.

According to the site Right Wing Watch, Loomer believed she was the target of a CAIR-led smear campaign because she was pranked. Nathan Bernard and Chris Gillen of Bernard Media, a group that trolls right-wing media figures, claimed to be Twitter employees and got in touch with Loomer to "[offer] deadpan confirmations of all conspiracy theories Loomer suggested to them about Muslim groups’ responsibility for her suspension."

“She didn’t verify who I am once. Never did she make an attempt,” Gillen said. “Everything I gave her as ‘info,’ she took as gospel. She hasn’t batted an eye or questioned anything that I said, ever.”

In a recorded phone call Bernard shared with us, Loomer expressed her willingness to leverage all means possible to retaliate against Twitter.