In the months that followed, right-wing media ran wild with speculation that Reid was lying about his injuries -- on the March 27 edition of his radio program, Rush Limbaugh claimed Reid was “behaving like somebody who may have been beaten up.” Breitbart.com published an “investigation” into Reid's story, going so far as to obtain “a copyrighted digital image” of the model floor plan of Reid's home is based on, and claiming it had “uncovered facts that appear to discredit Reid's version of the home exercise,” such as the distance between his shower door and his bathroom cabinets. John Hinderaker, who runs the conservative Powerline blog, helped spearhead the conjecture. Only four days after Reid's injuries were reported, Hinderaker noted that "[s]ome are speculating that he had a run-in with Las Vegas underworld characters," though admitting there “is zero evidence for that.” On March 28, Hinderaker asked: “Was the Senate Majority Leader in the pocket of the Mafia? That seems like a question worth exploring.”

With the right-wing rumor mill churning, a Las Vegas man has come forward saying he duped the conservative talking heads with phony rumors about Reid. Lawrence Pfeifer told the Las Vegas Sun on April 26 that he “started a false rumor that the injuries suffered by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid several months ago were the result of an attack by Reid's brother ... after becoming appalled that right-wing political blogger John Hinderaker published a rumor that Reid's injuries stemmed from an assault by a Mafia enforcer.” Using the name Easton Elliott in his dealings with Hinderaker, “he pitched his fake story about the Reid brothers' supposed fight to Hinderaker, author of the Power Line blog, to test whether the blogger would publish it.”