Jim Hoft — founder of Gateway Pundit, a conservative site that has previously shared false stories — was slated to speak on a panel on "Social Media Censorship." | Ben Jackson/Getty Images Speaker pulled from panel alongside CPAC over Florida shooting controversy

A speaker has been pulled from a panel planned to coincide with the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference after his website propagated evidence-free theories about survivors of last week's Florida high school shooting, a representative for the group organizing the discussion said Wednesday.

Jim Hoft, founder of Gateway Pundit, a conservative site that has previously shared false stories, was slated to speak on a panel on "Social Media Censorship." The panel was organized by the think tank American Principles Project and other groups and was to occur on the sidelines of the annual summit of conservative political figures on Friday.


American Principles Project's executive director, Terry Schilling, said Wednesday that Hoft was pulled from the lineup after Gateway Pundit suggested without evidence that students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were coached to criticize President Donald Trump's response to the shooting.

“The reason that Jim Hoft is not allowed to be on this panel is because of his unfair and distracting coverage of the Florida shooting," Schilling said.

Hoft claimed Wednesday that CPAC had moved to "censor" his voice by canceling his participation, but APP later announced the event would go on without him.

"The topic of censorship of conservative views by big tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter — especially in the wake of last night’s #TwitterLockout — is very important," Schiller said in a statement, referring to the recent purge of social media accounts on the network. "We will be holding the panel as scheduled."

Earlier this week, Gateway Pundit published an article that baselessly claimed that a shooting survivor, David Hogg, was "coached" to attack the president. Hogg and students from the Parkland high school have gained prominence in the past week as advocates against gun violence.

The Gateway Pundit article said Hogg had been "astonishingly articulate and highly skilled at propagating a new anti-Conservative/anti-Trump narrative behind the recent school shooting." The site suggested that Hogg was critical of Trump because his father is a former FBI agent.

Trump has criticized the FBI's response to the Parkland shooting, suggesting agents missed signals that the alleged gunman had the potential to carry out an attack because they were "spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign."

Donald Trump Jr., the president's son, liked several posts on Twitter on Tuesday that questioned the motives of the students, including one linking to Gateway Pundit's article.

Hogg told BuzzFeed the stories were "a testament to the sick immaturity and broken state of our government."

Schilling said Gateway Pundit's actions were not representative of conservative ideals.

"That’s not what conservatism is about," he told POLITICO. "Conservatism is about arguments and ideas. We’re sticking to policy, and we’re going to have a high-minded discussion."

