Rightwing podcaster Tim Pool has started attending White House press briefings as the administration seeks to get more questions from the media that are friendly to the administration’s goals while it cuts off access for mainstream news sources. Pool’s attendance is already paying off.

Pool, who has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ statements and whose work has been funded by the Russian government, attended his first press briefing today where he accused other journalists of creating a “hoax” around Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland dad who the Trump administration admitted it had sent to a torture camp in El Salvador through an “administrative error.”

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“Many of the news organizations that are represented in this room have marked in lockstep on false narratives such as the ‘Very Fine People’ hoax, the Covington smear, and now what’s being called the Maryland Man hoax, where an MS-13 gang member adjudicated by two different judges, I believe, is just simply being referred to as ‘a Maryland Man’ over and over again,” Pool asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at today’s briefing. “I’m wondering if you can comment on the unprofessional behavior.”

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Leavitt, like many members of the Trump administration, loves to attack the press, so she took Pool up on the opportunity.

“We certainly welcome diverse viewpoints in this room, which is one of the reasons we have you in here,” she said. “We welcome unbiased journalists who really care about the truth and the facts and the accuracy.”

“The press in this room have this story wrong,” she said, referring to Abrego Garcia’s case. “We were always right. The president was always on the right side of this issue to deport this illegal criminal from our community.”

“And it is despicable to see the media continue to refer to this individual as someone who is just a peaceful man living his life in Maryland.”

Despite the fact that he was never convicted of a crime, Leavitt said that Abrego Garcia “is, was, and always has been, an illegal criminal, an MS-13 gang member, and a designated foreign terrorist.”

Last year, Pool was one of several rightwing media personalities found to have been taking money from Russian state media employees to push rightwing propaganda and disinformation to American audiences, according to the Department of Justice. Pool claims he didn’t know the money was coming from the Russian government.

In 2023, Pool said that Hurricane Hilary was God’s punishment for drag queens, saying that the hurricane hit several months after the Los Angeles Dodgers honored the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

“If someone came to me and said that they believe this is the, uh, this is God’s wrath, I’m gonna be like, ‘Well look, coincidences can happen – I’m fairly agnostic, I do believe in God,” he said. “I just gotta tell you, ya know, a month-and-a-half or two months after they do this drag nun thing, a city that never gets hit by hurricanes, gets hit by an earthquake and a hurricane! And I’m kinda just like, ooooohhhhh!”

The previous year, he blamed Club Q in Colorado Springs for being the victim of a mass shooting. A shooter opened fire on the club in November 2022, killing five people and injuring dozens.

Pool accused Club Q of holding a “groomer event” on the night of the shooting, writing, “We shouldn’t tolerate pedophiles grooming kids. Club Q had a grooming event. How do we prevent the violence and stop the grooming?”

Abrego Garcia, who was born in El Salvador and has lived in Maryland for 13 years, was arrested in 2019 for loitering outside a Home Depot — his lawyers said that he was looking for day labor work — and police officers accused him of being a gang member because he wore a Chicago Bulls hat, which is sometimes associated with MS-13.

He denied that he was an MS-13 member, but the immigration judge did note that she believed that a “gang field interview sheet” provided enough evidence that he was at some point a member of MS-13, and an appellate judge agreed. He wasn’t convicted of a crime, and the judge barred immigration officials from sending Abrego Garcia back to El Salvador, saying that he had a “well-founded fear of future persecution” from gangs. He was released and got a work permit.

Earlier this year, he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers when he and his child were coming home from a worksite. His wife was called and given 10 minutes to pick up their child, or else the kid would be turned over to protective services. The wife said that Abrego Garcia was on the curb in handcuffs when she arrived and that the officers said his “immigration status had changed.”

“They asked me if I wanted to say goodbye to Kilmar,” she wrote in a declaration to the court. “Kilmar was crying and I told him he would come back home because he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

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