U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake, the unhinged conspiracy theorist who lost the 2022 election for Arizona governor and the 2024 election for U.S. Senate and refused to concede, made up a “gay lover” rumor about a Democratic lawmaker who had some harsh questions for her at a House hearing.

The exchange occurred at a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on Wednesday, where Lake appeared to answer questions about the current administration’s attempts to dismantle Voice of America (VOA), a state-funded radio station that the U.S. broadcasts into hostile countries to promote democracy and American values. The administration laid off 639 VOA employees this month, which is most of its staff, and it hasn’t broadcast any journalism since March.

Related

This drag queen had the best response to an anti-LGBTQ Republican threatening a lawsuit
Arizona gubernatorial candidate says that drag queens “sexualize” children. Her old drag queen pal says she brought her kid to his show, and he refuses to shut up about it.

At the hearing, Lake claimed that USAGM and VOA were rife with corruption but provided little evidence.

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Then she was questioned by a hometown Democrat, Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, who was the mayor of Phoenix back when Lake was a local news journalist. He questioned her about her long history of lying, which includes numerous conspiracy theories she pushed to assert that she actually won her 2022 election but was robbed due to fake ballots, a claim that courts ruled against.

Stanton ran through many of Lake’s conspiracy theories.

“Let me be clear about something: the American people cannot believe a word you say,” he told her at the hearing. “You ran for governor in Arizona in 2022. You lost fair and square. Instead of conceding, you embarrassed yourself and our state by lying again and again for years, blaming everything under the sun for your loss except for your own toxic politics.”

“You lie about that election to this very day,” he said, listing out specific lies she told that have been found untrue in courts and asking her if she is “finally ready to admit you lost the 2022 Arizona election.”

“It saddens me that you are from Arizona and you’re OK-” Lake started to answer.

“You’re an adjudicated liar and a two-time political loser,” he said before asking her not to run for governor again.

Lake responded by discussing the alleged corruption at USAGM, which she claimed involved fabricating fake news.

“They could literally put out a lie about anybody here, and I know you’ve been the victim of that. I know you’ve been the victim,” she claimed. “I remember the stories about you where they said you had a gay lover and those were going on-“

Someone tried to interrupt her, but she continued.

“Those kinds of lies could be broadcast today on VOA and you couldn’t pick up the phone, Representative Stanton, and say, ‘Hey, you’re putting out lies about me…’ They would sue you for breaking the firewall,” she said, referring to how VOA legally has editorial independence and lawmakers aren’t allowed to unduly influence its reporting. While that firewall exists under current law, it doesn’t mean that VOA journalists don’t have a professional obligation to tell the truth or that U.S. lawmakers can’t provide comment for stories or dispute them.

Stanton is married to a woman and has never said he identifies as LGBTQ+.

Several local Arizona journalists who talked to the Phoenix New Times said that there have never been any rumors about Stanton having a “gay lover” and that it appears that Lake just made that up on the spot. That news source said, “Lake appears to have made those ‘stories’ up,” and said that she was “raising questions about Stanton’s sexuality and dog-whistling to homophobes.”

AZ Central accused Lake of managing to “insinuate that Stanton is gay in a nationally aired public hearing without ever actually saying that he’s gay.”

She refused to say that the rumor was false, bringing it up several times at the hearing and stating only that Stanton had said it was false. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of Ohio brought up the rumor again while questioning Lake and tried to get her to say it’s untrue.

“She was responding, and I thought rather complimentary that those were untrue and she was defending that,” said Rep. Issa.

“That’s what he says,” Lake replied, apparently to stress that she does not necessarily believe that the rumor is untrue.

Showing a sense of humor about the incident, Stanton posted a link to a story about the fake “gay lover” rumor to social media and wrote, “Happy Pride Month!”