FACT CHECK: Fake fact check site Snopes.com, which was baked into Google and Facebook as part of the media's fake fake news crusade, despite having all the credibility of your drunken cousin who can't spell "potato" without his iPhone, is in a state of complete meltdown.
You may recall this previous story on the Snopes meltdown.
Now a DailyMail.com investigation reveals that Snopes.com's founders, former husband and wife David and Barbara Mikkelson, are embroiled in a lengthy and bitter legal dispute in the wake of their divorce.
He has since remarried, to a former escort and porn actress who is one of the site's staff members.
They are accusing each other of financial impropriety, with Barbara claiming her ex-husband is guilty of 'embezzlement' and suggesting he is attempting a 'boondoggle' to change tax arrangements, while David claims she took millions from their joint accounts and bought property in Las Vegas.
FACT CHECK: Just the sort of folks you want to rely on for "facts". And Snopes is going even further downhill with more legal problems.
The popular debunking site published a plea to its readers Monday requesting they donate money to help keep its doors open amid a legal fight against Proper Media, a small digital services company that owns, operates and represents web properties.
Mikkelson told Poynter in an email that the goal amount is "intended to help us get through the next several months in the hopes that the legal issues will be largely resolved by then."
"... we've received no revenue whatsoever for several months now, and we obviously cannot operate indefinitely with no income (especially with mounting legal fees on top of our usual operating expenses)," he said.
The call for support is the latest development in a back-and-forth that goes back to fall 2015, when Bardav entered into a deal with Proper Media to manage Snopes' content and advertising accounts in exchange for a share of the site's revenue. However, Bardav terminated that contract in spring 2017 because "it was highly disadvantageous to us," Mikkelson previously told Poynter in an email.
Now, Snopes alleges Proper Media is holding its website hostage.
"Although we maintain editorial control (for now), the vendor will not relinquish the site’s hosting to our control, so we cannot modify the site, develop it, or — most crucially — place advertising on it," reads the letter Snopes published Monday. "The vendor continues to insert their own ads and has been withholding the advertising revenue from us."
In its complaint, Proper Media alleges that it still has a valid agreement with Bardav and that the company breached the contract by terminating it. Bardav claims in its cross-complaint that Proper Media "failed to perform its contractual and legal obligations" and is "wrongfully withholding money owed to Bardav and effectively holding the Snopes.com website hostage," according to the document.
FACT CHECK: The geniuses behind Snopes couldn't figure out how to run a lemonade stand, but claim to be able to resolve complicated issues of international affairs, foreign policy and domestic policy.
But Snopes has always been a scam. Its people have no idea what they're doing. They couldn't find a fact in a fact storm. And their research usually involves 5 minutes in Google. Furthermore Snopes is particularly notorious for the obnoxious habit of "debunking" an extreme claim to discredit a real once. Thus, for example, Snopes will "debunk" a claim that Soros was a Nazi officer, which is not a claim that anyone is actually making, to silence debate about his anti-Semitic issues and behavior during the Holocaust.
Still don't count on Snopes actually going out of business. The left is now in the business of subsdizing partisan attack "fact check" sites. That's why Poynter is running the story.
Donors to Snopes however might consider where their money is likely to end up...
In the filings, Barbara, 57, has accused her former husband, 56, of 'raiding the corporate business Bardav bank account for his personal use and attorney fees' without consulting her.
She also claimed he embezzled $98,000 from the company over the course of four years 'which he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired'.
It's a toss up whether Snopes donors will be funding the site's political prostitution or an allegedly more conventional prostitution.
FACT CHECK: You don't want to know.