OAN doubles down after Trump cites unfounded report on elderly protester injured by Buffalo police

One America News Network doubled down after President Trump touted an unfounded report Tuesday it ran about an elderly protester hospitalized at the hands of Buffalo police.

The right-wing cable network, also known as OAN, ran another segment pushing a conspiracy theory about the protester, Martin Gugino, after its initial report caught Mr. Trump’s eye.

“The media has been quick to blame the police in this case, but there’s obviously a lot more going on here than the news networks and social media would have you believe,” OAN correspondent Pearson Sharp said in the latest report. “There are simply too many pieces to this story that just don’t add up.”

Mr. Gugino, 75, was shoved to the ground by members of the Buffalo Police Department Thursday as law enforcement cleared a protest taking place outside City Hall. Video of the incident caught two officers pushing the longtime activist, sending him to the sidewalk where he hit his head, became unconscious and began to bleed on the pavement.

He remained hospitalized as of Tuesday, The Buffalo News reported, and both officers involved have been suspended without pay and charged with counts of second-degree assault.

The president had not commented publicly about the incident, which occurred amid nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism taking place, until posting on Twitter on Tuesday morning about a report OAN had recently aired smearing Mr. Gugino and speculating his hospitalization was the result of a “false flag provocation” caused by anti-fascist activists, or Antifa.

“Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post tagging OAN”s account Tuesday morning. “Could be a set up?”

The president’s tweet also cited an unfounded claim made in OAN’s initial report — and later repeated by Mr. Sharp — speculating that Mr. Gugino may have been using his cellphone to interfere with official police communications moments before being injured.

“The tactic, known as skimming, as an old trick used by Antifa to locate police officers and plan violent activities bypassing the police response,” OAN correspondent Kristian Rouz said in the initial report that caught Mr. Trump’s attention, citing an anonymous blog post recently published on a right-wing website called Conservative Treehouse.

Mr. Sharp subsequently echoed that allegation in the follow-up report Tuesday, saying that “some have suggested” the septuagenarian may have used a device called a capture scanner to intercept police communications, adding: “It’s not certain that this is what Martin intended to do, but in the video you can clearly see him waving his phone over the officer’s chest, which is exactly what you do if you’re using a capture scanner.”

OAN’s follow-up report also described the 75-year-old protester as a likely anarchist and “enthusiastic provocateur for the radical left,” and it included an image of an online profile in his name containing what appeared to be his phone number and home address.

A lawyer representing Mr. Gugino did not immediately return a message seeking their reaction to OAN’s reporting.

Launched in 2013, OAN has a history of boosting baseless right-wing conspiracy theories and broadcasting unabashedly glowing coverage of Mr. Trump and his administration.

Mr. Rouz, whose initial segment about the injured protester was cited by Mr. Trump on Twitter, has especially come under fire for his work at OAN, including a segment he narrated last month that purported the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is actually a “globalist conspiracy to establish sweeping population control.”

The Daily Beast reported last year that Mr. Rouz had been working for OAN while simultaneously on the payroll of a media outlet owned by the Russian government.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow subsequently described OAN as “literally … paid Russian propaganda” while discussing that report, prompting OAN parent company to file a $10 million defamation suit that was ultimately dismissed by a federal court judge last month. Lawyers for the parent company, Herring Networks, have since filed a notice of appeal in the Ninth Circuit.