Maine Wire Spreads Libelous Epstein Conspiracy to Smear Mills
Is Steve Robinson a pedophile? I don’t know, but many people are asking.
Content warning: this post contains descriptions of child sex abuse.
“Buckle up!” announced Republican State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw (R-Windham), Monday morning in her best Q impression. “Buckle Up” was a phrase frequently used by the anonymous figure “Q” and QAnon followers to signal an impending, dramatic revelation or major event in their narrative—often referred to as “The Storm.” In this case the supposed revelation came from the Maine Republican Party’s favorite slop merchant Steve Robinson and the Maine Wire, with the headline: “EPSTEIN FILES: Maine Gov Janet Mills Accused of Child Abuse Cover-up, Cocaine Trafficking in Newly Released SDNY Documents.”
Normally I would have ignored this incredibly dumb smear, but it broke containment and Sinclair’s affiliate station WGME ran a story about it, so I guess have to explain what this is all about.
UPDATE: As of Tuesday morning the WGME article had been deleted, so apparently someone at Channel 13 realized running such a libelous story might get them in trouble.
Anonymous AI accounts have also been flooding Facebook the smear. I don’t think we are prepared for the massive deluge of political slopaganda we’re about to get this campaign season.
So, the Maine Wire has found what they describe as “a detailed tip” submitted to the Southern District of New York, following the 2020 arrest of Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, in a trove of documents recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case.
“An anonymous tipster alleges that Mills was ‘instrumental’ in covering up child sexual abuse and was ‘credibly named’ in cocaine trafficking,’” Robinson and company breathlessly reported. “The tipster appears to have a deep familiarity with Maine politics and powerful figures from Maine political history.”
I’m not going to go into the graphic details about all of the accusations described in this “tip,” but this sensational story periodically pops up on blood libel conspiracy threads in online QAnon fever swamps. Back in the 2010s, the author Lori Handrahan’s trademark was to use several different sockpuppet accounts to hijack discussion threads on social media about current news headlines in an attempt to connect them to her claim that her “criminal alien” ex-husband sexually abused their two-year old daughter and that a cabal of lawyers, law enforcement officials, judges and political leaders were involved in an elaborate cover-up. She plastered the internet with photos of the girl and videos her purporting to show her describing the abuse. In the version of the story republished in the Maine Wire, she claims Governor Janet Mills was “instrumental in the crimes against my daughter and protecting” her ex-husband and his lawyer.
“She has also been credibly named as involved in cocaine trafficking,” she added.
She offered no evidence for how it was a credible accusation, but she said it and it’s in the Epstein files so now it’s news story again! Maine Republicans have circulated the Mills cocaine story for three decades. Back in the 1990s, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maine, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Maine’s Bureau of Intergovernmental Drug Enforcement (BIDE) investigated Mills, then a sitting district attorney, after a drug suspect accused her of using cocaine. The investigation was eventually dropped without charges being filed. Mills claimed it was politically motivated because she had publicly criticized BIDE for inflating arrest numbers through excessive enforcement of low-level drug offenders.
As for the sex trafficking conspiracy, in 2012 Handrahan’s ex-husband successfully sued her for emotional abuse because her efforts to constantly smear him and his associates all over the internet. U.S. District Court Judge George Z. Singal ordered her to pay the man and their daughter $750,000 in compensatory damages for “negligent infliction of emotional distress.” Court documents reveal that she inflicted a horrifying level emotional torture and legal terrorism against this man and their child.
“As a direct result of Handrahan’s false representations, [her ex-husband] has been deprived of the love and companionship of his child for long periods of time,” the court concluded. “As a direct result of Handrahan’s false representations, [the daughter] has been deprived of the love and companionship of her father for long periods of time. As a direct result of Handrahan’s actions and false representations, [the daughter] has suffered physical and emotional harm.”
This whole sordid story shows how sadistic people with money and resources can weaponize the legal system and child protective services against their enemies. It also reveals how they can take advantage of partisan polarization and use right-wing 501c3 nonprofit '“news” sources to launder their blatantly false and defamatory accusations. Winning a libel case is expensive and extremely difficult, but I hope Big Steve and his cronies are eventually sued for spreading these blatant lies.
The "source", Lori Handrahan, is batshit crazy, as you point out, but that didn't stop a whole cadre of LCSW feminist warriors from jumping on her bandwagon to try and destroy anyone who wouldn't buy the BS she was selling.
To this day she gets cited as an aggrieved victim of a Maine pedophile ring. Sadly, there are plenty of real victims. It's maddening that someone as malicious and discredited as Handrahan usurps their pain and that alleged experts are good with it.
Don’t miss out on founder lance dutson. Our dominative insipid former hippie who owned a woo woo bookstore in Blue Hill. Nothing worse than a failed entrepreneur with an over aching need to fill the greedy hole in his soul.
The Dark Knight of Maine Politics: little lance dutson in his Pajamas plugging Propaganda, and the Ministry of Truthiness
Somewhere north of Gotham, in a state where the snow never melts and the politics never change, a lone sentinel guards the digital frontier. Cloaked in Batman pajamas, our caped content crusader grips his sippy cup full of Allen’s brandy -like a holy relic and types furiously against the coming tide of reason. He’s still brainwashing the people who are truly the salt of the earth.
In his frozen dystopia, where 2 + 2 = “government overreach,” he reigns supreme as the editor, commentator, and self-appointed Winston Smith of The Maine Wire. The Ministry of Truthiness needs no marble halls here — just Wi-Fi, caffeine laced bottom shelf brany, and the courage to turn every zoning ordinance into an existential battle for freedom.
Law and order? A fragile dream. Bureaucrats prowl the night like Orwellian thought-police, whispering phrases such as “public infrastructure” and “collective responsibility.” But fear not: our pajamaed protector stands ready to expose their tyranny, one outraged headline at a time.
By dawn, the sippy cup runs dry, but the mission continues. In a world of doublespeak and disappearing nuance, someone must defend the sacred right to miss the point entirely, and protect the pedophile scumbags who rape children, and get away with it.
Personal responsibility is only for immigrants. He probably hires one to clean his toilets and can’t understand irony.