CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Before many people had even heard of the social media site Gab that touts a platform for free speech, it had a prominent investor from Mecklenburg County -- State Sen. Dan Bishop.
Last year, Bishop posted on Twitter, “So, I’m about done with [San Francisco] thought police tech giants, and so… I just invested in Gab.”
Robert Bowers posted hateful messages on Gab before he killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning, officials said.
[Who is Robert Bowers, alleged Pittsburgh synagogue shooter]
The site is now offline after hosting providers cut ties with Gab.
“[Robert Bowers] was not only on Gab. He was on other social networks and yet the focus of this entire thing has been on Gab, and I think that’s really unfair,” Gab founder Andrew Torba said in an interview with Pennsylvania news station WYOU.
Torba said he did not know about the suspect’s posts until after the shooting. He said other users are responsible for red-flagging content that threatens violence.
“We feel that everybody should be able to speak their mind freely, as long as you’re not causing immediate danger or immediate harm or threatening these such things,” Torba said.
Bishop is now distancing himself from Gab after Eyewitness News anchor Liz Foster emailed his state legislature account and his campaign for comment.
Bishop did not respond to Foster’s request for an interview, but he posted a statement on Twitter: “I made a $500 crowdfunding investment 14 months ago in a startup called Gab, which promoted itself as a new, unbiased social-media platform. I don’t use Gab, but if its management allows its user to promote violence, anti-Semitism and racism on the platform, they certainly have misled investors and they will be gone quickly, and rightfully so. Why I’m being targeted and smeared by a British tabloid for a $500 investment in the final days of a campaign, I have no clue.”
Bishop is referring to the UK-based Daily Mail, which first posted an article about his donation.
The incumbent senator is running for re-election. Bishop’s challenger, Chad Stachowicz, released a statement Wednesday: "Our community deserves to know why Dan Bishop was funding a platform for hate speech. His investment helped spread white nationalist content, so we deserve to know if he holds these views. Dan Bishop should have known he was playing with fire.”
As of now, Bishop is one of the only known investors of Gab. The startup company claims to have more than 3,000 donors.
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