Gage Skidmore/The Star News Network; John Lamparski/Getty Images
- Blake Masters, a GOP candidate for Arizona senate, threatened to sue a reporter for defamation.
- The Arizona Mirror reported Masters may support banning birth control and praised a Nazi leader.
- Masters invoked Peter Thiel's Hulk Hogan-Gawker lawsuit, which put the publication out of business.
Blake Masters, an Arizona GOP candidate for Senate, threatened to sue a reporter for defamation after an Arizona Mirror article suggested Masters praised a Nazi leader in a 2006 essay and would be open to banning birth control should he be elected.
The article, published May 6, reported that Masters' campaign website contained a pledge that the candidate will only vote for judges who oppose the Supreme Court rulings of Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Griswold v. Connecticut, and suggested Masters would ban contraceptive use based on this position.
The reference to Griswold has since been removed from Masters' campaign site.
The Arizona Mirror also referred to a 2006 essay written by Masters that ends with a quote from Hermann Göring, a military leader and one of the most powerful figures of the Nazi party – credited with creating the Gestapo – who was eventually prosecuted during the Nuremberg Trials and sentenced to death.
Masters quoted Göring's thoughts on war at the end of the essay, calling his words "poignant."
Invoking the 2013 Hulk Hogan-Gawker lawsuit funded by supporter and former coworker, Peter Thiel, Masters said he would sue the Arizona Mirror and reporter Dillon Rosenblatt for the reporting, saying in a tweet: "Gawker found out the hard way and you will too."
Masters' campaign did not respond to Insider's requests for comment on May 7 or follow-up requests on May 9.
Gawker filed for bankruptcy and went out of business following the lawsuit, funded in large part by Thiel, that found the publication liable for invasion of privacy, infringement of personality rights, and intentional infliction of emotional distress for publishing a sex tape featuring Hogan.
A jury awarded former professional wrestler Hogan, whose real name is Tony Bollea, $115 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages. The parties settled for $31 million.
Masters, whose campaign has been given $10 million in donations by Thiel's pro-Masters PAC, suggested the lawsuit against the Mirror would be a priority "after winning" the election. Current polling shows Masters behind other candidates in the GOP primary race for Senate by as much as six points.
"If spreading false progressive political propaganda under the guise of "reporting" were an Olympic sport, you would be on the podium," Kory Langhofer, counsel for Masters, said in a demand letter published Monday and sent to the Arizona Mirror.
"But be prepared for the consequences of your business model of subverting facts, for consequences are indeed coming."
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