MAGA rep's astonishing smear of Dem stirs defamation fears: 'This is actual malice'

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) was accused of spewing defamatory statements Monday night after falsely accusing progressive activist Hasan Piker and Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed of advocating for rape and Sharia law, respectively.

Speaking on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Luna falsely claimed that El-Sayed had “advocated for Sharia law” — the broad reference to religious law derived from the central text of the Islamic faith, the Quran — and also accused progressive activist Hasan Piker, who campaigned with El-Sayed, of advocating for sexual assault.

“[El-Sayed is] really trying to distance himself from the fact that he advocated for Sharia law, but more importantly, I want to know why the leftist media — why the Democrat establishment is not calling him out for campaigning with Hasan Piker, someone who basically said that they were going to essentially invade and rape our women,” Luna said.

“I mean, that's the type of rhetoric that we're supposed to tolerate, and then we are supposed to somehow work with this guy if he's, god forbid, elected to Senate?”

El-Sayed has not advocated for implementing Sharia law in the United States, contrary to the oft-repeated conservative claim that Vice President JD Vance has also pushed, nor has Piker advocated for mass invasion and sexual assault of American women.

“As someone who has been falsely sued for defamation, twice, this is the real thing. This is actual malice,” argued Jim Stewartson, a California-based writer and political commentator, in a social media post on X. “This psycho Russian agent should be sued, run out of office, and investigated for espionage.”

The claim that El-Sayed has advocated for Sharia law is believed to be derived from comments he made criticizing a 2010 ballot measure that would prohibit courts from considering Sharia law in their decisions, arguing at the time that the measure was part of a broader effort to “uproot Muslim Americans” and other marginalized groups. He has explicitly come out against incorporating “faith laws into the laws of our country.”

Piker has faced scrutiny in recent months regarding controversial remarks he made in 2019. In an online stream reacting to remarks from Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) in support of American military interventionism abroad, Piker said “America deserved 9/11,” arguing that the United States “brought it on” itself due to the U.S. government “[funding] the people who did 9/11 to this day.”

“Yo [Luna] are you f------ mental?” asked Tommy Harrington, a streamer and political commentator. “You just hop on Fox News for defamatory lies, now? Is that your new thing? F------ scoundrel.”

MeidasTouch reporter Pablo Manríquez argued that Luna’s remarks appeared to be “another lawsuit easy for [Piker’s] attorneys to win,” Tennessee Holler founder Justin Kanewcalled Luna’s comments “total insanity,” and Piker himself quipped: “yeah this is getting completely out of hand.”