A senior adviser at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) repeatedly promoted a false conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman participated in a satanic ritual, CNN reported Thursday.
John Gibbs, who has worked as a senior adviser since last August, tweeted multiple times about a conspiracy theory that John Podesta participated in a Satanic ritual involving bodily fluids. The claim originated within the far-right after WikiLeaks in 2016 published a hacked email linked to Podesta in which there is a reference to a “spirit cooking dinner,” which conspiracy theorists inferred was a satanic ritual.
{mosads}In one instance, Gibbs quote-tweeted a comment that Clinton was losing support among black voters because Podesta took part in “Satanic #SpiritCooking,” and added “True, true, and true,” CNN reported.
Gibbs used the hashtag #SpiritCooking in other instances as well, CNN reported.
CNN was able to obtain Gibbs’s tweets through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
A HUD spokesman declined to comment to the news outlet on Gibbs’s past tweets, saying the agency doesn’t weigh in on remarks not made as a public official.
Gibbs’s role at HUD involves boosting economic development efforts for low-income individuals.
Multiple appointees to agencies during the Trump administration have been found to have made racist comments or promoted conspiracy theories before joining the administration, including Carl Higbie and Leandro Rizzuto Jr.