California Democrat threatens to sue The Intercept over reporting on ‘fabricated’ voicemail

Gil Cisneros, a California Democrat running for the state’s 39th Congressional District, is threatening to sue The Intercept for reporting about a short voicemail he claims was fabricated, The Washington Post reported.

The voicemail, which was reportedly left on his opponent’s wife’s phone, is just a few seconds long and states: “Hi Andy. It’s Gil Cisneros. I’m gonna go negative on you.”

His Democratic opponent, Andy Thorburn, apparently provided the audio recording to The Intercept, which then wrote a story about the incident that featured the audio.

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Cisneros says the voice in the recording is not his and threatened to sue The Intercept if it did not take down the story by the 3 p.m. Pacific time deadline, which The Intercept has not done.

The Intercept has said that it is standing by the story and noted that Cisneros refused to respond to questions until after the story was published.

“Multiple sources familiar with Mr. Cisneros identified the voice as the candidate’s voice,” The Intercept’s legal team said in a statement to the Post. “The context, including the fact that Mr. Cisneros’s campaign did, in fact, go negative soon thereafter, supports the authenticity of the tape message.”

Cisneros’s campaign has yet to say whether it will sue the publication.

The Thorburn campaign responded to the incident by calling Cisneros’s threat to sue “typical Trump-like tactics.” The campaign also mocked Cisneros on Twitter by citing John Barron — the pseudonym President Trump assumed to push for positive media coverage of himself.

The race for the 39th District is considered one of the country’s most vulnerable Republican-controlled districts.