Note: the video is a call I got from Peninsula, Ohio police detective, Dennis Pongracz, from August 2025.
Jeremy Hales has never believed in the marketplace of ideas.
Instead, he believes he should be able to say anything he wants, and anyone who opposes him is shut down by any means necessary.
That’s especially true of John Cook and Michelle Preston. Not only has he sued them twice, but he filed a dubious protective order in Ohio, despite Preston and Cook living in Florida.
With his dubious protective order in hand, he then threatened them with a violation all while making tons of videos about them.
He’s since filed for an extension, arguing that others exercising their free speech violated the protective order.
Hales has also filed a frivolous lawsuit against nearly all his critics, arguing that saying mean things about him was a conspiracy. Parts of the initial lawsuit are below.
Hales has also directed coordinated attacks on rivals YouTube channels. Lisa Lee, from Two Lee’s in a Pod, said she’s had two strikes against her YouTube channel, which she attributed to malicious attacks by Hales and his followers. On September 25, 2025, she sent an email to YouTube which stated in part.
I am Lisa Lee, a Florida resident and owner of the YouTube channel Two Lees in a Pod (https://www.youtube.com/@TwoLeesInAPod), a Florida news reporting, education, and entertainment outlet protected under the Florida Deplatforming Act.
I am also a named defendant in Hales v. Preston, et al., No. 1:25-cv-00058-RH-ZCB, pending in the Northern District of Florida. This is a formal demand under Florida Statutes § 501.2041 (the “Florida Deplatforming Law”).
I am prepared to assert my claims in a new action in Florida state or federal court, or as counterclaims in the pending federal litigation, and to bring in new parties including YouTube, Alphabet, and counsel Randall Shochet.
In the email, she noted that her channel had been suspended twice in the previous six months: March 31 and September 22, for one and two weeks respectively.
Richard Luthmann had two of his channels suspended by YouTube before he fired off an email to YouTube, threatening to sue under Florida’s deplatforming law.
YouTube Legal and Judge Bolitho are copied hereto. YouTube and Alphabet, Inc., are hereby also on formal notice. YouTube and Hales are “business partners,” and YouTube has provided Hales with a designated “relationship manager.”
NOTE: I am NOT requesting a monetary demand from YouTube and/or Alphabet, Inc., at this time. I am requesting that Jeremy Hales and Randall Shochet settle a $500,000 demand so they can continue their business relationship with YouTube and/or Alphabet, Inc. Alternatively, I request that YouTube and/or Alphabet, Inc. deplatform Jeremy Hales and his channels, including What The Hale$, to resolve the issues outlined herein.
This is the SECOND TIME Hales, Shochet, and co-conspirators have maliciously and intentionally caused to be deplatformed a Florida-based journalist and news-dissemination platform without justification.
First, it was @rluthmann. Now it is @LuthmannNews.
I demand immediate action and relief for the harm caused by you (and YouTube) for the unlawful deplatforming of my news content and the intentional and tortious violation of my rights of speech, expression, the press, and to practice my profession. YouTube has been hoodwinked and engages in the blatant, inconsistent enforcement of its content standards, motivated in part by its business relationship with Hales and his co-conspirators.
YouTube reinstated both accounts after that legal threat.
Lisa, in her email to YouTube, noted that Hales boasted of coordinating attacks on rival channels.
“They all are suspended because of reports we made,” Hales boasted in the broadcast. “As soon as the suspensions are over, there’s going to be another wave.”
That wave hit my channel last night.
Hales has engaged in a long-term campaign to silence me. It started in February, when he suggested falsely that I was being investigated by local and federal law enforcement on a made-up crime- solicitation of a violation of protective order- because I criticized him on Two Lee’s in a Pod.
Next, he threatened to intercede in my child custody case.
The whole thing started innocuously when I sent him and others an email with a link to Richard Luthmann’s most recent article.
Hales has never responded to prior emails- including links to articles- but he responded to this one.
“Looks like she {my ex-girlfriend} could use an aggressive lawyer and someone who can afford that lawyer,” Hales said in the email, which had links to doctored text messages used by her in a failed protective order attempt earlier this year in Virginia.
His first two gambits were bluffs, so he upped the ante and coopted a dirty cop from Peninsula, Ohio- Dennis Pongracz- to call and threaten me. Dirty cop Pongracz falsely claimed that if I continued to send Hales emails I would be charged with telephonic harassment.
{Check out the video at the top.}
I ignored the dirty cop and continued emailing Hales.
Hales was undaunted, and early this morning, I received a bizarre note from YouTube.
YouTube didn’t budge after I appealed.
The only human I could communicate with- be it through internet messages- at YouTube told me it was their policy not to identify the offending video or videos.
I never put any nudity or sexually explicit content on YouTube.
YouTube also has a history of arbitrary and capricious decisions like this one. They suspended President Trump in January 2021, most QANON accounts, and anyone who suggested vaccines didn’t stop COVID.
YouTube recently settled for $24 million with President Trump.
Ironically, Megan Fox, Hales’ media bitch, used to be against this type of YouTube targeting.
Rekieta reached out to more than just DeBruin. He single-handedly created a new genre of entertainment on YouTube. Other lawyers built giant platforms with Rekieta’s help and generosity as he invited them to stream with him and get to know his huge audience. Rekieta’s massive tide lifted all the ships around him (including mine).
After the Depp trial, Big Media came after the streamers making big bucks on trial coverage, either jealous or just enraged that their narratives were destroyed by the streaming lawyers who had different takes than lazy media types who don’t spend eight hours a day watching entire trials and who got used to phoning it in. Media was not able to do that after Rekieta’s wide reach spread his detailed and accurate takes much further than NBC’s or CNN’s. Everyone knows you don’t screw with Big Media and make them do their jobs correctly. They get very angry about that. (See the massive hate campaign against me for questioning the sloppy reporting of Big Media and the “10-year-old rape case.”)
The mass flagging campaign can be described very simply (emphasis mine): Rekieta exposed a trans activist named Keffals, who publicly stated several times that he would send prescription hormone replacement drugs to kids without their parents’ knowledge or a prescription. He not only stated that he did that, he had a website where kids could get these drugs sent to them. This is a crime. After Rekieta exposed that, Keffals began a campaign to have him unpersoned and deplatformed on every social media site by claiming that he was doxed and swatted and in fear for his life. There is no way to prove Keffals didn’t just swat himself. No one has been arrested for it. The Young Turks blamed it on “right-wing bigots” but failed to find out which ones. Keffals and his minions not only mass-flagged Rekieta’s Twitter account until Twitter banned him, but they also sent over 40 ethics complaints to the Minnesota Bar to have his license revoked. In those letters, they lied and claimed he called for violence against Keffals, including saying he should be “shot in the head.” That never happened. There is no video of him saying any such thing (as there surely would be if it did happen).
