An anonymous Wyoming operation that posed as a neutral, fact-based watchdog is invoking a “parody” to defend fabricated political content, including statements and campaign commitments attributed to two Sarasota County Commission challengers who say they never made or approved them.
The admission came only after the Florida Trident exposed the operation’s open “war-room” folder, including brochures, talking points and AI-generated material designed to help Jim DeNiro and Kristina Sargent defeat incumbent commissioners Joe Neunder and Mark Smith.
Over the past weekend, 153 of the 356 files the Trident identified in the folder were no longer available from LGAI’s servers, including both candidate brochures, talking points, a confidential strategy paper, every attack meme and dozens of AI-generated images.
That material openly backed DeNiro and Sargent against incumbent commissioners Joe Neunder and Mark Smith.
In a lengthy post, the ghost website claims a right to publish what it calls parody and satire, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell.
That 1988 ruling protected the First Amendment right of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt to run a parody liquor ad that depicted Rev. Jerry Falwell, the prominent televangelist, in a mock “interview” claiming his “first time” was a drunken, incestuous encounter with his mother in an outhouse. The ad carried a bold disclaimer: “ad parody, not to be taken seriously.” Hustler also described the ad as “fiction” in its table of contents.
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Unlike the Hustler ad, LGAI’s campaign materials were designed to look factual and were published by an organization that repeatedly claimed to provide verified, public-record-based information to sway voters in favor of DeNiro and Sargent.
But Lourdes Ramirez, a Siesta Key resident who supports Neunder, said parody is not a label that can be applied retroactively to invented political content. “I doubt all the people who read it at the time believed it was parody,” she said.
“It was a scam from the beginning. I feel sorry for any voters influenced by the disinformation.”
LGAI also claims it has the right to anonymous speech despite its website stating it is a paid political advertisement.
More than 100 paid ads have targeted Sarasota voters with claims presented as fact, paid for by LGAI and a second anonymous Wyoming entity, US Polling Research. None of the ads carried the disclaimer required by Florida law for political messages created with artificial intelligence.
Neither LGAI nor US Polling Research are registered with the Florida Division of Elections as a Florida political committee, which is legally required. Nor have they filed any reports required by Florida law of contributions, expenditures or who is behind the operation.
LGAI’s only public registration is itself a commercial registered agent acting as a proxy in Sheridan, Wyoming. It lists a private mailbox in Washington, D.C., as its address. Its own new statement says individuals behind the entity “are not named publicly.”
Llyod Mayer, a Notre Dame Law School professor, told the Trident LGAI’s activities were “troubling” and likely violated federal law. LGAI registered in Wyoming as a charitable organization under 501(c)(3). A charitable organization “cannot explicitly or implicitly endorse or support a campaign or candidate. That’s a problem because their articles of incorporation control their legal status,” Mayer said.
The Trident’s reporting on Friday revealed the operation left a folder called “war-room-assets” sitting open on its own server, exposing the campaign brochures, the “resign” whitepaper, the AI imagery, internal work files, and statements attributed to both DeNiro and Sargent, including their campaign photos.
Within 24 hours, LGAI answered that reporting with a manifesto insisting it was concealing nothing because it was a parody fabricated with AI. Then it quietly deleted multiple files.
The deleted material includes brochures that name both DeNiro and Sargent along with their campaign photos, script their quotes, claim they agreed to a “Day One” agenda, 57 AI-generated images, multiple attack memes, and tell registered Republicans how to vote in the Aug. 18 primary, suggesting coordination with the campaigns.
Both DeNiro and Sargent say they do not know who is behind the website supporting them and its work to unseat their opponents.
The whitepaper stamped “confidential” on LGAI’s website was created at the end of March, roughly two months before the group incorporated and three months before its first advertisement. The plan to drive out two named incumbents existed on paper before the entity that produced it was created.
The campaign files captured by the Florida Trident were cryptographically sealed and archived with digital fingerprints before any of the files were deleted by LGAI. The deletions themselves are also preserved showing not only what the group published but the moment it tried to make it disappear.
The Trident sought comment from LGAI requesting an actual person sit for an interview. Because there isn’t a contact listed on its website, an email requesting an interview was sent to the address published on the site. There was no response by deadline.
“Entities have to register as a Florida PAC (Political Action Committee) if they spend over $500 on express advocacy in a Florida election. This would apply no matter where the entity is incorporated,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson University College of Law.
The Trident spoke with Gretl Plessinger, Communications Director with the Florida Department of State, under which the Division of Elections operates. This story will be updated when comments are received.
How we know
The Florida Trident preserved LGAI’s entire website and its “war-room-assets” folder repeatedly through early and mid-August using Browsertrix Crawler and Scoop, two open-source web-archiving tools, saving each capture as a sealed WACZ archive with a recorded SHA-256 hash. The two campaign brochures and the whitepaper were additionally obtained in a second, independent way, and matched byte-for-byte to the archived copies. On August 17 the Trident re-checked every file the operation had ever published to that folder, 356 in all, directly against its servers: 203 were still loaded and 153 returned “not found,” including all documents, all 34 share cards, all 10 memes, and 57 of the AI images. That live check was itself captured and timestamped.
Michael Barfield is an award-winning investigative reporter who helps strengthen transparency and accountability across Florida. He assists reporters and the public with public records questions and requests, and he oversees and supports the organization’s litigation to enforce open government. He’s a frequent lecturer on Florida’s Public Records Act and Sunshine Law, serves on the governance committee of Investigative Reporters & Editors, and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. Barfield is a former President of the ACLU of Florida, a life member of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and has twice been named by Sarasota Magazine as one of the most influential people in Sarasota. He lives in Sarasota with his wife, Iru.
This article first appeared on Florida Trident and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
