GOP Rep. Claims Reported $5,500 Donation To Pastor Who Praised Pulse Nightclub Shooter Is A Clerical Error

Texas Republican Representative Louie Gohmert claimed documents showing a $5,500 donation to anti-gay and Holocaust denying pastor Steve Anderson from his campaign were in error. The GOP legislator said he actually donated the money to a musician with a similar name.

According to a filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Louie Gohmert for Congress Committee made a donation in the amount of $5,500 to an entity called "Anderson Ministries" in 2019.

Shortly after the Pulse Nightclub shooting, Pastor Steve Anderson praised the shooter for killing 49 people at the nightclub.

Anderson is also known for a 2014 video in which he asserted killing gay people was the way to end the AIDS epidemic. There have been multiple other times Anderson has called for the killing of or discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.

In addition to his homophobia, Anderson is antisemitic. The Evangelical Christian pastor has multiple published sermons in which he blames Jewish people for many of the world's ills, as well as denying the holocaust occurred.

While Anderson Ministries is not the official name of Steve Anderson's church, the address listed is the address for his church in Tempe, Arizona. The payment was listed as a "donation."

The donation was discovered by The Daily Beast, who confronted the Representative about supporting a proponent of hate crime.

Gohmert's staffers insisted there was an error in the filing. They claim the payment was actually to Christian singer Steve Amerson, who happens to live in Granada Hills, California, not Tempe.

They further claim whomever made the filing got the "name, purpose, and address" all wrong when filling out the official government paperwork.

It must be a major coincidence all three errors pointed directly to a church which has been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Twitter users weren't buying it, either.

If Republican Gohmert's name sounds familiar, it could be because he was widely mocked online for proposing the National Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management should somehow change the orbit of the moon to fight climate change during a congressional Natural Resources subcommittee hearing earlier this week.

"We know there's been significant solar flare activity. And so, is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM (Bureau of Land Management) can do to change the course of the moon's orbit or the Earth's orbit around the sun? Obviously, that would have profound effects on our climate. "

Twitter completely roasted Gohmert for the comment.

Gohmert also recently claimed Capitol police were briefed Trump "haters" would storm the Capitol on the January 6 to make the outgoing President look bad. The Texas Republican offered no proof for his claim.

He was also one of 12 GOP Representatives that voted against congressional medals for Capitol police who served with distinction during the violent MAGA riot.

Gohmert was an integral part of Trump's "Big Lie" about his overwhelming popular vote loss in the 2020 election. The Republican even filed a lawsuit against former Vice President Mike Pence to try to block the certification of President Joe Biden's electoral college win.

Gohmert is up for reelection in 2022.