Greg Pruett

Greg Pruett operates Idaho’s one-man propaganda network — six Idaho-focused content surfaces under one identity, each presented to readers as a separate voice. He admitted under oath to publishing an article under his own name that someone else wrote, and to publishing false statements about a Republican strategist and critic in connection with the Bonneville County CV10-21-1197 defamation matter. The byline admission poisons everything else he has published: a reader who trusts a “Greg Pruett” piece can no longer know whether they are reading Greg Pruett.

Inside this dossier:

• Six surfaces under one identity. Honor Idaho (the rebranded I2AA umbrella), Idaho Second Amendment Alliance, Idaho Dispatch (re-acquired August 1, 2024), Keep Idaho Free, GregPruett.com (the personal-blog firewall outside the 501(c)(4)), and the standalone ThankChristyZito.com domain.
• Byline fraud admitted under oath. Per case records archived at chadchristensen.org, Pruett conceded he published an article written by someone else under his own byline. The admission applies retroactively to every “Greg Pruett” piece on his network.
• Admitted under oath to publishing false statements about a Republican strategist and critic in connection with the Bonneville County CV10-21-1197 defamation matter.
• The 2020 Sunshine Act enforcement. $4,430 in Boise TV-market election ads purchased without proper disclosure. Idaho SOS Lawrence Denney referred attorney Steve Taggart’s complaint to the Idaho Attorney General before Pruett belatedly filed on April 27, 2020.
• Bryan Smith’s $1,600 anchored the belated I2AA filing. Single largest itemized donor on the disclosure that required state enforcement to surface.
• Christy Zito relationship is structural. Zito is I2AA Political Director and Board Member; ran the day-to-day during her 2022–2024 legislative hiatus. Five Pruett-operated surfaces all promote her, including a dedicated “Christy Zito Archives” tag on GregPruett.com.

Who he is

Greg Pruett runs Idaho’s one-man propaganda network. Six Idaho-focused websites, all his, all presented to readers as if they were six different voices. He works out of Rigby, Idaho.

The six surfaces:

• Honor Idaho (honoridaho.com), the 501(c)(4) umbrella. Rebranded February 11, 2026 from the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance to expand from gun-rights single-issue framing to full culture-war scope. Rebrand dateline: Rigby, Idaho.
• Idaho Second Amendment Alliance / I2AA (idahosaa.org), the legacy gun-rights brand. Sen. Christy Zito is Political Director and Board Member.
• Idaho Dispatch (idahodispatch.com). Pruett re-acquired it August 1, 2024.
• Keep Idaho Free (keepidahofree.org), advocacy and astroturf-petition operation.
• GregPruett.com, the “personal” blog firewall. Carefully positioned outside the 501(c)(4) so it can make direct endorsements the tax-exempt entities legally cannot. Maintains a dedicated “Christy Zito Archives” tag with nine-plus posts.
• ThankChristyZito.com, a standalone domain registered to thank one Idaho legislator. No other Idaho legislator has anything like it. The domain was stood up, used, and now returns connection-refused.

He also launched The D.C. Beat in May 2024, an Idaho-based national-news site, expanding the propaganda-portfolio model from state to federal scope.

A reader who lands on all six over the course of a week walks away thinking six separate Idahoans landed on the same conclusion. They landed on one Idahoan, and the brand names are decoration.

What he admitted under oath

In February 2021, then-sitting Idaho Rep. Chad Christensen filed a defamation lawsuit against Gregory Graf. Graf counterclaimed against Christensen, Pruett, and Dustin Hurst. Per case records archived at chadchristensen.org, Pruett admitted two things under sworn testimony:

1. He admitted to publishing false statements and accusations about Gregory Graf in connection with the Christensen lawsuit. Pruett’s published claims about Graf, made on the platforms Pruett controls, were not truthful, and Pruett conceded that on the record.
2. He published an article written by someone else under his own name. Byline fraud — the byline read “Greg Pruett,” but the author was someone else.

The byline admission poisons everything else he has published. A reader who trusts “Greg Pruett” content can no longer know whether they are reading Greg Pruett. Every Idaho Dispatch story, every I2AA action alert, every “Pro-Gun Champion” celebration of Christy Zito carries the same asterisk now. Was this Pruett, or was this someone Pruett was willing to lend his name to?

In a normal newsroom that admission ends a career. In the Pruett operation it produced a press release saying he was taking “a step back from day-to-day operations” of I2AA. Sen. Christy Zito stepped in as I2AA Political Director the same window Pruett was legally exposed. The handoff is on the record.

The 2020 Sunshine Act complaint that required state enforcement to surface

In April 2020, the Pruett operation purchased $4,430 in election ads in the Boise television market without proper Sunshine Act disclosure. Attorney Steve Taggart filed a complaint. Idaho Secretary of State Lawrence Denney referred the complaint to the Idaho Attorney General for investigation, stating: “My thinking is that if you are expending money to influence the outcome of an election, it should be reported.”

Pruett belatedly filed on April 27, 2020. The disclosure documented:

• $15,869 raised total.
• $1,600 from Idaho Falls attorney Bryan Smith (IFF Vice Chair) as the single largest identified donor, with the remainder in small unitemized donations under $50.
• $2,005 spent on a CBS2 Boise pro-Christy Zito TV ad that aired April 21, 2020. I2AA has publicly celebrated that ad as its “first-ever TV ad.”

Read those numbers slowly. I2AA’s flagship 2020 TV buy cost $2,005. The operation that put the ad on the air took $1,600 of that money from the IFF’s Vice Chair. The operation only filed Sunshine Act paperwork after an attorney complaint forced the Secretary of State to refer the matter to the Attorney General. That is what disclosure looks like in the Pruett shop. It only happens when the state walks up holding a subpoena.

The April 2020 I2AA campaign-finance disclosure, filed late after Steve Taggart’s Sunshine Act complaint forced Idaho SOS Lawrence Denney to refer the matter to the Idaho Attorney General, documented $15,869 raised, $4,430 in ad spend, $2,005 on a CBS2 Boise pro-Christy Zito TV ad April 21, 2020, and $1,600 from Bryan Smith (IFF Vice Chair) as the single largest itemized donor.

— Post Register, 2020-04-28

The self-quoting tell

On Honor Idaho, which Pruett operates, readers find references to “I2AA President Greg Pruett” quoted as an outside authority. Pruett the Honor Idaho operator cites Pruett the I2AA president to back up Pruett’s own Honor Idaho article.

It is the same trick as writing a press release for your own company, then quoting yourself in it under a different job title.

How a Christy Zito bill moves through the network — six channels, one operator

In 2025, Sen. Christy Zito sponsored SB 1298, the Stand Your Ground Shield Act. The pipeline that ran on it:

1. I2AA published an action alert urging readers to “Tell Your Legislator to Co-Sponsor Zito’s Self-Defense Bill.”
2. Idaho Dispatch covered the bill as news, framing it as common-sense reform opposed only by enemies of freedom.
3. Keep Idaho Free fundraised on it with “the left is coming for your guns” appeals.
4. GregPruett.com endorsed Zito personally for sponsoring it. The “personal” blog firewall lets Pruett say things his 501(c)(4) cannot.
5. ThankChristyZito.com (then still live) updated to include the bill in the gallery of Zito wins.
6. Honor Idaho ran “Stand Your Ground Bill Adds Real Immunity, Real Protection” on February 18, 2026 under Pruett’s byline.

Six channels, one bill, one operator. A reader who happened to hit all six in a week would walk away thinking grassroots Idaho had spontaneously rallied around Christy Zito’s bill. They would be reading one hand.

The April 2026 personal-byline Guthrie attack

April 3, 2026, six weeks before the May 19 Republican primary in which David Worley challenges Sen. Jim Guthrie, Pruett personally bylined “One Man Continues to Block the Best Gun Bills for Idaho” on the I2AA / Honor Idaho platform. Specific language: “Without fail, Idaho State Senate Chairman Jim Guthrie (R - Inkom) has blocked more critical pro-gun legislation” and “Guthrie shoved it in the chairman’s drawer and refused to give it a public hearing.” The article enumerates SB 1430, HB 621, and SB 1298 (sponsored by Pruett’s I2AA Political Director Christy Zito) as Guthrie’s blocking record. The implicit call to action: “send some better fighters to the Capitol.”

Look at the picture. The outlet running friendly coverage of the candidate (Idaho Dispatch) and the outlet running attacks on the candidate’s primary opponent (I2AA / Honor Idaho) have the same operator. Neither site discloses it.

The Worley campaign does not have to buy a dollar of this. It arrives for free, because the man running both the friendly-coverage outlet and the attack outlet has been promoting Worley editorially for five years — the same template Pruett built around Zito, now applied to candidate number two.

The Mickelsen smear

Republican Idaho legislator Stephanie Mickelsen has been a standing target of the Pruett network. Honor Idaho’s March 19, 2026 article “Mickelsen Misleads Voters While the Left Pushes California-Style Abortion” used an anonymous Facebook commenter’s lower-bound viability estimate (22 weeks) to attack Mickelsen’s medically-defensible range (25-27 weeks). It labeled her “one of the biggest RINOs in the capitol.”

You see the same template on every Pruett-network target. These are the framing the IFF uses to run primaries against Republican incumbents flagged on the IFF Index — not Idaho outlets that happen to agree with the IFF.

The Pruett-Hurst podcast partnership

In April 2023, Keep Idaho Free announced “Pruett, Hurst Partner to Present Freedom Bros Podcast.” A co-hosted show between Greg Pruett and Dustin Hurst, the IFF’s communications operative.

Calling the IFF and the Idaho propaganda network “separate independent voices” stops being a defensible position once their two operators are publishing a podcast together under the brand name “Freedom Bros.”

In April 2023, Keep Idaho Free announced ‘Pruett, Hurst Partner to Present Freedom Bros Podcast’, a co-hosted partnership between Greg Pruett and Dustin Hurst, the IFF communications operative who has since moved to People United for Privacy while still operating IFF strategy through IFPAC and Honor Idaho registered-agent role.

— Keep Idaho Free, 2023-04-27

The shared-infrastructure fingerprint

The technical plumbing under Pruett’s portfolio is shared, and the shared parts are documented: same Cloudflare nameservers, same Google AdSense publisher IDs, same hosting (InMotion), and same PayPal donation endpoints. Six “independent” sites running on the same backend.

The network uses the “independent third-party reporting” line to launder each other’s content. The shared backend says otherwise.

Connected pages

• Christy Zito dossier, I2AA Political Director and Board Member, the deepest legislator-side relationship in the Pruett network
• Dustin Hurst dossier, Freedom Bros podcast co-host, civil stalking injunction respondent
• John Heida dossier, Stop Idaho RINOs operator, the propaganda-network counterpart
• Bryan Smith dossier, $1,600 single-largest-donor to the disclosed I2AA cycle
• Doyle Beck dossier, East Idaho IFF anchor
• The Propaganda Network organization page
• Idaho Freedom Foundation organization page
• Manufacturing a Martyr investigation

Have evidence?

If you have direct documents, recordings, or firsthand information related to anything on this page, submit a tip.