A Republican representative has claimed that his alleged donation to a homophobic "holocaust denier" was a simple mistake.
Per The Daily Beast, Federal Election Commission files showed that the Texas GOP Louie Gohmert donated $5,500 to the anti-LGBTQ+ and antisemitic Pastor Steve Anderson last December.
However, Gohmert's Chief of Staff Connie Hair told the above publication that the donation was an accident.
Hair stated that the politician's 'donation' was the result of a botched internet search for an address by the congressman's treasurer, William Long.
Long had intended on hiring a Christian singer named Steve Amerson to play at an event. However, he mistakenly filed with the FEC that the money was given to Steve Anderson instead.
He added: "That's who it was written to, and Louie gave it to him, and when Bill Long got the check and the charge, he searched 'Anderson Ministries' instead of 'Amerson.' Bill Long is amending our filing."
Anderson is a pastor at the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. The fundamentalist church's doctrinal statement states that "homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty."
Meanwhile, a 2015 report from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League found that noted Anderson previously spread erroneous claims that millions of Jews had not been gassed and cremated in Nazi Germany during World War II.
Gohmert infamously drew widespread mockery after suggested changing the moon's orbit around the Earth, or the Earth's orbit around the sun, in a bid to halt climate change, during a hearing with the House Natural Resources Committee.
Speaking with senior Forest Service official Jennifer Eberlein, Gohmert stated:
"I was informed by the immediate past director of NASA that they've found that the moon's orbit is changing slightly and so is the Earth's orbit around the sun. We know there's been significant solar flare activity.
"So is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM 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."
NASA has previously debunked the idea that the Earth's orbit is responsible for climate change, with a spokesperson writing in a blog post:
"The small changes set in motion by Milankovitch cycles operate separately and together to influence Earth’s climate over very long timespans, leading to larger changes in our climate over tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years."
