Chelsea Goss, better known online as Chelsea Gods, is no stranger to controversy.
The comedian and social media provocateur is a paragon of the dark woke-posting that has swept lefty internet and politics. It eschews the more civil activism of yesteryear for a brash, inflammatory approach. Think videos lampooning “Trumpasexuals,” rather than kneeling in kente cloths.
Goss’ antics have built her a sizable following among people infuriated by what they view as elected Democrats’ prim and feckless response to the myriad outrages of the Trump 2.0 administration. But they’ve also now landed her in some legal hot water courtesy of far-right media outlet One America News Network.
After filming a video at the headquarters of the San Diego-based network in which she called the OANN commentator Matt Gaetz a “pedophile,” that network’s president has alleged Goss trespassed on his company’s property and harassed his employees. Charles Herring is asking a judge to not only prevent Goss from speaking about any employees of the company but to also force her to delete all posts she’s previously made mentioning OANN employees.
Now, Goss and her attorneys have filed an anti-SLAPP motion asking the court to strike down Herring’s request for a restraining order. The motion alleges the true purpose of Herring’s complaint is to silence Goss, infringing her First Amendment right to free speech.
“One America News Network tried to use their endless deep pockets to silence a person like me,” Goss said. “That’s what this case is really about, that a large corporation is trying to make me stay silent about the fact that they hired a pedophile because it makes them look bad. Well, it does make you look bad. You hired a pedophile.”
In her hundreds of Instagram posts, she rails against everything from elites involved in the Jeffery Epstein scandal to the war in Iran to the deportation tactics of immigration officials, often while wearing “Deport Melania” merchandise.
She’s even expanded into the realm of music, posting songs like “Bird-Legged Ho,” which is in reference to former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. In “Leave your MAGA Husband,” she implores listeners to cheat on, and then leave, their MAGA husbands.
OANN’s petition stems from a February video Goss filmed in the parking lot of the network’s Morena Boulevard headquarters. In the video, she called employees of the network “pedophile protectors,” because the network hired the Florida Congressman-turned-television-personality.
“Do you remember when Matt Gaetz fucked a 17-year-old because she wanted braces? I do,” Goss filmed herself telling the network’s president, Herring. After being told that Herring had called the police, Goss responded: “Thank God because Matt Gaetz is a pedophile who fucks kids. He does need to be arrested.”
A 2024 congressional investigation found there was something to the allegations of drug use and statutory rape that followed Gaetz – a conservative firebrand and President Donald Trump’s original pick to lead the Justice Department – throughout his brief career in congress. The investigation found evidence Gaetz “regularly” paid women for sex, one of whom was a 17-year-old who wanted money for braces.
“The committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the report reads.
Gaetz resigned shortly before committee members voted to release the report amid his selection as Trump’s next attorney general. Prosecutors never brought criminal charges against Gaetz.
After the February encounter, Herring petitioned for a temporary restraining order against Goss, asking the court to prevent her from doxxing any employees of Herring Networks and making any social media posts about Herring or his employees.
A Superior Court judge approved the order but determined that the original scope was too vague. The narrowed order only applied to Herring and prevented Goss from coming within 100 yards of OANN’s headquarters. Judge Chandra Reid denied Herring’s request to prevent Goss from making social media posts about the entity, but did prohibit her from contacting Herring “directly or indirectly,” by any means.
OANN, and Herring, are themselves no stranger to legal trouble. Voting technology companies Dominion and SmartMatic both filed defamation suits against the network in response to conspiracies its hosts spread about their machines changing votes in the 2020 election. The network ultimately settled the SmartMatic case out of court. Falsehoods about the 2020 election led all major television providers to drop OANN from their services in 2022.
Herring subsequently filed a request for a permanent restraining order against Goss, alleging she’d harassed OANN employees during her initial visit and violated the temporary restraining order. As evidence, Herring included a video posted by Goss in which she told her followers that she’d been slapped with a temporary restraining order because Herring “does not like it when you point out the fact that they hired a pedophile and sex trafficker, Matt Gaetz.”
Herring redacted Gaetz’s name in his filings, referring to him only as a “well-known political figure.”
Like the earlier petition, Herring’s new one asks the court not only to prevent Goss from posting about any OANN employees on any social media site, but that she remove all existing posts about the network’s employees. If that order were approved, Goss would have to delete dozens of videos about Gaetz and OANN.
Particularly troubling to Goss’ lawyer, Connor Lynch, is the request Goss not post about Herring or any OANN employee in the future. That request is an example of a generally prohibited practice known as prior restraint, referred to by the Supreme Court as “the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.”
Goss and her lawyer hit back this week, filing an anti-SLAPP motion meant to rapidly strike down Herring’s request for a restraining order. The motion seeks the dismissal of the restraining order outright, or at least the striking of requests related to Goss’ constitutionally protected right to speech.
“I don’t think they did a particularly good job of disguising what they were really seeking. They almost come right out and say it: make her stop posting,” Lynch said.
Herring’s petition alleges that Goss had trespassed on the Herring Networks property not once, but twice. The first time was in August, and again last month when she waited for an employee to leave so she could enter through the open security gate.
During that encounter, Herring said Goss made “harassing and obscene statements,” to OANN employees including remarks about “brown people.”
Some of the encounter is shown in another video Goss posted from the incident, in which she speaks to an employee who exits the building and asks her to leave.
“Oh my God, you don’t even speak English … They haven’t called ICE on you yet? That’s crazy,” Goss said to the man. “How does it feel to work for a company that protects pedophiles? How does it feel? Huh? I guess you protect pedophiles too. Have you thought about protecting children?”
When asked about the interaction, Goss said she often uses satire and hyperbole in her videos.
“Obviously I don’t want that man deported. I don’t want anybody deported except Melania,” she said with a grin.
From a legal perspective, Lynch thinks even the argument that Goss trespassed at OANN doesn’t hold water. Besides, he added, Herring hasn’t brought an action against Goss alleging she trespassed.
“They just have somebody who walked into the parking lot and then left when asked to leave,” he said.
In his filings, Herring also included a video Goss posted on Instagram the day Customs and Border Protection agents shot Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti to death as an example of her “unhinged violence and threats.” In it, Goss said she was so “fucking angry,” that she wanted to punch “every MAGA” in the face.
“I’m gonna’ beat up your whole fucking family. If you have a five-year-old, I’m gonna’ pick them off too. I fucking hate you guys. You’re choosing violence, you’re choosing war instead of peace on American streets,” Goss said.
On this front, like most others, Goss also makes no apologies. Not only was she not referring to Herring, she said, but she was just venting at a moment when she felt fed up with the killings of Americans by the federal government.
“I don’t try and be politically correct, and I don’t apologize for who I am,” Goss said. “People on the right have been doing this for a really, really, really long time, and people on the left, we’ve been kind, we’ve been diplomatic. Well, I’m not trying to be any of those things.”
Update: This story has been updated to clarify language involving Chelsea Goss’ anti-SLAPP motion.