by ESPN who lied about her identity and credentials to staffers in order to gain employment. In 2013, Deadspin broke the news that the reported September 2012 death of the girlfriend of Notre Dame All-American linebacker Manti Te'o, which Te'o had said inspired him during the 2012 season, was apparently a hoax. Deadspin found no evidence that the girlfriend had ever existed, much less died. A 2022 documentary, Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist, features former staffers Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey speaking about the methods Deadspin used in exposing the hoax. Deadspin received attention for "buying" a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame election in 2013. The site announced in late November 2013 that it had acquired a vote from a BBWAA writer which was "purchased" not through a cash payment to the writer, but instead to a charity of the writer's choice. On January 8, after the Hall of Fame voting was announced, Deadspin revealed that its voter was Miami Herald sportswriter Dan Le Batard. Le Batard was heavily criticized by fellow sportswriters for "selling" his vote. The BBWAA permanently revoked his Hall of Fame voting privileges and suspended his membership for one year. In 2014, Deadspin provided coverage of the Gamergate controversy, "expos[ing] a shocking view of sexism and harassment in the gaming industry to the wider public", according to Salon. On October 15, 2014, Deadspin published an article which alleged that Cory Gardner, the Republican who ran for the U.S. Senate in Colorado, had faked his high school football career. Later that day, Gardner tweeted photographic evidence of himself in his football uniform as a teenager, and the main source of the story said the report mischaracterized his comments. In response, Deadspin published an article entitled: "How Deadspin Fucked Up The Cory Gardner Story", stating: "we're sorry and embarrassed", it was "shitty" of them to have wronged Gardner, and "the only thing for us to do now is to eat shit." After Deadspin posted an article asking readers to post proof of Ted Cruz playing basketball, Cruz responded by jokingly tweeting a picture of Duke University star Grayson Allen, which then prompted Deadspin to reply with "Go eat shit." In July 2017, Deadspin sparked controversy when in response to Senator John McCain's brain cancer diagnosis, Deadspins Twitter account tweeted that the website did not want to "hear another fucking word about John McCain unless he