The cyber-security group behind a “false flag” disinformation campaign that targeted Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore has ties to an organization partially funded by progressive billionaire George Soros, according to the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross.
The Soros-funded Democracy Integrity Project recently joined up with New Knowledge, the Austin, Texas, social media firm that created fake social media accounts and twitter bots to mislead voters about Moore and link him with Russia.
The Democracy Integrity Project also has ties to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that created the infamous Russia-Trump dossier.
Soros-linked Alabama “false flag”
The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP) partnered with New Knowledge before the 2018 midterm elections to track Russian disinformation efforts. Both groups are linked with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is investigating Russian election interference and alleged collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia.
New Knowledge and TDIP collaborated on a website to track Russian disinformation in the midterms, Disinfo2018.com. According to the Daily Caller, the site is similar to Hamilton 68, another dashboard project to track Russian disinformation which New Knowledge’s founder, Jonathon Morgan, worked on.
At the request of the Senate committee, New Knowledge drafted a report on Russian interference, “The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency,” which refers to a Russian “troll farm” indicted by Robert Mueller for election interference. According to the Daily Caller, the committee provided New Knowledge with data from social media companies to help the investigation, but the committee denied ever paying New Knowledge for its research and said it doesn’t endorse its findings.
Morgan has frequently warned about Russian disinformation efforts in media appearances. He claimed that Russians were behind last year’s #ReleaseTheMemo campaign, which called for the disclosure of a House Republican document that alleged FISA spy abuses by the Justice Department, the Daily Caller noted.
The Senate panel also told the Daily Caller that it never hired the TDIP for any work. But the group’s founder, Dan Jones, a former staffer of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), was in contact with at least two Democrats on the panel, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and one other unidentified Democrat, in 2017.
According to an April 2018 House Select Committee on Permanent Intelligence report from its investigation into Russian meddling, Jones told the FBI in March of 2017 that his group hired Fusion GPS to continue its opposition research into President Trump and his alleged links to Russia, which Fusion GPS contractor and British ex-spy Christopher Steele described in the now-infamous Trump-Russia dossier that was partially funded by the Clinton campaign.
Jones said his group was paid $50 million by wealthy progressives to continue its independent Trump-Russia investigation, and an attorney connected to Jones told the Daily Caller that Soros was one of the donors.
False flag operation
Ironically, New Knowledge was recently exposed for attempting to influence Moore’s campaign using tactics evocative of the Russian disinformation efforts they supposedly researched on the Senate’s behalf with the aim of stopping election interference.
A New York Times report revealed in December that New Knowledge was behind a Democrat-organized effort to connect Moore with Russia by creating thousands of fake Russian bots and misleading social media pages. A Silicon Valley billionaire, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, donated $750,000 to New Knowledge through the group American Engagement Technologies, which was founded by former Obama appointee Mikey Dickerson. $100,000 of that money went towards the false flag campaign, known as Project Birmingham. Hoffman apologized and denied knowing that his money was being used for a shady social media campaign.
The Washington Post claimed that New Knowledge authored a document on Project Birmingham, but Morgan denied knowledge of the brief or much of the project, which he downplayed as an “experiment” meant to study Russian disinformation methods, not affect the outcome of the election. Dickerson also claimed that the 12-page report exists, contradicting Morgan. While Moore’s loss has been attributed to sexual assault allegations against him, the Russia smear worked and national news outlets amplified the “experiment,” which made it look like Moore had connections with the Kremlin.
Moore was outraged by the “false flag” reports and called for an investigation into the project, which is being conducted by the state’s attorney general. Besides Dickerson, whose group funneled the money for Project Birmingham to New Knowledge, another Obama affiliate, Evan Coren, was allegedly involved with a separate, second Democrat-led false flag operation.
That campaign, known as Dry Alabama, created the misleading impression that Moore was supported by a fake teetotaling group to scare away pro-business Republican voters.
No comments: