Breitbart and Infowars under investigation for ties to Russia: report

[Chicago1980]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by DonViejo (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: The Raw Story

Breitbart and Infowars under investigation for ties to Russia: report


MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU
20 MAR 2017 AT 22:18 ET

WASHINGTON — Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories — some fictional — that favored Donald Trump's presidential bid, two people familiar with the inquiry say.

Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as "bots," to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.

The bots' end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said. Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the bot attacks are part of an FBI-led investigation into a multifaceted Russian operation to influence last year's elections.

Investigators examining the bot attacks are exploring whether the far-right news operations took any actions to assist Russia's operatives. Their participation, however, wasn't necessary for the bots to amplify their news through Twitter and Facebook.

The investigation of the bot-engineered traffic, which appears to be in its early stages, is being driven by the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, whose inquiries rarely result in criminal charges and whose main task has been to reconstruct the nature of the Kremlin's cyberattack and determine ways to prevent another.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/breitbart-and-infowars-under-investigation-for-ties-to-russia-report/

[Jonny Appleseed]

1. lmao Russia clearly was using America as a test lab for its democratic subversion techniques

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Test lab? No, Putin was playing for real stakes. Just that neither tRump nor Putin expected to win.

Comey's bombshell in OCTOBER about FBI investigating Clinton without revealing FBI investigating Trump was the hammer that swung the election.

Comey has a lot to answer for.

[notdarkyet]

22. Putin wanted to win, but he teamed up with a bunch of clowns that

Couldn't shut up. Gulliani forecasting with laughter on fox the first Wikileaks's dump of Podesta is a good example of how dts team fell/falls apart. Putin wanted the sanctions lifted. Only reason for tillerson to be where he is. Trump couldn't, can't act presidential. That's why Putin doesn't want to talk about DT anymore. His years of planning are flushing down the toilet.

[Eyeball_Kid]

28. Criminals often make mistakes

By way of supreme arrogance.

[Charles Bukowski]

29. Agreed, I bet he regrets aiding and abetting a ginormous

imbecile like Trump. Just look how quickly this us all unraveling.

I can't wait for the next democratic president to sanction the living shit out if Putin. Bury his ass.

[zentrum]

18. I've read that he's doing it...

....in other, if not all, Western Democracies, because he wants to undermine the idea of Democracy and the power of Europe (NATO).

He is supporting the far right racist candidate Le Pen in France, for instance, using similar techniques. Can't remember where I read this--but it was a reputable journalistic outlet.

So the test experiment is world-wide. He is the KGB after all.

[pnwmom]

2. The original McClatchyDC story is posted here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141733529

[shenmue]

3. Haaaaaaa

[Maraya1969]

4. YES! When one goes down they all topple down. These are the scourge of the interent

[regnaD kciN]

5. You mean RUSSIA brought us...

[Grassy Knoll]

7. LOLOLOLOL.....

[MelissaB]

8. K&R!

[Tinamarief57]

9. Take down Infowars and Breitbart along with Trump

One can only hope that all of these alt right KKK conspiracy theory looney tunes can be taken down.. it would make the world a much better place..

[gopiscrap]

19. Welcome to DU

[littlemissmartypants]

23. Welcome to DU Tinamarief57. eom

[Raster]

10. And while they're at it... someone needs to take a good, long look at the Mercer family...

...The family that brought Kellyann Conjob* and Adolph Bannon* to the tRump* campaign and the White House.

[BadgerMom]

21. +1000

And whose yacht met Rybolovlev's in the British Virgin Islands recently.

[Raster]

24. absolutely! Robert Mercer has gone out of his way to be nonchalant and discrete...

...apparently allowing others to do the dirty work. If other parts of the puzzle indicate collusion with Russia, I'd say it's a damned good bed the Mercer's are in the thick of it.

[cstanleytech]

11. I doubt they were knowingly colluding with Russia as there is to much risk to them legally

if they were though of course it does need to be investigated to make sure.

[lunasun]

12. I hope all this coming out helps with the French and German elections soon where they

have settled in to do no good there
https://qz.com/841959/breitbart-news-is-coming-to-france-and-germany-ahead-of-elections/

[Hekate]

13. Excellent. KnR

[calimary]

14. The McClatchy newspapers were some of the VERY few publications to get the Iraq War/WMD scam right.

VERY few major papers or chains did anything but genuflect and take the phony baloney from the cheney machine and simply swallow it and shit it out onto their front pages without bothering to ask too many questions or dig into any truths. The Knight Ridder papers weren't fooled much, either.

The New York Times, on the other hand, was TOTALLY owned at that time. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the Vice President's info-manipulation machine. A literal dumping ground of bush/cheney lies about the war and about Saddam Hussein and the effort to sweep up everything about 9/11 and blame it all on Iraq. cheney would drop nice tasty little dog biscuits on his little pet Judith Miller, and she'd dutifully write it all up, attribute it to unnamed sources high up in the administration who didn't want to be identified. NO DUH! They were mainly cheney! Then her latest big story would land on the front page of the New York Times Sunday edition, usually two-columns above the fold, and then cheney and his little band of liars (rummy, wolfie, contradicta, etc) would fan out across the Sunday morning news shows and spread the story, with the inevitable "it's the FRONT PAGE STORY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES!!!!!!!OMG!!!!!!!OMG!!!!!!!" NO DUH! The story cheney had planted with Judith Miller, a day or so earlier. Like a news Mobius strip from Hell.

[UpInArms]

17. Thank you for your crystal clear memory!

[Miigwech]

15. They will scream

and I hope they go down is a cloud of poo

[C Moon]

16. I wonder if the FBI will look into the DU hack. It seemed well-thought-out

and to me it could have been a small part of the plan.

[Chevy]

20. The TYT and The Intercept and their agenda as well n/t

[UCmeNdc]

25. Wow, the US must investigate and fully understand how all of the different

components of this sophisticated operation worked. The Russians have to have a recovery plan to hide their hostile spy network.

[Warpy]

27. It will be nice if the only large scale deportations we see from now on

are of Russian mobsters. I'm sure a lot of these shoestring outfits got offered deals that were too good to refuse and only found out what they cost a little later.

[certainot]

26. how long has putin been using team limbaugh?

— talk radio is a classic psyops, according to the army psyops manual, and was instrumental selling ‘climategate’ in 2009 after russians hacked the east anglia emails. limbaugh created that and essentially sabotaged the copenhagen talks.

every year on delay on global warming is worth billions to putin.

then limbaugh spent weeks in 2011 trying to get the teabags to default the debt.

how long's Putin been using talk radio? trump 2014, debt default in 2011, 'Climategate' '09?

he started making excuses for trump in the primaries vs the gop establishment and still is.

they really need to check out who’s been feeding limbaugh all these years. breitbart started in 2007 i think, right in time to go after hillary.

drudge, then breitbart, feeding the talk radio psyops, where the real unchallenged repetition to create the alternate reality is done.

[Sunlei]

30. Breitbart & Infowars & FOX. fixed it. Only 3 news Repub. party tweeted the most entire campaign!

trump was Republican Party candidate, Republicans backed him, Republicans voted for him, they knew about Russia. They colluded with Russia hackers.

[jpak]

31. LOCK THEM UP!

LOCK THEM UP!

LOCK THEM UP!

LOCK THEM UP!

[DonViejo]

32. Locking...

Duplicate of http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141733529