Democratic operatives created thousands of Twitter accounts posing as Russian bots in order to boost Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in the October 2017 special election by linking his Republican opponent, Roy Moore, to Russian influence campaigns.
The operatives, who were funded by liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman independently of Jones’s campaign, created more than a thousand Russian-language accounts that followed Moore’s Twitter account overnight, The New York Times reported Wednesday evening.
Hoffman gave the operatives $100,000 for their project, which included creating fake conservative Facebook accounts to dissuade voters from supporting Moore, according to the Times.
“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the operatives recounted in an internal report obtained by the Times.
Media outlets — both in Alabama and nationally — fell for the ploy and amplified the false narrative in October 2017.
https://amp.dailycaller.com/2018/12/19/democrats-russian-bots-false-flag?
Aide to California state attorney accused of running an occult police force claiming to be 3,000 years old
One of California Attorney Gen. Kamala Harris’ (D) staffers was arrested last week and “accused of operating a rogue police force that claimed to exist for more than 3,000 years,” The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
Brandon Kiel, deputy director of community affairs at the California Department of Justice, and two others — David Henry and Tonette Hayes — reportedly face charges for their roles in the Masonic Fraternal Police Department.
“Suspicions about the Masonic Fraternal Police Department — whose members trace their origins to the Knights Templar — were aroused when various police chiefs in Southern California received a letter in late January that announced new leadership for the group,” the Times’ Matt Hamilton wrote. “Following an investigation, officials said, sheriff’s investigators searched two sites in Santa Clarita and found badges, weapons, uniforms and law enforcement paraphernalia.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department said in a statement that the Masonic Fraternal Police Department was not a legitimate police force and Kiel, Henry, and Hayes were arrested for allegedly impersonating police officers.
“Detectives conducted a thorough investigation in collaboration with several law enforcement agencies and determined MFPD was not a legitimate police agency,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement, according to NBC News.
Harris is the Democratic front-runner to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) in 2016. Her office declined to comment to the Times but said Kiel had been placed on administrative leave.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/kamala-harris-aide-accused-of-running-an-occult-police-force-2015-5?r=US&IR=T
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_Order_of_Police