Thread by @UrbanAchievr

This story didn't get the attention it deserved IMO.
thedailybeast.com/inside-the-sha…

Paul Manafort hired a blogger to come up with a fake think tank called the "Center for the Study of Former Soviet Socialist Republics (CXSSR)" to support Russian-backed president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.

Site has been scrubbed but archived here.
web.archive.org/web/*/http://c… /2

CXSSR had two or three "real" people producing content, but there's strong evidence that several of the "scholars" were sock puppets. They didn't exist.

@lachlan did a pretty intensive search but couldn't find evidence that "Erika Chen" or "Matthew Lina" actually existed.

It's amazing the work that went into this con. They almost certainly fabricated this "panel discussion" for instance. /4

But "Matthew Lina" didn't just contribute content to the CXSSR website. He also wrote for the popular conservative/right-wing blog RedState. Those posts are still live. Who really wrote them?
redstate.com/diary/mattlina/ 5/

The Daily Beast named Atlanta attorney Chris Badeaux as a person who paid a university professor to write for the site. Badeaux was named as a potential witness for the DC trial of Paul Manafort, but was never called because of Manafort's guilty plea.
politico.com/f/?id=00000165…

Intersestingly, Badeaux's name also comes up as one of the bloggers involved in a scandal involving undisclosed PR work for the Malaysian government (along with others like Ben Domenech and Seth Mandel). 7/
buzzfeednews.com/article/rosieg…
efile.fara.gov/docs/6152-Regi…

I get the feeling there are more dots to connect here. But it does serve as a reminder of why it's important to know who funds the opinions that people serve up as their own. 8/end