Thread by @SethAbramson

Two years after I wrote a 100-tweet thread on the VIP-event attendees to Trump's first foreign policy speech (the Mayflower Hotel; April 27, 2016), with an emphasis on Bud McFarlane, here we are: McFarlane is at the center of breaking news on Trump-Saudi collusion.

*Two years*.

The first hitpiece ever written about me, in DEADSPIN—a sports website—was focused on how ridiculous I was for writing such a lengthy treatise on a single VIP event at a Trump speech. The site's smugness at how obviously foolish I was—despite my bona fides—how does that look now?

If you've been along for the ride on this feed the last two years, you may recall that it was this feed that found photos and video from the 30 minutes before Trump's Mayflower speech and crowdsourced identifying VIP attendees as they walked in. McFarlane was the first I spotted.

The feed then went on to find every other connection between McFarlane, K.T. McFarland (Bud's mentee, Flynn's deputy), and Flynn—including employment histories, photos, and evidence of meetings. The whole time I was doing this, hitpieces were being written about how stupid I was.

Then I wrote a book, PROOF OF COLLUSION, which documented everything that I'd found in major-media reports from around the world and going back decades. It became a NYT bestseller, but still many wouldn't read it—because of those hitpieces that had been proven conclusively wrong.

My point is, PROOF OF COLLUSION has prepared tens of thousands of people for 2019's "breaking news." But hundreds of thousands never read the book because of bullshit hitpieces by people who had not done any of the work that I had done and didn't understand the Trump-Russia case.

So I'm just registering my sadness about that—because anyone who's read PROOF OF COLLUSION will confirm for you that they're not surprised by 90% of what others consider breaking news. So if you ever have a chance to recommend the book to someone, I hope you'll consider doing so.