[Thread] 1/ This whole @IlhanMN being a Qatari agent story is bizarre. The @alanbender1965 affadavit, if credible, would be hoovered up by all the mainstream media. It contains stories of murder, fraud, foreign conspiracies, everything! The social media story is also bizarre.
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 2/ After Bender's affidavit was strategically leaked, its claims were more or less boosted by the right wing media, JPost and other outlets. One of the oddest elements was that the claims were soon corroborated by @abdullahalsaleh on Twitter. Al Saleh claims to have a phd, 
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 @abdullahalsaleh 3/ and is apparently a journalist. What's more bizarre though is that prior to Al Saleh's corroboration the account of @HKrassenstein , a wife of either Ed or Brian Krassenstein, (brothers suspended by Twitter for running an operation trolling @realDonaldTrump) pre-empted
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 @abdullahalsaleh @HKrassenstein @realDonaldTrump 4/ Al Salah's corroboration. If you see below, you can see @HKrassenstein 's post is at 7.41pm, while @abdullahalsaleh 's post is at 10.32 pm on the same day. Clearly @HKrassenstein - if legit - has some sort of inside knowledge of the whole affair as she claims (unless its some
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 @abdullahalsaleh @HKrassenstein @realDonaldTrump 5/ sort of elaborate double bluff where the same people are running the whole thing 😅). Anyway, despite this strange timing, Al Saleh's corroboration got a lot of traction, almost 22,000 retweets and 32,000 likes. While I imagine Al Saleh is not known to many of the American
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 @abdullahalsaleh @HKrassenstein @realDonaldTrump 6/ online right-wing community and MAGA fans, they of course were the largest community boosting this post. Indeed, of around the 17,000 retweets that I downloaded, almost half (with bios) were produced by accounts containing 'MAGA, Trump, KAG, WWG1WGA and Qanon' in the bio (red)
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 @abdullahalsaleh @HKrassenstein @realDonaldTrump 7/ Again this "online MAGA movement" showed the typical fingerprints of the same community active on hard Brexit, anti Trudeau and other hashtags. A spike in creation dates on January 2017 - and to an extent Jan 2018. Over 350 accounts...
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 @abdullahalsaleh @HKrassenstein @realDonaldTrump 8/ So yeah, literally half the accounts promoting @abdullahalsaleh 's corroboration of @alanbender1965 bizarre affidavit are right-wing Trump-promoting accounts already earmarked as suspicious. Of course it is plausible that Always Trumpers just get on any anti-Ilhan bandwagon
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 @abdullahalsaleh @HKrassenstein @realDonaldTrump 9/ Of course I don't buy it. Even if this were 'organic' behaviour, it is so co-ordinated that literally anything negative about Ilhan will just be regurgitated. However I really don't believe it is. I think we will slowly get to the bottom of this strange MAGA network
@IlhanMN @alanbender1965 @abdullahalsaleh @HKrassenstein @realDonaldTrump 10. I'm also curious about @HKrassenstein 's claim that Ed and Brian's Twitter accounts were suspended after threads criticizing Saudi Arabia. Could be a coincidence if true, but the same has happened to me (not suspended though, limited, probs due to troll/nationalist reporting)
