Thread by @KathrynTewson

Ok, y’all, gather round, because it’s Easter Sunday and @CodingEtudes and I stayed up way too late figuring out how the fuck Scott Adams ended up involved in the Matt Gaetz scandal.

Y’all, the answer appears to be “because everyone involved is dumb af.”

Let’s get into it.

First, a little background. In a lot of ways, this is a story about Bob Levinson. Levinson was a government agent who disappeared in 2007 in Iran. It’s widely understood that he was kidnapped by the Iranian government and died in their custody. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappear…

His family announced his death just about a year ago, in March 2020. The Iranian government still denies any involvement with or knowledge of his arrest, detainment, or death. C’est la guerre.

However, recently there have been rumors that Levinson is in fact still alive.

Well… “rumors” may be overstating it a little. Here’s an article about that topic. 5tjt.com/novak-time-for…

That article starts off reasonably enough, but as it goes on, a few details start to emerge that sound a little … phishy.

Now that isn’t proof of anything, maybe people have to crowdfund private missions to extract government operatives because the government has to disclaim all knowledge of their existence for complicated diplomatic reasons all the time.

Maybe.

(Did I break the thread already? I need thread glue.)

Anyway, let’s look at the byline on that article.

Jake Nowak is the media director for the Israeli Consulate in New York. This is important: he is not a diplomat, and as far as I can tell he does not have consular authority in any way. He’s just a guy who works there. muckrack.com/jakejakeny

Just a guy who works there, who believes that he can save the life of a disavowed American agent if only he can come up with $250,000 to fund the private extraction.

So, how does Gaetz get involved?

Well, someone texted his dad.

Anyone who has ever gotten email from a Nigerian prince recognizes this format, right? You start with the hook — I have a problem and only you can help, and the reward for you will be great!

Then the surprisingly complex details of the plan, which the author assures the mark ^H reader that he absolutely has the power to pull off, but somehow does not have the power to fund

And concluding with stressing the importance of acting now now now!! and that other people CAN be involved but they don’t need to be, this can just be our little secret, right?

Somehow Don also gets given a document describing the details of “Project Homecoming,” and y’all, this is just fake as *fuck*, and possibly a a boilerplate scan letter.

For starters, that opening paragraph is super vague and … not really on point? “Various public corruption and public integrity issues”?

And, like, none of this is a thing

Biden will strongly consider pardoning Gaetz because he considers springing Levinson a matter of National Urgency, capital letters and all!

But apparently not enough to fund it.

“You will be hailed as a national hero and given great public accolades by the government for your role in this operation which must also be completely disavowed by the government for Reasons” is quite the pill to get someone to swallow

Fortunately, everyone involved can rest easy, since there is a ton of incredibly specific information included as to how, where, and when the money will get moved.

THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT, AND ALSO THIS IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE TO HELP ME WITH MY TERRIBLE PROBLEM

yeah no

Fortunately Gaetz père was smart enough to realize that this wasn’t a real thing, but not smart enough to realize that it was a run of the mill scam. So he reported it to the FBI as an extortion attempt. His lawyer, having clearer eyes, called it a “scheme to defraud.”

“OKAY OKAY, BUT WHERE DOES DILBERT GUY COME IN?!” I hear you cry.

Well, remember Jake Nowak? Media director for the Israeli Consulate?

Jake apparently reached out to Adams, and I can speculate as to why.

Here are the screenshots of text messages between Novak and Adams that were allegedly shared with the American Conservative by “one of the parties” (but not Novak!)

First of all, seems pretty clear from these texts that Nowak or people he’s working with are the authors of that Project Homecoming document.

Second? Those screenshots aren’t the complete conversation, I don’t think. I think there’s a jump in it.

My speculation is that Nowak asked Adams to “pre-habilitate” Gaetz’s reputation in an attempt to secure the money that Nowak’s “commando team leader friend” is waiting for.

Now, @CodingEtudes disagrees with me here and thinks that it’s more likely that Adams volunteered to help out on his own. Which is also plausible! But it’s undeniable that Adams then leaped into a full-throttle defense of Matt Gaetz in his own inimitable way.

You know, by pointing out that just because he had his hands in a box full of fake IDs doesn’t mean that he was actually doing anything with them, and that they probably don’t even prosecute strict liability statutory rape if the girl looked like she could be close to 18.

Because these are just the dumbest fucking people.

So that’s the story. Some guy who works at the consulate got taken in by a golden-egg scam, and — on his own or under instruction — further ran a 419 scam to ensure additional funding for it.

The murder conspiracy part, I know nothing about.

Oh, and how did the American Conservative get those screenshots? My guess is that Adams was all excited about his secret decoder ring and bragged to all his buddies about how he was totally involved in a top secret black ops mission. Seems like the kind of thing he’d do.

Questions? Comments? Holes in my theory? Lemme have it.

(Also, why do i alternate back and forth between Nowak, which is wrong, and Novak, which is right? No clue. Probably staying up until 2 AM has something to do with it.)

For more context, here’s the thread from the American Conservative story that mentioned Adams’ involvement

https://twitter.com/kathryntewson/status/1378534319543648259

And the thread about Adams’ defense of Gaetz:

https://twitter.com/KathrynTewson/status/1378551073476993025