THREAD: The seemingly coordinated right-wing noise and disinformation campaign targeting @Susan_Hennessey this week—another smart woman who worked hard to hold to account the worst excesses of the Trump admin—is a fascinating case study in the GOP's attempt to rewrite history.
https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/1392794195384053761
1) As you may know, Susan—one of the smartest people I've ever encountered anywhere & former NSA lawyer—joined the @TheJusticeDept's National Security Division Monday as a senior counsel. Ever since, the right-wing noise machine has ginned up one false controversy after another.
2) First @ggreenwald attacked her for deleting old tweets, clearly a plot to disguise her past statements. The reality—as Susan has said!—is her tweets have long auto-deleted, a policy she began when…wait for it… @ggreenwald began auto-deleting tweets.
https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/1391738057158692865
3) From there, the "controversy" about Susan was amplified, in a very tried and true pathway, from alt-right Twitter trolls to the Federalist and National Review to Fox News and on, each story seeming to rewrite the history of the Trump era and downplay its documented abuses.
4) Much of this "controversy" stems from the ongoing attempt to rewrite the history of the "Russia Hoax" and the Ukraine impeachment as giant nothingburgers, when both clearly are anything but.
5) This culminated in that WSJ editorial against her "partisanship" at DOJ, a remarkable statement given her *years* of writing—and even an entire book!—about the correct role and line between political appointees at DOJ. See, for instance, this argument: lawfareblog.com/what-bill-barr…
6) The WSJ actually cites as concerns such UNHINGED WILD WOMAN comments like @Susan_Hennessey saying DOJ dropping charges against Mike Flynn was "an astonishing assault on the rule of law," an opinion so crazy that ...
... the move by Trump and AG Barr led the case's prosecutor to quit in protest & *1,900* former DOJ officials called on Barr to resign, saying the AG "assaulted the rule of law"! washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
7) Now, in a predictable conclusion, @JohnCornyn clutches for his nearest pearls reading the WSJ editorial on Susan. Cornyn, of course, is often the ultimate patsy in these false controversies—the one who amplifies something from trolls into "legitimate" congressional concern....
8) Cornyn is no stranger to being confused and worried by the internet: He was recently flummoxed by another (woman!) DOJ appointee's *satirical* 25-year-old college oped: washingtonian.com/2021/04/15/a-s…
9) All week, the controversy about Susan has been a classic disinformation campaign: Mixing some truth, a bunch of bad faith, some unfounded conspiracy, and twisting it all together in such a way that no one will seriously refute it because it's so clearly dumb and pointless....
.... but along the way, unrefuted, it lays the groundwork for undermining legitimacy later and smears someone (often a woman!) in a way that will dog them for years.
10) tl;dr: Don't believe everything you read at Fox News. @Susan_Hennessey is smart, respected, oozes integrity, and we should all be grateful she's serving the country at @TheJusticeDept and working to rebuild what Barr so badly damaged.
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