Thread by @szhang_ds

In 11/2018, I helped investigate America Progress Now (APN), a shady group running Green Party ads in swing districts. Other employees quickly determined that the group was run by US conservative operatives.

FB failed to act before the election. (1/15)
theguardian.com/technology/202…

The episode attracted the attention of the press at the time. My role was minor; others did the real work.

FB did finally act after the election... to warn the perpetrators their duplicate accounts would be disabled. Mission accomplished, we said. (2/15)
propublica.org/article/a-myst…

Although the world had no idea, FB knew the page was controlled by three people. They were using duplicate accounts - e.g. @duncan_colton created a "CG Duncan" account.

As they sent FB their personal ID for ad verification, this apparent obfuscation was not effective. (3/15)

Ultimately, APN was run by Rally Forge (RF), a conservative marketing group closely tied to @TPUSA, which was eventually banned from FB in 2020 for disinformation.
One wonders if RF would have escalated to troll farms, had FB deterred them in 2018. (4/15)
washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

In 2019, @CampaignLegal filed a complaint with the @FEC. APN had never reported its spending and funding to the FEC. As a result, the world still did not know who was responsible for the advertising. (5/15)

campaignlegal.org/update/fake-po…

The next year, Mr. Evan Muhlstein came forward, took responsibility for creating the page and placing the ads, and apologized. "Muhlstein states that any errors were due to his inexperience", the FEC wrote in 2020 while dismissing the complaint. (6/15)

fec.gov/files/legal/mu…

@txelectionlaw criticized @CampaignLegal: "There was...no evidence to support [their] salacious theories about the “unknown person or persons” behind APN."

But the only evidence was held by the perpetrators and FB workers under nondisclosure (7/15)

eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/764…

Facebook knew three people controlled the America Progress Now page, placing the ads and financing them out of an ads account. Their accounts had been verified with ID.

Mr. Evan Muhlstein was not one of them.

I'm not a lawyer. But lying to a court is generally a crime (8/15)

@txelectionlaw took Muhlstein's statement at his word.

This is how official proceedings work - testimony is believed until contradicted. The consequence for perverting justice must be severe to dissuade lying. If deception is permitted, courts will be unable to trust. (9/15)

This shouldn't be a partisan issue.

In 2018, the Indiana Democratic Party openly ran ads (with disclosure) supporting the Libertarian candidate. If they were "smarter" like APN, they'd have set up a phony libertarian group to hide their tracks. (10/15)
apnews.com/article/8560cf…

Lying to courts is one of the oldest crimes in history. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is the 9th Commandment in the Old Testament.

Courts cannot scrutinize every statement for truth. Perjury perverts the course of justice, poisons the well for future testimony. (11/15)

"There is no excuse for perjury - never, never, never. There is truth, and the truth demands respect." - Ken Starr

Muhlstein may claim he simply omitted Rally Forge's role. This sort of quibble is how we get to "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is." (12/15)

In the end, this is a story about Facebook, the FEC, and broken systems.

Facebook says it's made improvements since, which is true. It's cold comfort for their failure to protect American democracy in this 2018 case. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied. (13/15)

Meanwhile, there's no sign the FEC asked FB to confirm Muhlstein had administered the page.

It's quite possible that FB would have blown the FEC off. But many employees were upset over this case, and may have come forward if asked. I would likely have if I'd known. (14/15)

Anyone who becomes aware of the possible commission of a serious crime has a responsibility to come forward. Perjury and obstruction of justice are so serious, we impeached a President for it.

Now it's time for the @FEC to prove that perverting justice has consequences. (15/15)

And kind thanks to @juliacarriew for her tireless effort investigating this story for the last few months. I hadn't even known about the @FEC case or @CampaignLegal's suit until she dug it up earlier this year.

She really deserves an award for all the hard work.