Thread by @lachlan

In 2022 I wrote about the Main Street Sentinel, a progressive news site that popped up to run generic pro-Biden/Whitmer content and use that content to run paid ads clearly designed to boost Dems in MI. The site was run by Star Spangled Media LLC axios.com/2022/03/27/pro…

Star Spangled Media spent $1.4M+ to run ads on the Main Street Sentinel’s FB/IG pages in 2022 promoting Dem MI statehouse candidates with ads that aligned with Dem midterm messaging. After the election the site stopped running ads, then shut down entirely facebook.com/ads/library/?a…

I couldn't figure out who was behind it. But this @maxwelltani piece pulls back the curtain a bit further Based on his reporting and some additional digging, I think I’ve ID'd the dark money group trying to use these "news" sites to launder political adssemafor.com/article/07/07/…

@maxwelltani Max found a new Star Spangled Media site: the Morning Mirror. It’s running ads boosting Dems in PA and MI. Its attorneys, from Dem super-lawyer Marc Elias’ firm, recently asked AZ election regulators to officially rule that it is not a political committee running political ads.

@maxwelltani Morning Mirror and Main Street Sentinel populate their sites with aggregated local news content, intersperse it with “stories” praising specific political candidates, then use paid ads to boost the latter. It’s an attempt to launder political ads through a sham “news” outlet.

@maxwelltani Just how transparently political are these sites? The URLs for the Main Street Sentinel stories backing MI statehouse candidates last cycle were simply the names of the state legislative districts the candidates they were backing were running in:

@maxwelltani What Elias&Co are doing here is incredibly cynical. These sites are OBVIOUSLY political. In their AZ letter, they try to pass them off as standard left-leaning news orgs. There is no legit news mission here. These are political advertising vehicles masquerading as media outlets.

@maxwelltani To their credit, AZ regulators seemed to recognize this effort for what it is, and denied the Elias firm’s request to officially bless Star Spangled Media as a non-political news entity. (We’ll come back to this, since it’s a significant development.) …orageccec.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/public/docs/11…

@maxwelltani So who is actually behind this? Here’s Semafor: “A person familiar with the outlet said that it was not owned, operated, or controlled by a campaign, political party, or political action committee, didn’t endorse candidates, and had editorial independence.”

@maxwelltani In his piece, @maxwelltani says that fingerprints in Morning Mirror source code identify two people behind the site: Dem digital consultants @lucas_anderton and @august_torrico. And sure enough, their names pop up repeatedly as authors on the site’s back end:

There’s a third name that also frequently appears in that source code: David Cohen. But there's not much else to ID Cohen, and it's a pretty common name.

There are breadcrumbs though. I believe—but can’t prove—that the David Cohen in question is this one, the co-CEO and chief strategist of the progressive dark money group (and sister super PAC) Forward Majority linkedin.com/in/davidchasec…

Cohen's description of his group certainly fits: “Forward Majority is winning back Democratic power in the states. Our innovative model is reshaping the legislative landscape in the states that matter most to national outcomes with an aggressive, scalable model to drive wins.”

One of the digital consultants running the Morning Mirror, Lucas Anderton, works for the firm SBDigital. During the 2022 cycle, Forward Majority’s Michigan arm paid SBDigital $1,497,608—very close to the $1,412,891 (less an agency fee?) in ads run by Main Street Sentinel

Whoever's behind Star Spangled Media and its “news” sites has worked to ensure they remain anonymous. And that’s what the Elias letter in AZ was all about: if SSM were forced to register as a political committee, it’d have to disclose financial info, potentially including donors.

As mentioned, AZ’s denial of their request is significant: if someone were to file a complaint against SSM, it’d be adjudicated through a normal investigative process, which would almost surely turn up evidence confirming that this is a political operation, not a news venture.

Star Spangled Media/Morning Mirror/Main Street Sentinel are just a small part of a sprawling progressive push to use ostensible news properties to advance political and policy goals. It’s a sophisticated effort, and one that relies on duplicity and subterfuge.

Anyway, be sure to read @maxwelltani's excellent reporting here semafor.com/article/07/07/…