Peter Thiel's sidekick Chuck Johnson is now accused of posing as an intelligence asset to defraud businesses. So let's ask: how in 2023 did SEVEN news outlets print Johnson's story that he and Thiel were working for the FBI, without calling his bs? 1/ semafor.com/article/10/16/…
The two outlets who named Johnson as their source are Business Insider and The Atlantic, but their stories were picked up by 5 others, and MANY outlets did worse: they printed versions of the story over April-Nov 2023 without naming sources. It was all bullshit - a campaign. 2/
When Johnson started calling reporters to say he and Thiel were Super Secret FBI Sources, they should have have known this was 1) bs and 2) a PR campaign by Thiel. They should have asked: why would Thiel do this? What is his goal? Every leak has a goal. 3/
Also: why would anyone spread a story about cooperating with the FBI, that the FBI would know is a lie? If Chuck Johnson and Peter Thiel did this, it suggests they were trying to get ahead of something. And reporters should ask what.
h/t @willsommer for flagging the lawsuit. 4/
For those interested in following up, here's a public version of the page on Peter Thiel's 2023 PR campaign, with live links to the articles. Read and ask: would I have fallen for this? And try to imagine an FBI agent calling Chuck Johnson "Genius". 5/ docs.google.com/document/d/1bq…
For people who want to read the court documents from the suit against Chuck Johnson, they've been posted by Max Tani of Semafor. The suit claims Johnson and his pal "Gator" would issue threats to try to get a stake in defense and intelligence companies. 6/ cdn.sanity.io/files/ifn0l6bs…
Remember: Chuck Johnson was the white nationalist Matt Gaetz invited to the 2018 SOTU. Gaetz is now married to the sister of Palmer Luckey, who fronts the Peter Thiel-backed defense company Anduril. It's the Keystone Kops version of James Bond villains. 7/ theguardian.com/us-news/2018/f…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
People shocked by Evie magazine's article fawning over JD Vance's "classic beauty" and "blue laser beam...eyes that sent women swooning", please realize this is the same outfit that launched a menstrual cycle tracker funded by Vance's patron Peter Thiel. 1/
The propaganda efforts aren't even subtle. Evie (started 2018) is a pitch for the horseshoe left via a "wellness" magazine. The period tracker was spun up in 2022 ("women were tired of the pill"); they claimed they'd have 1M users in a year. They don't. 2/ futurism.com/neoscope/peter…
Evie's use of "blue laser beam eyes" for Vance is funny since that phrase is borrowed from the parody ZDF did of Peter Thiel using the James Bond theme song: "Immortal libertarian, so refreshingly Aryan... with blue laser eyes into human demise..." 3/
Skimming the Jack Smith filing, seems that Ken Chesebro (CC5 here, p. 53) was openly telling people his fake elector plan was a gambit to let Congressmen make false claims disputing the election. He seems to be clearly aware the votes were illegal. Not a good look. 1/
On p. 58: again, Chesebro knew the fake electoral votes were just a "pretext" for a fake fight to deny Biden the presidency. Interestingly, the same para says Trump was in "almost daily" contact with someone whose podcast spread the false claims - who? 2/ storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
On p. 59 we learn that Trump spoke directly and privately to Ken Chesebro (CC5), and that someone else closely involved (CC6) warned Chesebro to not talk about the plan in chat groups and to text about the fake electors to just a few people. They knew it was illegal. 3/
Today DOJ revealed a $10M op to use US podcasters to push Russian propaganda, since 2023. Let's remember that Lauren Southern, "Commentator-5", went to Moscow in 2018 to make a film to "correct " "America's irrational fear of Russia". This stuff has been going on for years. 1/
Today's indictment doesn't claim Southern knew her recent funders were Russian. But in 2018, she must have known. Daniel Lombroso says that when Southern got to Moscow, she was so dismayed that she dropped the film. So it wasn't her idea. Whose was it? 2/ archive.is/L0AOb
In 2018, Lauren Southern pivoted her film project to another favorite Russian theme: the danger of Islamic immigrants. Just when Scott Presler was starting an anti-Islam speaking tour at US colleges. Why are their talking points coordinated? Because someone's paying for them. 3/
This headline about how Trump lied about nearly dying in a helicopter crash gives major deja vu. Sure, today he mixed up Jerry Brown vs. Willie Brown. But there may be a deeper brain scramble going on. Trump famously lied about nearly dying in a helicopter crash in 1989. 1/
In Oct 1989, as Trump's casinos were edging into bankruptcy, 3 of his top casino execs died in a crash of a helicopter chartered by the Trump Org. The rotor simply fell off. Trump soon began telling reporters he was scheduled to be on the flight too. 2/ pressofatlanticcity.com/3-trump-execs-…
Trump's story of miraculously cheating death got a lot of press, even though other Trump execs contradicted his story almost immediately. It was a big deal; it got national-level coverage. In an old man losing his memories, this helicopter story might still remain. 3/
Since Trump has nothing new to offer, he can win only by smears and lies. That's why he hired Chris LaCivita, who "swift-boated" John Kerry with false slurs on his war record. LaCivita is already gunning for Walz. So let's talk about how to counter this swift-boat attack. 1/
Realize; the target of the smear is you. It's harmless if it's confined to Truth Social or GETTR. The goal is to get YOU talking about it. So ideally, we'd just ignore LaCivita's lies about Walz. The problem is, media is now helping them. They're making the smear the story. 2/
The NYT just handed Trump a huge gift, since LaCivita's entire goal is to control the dialogue, to force you to defend against his lie. So the only good response is to stay on offense. Don't let him make you chase the ball. Hit one return and then control the court again. 3/
New info about Jan 6: the DHS OIG report confirms that Secret Service drivers were emailing about rumored plans to take Trump to the Capitol already the day before. On Jan 5, people knew. 1/ oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/…
Fliers had circulated for weeks telling people to march to the Capitol. By January 4, Kylie Kremer knows that Trump would call on them to go to the Capitol in his speech. But the DHS OIG report is the first documented evidence suggesting Trump planned to go along too. 2/
The OIG report seems wrong in places. It says Pence was evacuated at 2:12 PM, before the Capitol was breached. But Pence is still there: Sen. Lankford waves at him as he says "vice president". Pence wasn't pulled til 2:13 PM, as the breach was happening. It was so close. 3/