Thread by @reveal

1/ Time for a 🍕 party!

Nine months ago, @starecheski and reporter Amanda Robb went on a quest to find out who started #PizzaGate. revealnews.org/episodes/pizza…

2/ To catch you up: #PizzaGate is a conspiracy theory alleging that @HillaryClinton and other high-profile Democrats ran a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington DC pizzeria.

It’s false. #FakeNews.

3/ Amanda and @starecheski’s journey started with this Facebook post. It's one of the earliest references they found to the conspiracy theory:

4/ Amanda and @Starecheski went to Joplin, Missouri, where “Carmen Katz” said she lived.

On Facebook, she'd liked this smoothie truck:

5/ They went to Erie, Pennsylvania, to meet private investigator Doug Hagmann (@HagmannPI).

He brought the #Pizzagate conspiracy theory to @Infowars, where it took off.

6/ He said he had “court-ready” documents proving #Pizzagate. But here's what happened when our reporters asked to see them.

7/ He, uh, also sent wine to their hotel rooms. They did *not* partake.

8/ Our reporters tracked the story on @Twitter, then how it spread to #fakenews sites.

Amanda tried to count them once. She stopped at 150.

9/ Amanda went all the way to Macedonia to meet fake news profiteers who pushed out #Pizzagate on their sites.

This is the listed address for one site. 🤔🤔

10/ This guy, @jackposobiec, wouldn’t talk to us. He’s a Twitter agitator who has worked with Roger Stone.

He live-streamed himself “investigating” inside the pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong:

11/ We found that a few Trump campaign staffers tweeted about the conspiracy – including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. 👇👇

12/ Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr., who worked on Trump’s transition team, pushed #Pizzagate *AFTER* the shooting.

13/ @reveal’s @mikejcorey dug into Twitter data and found that some accounts tweeted about #Pizzagate hundreds of times in a month.

Most of those seem to be bots.

14/ Bots, that is, like @Nuevomedio. It's an account that has tweeted almost 900,000 times. It follows no one. And is STILL tweeting about #pizzagate.

Right before the shooting, it tweeted this:

15/ @Reveal cybersecurity reporter @aaronsankin found #Pizzagate tweets from 14 accounts linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which pushed propaganda on social media.

One of them, @GarrettSimpson, retweeted Roseanne Barr:

16/ This is just the tip of the iceberg. Subscribe to our podcast for this and more stories like it: revealnews.org/podcast