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Luke O'Brien Profile picture
Luke O'Brien
@lukeobrien
Investigative journalist, magazine writer. Extremism/disinfo. 917-284-8226
6 subscribers
Nov 15, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
In trying to understand how the Washington Post overlooked Peter Thiel pal Jeff Giesea funding white nationalism (see below), I began to wonder if the reporters didn't do any digging on Giesea beyond reading his Wikipedia page.

So I looked at his Wikipedia page. Well well. It has been scrubbed to remove references to his far-right extremism, many of which I first reported. Here's Giesea's current page and the lingo at the very top:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gies…
Image
Nov 13, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In 2020, I proved that Peter Thiel pal Jeff Giesea helped fund the white nationalist movement in America. He gave thousands to Richard Spencer's org & worked closely w/ extremists.

The WaPo omits that info from this story, which uses Giesea as a source.

washingtonpost.com/technology/202… Instead, the Washington Post describes Giesea as someone "launching a nonpartisan think tank." A fella focused on "solving real problems."

Best-case scenario: WaPo reporters/editors remain disturbingly clueless about far-right extremism & subversion. Even after Jan. 6. Image
Nov 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A few more thoughts on Doug Mackey...

1) His family wasted thousands of dollars on "treatment" to de-radicalize him. He hasn't reformed and has no remorse for his actions. He's now playing MAGA martyr for the anti-democracy movement in America.
angrywhitemen.org/2023/11/10/tuc… 2) I didn't cover Mackey's voter suppression efforts in my 2018 story. I focused on how he spread extremist content, including Nazi propaganda, and promoted and was promoted by a major Kremlin-controlled Twitter account. All of which made him a MAGA hero.
huffpost.com/entry/trump-wh…
Aug 22, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Gutsy undercover reporting from @noturtlesoup17 shows how easy it is for insurrectionism-endorsing fascists to gain access to GOP mainstream.

Some of these extremists have close ties to Gavin Wax’s New York Young Republican Club and Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA. Take Shane Trejo, a Big League Politics propagandist. He used to write for Wax and co-host a podcast with a neo-Nazi.

Then he became chair of Michigan's 11th District GOP Committee. Trejo is a Stop the Steal guy. He's big into voter suppression.

Also has smooth pickup lines. Image
Apr 1, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Donald Trump Jr. last night praised Douglass Mackey on Tim Pool's show, saying:

"That'd be my first pardon, man. That guy that was Ricky Vaughn, right? Like he was one of the great like the original OG like sort of Twitter accounts like MAGA accounts I mean think about." To be very clear, here, in part, is what Donald Trump Jr. is celebrating:
Mar 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I, too, had some questions for Douglass Mackey's attorney Andrew Frisch. He also declined to answer. Unclear if he rolled his eyes. Image Anyone following up on the Mackey trial might care to look into how James Lawrence, who appeared a few weeks ago on Tucker Carlson to lay down propaganda, became a lawyer for Mackey's legal defense fund.

And whence he came. Image
Mar 26, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Wow. Fake patriot social media network Gettr was run by Guo Wengui, the alleged Chinese fraudster who works with Steve Bannon and is suspected of being a double agent for China.

washingtonpost.com/technology/202… Gettr paid far-right operatives like Jack Posobiec and Andy Ngo, who lie about being journalists, spread voluminous amounts of disinfo on social media and defame and harass American citizens in what appears to be a coordinated effort to destabilize the United States.
Mar 24, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec appears VERY worried about the Douglass Mackey trial.

Why wouldn't he be?

Posobiec, a Duginist political operative w/ ties to Trump, was in the DM rooms with the fascists who attacked our country in 2016 and beyond, according to Microchip. Microchip was my source long before he was talking to the government. He remained my source while working for the government.

He told me many times over the years that he and Posobiec were extremely close.

"We're best buddies," he said to me in May 2020.
Mar 23, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Wish I could stay to see Doug Mackey aka Ricky Vaughn testify today as the ONLY witness for his defense, especially because I've done so much reporting on him. But I was at the trial on my own dime.

The feds were able to nab Mackey after my 2018 piece:
huffpost.com/entry/trump-wh… When the government finally arrested Mackey in 2021 for federal election interference, they named several alleged co-conspirators in the indictment -- but only by their Twitter IDs.

I identified a few of them at the time:
huffpost.com/entry/fbi-rick…
Mar 13, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Project Veritas fans hating on far-right operative Matthew Tyrmand likely don’t realize how much of a loyal servant he’s been to the fascist project in America. Many examples exist of Tyrmand supporting authoritarians, including violent ones like Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. That's Tyrmand and McInnes partying together at a 2016 Milo Yiannopoulos event in NYC co-organized by Ali Alexander. When McInnes smashed a protestor's phone outside the venue, Tyrmand grew downright giddy. @DLamontJenkins captured the fanboying on video.
Mar 10, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Interesting tidbit from Alex Jones' text messages: the InfoWars host was briefly in business with far-right memesmith Logan "Carpe Donktum" Cook on a doomed Cook-led project called MemeWorld.

splcenter.org/hatewatch/2023… MemeWorld was best-known for releasing a gratuitously violent video in which a fake Donald Trump murders journalists & political opponents. It bore several hallmarks of the downmarket troll style favored by Cook, most notably a sneering cultural and civic illiteracy.
Feb 6, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
New details about the scheme to overturn the Brazilian election sound like they were cribbed from the Project Veritas playbook.

The plan: walk supreme court justice into compromising statements on taped call, weaponize recording, attack democracy.

theguardian.com/world/2023/feb… Notably, the Bolsonaros have some history with Project Veritas. In 2021, Eduardo Bolsonaro urged the political espionage firm to expand to Brazil. In a video message that September at CPAC in Brazil, Project Veritas head James O'Keefe said he wanted to do just that.
Jan 12, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The man holding the door for George Santos is Vish Burra, a Steve Bannon henchman and leader of the New York Young Republican Club. NYYRC is an elite fascist networking nexus with strong ties to far-right foreign political parties.

Burra is Santos' "operations director." Burra worked diligently alongside Bannon and other prominent extremists in an effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Now he's strolling the halls of Congress.

Here he is meeting the Hungarian ambassador alongside Gavin Wax, the head of NYYRC. Image
Jan 8, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Far-right American "Stop the Steal" operatives have been in Brazil stoking this kind of violent unrest for months. People allied with Steve Bannon. Like Matthew Tyrmand, who functions as something of an international fascism supereconnector. A dual-national (Poland) who spreads anti-democratic disinfo and has done work in the U.S. for foreign far-right governments, Tyrmand is tight with the Bolsonaro clan.

He earned a mention in this NYT column.

nytimes.com/2022/11/14/opi…