Russiagate was a hoax w/Matt Taibbi | The Chris Hedges Report (Chris Hedges: it’s kind of like Joe McCarthy’s empty briefcase Matt Taibbi: oh yeah)

0:34

“Chris Hedges: Matt taibi is published an investigation which you can read on his sub stack about a vast propaganda campaign called Hamilton 68 launched a year after Donald Trump won the presidency it smeared critics of the democratic party from the left and the right is Russian assets Hamilton 68 claimed used a complex data analysis and relied on so-called disinformation experts to fare it out fake news on social media that emanated from the Kremlin Hamilton 68 a computerized dashboard designed to be used by reporters and academics to quote-unquote measure Russian disinformation was run by Democratic operatives including John podesta Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair and figures from the intelligence agencies such as the CIA the FBI and Homeland Security as well as neoconservatives uh and from an establishment Republicans such as Bill Crystal who do not support Trump and have been warmly embraced by the Democratic Party mainstream news outlets including the New York Times The Washington Post CNN PBS NBC CBS ABC MSNBC as well as Mother Jones which ran 14 stories based on the group’s alleged research cited Hamilton 68 as an authoritative Source even as the site refused to disclose the data or methods it used to make its assessments hundreds if not thousands of media headlines were flagged as a Russian bot infiltrations in online discussions about Brett Kavanaugh Tulsi gober’s campaign the Parkland shooting U.S missile strikes in Syria and Bernie Sanders campaign many other stories fact-checking sites such as PolitiFact and Snopes also relied on Hamilton 68. taibi given access to Twitter’s internal memos and emails by Elon Musk who bought Twitter was able to expose not only fraudulent claims of Hamilton 68 but the massive failure of the press which was a full partner and one of the worst forms of censorship since the red baiting of Joe McCarthy in the 1950s one that targeted people with dissident or unconventional opinions and accuse them in essence of Un-American Activities “

3:20

“Matt Taibbi: well it’s a complicated story I think the the backdrop to the Hamilton 68 story is if you really want to look at the full timeline the Columbia journalism review as a whole 20 six thousand word piece this week but the shortcut version of this story is that after Trump won the election uh Chris there was immediately a series of stories coming from different directions saying that the election was a legitimate that Trump had been assisted by Russians that there was some kind of collusion going on uh and that there was disinformation in the news media that had been Amplified by Russian accounts that Trump’s own accounts and hashtags and tweets had been Amplified by Russian forces and then formally uh in I believe it was August of 2017 this group Hamilton 68 came out and it’s a it’s an outgrowth of both the German Marshall fund and a think tank called The Alliance for secure and democracy and it was basically a tool designed to be used by reporters in academics that quote unquote tracked Russian disinformation by monitoring accounts that were called linked the quote linked to Russian influence activities online now they never disclosed what was on this list or what they were actually tracking uh and it was only by accident looking through some Twitter files emails that we find this big conversation where internally Twitter is saying we’ve got the list we’re we’re reverse engineering it and they’re not Russians”

7:08

“Matt Taibbi: I wanted to hear what the innocent explanation was not only from this group but from all the media uh companies that ran these stories so I not only send queries up but I kind of threw a fit about it publicly um on Twitter and online basically you know sort of Daring them or taunting them in an effort to try to get comment out because I if there were some there was if there was some reason that I wasn’t privy to I really wanted to hear it and they they no commented me until the story made a big splash on the internet at which point some of them started to come in now immediate people haven’t commented yet um but there’s no excuse for what happened with them because you know you and I booked in reporters Chris if someone comes to me with historians as we’re tracking Russian if we have a magic box that tracks Russian influence um and they are connected to all these organ Advantage political activities you think about things like hashtag walk away that’s Democrats who are leaving the party hashtag fire McMaster that’s Republicans who are against H.R McMaster right hashtag release the memo as Republicans who want Devin Nunes memo out all these things we’re quote-unquote links to Russian influence on all the biggest channels and the newspapers in America and that the source was was wrong I mean again what would you do as a report first I’d say what’s in the box right tell me how it works and they they never ask that question

Chris Hedges: Well I love this this is from your uh article it’s uh uh Laura Rosenberg the two founders of Hamilton 68 the blue and red team of former counselor to Marco Rubio Jamie fly and Hillary for America foreign policy adviser Laura Rosenberger told political they couldn’t reveal the names of the accounts because the Russians will simply shut them down um it’s kind of like Joe McCarthy’s empty briefcase

Matt Taibbi: oh yeah there are exactly you know 57 communism right I guess I’m mixing right that was Manchurian Candidate but um yeah that’s that’s what they were doing they were saying inside this this thing there are subversatives who are linked to Russia but they weren’t that like I I looked in the list the chronology here is a little complicated Twitter was upset about all this stuff and so they figured out what was in the list being in a unique position to do it because they had the data and so they recreate the list and it’s full of all these people it’s like the Consortium Ender Joe Lauria uh they’re all these small low influenced Trump accounts with names like classy girl for DJ T Trump Dyke here’s another one uh there’s there’s lots and lots of people and I I reached out to you know probably a couple of dozen of them talked to a bunch of them on the phone they’re all over the world but they’re real people they’re not Russian agents they just have these opinions and so they were used as sort of fodder to create these fake news stories.

Chris Hedges: so why did the most prestigious and Powerful media organizations and why did universities such as Harvard Princeton MIT why do you think they so enthusiastically signed on for the Witch Hunt.

Matt Taibbi: Well I think this is connected to a bigger picture that I don’t fully have yet I mean I think there are things that are going to come into view maybe not necessarily for me but but there are people working on it and and the idea is I think that the this whole concept of Russian disinformation was used as a battering ram to get inside of companies like Twitter and and to influence them to open their doors to sort of government efforts to moderate the platforms right we we don’t like the fact that you’re not letting us censor this or that we want to have more direct control over things and you are being you are housing Russian disinformation activities online they all got dragged to the senate floor and the house floor in late 2017 if you remember that uh it started with Senator Warner Mark Warner of the Senate select uh committee on intelligence uh it’s spread to all like the house committees house intelligence committee and there was Energy and Commerce it never ever ended the companies finally said Uncle and we’ll let it let these people in I think this is all related these stories were used basically to make the argument that you have to let us start censoring people.”