Russian Owned Fake BLM Lawn Jockeys Outed

The Russians also targeted black folks in their collusion to elect Trump.

It appears that the Russians had a better handle on utilizing social media than eve Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

 

How Russia recruited wannabe YouTube stars to convince Black Lives Matter activists to vote for Trump

Two purported Black Lives Matter supporters who endorsed President Donald Trump have been outed as propagandists employed by the Kremlin.

The Daily Beast reports that two wannabe social media stars, who go by the names of Williams and Kalvin Johnson, have recently seen their Facebook and Twitter accounts suspended because they were found to have been part of a Russian propaganda operation to boost support for Trump’s candidacy among black Americans.

In their videos, the two men regularly attack former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as an “old racist b*tch,” while praising Trump for being a pragmatic businessman who couldn’t have succeeded if he’d actually been a racist.

“We, the black people, we stand in one unity,” one of the men said in a video that posted last November. “We stand in one to say that Hillary Clinton is not our candidate.”

The video also claimed that Clinton “is going to stand for the Muslim,” and claimed that this was a reason that black Americans should not support her.

In the video endorsing Trump, one of the men defended accusations that Trump was racist by claiming that “any businessman cannot be a racist because when you are a racist, then your business is going down.” The man then made a “black power” fist and told his viewers to back Trump.

In other videos, Williams and Kalvin highlight cases of police brutality and profess support for the Black Lives Matter movement in an apparent attempt to bolster their credibility among black activists who would otherwise be skeptical of their Trump endorsement.

While the duo’s reach on YouTube is very limited, they apparently had a solid following on Facebook, where their page had 48,000 fans.

 

More Information on How Russians Sodomized Useful White Right Fools To Support Chumph

Nearly every day Russian fingerprints are uncovered all over the Chumph campaign. Their online hacking for Trump was precise, and targeted. To be so, someone had to give the the mailing lists and information relative too who exactly to target. Collusion.

It would also seem that a significant portion of the misinformation campaign swallowed whole hog by the alt-right and racist right owes at least a part of it’s vitriol to Russian spies and propagandists.

REVEALED: ‘Down With Hillary!’ and ‘Miners for Trump’ flash mobs were organized by Russian provocateurs

 

Suspected Russia propagandists on Facebook tried to organize more than a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during last year’s election, The Daily Beast has learned.

The demonstrations—at least one of which was promoted online by local pro-Trump activists— brought dozens of supporters together in real life. They appear to be the first case of Russian provocateurs successfully mobilizing Americans over Facebook in direct support of Donald Trump.

The Aug. 20, 2016, events were collectively called “Florida Goes Trump!” and they were billed as a “patriotic state-wide flash mob,” unfolding simultaneously in 17 different cities and towns in the battleground state. It’s difficult to determine how many of those locations actually witnessed any turnout, in part because Facebook’s recent deletion of hundreds of Russian accounts hid much of the evidence. But videos and photos from two of the locations—Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs—were reposted to a Facebook page run by the local Trump campaign chair, where they remain to this day.

“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” read the Facebook event page for the demonstrations. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”

The Florida flash mob was one of at least four pro-Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton demonstrations conceived and organized over a Facebook page called “Being Patriotic,” and a related Twitter account called “march_for_trump.”  (The Daily Beast identified the accounts in a software-assisted review of politically themed social-media profiles.)

Being Patriotic had 200,000 followers and the strongest activist bent of any of the suspected Russian Facebook election pages that have so far emerged. Events promoted by the page last year included a July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in October, and a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower last November, after his election victory.

The Being Patriotic Facebook page was closed in August 2017—right when Facebook purged accounts secretly operated by a notorious St. Petersburg troll factory called Internet Research Agency. According to a public report by U.S. intelligence agencies (PDF), Internet Research Agency is financed by “a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.” Being Patriotic’s posts included scores of pro-Trump or anti-Clinton memes framed and watermarked in the same style as those found on the Heart of Texas and Secured Borders Facebook pages previously identified as Russian operations.

The Being Patriotic Twitter account was suspended at around the same time.

A Facebook spokesman told The Daily Beast the company was “not able to confirm any of the details here,” in response to a question about the Russian origin of Being Patriotic, but did not challenge The Daily Beast’s reporting.

On Sept. 6, Facebook acknowledged for the first time that inauthentic accounts from 2015 to 2017 promoted what the company’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, characterized as “divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum.” But Stamos said that most of the fraudulent activity it found—some 3,000 ads connected to 470 now-shuttered accounts linked to Russian troll farms—“didn’t specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting, or a particular candidate.”

After The Daily Beast found known Russian accounts that used Facebook’s Events tool to promote rallies inside the United States, the company said that it was not well positioned to determine “if something like coordination occurred” between the Trump campaign and Russia—something investigators and security researchers doubt because of the social network’s massive trove of information on its customers.

But the discovery of the Being Patriotic rallies suggests that the fraudulent activity on Facebook did indeed involve messaging on behalf of Trump, did prompt at least some Americans to rally on Trump’s behalf, and did result in the Trump campaign volunteers subsequently sharing material from those events.

The pro-Trump events represent “the next level” of suspected Russian influence operations, said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who has testified about those operations to a Senate committee investigating them.

“This would be a direct effort that they attempted that’s more than online promotion,” Watts told The Daily Beast. “‘Let’s organize and try to get people to move to events in a proactive way around a candidate. Again, if it traces back to Russia, you can’t deny that’s foreign influence in an election.”

Railing Against #BLM, Too

The extent of Being Patriotic’s impact is not clear. In June of last year, for example, the Being Patriotic Facebook page asked participants to “gather in front of Trump Tower, N.Y.” The event received call-outs on Facebook and Twitter, and 138 people marked themselves as “attending” on Facebook. Over 400 marked themselves as interested.

March_For_Trump specifically reached out to Nick Toma, a local news anchor in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for coverage of a “Miners for Trump” rally it promoted last October, only a month before the election.

“@NickTomaWBRE Hi, Nick! We’re holding a ‘Miners for Trump’ rally tomorrow. If you’re interested in covering it, please let us know,” March_for_Trump wrote on October 1st.

When Toma was emailed the link to the tweet, he told The Daily Beast: “Don’t recall ever seeing it before.”

Facebook has turned over some of the illicit ads to special prosecutor Robert Mueller after a federal judge issued a search warrant for the material, according to CNN. Facebook also showed congressional investigators that material but did not leave it with them. Legislators investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election have expressed frustration over what they describe as insufficient disclosures to Congress, and have indicated that they will seek public testimony from Facebook and other social-media companies.

Watts, the former FBI agent and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted that “plausible deniability is built into any Russian active-measures strategy,” such as using troll farms in St. Petersburg or Macedonia to conceal influence campaigns. But compelling unsuspecting Americans to gather in the streets on behalf of Trump shows the reach and efficacy of those efforts.

The page earned such a large following, a known Macedonian fake news distributor, Nikola Tanevski, purchased BeingPatriotic.com this year, but the page is currently dormant. Tanevski runs popular, pro-Trump fake news factories USATwentyFour.com and TheAmericanBacon.com. Attempts to reach Tanevski did not receive a response.

The layers of deception went beyond Facebook posts and manufactured rallies. When it wasn’t organizing events, Being Patriotic encouraged violence against minorities in incendiary posts. “Arrest and shoot every sh*thead taking part in burning our flag! #BLM vs #USA,” Being Patriotic’s Twitter account posted in April 2016, using the hashtag for the Black Lives Matter protest movement.

The account also advertised a toll-free “Being Patriotic Hotline” to report instances of voter fraud on Election Day.

“Detected a voter fraud? Tell us about it! Call 888-486-8102 or take photo/video and send it to us,” the account wrote on Nov. 8. Being Patriotic’s sister account, @March_for_Trump, plugged the same phone number, as well as a hotline for the “Trump Lawyer Team.” The number is now disconnected.

‘Broward’s Most Famous Trump Fan’

When asked for comment, the White House referred The Daily Beast to the Trump campaign, which, in turn, did not respond to emailed questions. But Susie Wiles, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in Florida, told The Daily Beast that the Broward County portion of the flash mob “was not an official campaign event.”

That’s despite the fact that the event was promoted on “Official Donald J. Trump for President Campaign Facebook Page for Broward County, Florida.” Photos and videos of the demonstration were posted there afterward….

 

Battle Lines in Portland

First – I think we owe kudos to the Portland Police Department for keeping this from becoming a bloody slug fest. Good Work!

Second, I don’t think the Trump supporter types quite understand what their close association with white wing, neo-Nazi, and white nationalists costs them in terms of credibility. I am seeing a lot of real Republicans with a lot of heartburn over the Chumph’s legitimization of white wing hate groups.

Lastly – a lot of white wingers aren’t old enough to remember the last time the left got pissed in this country. They have lit the fuse on something which has been dormant since the 60’s.

The Revolution in this case, has already started.

Right-wing free speech rally draws massive counterprotests in Portland

In a city splintered by protest, acrimony and the fresh pain of a pair of killings on a light-rail train, demonstrators gathered again — and clashed again — here Sunday afternoon, with a right-wing rally drawing thousands of counterprotesters in the heart of downtown.

The planned, permitted free-speech and pro-President Trump rally came just more than a week after 35-year-old Jeremy Christian — a man who performed Nazi salutes and screamed racial slurs at a recent right-wing rally here in late April — allegedly stabbed three men, killing two, after what witnesses said was a hate-filled tirade against two teenage girls on a light-rail train. The slain men, Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, and the survivor, Micah Fletcher, were standing up to Christian as he harassed the girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab.

The slayings shocked the city and exposed the long-simmering racial tension here, with roots in Oregon’s establishment as a white utopia in the Pacific Northwest. At the light-rail station where the two men were killed, a memorial of flowers, signs and messages of hope and sadness were scrawled in chalk, including this one: “Portland We Have to Do Better.”

Though drawing outrage and sympathy, the deaths in some ways only amplified the issue, again making Portland a magnet for the fight of political extremes.

Mat Dos Santos, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, was giving a television interview about the attacks last week when a man stood behind him performing a Nazi salute. “Did an interview with Al Jazeera in downtown Portland this morning and man walks up and starts doing the Nazi salute behind me on camera,” he tweeted. “The interview was on the rise of hate and Free Speech.”

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) last week tried to cancel Sunday’s right-wing rally, calling on federal officials to aid in pulling the group’s permit because he believed it would be destructive at a particularly difficult time. He wrote on Facebook that “our city is in mourning, our community’s anger is real.” His request, which was declined, drew criticism from the ACLU of Oregon: “The government cannot revoke or deny a permit based on the viewpoint of the demonstrators. Period.”

Sunday’s rally — in an outdoor plaza sandwiched between City Hall and the jail where Christian is being held — provided a vivid illustration of the city’s divisions.

Protesters surrounded the plaza in the hours before the rally began. To the west, in front of City Hall, protesters chanted and displayed signs with such messages as “Wake Up Portland! Your city is racist!” and “Nazis? Never!” Steps away, dozens of local organizations took to a microphone at City Hall in a “Portland Stands Against Hate” rally.

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” Cari Luna, chair of the Portland chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, said in a statement Sunday morning. “We’re here now, we’re coming together, and we’re saying NO to racism, NO to bigotry. We want a world where every person is truly free, and we’re not going to let the last dinosaurs of the white colonialist patriarchy stand in our way.”

To the north, hundreds of black-clad, left-wing, anti-fascist protesters chanted, blared music and held paper-mache spiders and skeletons, which have become signature icons at Portland protests. Beyond them, a group of Buddhists sat in silent protest.

And to the south, labor union members clad in helmets and safety vests screamed: “Racists! Murderers! Fascists! Out of Portland!”

Between every block were thick lines of Portland police and Homeland Security officers clad in riot gear; they made several arrests. Portland police announced about 3:30 p.m. that the anti-facist assembly was considered unlawful before deploying a volley of flash grenades into the crowd of counterprotesters, sending black-clad demonstrators running.

In the center of it all, at the rally, an assembly of right-wing groups including American Freedom M/C, Patriot Prayer, the III Percenters and Oath Keepers gathered, many of them vowing to defend free speech.

Patriot Prayer’s Joey Gibson, who has said that his group tried to eject Christian from the April protest, brought a message of peace to Portland: “I want everybody here . . . to find it in yourself to make this day positive, with no hate and no violence,” he told the crowd. “We have to understand Portland is legitimately shaken up right now.”

He called on his supporters to “prove them wrong. . . . Hatred is a disease. We need to start spreading love to get rid of this hate.”

 

Inspector General to Investigate Comey and FBI on Election

I going to bet the Chumph saves his boy on this one should he take office.

DOJ Watchdog To Review Pre-Election Conduct Of FBI, Other Justice Officials

The Justice Department’s watchdog has launched a sweeping review of conduct by the FBI director and other department officials before the presidential election, following calls from Congress and members of the public.

Top advisers to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton have blamed FBI Director James Comey, in part, for her loss in November. Now, federal investigators say they will examine whether public statements by Comey in July, October and November 2016 ran afoul of policies that caution officials not to influence the outcome of an election and to avoid making derogatory comments about people who haven’t been formally charged with wrongdoing.

Comey has previously told friends and employees that he had few good choices in the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information on her private email server.

In a statement Thursday, Comey said, “I am grateful to the Department of Justice’s IG for taking on this review. He is professional and independent and the FBI will cooperate fully with him and his office. I hope very much he is able to share his conclusions and observations with the public because everyone will benefit from thoughtful evaluation and transparency regarding this matter.”

Inspector General Michael Horowitz said he would not “substitute” his judgment on the declination to prosecute Clinton for that of prosecutors and the FBI. And he said the review could expand based on what his investigators encounter along the way.

Among the issues the IG will scrutinize:

• Allegations that Justice Department and FBI staffers improperly leaked details about investigations before the election.
• Claims that some “underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations.”
• Allegations that the deputy director of the FBI and the chief congressional liaison at the Justice Department should have recused themselves from the Clinton investigation.
• How the FBI release of information about an old investigation of Bill Clinton’s last-minute presidential pardons happened only days before the election and how an FBI Twitter account came to publicize the documents.

Former Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon called the inspector general’s announcement “highly encouraging and to be expected given Director Comey’s drastic deviation from Justice Department protocol.”

Fallon said the probe is “utterly necessary in order to take the first step to restore the FBI’s reputation as a non-partisan institution.”

 

FBI Finally Fingers Russians for Election Hacks

Took them long enough. I suspect certain high level FBI managers were given their walking papers.

Now we need the NSA to open up about communications between Trump’s campaign HQ and the Russian spies, and if Trump communicated with Putin.

FBI Analysis Fingers Russian Spy Agencies For U.S. Election Hacks

The report included samples of malicious computer code.

The FBI squarely blamed Russian intelligence services on Thursday for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, releasing the most definitive report yet on the issue, including samples of malicious computer code said to have been used in a broad hacking campaign.

Starting in mid-2015, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the FSB, emailed a malicious link to more than 1,000 recipients, including U.S. government targets, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a 13-page report co-authored with the Department of Homeland Security. (bit.ly/2iuT8cp)

While the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence had said Russia was behind the hacking in October, the report is the first detailed technical analysis provided by the government and the first official FBI statement.

Russia has consistently denied the hacking allegations.

The FBI issued its report on the same day that President Barack Obama announced a series of retaliatory measures, including the expulsion of 35 Russian intelligence operatives and the sanctioning of the GRU and FSB. The Kremlin denounced the sanctions as unlawful and promised “adequate” retaliation.

According to the FBI report, among the groups compromised by the FSB hacks was the Democratic National Committee, which was again infiltrated in early 2016 by another Russian agency, the military GRU.

The report largely corroborates earlier findings from private cyber firms, such as CrowdStrike, which probed the hacks at the DNC and elsewhere, and is a preview of a more detailed assessment from the U.S. intelligence community that President Barack Obama ordered completed before he leaves office next month, a source familiar with the matter said.

Much of the information provided in the report is not new, the source said, reflecting the difficulty of publicly attributing cyber attacks without revealing classified sources and methods used by the government.

Some senior Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress have expressed outrage at what they called Russian interference in America’s elections, diverging from their own party’s president-elect. The allegations and sanctions mark a new post-Cold War low in U.S.-Russian ties.

Throughout the raucous campaign, a steady stream of leaked Democratic emails clouded the candidacy of party nominee Hillary Clinton. In the aftermath of her defeat, Democrats have accused Russia. Meantime, Trump, a Republican, has questioned whether Russia was truly at fault and told the Democrats to get over it.

“It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump said in a statement on Thursday.

Trump has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, tapped people seen as friendly to Moscow for administration posts and rejected assessments by intelligence agencies on the hacking.

The FBI said hackers gained access to and stole sensitive information, including internal emails “likely leading to the exfiltration of information from multiple senior party members” and public leaks of that information.

The report did not name hacked organizations or address previous conclusions reached by the Central Intelligence Agency and FBI, according to U.S. officials, that Russia sought to intervene in the election to help Trump defeat Clinton.

 

KKK Leader Holds Up Vote for Trump Sign During His Trial For Raping Children

Not the type of association the Trump campaign managers want…But the type Trump has courted.

A photoshopped image…But not far from the truth. Apparently former Aryan Nation Leader Kreis displayed a “Vote for Trump” sign throughout his trial.

KKK leader found guilty of molesting girls: ‘I will always hate the Jew — and please vote for Trump!’

A South Carolina jury was apparently unswayed a neo-Nazi’s “vote for Trump” sign and convicted the former Ku Klux Klan leader of sexually abusing two girls.

August Kreis III was found guilty Thursday of one count of criminal sexual conduct involving a minor child and two counts of committing lewd acts on a child, reportedThe State.

Three young women testified during a three-day trial that Kreis repeatedly molested two girls who were between the ages of 10 and 14 years old.

The 61-year-old Kreis, a onetime Aryan Nation leader and Christian Identity pastor, held up a sign throughout the trial expressing his support for Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

Circuit Court Judge Douet “Jack” Earley instructed jurors to ignore the sign and focus instead on the evidence.

Trump, the real estate tycoon and reality TV star, holds a four-point lead in South Carolina — which will be the first southern state to hold a presidential primary next year.

The GOP candidate has drawn support from many of the most influential white supremacists in the U.S., including Kreis — whose activity and influence has waned with his arrest and diabetes-related health problems.

One of the sex abuse victims read a poem during the sentencing hearing that described Kreis, who lived for a time in the same town as the Charleston church gunman, as a “monster.”

“My soul cries at the mention of your name,” the woman read. “Your disgusting little secret is out. I hope you are haunted till the day you die for the things you’ve done.”

The white supremacist, who is perhaps best known for an explosive appearance two decades ago on “The Jerry Springer Show,” spouted off hateful remarks and expressed support for his preferred candidate just before sentencing.

“I will always hate the Jew,” Kreis said. “This government is run by an evil group of people, and please — vote for Trump!”

Kreis was sentenced to 50 years in prison, and he told the judge he wanted to remain in jail for the rest of his life — which he almost certainly will.

A little background on Kreis, who appears in this video about halfway through…

As a kid, I remember these guys goose stepping around in Arlington, Va. Rockwell’s house was across a side street from the parking lot of the local Sears and Roebucks in North Arlington. They would parade around in their uniforms with their Nazi Flags trying very hard to look military. They generally had sense enough to leave the paying customers alone, but would sometimes put flyers on the windshield of cars in the lot.

This is another example of why Anonymous just going after the KKK isn’t enough. The guys often belong to multiple hate groups and drift from one to another. In Kreis’ case he started as an American Nazi,  moved to Aryan Nations where he was their leader, dabbled in the racist Skinheads, created the Christian Identity racist “religion”, and finally wound up back “home” in the KKK. No telling how many little girls this scumbag raped along the way.