pettibone

<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Down the block, at Politics and Prose Bookstore, employees noticed tweets and other online posts that included them on a list of stores linked by underground tunnels that do not exist.</b></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The fact that one of the shop’s co-owners, Lissa Muscatine, had worked as Clinton’s speechwriter and adviser for two decades quickly became one more data point in the Pizzagate activists’ conspiracy theory.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The shop’s phone rang off the hook with profane, abusive calls from across the country. Employees simply hung up, over and over.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Frustrated and frightened, merchants along the block talked to the police. They called the FBI, which said the threats were a local matter.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>On Nov. 16, Jack Posobiec</b>, a former Navy Reserve intelligence officer who had spent much of the previous year as a leader of a pro-Trump grass-roots organization, decided he’d had enough of just reading tweets and blog posts about the pizza place in his city.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Posobiec, 31, had never eaten at Comet; he had never even heard of the place until he started reading about it on conservative, antigovernment media sites. “I didn’t pay much attention to it before Election Day because I was focused on the campaign,” he said. “With that going on, who wants to talk about pizza?”</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Now, with Trump elected, he read the posts more closely. Any story that accused Clinton, John Podesta and Brock of nefarious deeds deserved some investigation, he thought. He believed the Clinton campaign was “full of secrecy and deception.”</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>It seemed reasonable to Posobiec that Podesta might have organized a sex ring in cahoots with Brock. </b>But the only part of the scenario that was real was that Podesta had been known to eat pizza at Comet. This part is false: pictures purporting to show that symbols, such as butterflies and spirals, in signs at Comet and other shops were statements about pedophilia.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Posobiec said he was curious and confused. He and a friend decided to go have some pizza. They walked into Comet eight days after the election, sat down and ordered. Posobiec got the garlic knots. His friend got a beer. But they were not just hanging out. Posobiec was using his phone to broadcast his evening at Comet on Periscope, an app that allows users to stream video live.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Part of the experience of living in 2016 is live, on-the-scene broadcasts,” he said. “People have lost faith with government and the mainstream media being any real authority. After the Iraq War, after Benghazi, people are searching for other sources of information. If I can do something with Periscope and show what I’m seeing with my own two eyes, that’s helpful.”</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Posobiec said he never made any disturbance inside Comet, but the restaurant’s managers saw him take his camera into a back room where a child’s birthday party was underway. It did not seem appropriate for a child’s party to be broadcast on a stranger’s Periscope feed. The manager asked two D.C. police officers who happened to be across the street to assist.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Posobiec and his friend “were gently refused service and asked to leave,” said a person familiar with the restaurant’s decision.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Posobiec offered to pay for what he had ordered. The manager said it was on the house.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Posobiec said he was not there to make a scene. “I didn’t have any preconceived notions,” he said. “I wasn’t sure. I thought I could just show it was a regular pizza place.”</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That evening, after Posobiec was ushered out of Comet, Pettibone tweeted: “You’re my hero for doing this, Jack. Never let go.”</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Twitter, the hashtag #pizzagate peaked in the hours after Posobiec’s video appeared.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Nov. 22, Reddit closed its “r/pizzagate” subreddit, a site forum focused on a particular topic. The site said it was concerned that Pizzagate posts were revealing private information about people at Comet and nearby stores. “We don’t want witch-hunts on our site,” it said. The decision sparked allegations of censorship from some people who were spreading the Pizzagate rumors. They moved their discussion to a similar site, Voat.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, two men carrying protest signs showed up outside Comet.</span></div>