redpill78 zak paine

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wired oct 21 2024

Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote wild and baseless claims that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sexually assaulted one of his former students, according to several specialists tracking the disinformation campaign.

Experts believe that the campaign is tied to a network called Storm-1516, which has been linked to, among other things, a previous effort that falsely claimed vice president Kamala Harris perpetrated a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West.

The propaganda unit’s work has successfully reached the highest levels of the Republican party, with vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeating at least one of their narratives. NBC reported this week that the group has pushed at least 50 false narratives in this manner since last fall, which comes amid a broader Russian government effort to disrupt next month’s election with the aim of helping former president Donald Trump return to the White House.

Numerous figures in MAGA world boosted the Tim Walz assault claims, including Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate promoter who is now a member of Trump’s campaign team, and Candace Owens, the popular right-wing podcaster. The claims went viral on X last week, when an anonymous account called Black Insurrectionist posted screenshots of emails from a purported victim. Other X users quickly debunked the claims, citing formatting errors in the images that suggested the emails were fake, but days later another conspiracist posted a video on X claiming he had spoken to one of Walz's supposed victims on the phone—without providing any proof. The video racked up millions of hits.

Then, on Wednesday, a video claiming to show a former student of Walz describing abuse by the former football coach spread widely on X. According to a WIRED analysis using several deepfake detector tools, the video was created using AI. The video, shared by a prominent anonymous QAnon-promoting account, garnered over 4.3 million views before it was deleted.

The campaign to attack Walz predates the video; it traces back to John Dougan, a former Florida cop who now lives in Moscow and runs a network of pro-Kremlin websites. Dougan appeared on Zak Paine’s QAnon show RedPill78 on October 5 with an anonymous man named “Rick,” who said he was a foreign exchange student at Mankato West High School in 2004 when Walz was a teacher there. “Rick” then claimed Walz assaulted him. Dougan did not respond to a request for comment.

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The claims, however, didn’t go viral until last week and the release of the deepfake video.

Darren Linvill, codirector at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, tells WIRED that he immediately recognized this tactic as part of Russia’s well-established disinformation playbook.

“There is little doubt this is Storm-1516,” says Linvill, whose team uncovered the network last fall.

Linvill says the account that first shared the AI-altered video bears all the hallmarks of previous Storm-1516 campaigns. “It is standard for them to create an X or YouTube account for initial placement of stories,” says Linvill.

The campaign orchestrated by Storm-1516 often begins with the posting of a fake story and video from a whistleblower or citizen journalist, the US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe outlined in July. Disinformation is “amplified by other seemingly unaffiliated online networks,” the US mission stated. The claims then take on a life of their own, shared and reposted by unwitting social media users who likely have no idea of where the videos originated.

The fake stories can also be picked up by other media outlets that cover viral social media stories. In the case of the Walz claims, they ended up on MSN, a news aggregation site owned by Microsoft.

In the past, Storm-1516 has relied on a network of fake news websites run by Dougan to push its narratives. On Saturday, a story that referenced the RedPill78 interview, the Black Insurrectionist posts, and the deepfake video was published on over 100 of Dougan’s websites simultaneously.

This was first discovered by Alex Liberty, a researcher who tracks the activity of Russia’s propaganda networks and who agrees with Linvill’s assertion that the deepfake video bears all the hallmarks of a Storm-1516 campaign.

“We believe that it might be a coordinated campaign in [an] attempt to bring numerous false accusations of the same nature against Tim Walz through different channels and in different formats in order to bring an image of legitimacy to the narrative,” Liberty tells WIRED.

McKenzie Sadeghi, the AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, agrees.

“The false narrative appears to be part of a wider campaign pushed by pro-Kremlin media and QAnon influencers ahead of the November 5, 2024, US elections aimed at portraying Walz, whose political appeal is as an everyman schoolteacher and coach, as a pedophile who had inappropriate relationships with minors,” Sadeghi wrote in an analysis of the deepfake video.

From the very beginning, the allegations against Walz were easily debunked. In his interview on the RedPill78 QAnon show, Dougan’s source claimed he was in the US thanks to the State Department–funded Future Leaders Exchange program, which allows students from countries formerly under the control of the Soviet Union the chance to study in the US for a year.

However, a spokesperson for the US State Department, told NewsGuard that it has no record of any Future Leaders Exchange student from Kazakhstan in Mankato area schools from 2000 through 2020. Mankato Area Public Schools communications director Mel Helling told NewsGuard the allegations were “outlandish.”

The baseless claims were shared by some far-right accounts in the days after the episode was published, but they didn’t really take hold until a week later, when the X account known as Black Insurrectionist posted a clip from Dougan’s RedPill78 episode. The clip was viewed over 800,000 times.

Google search trends data shows a huge spike in people searching for “Tim Walz pedophile” and “Tim Walz abuse” on October 13, the day the Black Insurrectionist account began posting their claims.

The Black Insurrectionist account is anonymous and launched a year ago; its followers include Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Roger Stone. The account’s bio reads: “I am MAGA.” It rose to prominence weeks before the Walz post, when it claimed to have been in contact with a whistleblower at ABC who said Harris had been provided with the questions ahead of her September debate with former president Donald Trump. Those claims were widely debunked by multiple major fact-checking and media organizations.

Last week, the Black Insurrectionist account shared screenshots of email correspondence the account had with an alleged victim on X. Almost immediately, the evidence was questioned when X users spotted a text cursor in one of the screenshots, suggesting that Black Insurrectionist was editing the document. Others pointed out that the date and time format shown in some of the screenshots was inconsistent with how they are displayed on real emails.

Black Insurrectionist initially defended itself before going silent. The account was deleted on Thursday.

The two dozen posts from Black Insurrectionist laying out their alleged evidence have been viewed over 33 million times, according to X’s own metrics, and have been shared on numerous other platforms, including Truth Social, Instagram, Telegram, and TikTok.

Among those sharing Black Insurrectiont’s claims was Paine, who hosted Dougan on his QAnon show. “I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this story,” Paine wrote on X.

The posts have also caught the attention of the wider MAGA universe in a way that Dougan’s initial claims didn’t. Prominent right-wing figures like Owens and Posobiec both flagged the “allegations” as something worth looking into.

Owens discussed the conspiracy on her top-rated podcast, with the episode racking up over 630,000 views on YouTube since it was posted on Wednesday.

Posobiec wrote on X that there were “lots of allegations going around regarding Tim Walz sexually abusing young student(s).” While he added that he didn’t “know about any of the recent allegations being made,” he did share a link to Dougan’s claims from earlier in the month.

When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president in July, Russian-aligned propaganda networks struggled to mount effective disinformation campaigns targeting the vice president and her team.

But as Microsoft reported in the summer, those campaigns have started to find their footing. "The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates," Clint Watts, head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, wrote in August.

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September 13, 2024, edition of RedPill78, streamed on Rumble

ZAK PAINE (HOST): Well, thank you again, Joy, and, you're welcome back. For part two, you're going to have to do a book on trans acts of violence because, unfortunately, that's — you know what I mean? It sounds funny, but there are so many of them, trans shooters. I mean, it just seems like every time you hear about it —

JOY PULLMAN (THE FEDERALIST EXECUTIVE EDITOR): We have — for those interested at The Federalist, we have a t----- tracker — well, we call it the t----- tracker. Maybe I shouldn't be telling you that, but it's for transgender shootings. And so —

PAINE: That's the internal — that's what's on the spreadsheet.

PULLMAN: We also have one for corporations, you know, pledging large amounts of money for — to transgender causes.

PAINE: Yeah. OK. Well, worthwhile checking out. And, again, I love The Federalist.

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/how-true-vote-cultivated-relationships-qanon-influencers-target

no lnx many, vids

How True the Vote cultivated relationships with QAnon influencers to target an election software company and serve as a pipeline to law enforcement

True the Vote’s activity with QAnon influencers shows how the election denial movement is exploiting the conspiracy theory’s network

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 09/15/22

True the Vote, a conservative organization that’s known for pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud and that was behind the debunked film 2000 Mules, has actively collaborated with QAnon influencers, promising to act as a liaison between them and law enforcement and using them to target an election software company in Michigan.

True the Vote’s collaboration with QAnon influencers is a significant development when it comes to the QAnon community’s ongoing influence in the election denier movement. Media Matters has previously reported on the community’s close associations with election denial efforts; one QAnon influencer is even involved with a coalition recruiting and electing election-denialist secretary of state candidates.

A Media Matters investigation into True the Vote’s extraordinary and blatant collaboration with QAnon figures to push election misinformation — including during repeated appearances on QAnon-supporting shows and the group’s “The Pit” event that included many QAnon figures — reveals the community’s connection with the election denial movement taken to a new level. Most recently, a software company targeted by True the Vote and its QAnon collaborators has sued the group, claiming defamation and saying its founder has left his home due to death threats. True the Vote’s leaders claimed the FBI refused to look at their supposed evidence against the company, so they turned their findings over to QAnon-supporting “citizen researchers.”

True the Vote’s background and history of election denial

Then-tea party activist Catherine Engelbrecht founded True the Vote in 2009, following the election of then-President Barack Obama, to push for voter ID laws and purging voter rolls. (“Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander has called Engelbrecht “the godmother of the election integrity movement.”) In 2016, Engelbrecht’s business partner, Gregg Phillips, a Republican operative and former Mississippi official, claimed without evidence that that year’s presidential election featured millions of illegal votes, a claim embraced by then-President Donald Trump.

Both Engelbrecht and Phillips are also listed as executive producers for and starred in 2000 Mules, a widely debunked film claiming evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Despite 2000 Mules’ false claims (and True the Vote’s dubious record with its finances), right-wing figures have widely embraced the film, which was screened at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in May. True the Vote has since announced partnerships with right-wing sheriffs groups.

As 2000 Mules catapulted True the Vote into fame within the right, Engelbrecht and Phillips also began to cultivate a relationship with another particular group: supporters of QAnon, a categorically false conspiracy theory that has been tied to multiple acts of violence, including the January 6 insurrection. The conspiracy theory has also spurred internal warnings of domestic terrorism from multiple government agencies.

True the Vote has cultivated relationships with QAnon influencers, appearing on QAnon-supporting shows at least 20 times in four months, and proposed getting their material to law enforcement

Around the same time that 2000 Mules was released, Phillips joined Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, whose leadership has extensively appealed to the QAnon community. There Phillips interacted with multiple QAnon figures, including repeatedly amplifying posts explicitly promoting the conspiracy theory and calling QAnon influencers his “friends.” (Phillips has explicitly credited Truth Social for connecting him with QAnon figures.)

Phillips Q post1

Phillips’ association also extended outside of Truth Social posts. Since at least June, Phillips has repeatedly gone on theQAnon-supporting MatrixxxGrooove Show (or MG Show), which is co-hosted by QAnon supporters Jeffrey Pedersen (known online as “intheMatrixxx”) and Shannon Townsend (known online as “ShadyGrooove”). In fact, he has been on the show at least a dozen times since June.

During those appearances, Phillips has worn flannel for “Flannel Friday,” a trend that developed in the QAnon community,and lauded the QAnon community, saying it was “becoming a force” and adding, “It’s not a fringe movement. It’s not a conspiracy theory.” Phillips even promised the hosts to get Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake on the show — which he did.

Video CitationFrom the July 15, 2022, edition of MatrixxxGrooove Show

Phillips has also gone on other QAnon-supporting shows — such as X22 Report, RedPill78, and those hosted by Jon Herold (known online as “Patel Patriot”) — at least 6 times since May, leading Pedersen to brag that Phillips had been “going on all the anon shows.”

Phillips seemingly revealed some of his motivation for going on QAnon-supporting shows in May, writing, “I don’t agree with all I hear but as long as the motive is freedom from tyranny, I’ll stand next to ANYONE and fight.”

Phillips has also collaborated with QAnon figures for Patriot Games, a podcast that he launched in July. A QAnon influencer has been co-running the podcast’s official Truth Social page, and J.T. Wilde, a QAnon-supporting musician, wrote a song for the podcast, which they first debuted on MatrixxxGrooove Show. Phillips said he is also working with Wilde on other projects.

Engelbrecht, too, has associated with the QAnon community. Besides going on RedPill78,she has appeared multiple times on both X22 Report (whose host is an “old friend” of Engelbrecht, according to Phillips) and MatrixxxGrooove Show. During the latter, the show featured on screen a donation link for True the Vote that suggested some kind of collaboration between the show and the group.

Engelbrecht also participated in the QAnon Flannel Friday trend on the show alongside Phillips and has lauded the show’s “awesome” hosts for doing “such a great job of building an audience of activists and of people that are not willing — not only willing to listen, but willing to engage.” She has also said, “It is coming, there is nothing that can stop what is coming” — echoing a common QAnon phrase. (Engelbrecht has also said a QAnon influencer was “helping to run” True the Vote’s Substack.)

Phillips and Engelbrecht also see QAnon figures as tools to support their agenda. Phillips in recent months said he wanted to use supposed research from QAnon figures to give to law enforcement and the sheriffs groups that partner with True the Vote. Phillips has praised the QAnon community’s research efforts — saying that its “open source intelligence” is “spectacularly good” — and said that he wants to involve its “citizen researchers.” He has also specifically floated giving their research and findings toPinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Lamb — the head of one of the sheriffs groups True the Vote is partnering with who once signed a book with the QAnon slogan (“where we go one, we go all,” or “WWG1WGA” for short) — and to “any of the other sheriffs that are going to be involved.”

Many QAnon figures attended True the Vote’s The Pit event

In August, Phillips and Engelbrecht hosted an event in Arizona they called The Pit (which Herold said he helped coordinate), where they would supposedly reveal “devastating” information showing the 2020 election was stolen.

In the weeks leading up to the event, Phillips told the MatrixxxGrooove Show hosts it would be a “secret meeting” of “influencers, folks like you all, you know, Patel [Patriot] and all the guys” where they would “turn over a bunch of information to you.” Multiple QAnon influencers were photographed at the event, including Zak Paine, the host of RedPill78 and who participated in the January 6 insurrection; David Hayes (know online as “Praying Medic”), who has called for a military coup against Biden; and the host of X22 Report. Multiple members of We The Media, a QAnon influencer collective channel, were also photographed together at the event, and one of its members, Jordan Sather, said “a bunch” of them were attending.

QAnon influencers the pit photos

Media Matters identified at least a dozen QAnon figures who attended. Multiple QAnon influencers later praised the gathering, saying it allowed “us to meet, in the flesh, fellow digital soldiers who have been working tirelessly together in the trenches for years” and thanking Phillips for “bringing the anon community together” because “nobody else has done what you did for us and bringing us together.”

Political figures also attended the event, such as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Lake and Arizona Republican secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem, along with Lamb, the Pinal County, Arizona, sheriff, and Trump attorney Christina Bobb, who used to work for far-right network One America News.

True the Vote used QAnon influencers to target Michigan election software company Konnechafter allegedly being rejected by the FBI

From The Pit, Phillips and Engelbrecht used the QAnon community to target Konnech, a Michigan-based election software company, with election fraud conspiracy theories. Konnech has since sued True the Vote, Phillips, and Engelbrecht for their claims about the company, saying they hacked its servers and that their campaign resulted in death threats against its founder and forced him and his family to flee their home.

While much of The Pit was livestreamed, a portion of it was kept private. That portion focused on conspiracy theories about Konnech, where they claimed it was a “questionable company involved in this that may have been rigging elections on behalf of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party],” according to Sather, and that the FBI was “too compromised to do anything” about it.

Engelbrecht has criticized the FBI, saying True the Vote shared this information about Konnech with the FBI, but “we became the target” of the agency instead. Therefore, the aim of The Pit event was to “go public … initially in a trusted space with people who could help gather up more and more and more information so that if, God forbid, something happens to us ... that other people are equipped.” Phillps has also said that the FBI “betrayed us.”

Video CitationFrom the August 19, 2022, edition of GraceTime TV

In response to their grievances with the FBI, Phillips and Engelbrecht turned to the QAnon community to “take what we had done and turn it over to these men and women on the internet, these anons, and just let them have it.” Phillips said that because of what they claimed was their falling out with the FBI, they turned to the “most maligned community on Earth,” the “anonymous researchers, you know, that were linked to ‘Q’” (referring to the conspiracy theory’s central figure).

Video CitationFrom the August 31, 2022, edition of 1819 News The Podcast

And the QAnon community responded, saying after the event that it was now “focusing on” and “digging in to” Konnech. Figures also spread nefarious allegations about the company, such as calling it one of the “front companies here in the United States … owned by the CCP” and saying it was tied to efforts to “manipulate our elections.” They also claimed its owner had questionable connections. Sather even called Konnech “our new Dominion,” referring to the election voting software and hardware company that has been targeted with numerous false conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

Video CitationFrom a video uploaded to Rumble on August 17, 2022

Some QAnon influencers also said Phillips and Engelbrecht had emailed or planned to email them material about the company, and some even helped establish a Telegram channel dedicated to finding supposed information about Konnech.

Both Phillips and Engelbrecht also subsequently shared content that QAnon figures created regarding Konnech on Truth Social and praised it as “brilliant” and “great work,” and even praised and recommended people follow multiple We The Media members for their supposed findings. One QAnon influencer’s blog targeting Konnech has since been shared by former national security advisor Michael Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, both QAnon-connected and election denialist figures. Both Phillips and Engelbrecht also pointed to what the “anons” supposedly found to further criticize the FBI.

Phillips and Engelbrecht have also said they are talking with law enforcement and giving them the supposed information from those QAnon figures, invoking their partnerships with sheriffs. “We’re in with attorneys general and district attorneys and sheriffs and governors and any level that will take action,” Engelbrecht said. Phillips also said they were speaking with some United States senators, a secretary of state, and state attorneys general, and Engelbrecht in September said she had been meeting “a number of” elected officials in Washington, D.C.

Video file

CitationFrom the September 8, 2022, edition of MatrixxxGrooove Show

Days before Konnech’s lawsuit was filed, Engelbrecht disclosed — on a QAnon-supporting show — that Konnech sent True the Vote a cease-and-desist order. She refused. A federal judge has since granted Konnech’s motion for a temporary restraining order against True the Vote.

The clear collaboration between True the Vote and QAnon figures to target Konnech serves as a warning on how the QAnon movement has become an online anti-reality network that helps boost other conspiracy theorists — including the election denial movement.

no lnx

new inauguration date is set': Inside the latest QAnon conspiracy theory to 'reinstate' Trump

Zachary Petrizzo Salon June 02, 2021

Hundreds of people gathered in Texas for a QAnon-sponsored conference over Memorial Day weekend to hear the biggest boosters of Donald Trump's Big Lie downplay the Capitol riot and bandy about new threats of a coming coup.

Key Trump allies, including Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, Allen West; and perhaps most notably Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex., attended the three-day event, dubbed "For God & Country Patriot Roundup," at the Omni Hotel in Dallas.

The QAnon conference came amid reports that Trump is attempting to orchestrate another election coup from his far-off kingdom at Mar-a-Lago. According to a Tuesday tweet from the New York Times' Maggie Haberman, the former President has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August." Trump's reported thinking echoes that of hisformer lawyer's, Sidney Powell. On Saturday, Powell told attendees to the QAnon conference that Trump "can simply be reinstated."

"A new inauguration date is set, and Biden is told to move out of the White House, and President Trump should be moved back in," she explained. "I'm sure there's not going to be credit for time lost, unfortunately, because the Constitution itself sets the date for inauguration, but he should definitely get the remainder of his term and make the best of it."

Powell was not the only speaker at this past weekend's event who spoke directly about the possibility Trump could reclaim his throne soon.

Michael Flynn, apparently looking to encourage another election coup, asking the crowd why "what happened in Myanmar" can't happen in the U.S?

"No reason," Flynn answered. "I mean, it should happen here."

Flynn's comments drew widespread scorn but during his speech on Saturday, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert promulgated a number of baseless conspiracies about the Capitol riot, claiming that "there's no evidence" that the event constituted "an armed insurrection."

Although "armed" in legal terms extends beyond that of just firearms, police nevertheless found a number of guns on rioters in the aftermath of the insurrection. Furthermore, CNN reported that the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia, were planning on trafficking a number of guns across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. in an effort to support the insurgency.

During his speech, Gohmert also criticized his Democratic colleagues' push to assemble a commission to investigate the riot – an effort that was effectively killed with a filibuster last week by Senate Republicans. Back in January, Gohmert baselessly accused Black Lives Matter and antifa of infiltrating the Capitol riot. Over the weekend, the representative appeared to double down on this theory, claiming that "it wasn't just right-wing extremists" who were involved. Allegations of left-wing agitation and infiltration have been routinely debunked.

The Texas lawmaker also accused the FBI of "unfairly" targeting Trump supporters in their federal probe into the riot. "Where is the outrage about young people being unfairly treated?" he rambled. "Joe Biden's Justice Department is criminalizing political protest." Gohmert later echoed on CNN: "Any violence should not be downplayed. But people who are not engaged in violence should not be charged with crime."

Following his speech, Gohmert posed and took a picture with known QAnon conspiracy theorist and podcaster RedPill78, who openly admitted to storming the Capitol building on January 6.

Around the time of the riot, Gohmert distinguished himself as a loyal Trump booster, spreading the baseless conspiracy theory of systematic fraud at the ballots in the 2020 general election. Back in January, Gohmert filed a lawsuit on Trump's behalf, arguing that a judge should be compelled to tell former Vice President Mike Pence that he had the right to overturn the electoral college votes in President Joe Biden's favor. (Pence in fact did not have this right.) The suit was dismissed twelve hours after its filing.

Many have speculated that Trump is attempting to overturn the election by cheerleading fallacious election audits in various GOP-led states, the largest of which has now dragged on for months now in Maricopa County, Arizona with no end in sight.

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