2017's Shaping Up To Be The Year Of The Hoax

Back in early November, I read this Daily Caller story on how Politico - and some other mainstream media outlets - got punked by a hoax from Mike Enoch. Enoch is the guy who owns the alt-right Website The Right Stuff (TRS):

The story began after Schreckinger contacted Andrew Anglin at the Daily Stormer via email. Anglin had mentioned he was working in conjunction with The Right Stuff on poll monitoring.

Schreckinger then contacted TRS. TheDCNF obtained the email thread of the exchange, which started on Oct. 27, as well as internal time-stamped screenshots of members making creative suggestions on how to take Schreckinger for a wild ride.

“Anglin tells me he’s working with you on organizing some poll-watching efforts for Election Day…You guys planning any Election Day parties or voter mobilizations?” Schreckinger asked a TRS representative over email, later revealed to TheDCNF as Mike Enoch, owner of TRS.

Enoch ignored his request for a phone call and instead stated that the group is planning to organize “poll watchers in urban areas to cut down on the most traditional type of voter fraud,” before moving on to describe the more grandiose elements of the charade.

This is where, if you have the same sense of humour I do, it gets hilarious:

“We also have some teams going in to the ghettos in Philly with 40s and weed to give out to the local residents which we think will lead to more of them staying home,” Enoch told Schreckinger. “We have had success with this in the past.”

“How many times have you passed out 40s and weed in the ghettos in the past and where? Do you have any documentation of your past efforts on this front?” Schreckinger, to his credit, asked in a follow-up email.

Enoch again ignored the request and continued explaining the plot to set-up hidden cameras to watch for voter fraud.

“Many polling locations are in schools, and black schools are so disorderly that pretty much any official-looking white person with a clipboard can gain access to them ahead of time and set up a hidden camera,” Enoch wrote. “You don’t really ever even have to speak with an adult. Simply walk in like you belong there and no one even asks you why you are there.”

“So we usually go in teams of two, one person driving and one person dressed as a blue collar worker … we set up a hidden camera in the school cafeteria. Go during lunchtime and the teachers are all so busy trying to contain the kids that no one says anything. We already have a few set up.”

“As far as going in to the ghettos with 40s and weed, probably the most successful operation was for the Michigan Democratic primary where we wanted to sway the vote to Bernie,” Enoch added. “We don’t really know how many black votes we kept from being cast in Detroit that day, but it was a very tight finish so we like to think we had an effect.

Neo-Nazis insidiously attacking the democratic process with 40s and weed!

And the punchline:

“We had four teams of two drop of cases of Heineken, OE and bags of weed to some of the guys hanging around near the polling locations that morning. The funny thing is that they thought we were from the DNC and asked our guys if they were going to have to vote. They were relieved when they were told there were no strings attached.”

(Images from here and here.)

When my gut was no longer sore, I realized that this spectacular prank was going to be built on. If any prank were made for the copycat circuit, this one was. I imagined that 2017 would be the Year of the Hoax, with the blue-ribbon top prize going to the 4Channer who managed to punk the New York Times.

Did A 4Chan pol/ack Hoax The FBI???

Four days prior to that sore-gut hilarity, October 31st, Mother Jones published this carefully-worded report: "A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump." Props to the reporter: his story was ahead of its time. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to conclude that the "information" was the same 35=page document that BuzzFeed published yesterday.

The day after MJ published it, a /pol anon posted this:

So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it.

They still believe it. Guys, they're truly fucking desperate - there's no remaining Trump scandal that's credible.

(Image from here.)

At the time, that was all. The story, and the claim, faded away. But yesterday, it came back with a vengeance because of this:

However, there were other aspects to TRUMP's engagement with the Russian authorities. One which had borne fruit for them was to exploit TRUMP's personal obsessions and sexual perversion in order to obtain suitable "kompromat" (compromising material) on him. According to Source D, where s/he had been present, TRUMP's (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSB [Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation] control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted.

(From the compilation of "Company Intelligence Report"s published first by BuzzFeed; embedded in webpage near bottom of story.)

And surely enough /pol fired up with claims that this part of the compilation was the hoax sent to Rick Wilson! Gizmodo is having none of it, and I do have to say that the anon who claimed credit didn't post enough detail to authenicate that he did it. Instead, someone at Twitter claimed yesterday:

Tfw you wake up from your neet slumber to find Rick Wilson passed on your fan fiction to the CIA and the media.

It was pretty obvious over the top piss fan fiction. ricky boy never released it before the campaign ended so I assumed he found out

I sent Golden showers or "British intelligence" to alot of shitty journalists. @juliaioffe has already came forward to confirm she got it

His last tweet before his account vanished said:

Speaking to a lawyer today, about publishing stuff. Tldr Two party notification state, etc

Gizmodo claimed that he deleted the account himself; others said it was deleted by Twitter. No proof either way.

Is The Compilation Itself a Hoax??

Buzzfeed captured a lot of flak when they published it, even though they said they were neutral as to its veracity. Its owner, Ben Smith, tweeted:

Here's the note I sent to @buzzfeednews staff this evening

An updated version of the Buzzfeed page says:

The document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent. It is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors. The report misspells the name of one company, “Alpha Group,” throughout. It is Alfa Group. The report says the settlement of Barvikha, outside Moscow, is “reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates.” It is not reserved for anyone, and it is also populated by the very wealthy.

Moreover, as reported by Breitbart (amongst others):

On Wednesday morning, we learned that a key figure in the dirty dossier, Trump counsel Michael Cohen, has produced convincing documentary evidence that he did not travel to Prague to meet with Kremlin officials, as the anti-Trump oppo dump alleges. We’re now told that it was some other Michael Cohen in Prague. It’s all starting to sound like a script written by the Coen Brothers.

Or a hoax, perpetrated by some other party or parties. I've read the whole document; it is hard to swallow if you can tell the difference between a documentary and a spy movie. One of its allegations claimed that the Kremlin was cultivating Donald Trump as a political asset since 2008 - even though Trump didn't even seriously consider running for President until 2012!

It's quite possible that the "Company Intelligence Report" compilation is itself a collection of hoaxes - or of unsubstantiated gossip that the "ex-British intelligence officer" - now fingered as Christopher Steele - simply threw together to please his paymasters. (Remember, this was as assignment to dig up dirt on Trump: so-called opposition research.)

The McCain Connection

The Daily Mail, amongst others, has stated that the person who took that compilation seriously - seriously enough to pass it on to the FBI:

McCain - a longstanding anti-Trump Republican who had disassociated himself from the candidate's campaign weeks before the election - cast himself as an innocent and concerned member of the public as he justified his move.

He claimed he had no idea whether it was accurate or not - but that he believed the FBI should have it because it was 'sensitive'.

'I did what any citizen should do. I received sensitive information and handed it to the FBI,' he told CNN - the network which broke the story that the document existed. It was then published in full by Buzzfeed.

Was this the motive, or was it part of a McCain-Trump feud?

(Image from here.)

Or was it, as Mika Brzezinski wondered on MSNBC, an attempt by certain members of "the intelligence community" to get back at Trump?

Just so ya know, Ms. Brzezinski is the daugher of Zbigniew Brzezinski. During the Carter years, Mr. Brzezinski was the Dems' answer to Henry Kissinger. So she does have some second-hand knowledge of "the intelligence community". This fact is most pertinent to her dismissing the compilation as a load of you-know-what.

Conclusion: 2017 Is Shaping Up To Be The Year Of The Hox

As I write, the story is falling apart even more. In addition to all the above debunking, Donald Trump himself savaged it on Twitter:

FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!

Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is "A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE." Very unfair!

I win an election easily, a great "movement" is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!

Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me.Are we living in Nazi Germany?

And of course, he savaged CNN in a press conference earlier today:

The compilation itself is only arguably a hoax; it may be or it may not be. But the folks at 4Chan /pol certainly thought (part of) it was!

Their excitement shows that there's a lot of desire to be the new Mike Enoch: to concoct a hoax that the mainstream media will fall for. Undoubtedly, some joker will try another one.

It's a very good idea to treat exciting reports like the above with a lot of skepticism. Be cagey: there's a lot of fake out there!

(Image from here.)