Democratic Operative who Bragged about Russian bot ‘False Flag’ issues Contradiction-filled Denial

https://www.rt.com/usa/447682-jonathon-morgan-russia-bots-lie/

The Democratic operative who boasted about orchestrating a “false flag” operation that used fake Russian bots to swing a US Senate race has issued a farcical denial in which he backpedals on his own publicly available statements.

Jonathon Morgan, CEO, and co-founder of “Democratic-leaning” private intelligence firm New Knowledge, was reportedly part of a secretive campaign to discredit Republican candidate, Roy Moore, during the Alabama election. According to an internal report obtained by the New York Times, Morgan and his accomplices boasted about how they had “orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.” Moore ended up losing the race by a hair to his Democratic opponent Doug Jones – who became the first Democrat in 25 years to serve Alabama in the Senate.

READ MORE: The only ‘Russian bots’ to meddle in US elections belonged to Democrat-linked ‘experts’

Morgan adamantly denied these accusations in a statement posted on New Knowledge’s blog, insisting that his company used the election to conduct “research” and “did not engage or operate a botnet.” In fact, according to Morgan, New Knowledge believed from the beginning that the “Russian bots” purportedly aligned with Moore were fake. The hundreds of Cyrillic-sporting accounts that followed Moore on Twitter “seemed to us to be the work of internet trolls, not Russian activity,” Morgan wrote. He acknowledged that the media presented the bots as a genuine Russian influence campaign, but asserted that “to this day, we have no idea where these followers came from or what their purpose was.”

Morgan, it appears, felt differently during the actual election. Citing his much-admired “Russian bot” dashboard, Hamilton 68, Morgan tweeted in November 2017 that Moore was conspicuously popular among “Russian trolls.”

In other words: In November 2017 – when Moore and his Democratic opponent were in a bitter fight to win over voters – Morgan openly promoted the theory that Russian bots were supporting Moore’s campaign. A year later – after being caught red-handed orchestrating a self-described “false flag” operation – Morgan now says that his team never thought that the bots were Russian and have no idea what their purpose was. Did he think no one would notice?

Tellingly, Morgan publicized during the election that New Knowledge had invested time and resources into unmasking the owner of a pro-Moore Twitter account. True to form, Morgan suggested that the Twitter user was a Russian bot – an accusation that was found to be baseless after the Daily Beast conducted a thorough investigation into the matter.

This is just one of several painfully apparent inconsistencies with Morgan’s “research” story. He insists that his company’s activities were limited to the creation of a benign Facebook page aimed at Alabama conservatives, which was used to gauge how political audiences responded to “mainstream, moderate” journalism.

None of this adds up. According to the New York Times, which broke the story, Morgan “acknowledged his role in the secret Alabama operation on Facebook and Twitter.” Why is he now denying any role – and why is there no mention of Twitter activities in his statement? Morgan’s obstinate denial insists that he was only involved in setting up a harmless Facebook page.

Morgan ends his statement by declaring that New Knowledge “is in the integrity business.” This is why, as the Times reported, the company “intended to help Mr. Jones and hurt Mr. Moore and that its operators believed it had succeeded in doing so.”

The company being used by Democrats to prove their case against Russia caught using shady tactics.

God damn it, people. Stop using propaganda outlets.

fake news

*wait I was being sarcastic at first, but RT and Dailybeast as sources? Yeah, actual fake news. For once.

Your hero's caught using dirty tactics to sway an election.

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/political-gamers-909409192/the-most-egregious-fake-news-stories-of-2018-33449108/

That was this thread.

Do you have a real news source for this? Not that I care. Roy Moore is likely a pedophile.

...and now it's this one.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/21/senate-russia-report-russian-bot/

The head of the firm behind a report on ongoing Russian influence campaigns in the United States was part of a Democratic project to create fake Russian bots ahead of the Alabama special election in December 2017.

The chief executive of cybersecurity firm New Knowledge, Jonathan Morgan, was one of the operatives on a self-described “false flag” operation meant to link Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore to Russian bots in order to boost his Democratic opponent, now-Sen. Doug Jones. The project sought to spread misinformation about foreign interference in an American election.

Morgan’s firm also recently authored a report on that very topic for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The New Knowledge report — which is posted in full at the bottom of this article — stated that Americans’ hesitance to embrace censorship puts the U.S. at a “disadvantage” in dealing with Russian influence campaigns.

The report also called for “robust collaboration between government agencies, platforms, and private companies” in order to combat the threat of Russian influence campaigns.

Leftist billionaire Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, reportedly spent $100,000 on the false flag operation, which included running fake conservative Facebook pages meant to dissuade Republican voters from supporting Moore.

The project and Morgan’s participation in it were revealed by The New York Times in an investigation published Wednesday evening. (RELATED: ‘We Don’t Track Bots’: What The Media’s ‘Russian Bot’ Coverage Is Getting All Wrong)

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the operatives recounted in an internal report obtained by the Times.

Media outlets — both in Alabama and nationally — fell for the ploy and amplified the false narrative in October 2017.

In a statement to the Times, Morgan described the misinformation operation as a “research project” and claimed his involvement in the fake Russian bots didn’t “ring a bell.”

New Knowledge did not return an email asking whether Morgan’s reported involvement in spreading misinformation online affects his trustworthiness on that topic and whether he considers online misinformation campaigns to be harmless as long as they have a budget of $100,000 or less.

Not helping your case.

The point isn't to convince you, you're beyond help.

Then what is the point? Otherwise you're just in here like some tattletaler with false information "Look at what the libs did!"

Totally open to anything, I've no dogs in the GOP or DEM fight.

What exactly is false?

@Damedius: Rt? Are you seriously that dumb?

Wow...just...wow.

Russian propaganda and sub par trolling. 1/10.

Democratic operative caught with hand in cookie jar, posters blame Russia.

Shouldn't moderators lock/delete actual fake news threads like this?

This guy also tried to trick people Russia only spent a few thousand on their interference campaign.

You don't remember Johnathan Morgan and New Knowledge?

I understand why you want this thread closed, since it exposes the propaganda you like to spew.

This isn't the case of the Democrats.

This is the case of the FBI, DHS, CIA, DOJ, NSA, Senate, and Congress. Both bipartisan and of both administrations. Interference happened. It is a fact. They spent millions. They hacked. They botted. They troll farmed. This reached 100's of millions of Americans, many in swing states. It was a targeted and specific effort, and the biggest in history against US.

is this the site that had to register as a foreign agent?

The media and you both used a report produced by New Knowledge who seem to be both partisan and not adverse to shady tactics

Did the the FBI, DHS, CIA, DOJ, NSA, Senate, and Congress only use New Knowledge to come to the conclusion Russia did in fact interfere?

Do you often brush off using questionable sources?

You also list whole agencies. I would find it hard to find any agency that agrees on everything. Surely you aren't suggesting that ever member or every one of those groups came to the same conclusion.

Those agencies agree..........you're objectively wrong.

They did come to the same conclusion, through different sources of information. There are dozens of hours of testimonies, and dozesn of pages of reports (DOJ indictments, leaked NSA, ICA report). You're dead wrong on this issue.

Even your dear Republicans agree Russia interfered. You're done on this issue. Stick w/ crying about college campuses or brown people or whatever.

We let infowars slide. Is this any worse?

True. I guess it's better if the readers sort it out on their own since this isn't actually a political news site.

Exactly. And I don't want to be picking which news sites are OK and not. If a site is full of BS, most of you guys say so. RT is rather far out on the right side, isn't it?

RT is a Russian propaganda network funded by the Russian government.

Literally.

I agree with letting people post whatever sources they want. There are enough smart people here for us to sort them out for ourselves.

@Damedius: we literally have a Russian spy in prison.

Dude..stop

Ah. Best source of news then :P

Are you saying countries spy on each other?

Is that where the word spy comes from?

You guys are next level on this forum.

So are you defending New Knowledge and Johnathan Morgan's actions?

I can't defend something that hasn't had a proper citation. Find a real article on it.

Either way, our ICA had quite a lot of sources. Russia interfered.

Are you saying the article isn't real?

Is it an essay masquerading as an article, or perhaps an under achieving poem?

1. I said find a reputable link on this.

2. It doesn't undermine the consensus of the ICA either way.

@Damedius: no.

I mean got a russiam spy who came over...slept their way up the nra and Republican party ....and convince so called proud Americans to put every thing to turn us government interest towads Russian intrest under our governments nose.

You know the thing we don't want other countries to do.

So it is a real article and you are to lazy to look at the other links that have been posted.

Do you still need your ass wiped too?

Daily Caller is not a valid source. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-caller/

The NYT link doesn't say what Dally Caller or RT are saying, they are spinning it. You would have been better off using the direct source, NYT, but why would an extreme tribal do something like that?

The secret project, carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race, in which the Democratic candidate it was designed to help, Doug Jones, edged out the Republican, Roy S. Moore.

Mr. Morgan said in an interview that the Russian botnet ruse “does not ring a bell,” adding that others had worked on the effort and had written the report. He said he saw the project as “a small experiment” designed to explore how certain online tactics worked, not to affect the election.

“The research project was intended to help us understand how these kind of campaigns operated,” said Mr. Morgan. “We thought it was useful to work in the context of a real election but design it to have almost no impact.”

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at though. Russia interfered.

This Company isn't the only source we have to confirm interference, and this report doesn't actually diminish their findings.

We are back to discussing this again?

Please leave me with your approved list of propaganda sources.

Are you saying something only happens when your approved propaganda source says it happens?

So if I see a cat, does that cat exist before it is reported by your approved propaganda source?

You should post the the original story that DC and RT are copying from, instead of from biased and inaccurate sources. The NYT article, which they are using, doesn't say what those 2 are saying. They are spinning it and making up implications.

This isn't rocket science.

So when are you going to provide the list?

Or is the list just the NYT?

NYT is the source that both DC and RT are inaccurately using for this thread. It's better if you posted the direct source, NYT, rather than pseudo blog pieces from RT and DC concerning said article.

But i'll indulge in your goal post move, if you want a list of more reputable sources than DailyCaller (lol) that isn't exactly difficult. NYT, PBS, The Guardian, BBC, Washington Post, NPR, Rueters, and The Wallstreet Journal. More awards, more trusted, more accurate.

This has been a great exercise in understanding why some sources such as RT and the Daily Caller are bullshit and should be avoided. I'd like to thank @Damedius and @zaryia for their contributions to this illustration.

We can now hopefully move forward both wiser and more experienced.

Seems like a very small list.

Those are the only reputable sources in the entire world?

No. There's obviously more. But when it comes specifically to DC, they aren't reputable:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-caller/

I mean, c'mon

According to a study by Harvard University'sBerkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, The Daily Caller was among the most popular sites on the right during the 2016 presidential election. The study also found that The Daily Caller provided "amplification and legitimation" for "the most extreme conspiracy sites", such as Truthfeed, Infowars, Gateway Pundit and Conservative Treehouse during the 2016 presidential election.^[38][39][40]The Daily Caller also "employed anti-immigrant narratives that echoed sentiments from the alt-right and white nationalists but without the explicitly racist and pro-segregation language."^[39]The Daily Caller also played a significant role in creating and disseminating stories that had little purchase outside the right-wing media ecosystem but that stoked the belief among core Trump followers that what Clinton did was not merely questionable but criminal and treasonous. In a campaign that expressed deep anti-Muslim sentiment, a repeated theme was that Hillary Clinton was seriously in hock to Muslim nations.^[39] In one of its most frequently shared stories, The Daily Caller falsely asserted that Morocco's King Mohammed VI flew Bill Clinton on a private jet, and that this had been omitted from the Clinton Foundation's tax disclosures.^[39]The Daily Caller also made the "utterly unsubstantiated and unsourced claim" that Hillary Clinton got Environmental Protection Agency "head Lisa Jackson to try to shut down Mosaic Fertilizer, described as America’s largest phosphate mining company, in exchange for a $15 million donation to the Clinton Foundation from King Mohammed VI of Morocco, ostensibly to benefit Morocco’s state-owned phosphate company."^[39]

The Daily Caller has published a number of articles that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change.^[16] In 2017, The Daily Caller published a story saying that a "peer-reviewed study" by "two scientists and a veteran statistician" found that recent years have not been the warmest ever.^[17][18] The alleged "study" was a PDF file on a WordPress blog, and was not peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.^[17] Also in 2017, The Daily Caller uncritically published a bogus Daily Mail story which claimed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) manipulated data to make climate change appear worse; at the same time, legitimate news outlets debunked the Daily Mail story.^[19][20][21] Also in 2017, The Daily Caller published a story claiming that a study found no evidence of accelerating temperatures over a 23-year period, which climate scientists described as a misleading story.^[16] In 2016, The Daily Caller published a story claiming that climate scientist Michael Mann (director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University) had asserted that data was unnecessary to measure climate change; Mann described the story as "egregiously false".^[22] In 2015, The Daily Caller wrote that NOAA "fiddle[d]" with data when the agency published a report concluding that there was no global warming hiatus.^[23][24]

It's a glorified conspiracy blog.

And even more specifically when it comes to this thread topic article they copied from NYT and then spun, sliced up, and implied. Just like RT did.

Please post from the fact based source. Not the blog spin cycle who latches on to it.

So is this site the standard? This site is the authority on reputable sources?

The place looks like a blog, which is funny after your comments.

I thought you might say that, so I gave specific examples as to why they aren't reputable, if that wasn't enough. Do you want more?

I mean, you're kind of done here.

Also you are free to fact check the following:

A factual search reveals a very poor track record with fact checking. Here is a short list of some failed fact checks:

• “Former President Bill Clinton and his Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) distributed ‘watered-down’ HIV/AIDS drugs to patients in sub-Saharan Africa.” – FALSE
• “Jeanne Shaheen was principally involved in a plot with Lois Lerner and President Barack Obama’s political appointee at the IRS to lead a program of harassment against conservative nonprofit groups during the 2012 election” – FALSE
• George Soros-controlled Smartmatic manufactures the voting machines used in 16 crucial states, and those states will be rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. – FALSE
• Indiana Muslims are appalled by a billboard displaying a list of deeds by the Prophet Muhammad even though it is accurate. – MOSTLY FALSE
• Washington state has updated their curriculum standards to include teaching “transgenderism” to Kindergarteners. – MOSTLY FALSE

I look forward to your corrections.

Okay.