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January 27, 2023

Twitter Files No. 15: ‘I think we need to just call this out on the BS that it is.’

By Andrea Widburg

Matt Taibbi has just dropped Twitter Files #15 (embedded at the end of this post), and it’s a humdinger. It turns out that one of the most aggressive sites to push the Russia hoax and to use its status to silence anyone who challenged the hoax or supported Trump and his agenda was always full of fecal matter. Twitter knew it but refused to act and, when it delicately tried to let the mainstream media know that a major source of pro-Russia hoax information was fake, the media (surprise!) did nothing.

In 2017, when the Russian collusion hoax against Donald Trump was in full flower, a website called Hamilton 68 made big waves. It identified itself as a website capable of tracking Russian-backed propaganda on Twitter. Here’s Reuters, in August 2017, puffing it up:

A website launched on Wednesday seeks to track Russian-supported propaganda and disinformation on Twitter, part of a growing non-governmental effort to diminish Moscow’s ability to meddle in future elections in the United States and Europe.

The “Hamilton 68” dashboard was built by researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic project set up last month to counter Russian disinformation campaigns.

The website, supported by the German Marshall Fund, displays a “near real-time” analysis of English-language tweets from a pool of 600 Twitter accounts that analysts identified as users that spread Russian propaganda.

Reuters made a point of noting that the site came along just as the (impliedly guilty) “Trump administration has shown reluctance to address Russian cyber attacks during ongoing investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow during the 2016 election.”

Image: Chris Watts of Hamilton 68. Twitter screen grab.

Hamilton 68 had some interesting people behind it. Clint Watts, a one-time FBI counterintelligence official and now an MSNBC contributor, headed the project. The money came from the Alliance for Securing Democracy (“ASD”), with an advisory council including fanatic Trump hater Bill Kristol, Obama-era ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, Hillary’s crony John Podesta, and various former CIA, NSA, and DHS high officials. It would be accurate to call them career disinformation specialists. Hamilton 68 was ultimately a repository for former Deep State employees and their allies.

With those credentials, all of which were music to Democrat ears, Hamilton 68 had huge reach for years, with the mainstream media constantly citing it to attack Trump and, when he seemed likely to be a Democrat nominee, Bernie Sanders. Academia and politicians relied on it too. For all of them, it was a boon that Hamilton 68 shot down as the product of Russian bots anything that challenged the Russia collusion narrative or supported Donald Trump.

When Hamilton 68 launched, reports Reuters, “Twitter said it was not involved in the project. It had no other comment.” ]

It turns out, though, that if Twitter had commented, it would have said that the site was unadulterated “bulls***.” Or at least, it knew the truth by October 2017, just a short time after it launched. As Yoel Roth, no friend to Trump, wrote in an internal email, “Virtually any conclusion drawn from it will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.”

Hamilton 68 was a scam. To their individual credit, some Twitter executives, including Yoel Roth, wanted to out it as “wrong, irresponsible, and biased.” However, they were afraid of running afoul of the ASD. Despite Hamilton 68’s incredible, dishonest reach, Twitter kept silent. The most it did was delicately try to give reporters “off the record” information.

Those reporters did nothing. They liked Hamilton 68’s narrative and were not going to destroy it. The same was true for academia (Harvard, Princeton, NYU, etc.), which also relied on Hamilton 68 and refused to acknowledge any problems.

In sum, Twitter knew that Hamilton 68 was a disinformation operation against Trump and the Republicans. However, the powerful former Deep State cabal behind Hamilton 68 frightened Twitter executives so much that they did nothing other than quietly whisper their concerns to reporters and academics, who refused to listen.

As you think of that, remember, too, that the Russia hoax sucked up much of Trump’s time, energy and, importantly, political capital. This hampered his ability to make good on his campaign promises and dogged him going into the 2020 election. Twitter was a coward; the media and academia were evil.

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