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Political Operatives Are Faking Voter Outrage With Millions Of Made-Up Comments To Benefit The Rich And Powerful

Sarah Reeves sat on her couch in Eugene, Oregon, staring at her laptop screen in furious disbelief. She was reading the website of a government agency, where her mother appeared to have posted a comment weighing in on a bitter policy battle for control of the internet. Something was very wrong.

For a start, Annie Reeves, who loved to lead children’s sing-alongs at the Alaska Zoo, had never followed wonky policy debates. She barely knew her way around the web, let alone held strident views on how it should be regulated — and, according to her daughter, she definitely didn’t post angry comments on government websites.

But Sarah Reeves had a more conclusive reason to feel sure her mother’s name had been taken in vain: Annie Reeves was dead. She died more than a year before the comment was posted.

In the spring of 2017, a virtual war was raging over the future of the internet, much of it through comments on the website of the Federal Communications Commission — the government agency responsible for regulating the broadband industry. Reeves wasn’t the only ghost to get sucked in from beyond the grave to do battle on behalf of giant telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Comcast.

At issue was a rule from the Obama era known as “net neutrality.” It was designed to protect the open web by requiring internet providers to treat traffic from all sites equally — and under Trump, the FCC was planning to scrap it. Conservatives had long branded the regulation as an assault on free enterprise, but advocates warned that its repeal would allow the broadband giants to manipulate traffic in favor of the highest-paying platforms, crowding out competition and stifling free speech. The stakes were high, and the public comment period attracted a staggering 22 million submissions.

The problem was, many of the comments were fake.

The New York attorney general opened an investigation and has since issued subpoenas to more than a dozen entities — estimating that “as many as 9.6 million comments may have used stolen identities.” But the FCC went ahead and scrapped the net neutrality rule in a massive victory for the broadband industry and a huge blow, consumer advocates said, for users. Some suspicious comments have been tracked back to particular political operatives. But the question of how millions of identities were marshaled without consent has largely remained a mystery. Until now.

A BuzzFeed News investigation — based on an analysis of millions of comments, along with court records, business filings, and interviews with dozens of people — offers a window into how a crucial democratic process was skewed by one of the most prolific uses of political impersonation in US history. In a key part of the puzzle, two little-known firms, Media Bridge and LCX Digital, working on behalf of industry group Broadband for America, misappropriated names and personal information as part of a bid to submit more than 1.5 million statements favorable to their cause...

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
As the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!

"I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop [the investigation] because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

I am driven around the bend by posters here or anywhere who are so moronically trusting of comments and "information" they get via social media where authorship is completely invisible.

I am driven around the bend by posters here or anywhere who are so moronically trusting of comments and "information" they get via social media where authorship is completely invisible.

Mitch McConnell raises money vowing to stop impeachment

In a new campaign video on Facebook, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell pitches himself as the man who can end the House's impeachment inquiry, a sign of how the chief Republican in the chamber might handle an impeachment trial should the House pass articles charging President Donald Trump with crimes.

"Nancy Pelosi is in the clutches of a left-wing mob," McConnell says directly to a camera. "They've finally convinced her to impeach the President. All of you know your Constitution. The way that impeachment stops is a Senate majority, with me as majority leader."
"But I need your help," he adds. "Please contribute before the deadline."

I don't think they're doing that. I think they're just looking for something that confirms their own prejudices.

rev, it just dawn on me - Biden needs to go out there and say "World, don't do tRumps bidding and you get me - no quid pro quo, I pay you nothing and you pay me nothing plus you get me. No tariffs to boot, no lies, no wishy washy negotiations!"

I think so, rev. But what I find so sobering is this. In our lifetimes, I don't think we've ever seen anything like the present moment where pretty much all the mainstream media has been reporting on the Trump phenomenon with such a level of critical coverage and commentary. Right wing types, of course, see this as a broad conspiracy to damage Trump. It isn't that at all, as we understand, but they believe it to be so... because of the establishment of a rightwing media universe which has now become large enough and corrupt enough to convince some 30 or 40% of Americans that it is so.

There is a pattern of consistently illegal behavior happening here. Trump is trying to use the presidency to pressure other world leaders to investigate his political rivals. The Ukraine whistleblower was correct. There are more calls, probably a lot more calls.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s name is a new addition to the story, and it shows that Trump is worried about losing to both of the top two Democrats.

Donald Trump can’t win an election on his own. Russia helped him in 2016, and he is searching the globe for nations that will help him keep his weakening grasp on power in 2020.

Over the years, he established himself as a generous Republican donor, taking on fundraising roles for the Republican National Committee and presidential candidates including Mitt Romney, John McCain and President George W. Bush, who also appointed him to serve on the Commission on White House Fellows, Politico reported.

He initially supported Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential campaign, before turning to Trump, the Oregonian reported — but the support didn’t last.

On Aug. 5, 2016, the Seattle Times revealed that Sondland and Bashar Wali, the president of Provenance Hotels, would host a fundraiser for Trump that month. Just two days later, the hoteliers publicly denounced Trump, citing irreconcilable differences in values and beliefs, the Willamette Week reported. A spokeswoman for Provenance Hotels told the paper they didn’t give the Trump campaign permission to list them as hosts of the event, and that they refused to participate.

The two hoteliers pointed to Trump’s criticism of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of Muslim American soldier Humayun Khan who died serving in the U.S. Army, as a reason for their disdain.

“Mr. Sondland is a first generation American whose parents were forced to flee Germany during the years leading up to World War II because they were persecuted for their faith,” the spokeswoman, Kate Buska, told the Willamette Week, “and Mr. Wali is a Muslim American who emigrated to this country from Syria.

Historically, Mr. Sondland has been supportive of the Republican party’s nominees for President,” she continued. “However, in light of Mr. Trump’s treatment of the Khan family and the fact his constantly evolving positions diverge from their personal beliefs and values on so many levels, neither Mr. Sondland or Mr. Wali can support his candidacy.”

But again, the disdain would apparently not last for long either.

In 2017, Sondland donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee through four of his limited liability companies. Trump nominated him to be U.S. ambassador to the E.U. the following year.

The new ambassador quickly took up Trump’s major grievances with other world leaders, urging European leaders to make a better trade deal so they could take on China together. But starting in at least July of this year, according to the text messages, Sondland was working to forward Trump’s interests in Ukraine.

“I [spoke] directly to Zelensky and gave him a full briefing. He’s got it,” Sondland wrote in a group text to Volker and Taylor six days before Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president that is at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

The texts released Thursday appear to show multiple State Department officials — including Sondland and Volker — seeking to lock down Zelensky’s promise to launch an investigation into the 2016 election and into a natural-gas company that previously employed former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Hanging in the air was a potential meeting between Trump and Zelensky that the Ukrainian president badly wanted.

Taylor, by contrast, was skeptical.


“Gordon,” he wrote on July 21, four days before Trump’s phone call with Zelensky, “one thing Kurt [Volker] and I talked about yesterday was … that President Zelenskyy is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics.”

“Absolutely,” Sondland responded, “but we need to get the conversation started and the relationship built, irrespective of the pretext. I am worried about the alternative.”

At one point, Andrey Yermak, an aide for Zelensky, appeared ready to agree to have Zelensky publicly announce that the Ukrainians would launch Trump’s desired investigations — but only once a date for the meeting between the two leaders was settled, the text messages show. Sondland went so far as to consider requesting that U.S. officials have prior review of the Ukrainian officials’ public statement announcing the supposed investigation, according to the text messages.

But that never happened. After news broke in late August that Trump had withheld $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, Trump also canceled a meeting scheduled with Zelensky in Poland. Taylor grew more concerned.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Taylor asked Sondland on Sept. 1.


“Call me,” Sondland responded.


Taylor later described fearing a “nightmare scenario” in which the Ukrainians give what Trump wants but do not get the security assistance in return. “As I said on the phone,” he told Sondland on Sept. 9, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

That’s when Sondland told him he believed he was wrong.

“The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” Sondland wrote. “The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign.”

With that, Sondland said it would be better to stop texting about the issue.