I suspect we are going to be seeing ratfucking in this election on a scale that dwarfs anything we’ve ever seen before. Between the inevitable foreign interference via social media and Trump’s official campaign operation, I think it’s going to be epic. But don’t discount the “entrepreneurs” either. Roger Stone has a lot on his mind, but on some level he must feel like a proud papa.
This Daily Beast story about how a small group of Trump fanatics, the leader of which is in close contact with the White House, pushed the Seth Rich conspiracy theory with the help of Fox News and a new company that specializes in ratfucking:
The varied group, according to Butowsky, included Schoenberger, Chavez, outspoken Rich conspiracy theorist Matt Couch and an associate, Logan’s husband Joe Burkett, as well as Fox News reporter Malia Zimmerman, who was the author of the retracted Fox story. “Nobody wiretapped anybody, nobody attempted to wiretap anybody, nobody discussed wiretapping anybody, and quite frankly, I don’t know what wiretapping is.”— Ed Butowsky
They were joined by Trevor FitzGibbon, a former Democratic PR bigwig whose firm once worked with groups like MoveOn and NARAL, but collapsed in 2015 in the face of sexual-harassment and assault allegations against him. (FitzGibbon denied those allegations and never faced criminal charges.) According to Schoenberger and Chavez, FitzGibbon teamed up with them in August 2017 to launch “Shadowbox,” their “elite” online reputation firm. Butowsky was their first client.
Zimmerman, FitzGibbon, Fox News, and Rich’s parents didn’t respond to requests for comment. Burkett, a former intelligence contractor, could not be reached for comment. Both Couch and lawyers for Aaron Rich, citing the lawsuit, declined to comment.
But the fact that marginal internet characters like Schoenberger and Chavez could be called to a gathering with political players like Butowsky—who enjoys connections to the White House, Fox News, and at least one leading House Republican—offers a glimpse into how conspiracy theories are bleeding into political life. It also raises questions about how far Trump allies will go to vindicate their wild theories about Rich.
Rich’s unsolved July 2016 murder in Washington, D.C., which police believe was a botched robbery, has fueled years of right-wing conspiracy theories. In most versions, the baseless claim is that Rich was murdered by Hillary Clinton or her allies for leaking Democratic emails to WikiLeaks in the run-up to the presidential election.
For Trump fans, that story has the value of absolving any connections between the president’s campaign and Russia, since it would mean that an insider, not Russian hackers, obtained and leaked the emails.
Butowsky, who enjoyed front-row tickets at Trump’s inauguration and regularly appeared on Fox News as an unpaid advocate for Trump’s agenda, saw that value as well. In a recording of a conversation obtained by NPR in January 2017, he fretted that questions about Russian election interference would undermine Trump’s legitimacy—but noted that the theory about Rich’s death “changes all of that.”
The whole story is byzantine and weird and probably wouldn’t be worth thinking too much about except for the fact that these people met with the president’s press secretary and Congressman Devin Nunes. There is zero degrees of separation with the White House and the US Congress with this lunacy.
I highly recommend that you read the whole thing. It’s one small example of the way our politics are being waged these days and since there is a big cyber element, it means people are even more unprepared than usual.