A former top aide to Republican Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been central to efforts to censor conservatives online by falsely accusing “them of being Russian,” the latest bombshell Twitter Files release has revealed.
According to the latest installment of the Twitter Files, Rubio’s ex-staffer Jamie Fly is one of the founders behind the platform “Hamilton 68.”
As Slay News previously reported, Hamilton 68 has been used by Big Tech companies and so-called “fact-checkers” to falsely smear and censor Americans, but mainly conservatives.
News Twitter boss Elon Musk tasked journalist Matt Taibbi with lifting the lid on Hamilton 68.
“The two founders of Hamilton 68, the blue-and-red team of former counselor to Marco Rubio Jamie Fly and Hillary for America Foreign Policy Advisor Laura Rosenberger,” Taibbi’s new report reveals.
Fly was the Foreign and National Security Affairs Counselor to GOP Senator Marco Rubio from February 2013 to May 2017.
Hamilton 68’s blue-red founding team of Jamie Fly and Laura Rosenberger, told Politico they couldn’t reveal the “dashboard” accounts because “the Russians will simply shut them down.” The real reason? It was bullshit: https://t.co/vxnKAoI9T7
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023
Musk and Taibbi claim “Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized dashboard designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure ‘Russian disinformation.’”
Taibbi quotes former Twitter executive Yoel Roth saying the group was wrong about everything and warning that it falsely accuses conservatives of being Russian bots.
“I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is,” Roth told his Twitter colleagues at the time.
“Falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots.
“Virtually any conclusion drawn from it will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.”
Taibbi writes:
“Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post.
“It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC ‘disinformation expert’) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank.
“The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.
“The Twitter Files expose Hamilton 68 as a sham.
“Examining further, Twitter execs were shocked.
“The accounts Hamilton 68 claimed were linked to ‘Russian influence activities online’ were not only overwhelmingly English-language (86%), but mostly ‘legitimate people,’ largely in the U.S., Canada, and Britain.
“These people never knew they were used for years to drive hundreds if not thousands of media headlines about supposed Russian bot infiltration of online discussions.
“About the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign, the #ReleaseTheMemo affair, the Parkland shooting, Donald Trump’s election, the #WalkAway, and #IStandWithLaura hashtags, U.S. missile strikes in Syria, the Bernie Sanders campaign, the ‘Blexit’ movement to peel black voters away from Democrats, calls to fire National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, ‘attacks’ on the Mueller investigation, and countless other issues.”
Taibbi concludes:
“The Hamilton 68 tale has no clear analog in media history, which may give mainstream media writers an excuse not to cover it.
“They will be under heavy pressure to avoid addressing this scandal since nearly all of them work for organizations guilty of spreading Hamilton’s ‘bullsh*t’ stories in volume.
“This is one of the more significant Twitter Files stories.
“Each one of these tales explains something new about how companies like Twitter came to lose independence.
“In the U.S., the door was opened for agencies like the FBI and DHS to press on content moderation after Congress harangued Twitter, Facebook, and Google about Russian ‘interference,’ a phenomenon that had to be seen as an ongoing threat in order to require increased surveillance.
“’I do very much believe America is under attack,’ is how Hamilton 68 co-founder Laura Rosenberger put it, after watching the tweets of Sonya Monsour, David Horowitz, and @holbornlolz.
“The Hamilton 68 story shows how the illusion of ongoing ‘Russian interference’ worked.
“The magic trick was generated via a confluence of interests, between think tanks, media, and government.
“Before, we could only speculate,” Taibbi said.
“Now we know: the ‘Russian threat’ was, in this case at least, just a bunch of ordinary Americans, dressed up to look like a Red Menace.
“Jayson Blair had a hell of an imagination, but even he couldn’t have come up with a scheme this obscene.
“Shame on every news outlet that hasn’t renounced these tales.”
This is one of the biggest stories and it will be utterly ignored because of how many people and entities it touches.
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) January 28, 2023
3.“Falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots.” pic.twitter.com/EHRWACkZu4
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023
