I'm telling yall...if you sleep on Internet right wing culture we we lose. These people are making moves:
A GOP STAFFER CROWDSOURCED A RESOLUTION FROM A CONSPIRACY SUBREDDIT
A man hides his face behind a Pepe the Frog sign after Donald Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in October.
CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS
THIS PAST WEDNESDAY, a group of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee presented
an amendment calling for an investigation into alleged misconduct on the parts of Hillary Clinton and James Comey. It was a way to
frustrate Democrats, but, more than that, it provided an opportunity to publicly discuss their very favorite thing: the many bygone misdeeds of Crooked Hillary. The amendment may sound to some readers like it's been ripped out of a conspiracy forum, because that's exactly what happened.
Sponsored by first-term Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), the amendment itself sought
to hijack what began as a resolution from Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) asking for information about Comey's firing. In response to Jayapal's proposal, Gaetz and a few fellow Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee effectively replaced the Democrats' resolution with one of their own. The new amendment (which you can read in its entirety
here) asks for an investigation into things like "the propriety and consequence of immunity deals given to possible Hillary Clinton co-conspirators" and "James B. Comey’s refusal to investigate then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding" a number of matters, including many of which may have come directly from
r/The_Donald.
Thursday night, three Twitter users discovered that a staffer for one of the resolution’s sponsors attempted to crowdsource a number of the resolution's salient points from
r/The_Donald, a subreddit notorious for playing host to unfounded conspiracy theories and anti-Islam tendencies. In other words, not a conventional source of legislative inspiration.
"If the purpose of oversight investigations is to get to the truth," one longtime legislative staffer explained, "then using baseless conspiracies as your starting point is completely counterproductive to a direct investigation."
Devinm666
Three Twitter users—
@regress_ceej,
@espressoself, and
@TrashWeightlift—first identified the possibility that a staffer was using Reddit for legislative CliffsNotes, after Reddit user and frequent r/The_Donald visitor Devinm666's unique comment history caught their attention. Though the account has since been deleted, it included threads like this one:
REDDIT
The insider references to subpoenas, the legislative process, and working in Congress (as well as allusions to taking down Crooked H) prompted some additional digging. The three Reddit sleuths then saw that Devinm666 had actively solicited other r/The_Donald members for assistance with the upcoming amendment. Representative Gaetz has confirmed that that Devinm666 is in fact legislative aide Devin Murphy.
"Yes, Devin is a staffer in our office," Gaetz wrote in an email to WIRED. "It is the responsibility of our staff to gather as much information as possible when researching a subject and provide that information for consideration. We pride ourselves on seeking as much citizen input as possible.”
REDDIT
Publicly identifying one of its users is generally seen as a strict taboo on Reddit. But Murphy is a public official, and in this case was using the platform for public business. He also made little effort to hide his identity, at one point even posting his congressional ID badge, albeit with his name and face obscured.
While the original Reddit post calling for information has since been deleted, several versions survive, both in
Google's cache and on the internet archive service
archive.is.
Though Devinm666 never explicitly said which congressman he worked for, his comment history left several clear indicators for
@regress_ceej,
@espressoself, and
@TrashWeightlift. Not only is Gaetz
the amendment's sponsor but Devinm666 mentions him more than any other politician, and generally refers to him as "Based Gaetz" (a term of reverence). A quick Google search was all it took for them to find that Gaetz
has a legislative assistant with the same name.
Archived version of Devinm666's post
GOOGLE CACHE
"It really wasn't that hard once we found it," one of the users who uncovered Devinm666 explained. "He talked about how much he liked Representative Gaetz. He posted his House credentials. He talked about the bill. He sourced information. His Reddit username is his name. From there, it was just a matter of getting everything together."
At around 11 pm Thursday night, Devinm666 began deleting comments, unsurprising considering the frequency and detail with which he bragged about his government job. At this point, all of them are gone. In one
since-deleted post, Devinm666 explicitly claimed to have had a hand in crafting Gaetz's amendment.
REDDIT
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @The Taxman @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike