After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News (2020) - full transcript

Our candidate for president...
Charles Lindbergh!

The Jewish people

are pushing the United States
into this new war.

Lindbergh wants to be
another little Hitler himself.

I believe he is a good man.

- This is my country.
- Not anymore.

It's their country.

We only think we're Americans.

As someone
working in politics in DC,

what do you think
about fake news?

I would use fake news as a weapon 'cause it's out there.



The Germans used chemical weapons,
the British used chemical weapons.

What are you gonna do?

It doesn't mean you like
chemical weapons.

It means you do
what you have to do.

I've tried some fake news.
I don't even remember.

We've tried some things.

Yeah, there are terrible,
negative potential consequences, but so what?

That's what I say.
So what?

What's the big deal?

We've always taken the position
in this country,

let it all come out,
let the people judge.

Despite the dangers.

But how can the people
judge fake stories and lies?

Or do you think we're
in a post-truth moment?



Oh, I don't know.

I mean, what is truth?

You study philosophy,
there is no reality.

There is only perception.

So when you say,
are we in a post-truth moment,

most philosophers
on all sides would tell you

there was never any such thing
as truth to begin with.

There is this ecosystem
that's growing now

where people are actually
confusing real and fake news,

especially
if they see it online.

This "post-truth" culture
that we're living in

has real costs to the people

who are victimized by those
who come up

with these theories and themes.

People have suffered
because of false news

that's being spread online.

The summer of 2015
was really the first sign

that there was
something happening

in our information space

that we weren't paying
enough attention to.

There was a two-month long
military exercise

that was occurring in the
American Southwest, Jade Helm,

and this conspiracy
emerged around it

that President Obama
was going to round up

political dissidents
and put them in camps in Texas.

Fake news.
What do I think about it?

A very old saying
comes to mind.

Don't believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.

I find myself there a lot.

I don't know what's real
and what's fake.

Here in Bastrop, it's a very close-knit,
rural community.

Typical small-town America,
hometown value structure.

In 2015, back during
the Obama administration,

there was
a huge amount of concern

about distrust of
the national government.

And once people found out

that there was gonna be
a major military operation

in Bastrop County,
a lot of people were,

you know, making
puzzle pieces fit together.

We're going to be conducting
the training exercise

safely and courteously.

We're not gonna interfere
with their privacy

or their rights with this.

The army says it's an
eight-week training exercise

in a realistic setting,

but they're not saying much
beyond that.

We began to get
inquiries from people.

Why are you allowing
the military

to come into Bastrop County?

What's gonna happen,
and why are they coming here?

And then, all sorts of
conspiracies were put together.

The truth is that
it's an exercise,

um, for enacting martial law
in this country.

This is conditioning for
martial law and a takeover.

And then I tuned
into another show.

They're saying the same thing,
"I guess Alex Jones was right."

There's been an awakening.

We happened to be
kind of the clearinghouse

of a lot of conversation.

People would come here,
it's like the pub,

to talk about it.

Somebody shares a story,
somebody else commiserates,

and then everyone else
jumps on the bandwagon.

I think it has a lot to do
with, you know,

having a degree in Google.

Whether it's vaccines
cause autism,

Masonic lizard people
running the world,

Jade Helm, we want so hard
to believe even in conspiracies

that things actually exist,

that there is
an underlying deal,

that we have some knowledge
that other people don't.

And we want to believe all that,

um, but it's... sometimes,
it's just not true.

I will be headed
to Bastrop, Texas,

to report on the Jade Helm
'15 military exercise.

I don't trust
the corporate media.

I don't want somebody else
to tell me what's going on.

I want to go
find out for myself.

In my view, Jade Helm was
a psychological operation

to gauge the response.

Will the people, you know,

be complacent
when this exercise happens?

Will they push back?

We're gonna go inside.
See, this is what the corporate media does.

They stand across the street,

and we go inside.

I can't believe we're in here.

I believe in
personal responsibility.

If somebody reads an article and they go crazy because of that,

because whatever issues
they got going on,

like, I don't know how I can,
you know,

be held responsible for that.

There are many who made
some pretty wild claims.

And social media is the devil.

So in my interest
in open government

and in transparency, I said,

well, let's just have
a town hall meeting

and explain this to everybody.

Colonel Lastoria came
and we asked him

to explain to everyone
who was interested

what exactly the operation
was going to entail.

Jade Helm is simply
just a challenging,

eight-week training exercise

for unconventional warfare

and it's an exercise
that will be conducted

throughout Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, and Utah.

Man:

Hysteria is
a little strong of a word,

but there were pockets
of hysteria.

Pape:

Lastoria:

You had people that were
otherwise normal people,

in the Jade Helm thing,
believing that there was an underground

network of tunnels that connected all the Walmarts in Texas.

These are giant facilities
that can house people.

So people started speculating
that, okay,

these Walmarts are getting
ready to be turned into

concentration camps,
detention centers, what have you.

Today, Governor Greg Abbott
is choosing to assign

the Texas State Guard
to monitor the operation.

Commander Abbott
states his reasoning is...

You get a part of
the citizenry worked up

and the governor reacted to it
in a way that looked like

the state government
was taking this seriously.

The relatively quick jump
of that information

from conspiracy blogs
to town hall meetings

to the governor's office,
I think,

was of great concern,
certainly to the military

and to our
intelligence services.

Recently, Michael Hayden,
the former CIA and NSA director,

talked about this,
very clearly linking

the disinformation campaign
around Jade Helm

to Russian information activities targeting the United States.

Russian bots,
Russian trolls,

combining with the American
alt-right media

convinced a non-trivial portion
of the Texas population

that it was an attempt
by the Obama administration

to round up
political opponents.

It was interesting to me
that someone would tie

what went on here
in Bastrop County

to this worldwide concern
about Russian interference

in American politics,
but you know what, um,

it's a small world.

In Texas,

we don't compare our economy
to other states.

We compare our economy
to other countries.

The Texas economy
is larger than Canada,

it's larger than Australia.

And get this,

the Texas economy is even larger
than the economy of Russia.

That makes me
more powerful than Putin.

That was a test.

And what all of it showed was

we are in a weaponized
information environment.

So we're at the point now
where I don't think people

can distinguish
fact from truth anymore

or people are starting
to make their own truth,

and honestly,
I'm okay with that.

I have about eight
different daily digests

that come into my inbox
every morning

from different Facebook pages
and other things

that we've started
tracking over time.

I scan hyper-partisan stuff

from people who tend to
propagate misinformation.

And it's basically just like
starting your morning

bathing in Internet garbage,
is pretty much the deal.

I have been looking at
false stories since 2014.

There were a handful
of journalists and researchers

who were interested
in this stuff, but it wasn't

what was the main focus
of the world.

And in the span of a few months,
that completely changed,

at the end of 2016,
with Trump's victory.

What we found was
the core key time

before Election Day,
that fake stories

got way more engagement

than the real news stories
about the election.

And as soon as
everybody, journalists,

politicians, researchers
started scratching the surface,

they were like, holy crap,
this is, look at what's here.

And then, right after
the election, we had Pizzagate.

Somebody walking into
a DC pizzeria

with a rifle and firing it off,

and realizing that
that was a result of this person

consuming conspiracies
and misinformation,

I think that freaked
a lot of people out.

My restaurant,
I try to be like,

everyone's invited,
just have a good time.

Play ping-pong,
eat some great food.

Families and kids are
the people who like it the most

because it's like,
it's fun, they can run around.

Comet Ping Pong is
a fixture here in Washington.

Everyone knows this restaurant.

People come from other parts
of Washington

to have pizza here.

We do have some
politically connected people

that come in here, and that
is just something that happens.

I mean,
I have CNN news anchors

who have been eating here
for years.

But what Comet is about is,
this is a safe space

for people to come in
and be themselves.

We host shows
for local bands, queer bands.

I think that one of
the nice things about Comet

is that there's space here

for... queer folks

to be part of the identity
of the restaurant.

I had this party
for the 10-year anniversary.

Everyone was invited,
and we had

the attorney general
of the United States

and like, congresspeople
and like, kids,

and musicians and artists.

And that was in the end
of October 2016.

I looked at it one moment
and I just thought,

wow, like, we've really
created something here.

Like, this place is special.

Uh, and then quickly after that,
we were slammed with this

year-plus-long,
endless conspiracy theory.

John Podesta,
who's Hillary Clinton's

campaign chairman,
his emails are hacked,

and they get uploaded online.

And a lot of conspiracy theorists start crawling through them.

And based on these emails,
they spin up

this crazy conspiracy theory
about Comet Ping Pong.

People on pro-Trump forums

start going through
John Podesta's emails,

and they see these
references to pizza.

Now, these are pretty
innocuous references.

Do we need to get pizza
for the campaign volunteers?

That kind of stuff.

And perhaps the first example
we've ever seen

of the creation of Pizzagate
is on a Reddit post.

Someone saying, I think we need
to be looking at these clues

for all this pizza stuff.

And really, from there,
that's where it took off.

So inside the emails,
they connect a lot of things.

CP, cheese pizza.
People dissect it.

They think maybe it stands
for child pornography.

Various people on Reddit,
sites like 4chan

become convinced that pizza
is slang for,

essentially, children to rape.

And so then,
they see the exchanges

with James Alefantis
and John Podesta.

I had emailed
with John Podesta

about hosting a pizza party

fundraiser cookout
at someone's house.

And so,
people become convinced

that Comet Ping Pong is like,
this child rape dungeon

in the basement.

This was supported
by George Soros

and John Podesta
and Hillary Clinton

and like, everybody was
somehow connected to this

child sex trafficking ring
at a pizza parlor

that you could dial up,
and say the right food words,

and get your order of children.

It's just days
before the election

and so, tensions are high.

It certainly looked like
Hillary Clinton was gonna win,

and so, Trump people
are very feverish,

and this was just blowing up.

So I said, jeez,
all these people are just going so wild about it.

I wonder if anything's
happening at Comet.

So I called him up.

I got a call from
a guy named Will Sommer

and he, at the time,
was working

at the Washington City Paper

and asked me if I had
read about this

or know about this
online conspiracy theory

that Hillary Clinton and I

were human trafficking
from Comet Ping Pong.

And I was like,

I don't know
what you're talking about.

And I make a comment like,

everyone is really up
about this election,

and passions are high,

and I'm sure that it'll go away
in a couple of days.

The election happens,
and then actually what happened

is in the days subsequent
to the election,

these online attacks
started escalating

and increasing in volume.

We started to get messages
onto, like, our Yelp page

for the restaurant.

Reviews that were really weird
and weird Facebook things.

I had put pictures
of my godchildren on Instagram.

Now, obviously,
I would know better

than to put anything anywhere,
but these images

were stolen from my Instagram,
taken and put up

as some kind of evidence of
nefarious activities going on.

I just want you
to ask yourself,

why does this guy,

I think he looks
like he's in his late 30's,

why is this
coming-on-middle-age guy

have a photo of a random kid
drinking milk?

Pizzagate, like so many
conspiracy theories,

it starts to echo on 4chan.

There are spaces that
drive more extreme content.

I would say 4chan is--

no, a bathroom
may be too polite.

Think of the rest stop
on the interstate highway.

4chan is a dirty restroom.

There's no toilet paper
on the toilet roll.

The sink has not
been cleaned in months.

And think about
the kinds of things

you saw on
bathroom walls there.

It builds on the Internet,
and then it starts

getting picked up by various
right-wing pundits.

You know, Alex Jones starts
promoting it all the time.

Pizzagate is real.
The question is how real is it?

What is it?
Something's going on.

Something's being covered up.

It needs to be investigated.
To just call it fake news...

InfoWars becomes the Pizzagate network for a bit.

The menu
from Comet Ping Pong.

Notice the symbol
of the ping-pong paddles

and its clever resemblance
to the FBI documents'

symbol for ChildLove.

There were so many
different entry points

for this specific attack.

I'm trafficking or abusing
these children is one.

The other was that I
or Hillary Clinton

or the Podestas were kidnapping
and selling these children

to retain our immense wealth.

There was some that,
this idea that

because I'm gay, I obviously
must be molesting children

or something,
which is a historical perspective on gayness.

So many of the calls
we've received,

people saying, why do you
like raping children?

And being like,
I know you're all gay.

And that one is necessarily
related to the other.

A lot of what fuels
misinformation

and what we call
"fake news" is hate.

It is essentially
some group of people

either misunderstanding

or having some sort
of violent feelings

about another group of people.

And in the case of Comet,
those who decided

to target James found
a little bit of hate and malice

in the piece of Comet
that is welcoming

to the LGBTQ community.

More and more,
we started receiving phone calls

that ran the gambit of being

just prank calls,
I'd almost say,

where people were like,
can I get a--

some kind of special pizza,
some ridiculous name--

something that meant to them
something about pedophilia.

It was code words

to just
straight-up death threats.

People saying,
gonna kill you,

or we know what you're doing
and we're gonna stop it,

and you're all gonna die.

We know where you live.
We are coming to the restaurant.

We're coming to get you.

You know,
you need to kill yourself.

There was a specific one
where someone said,

I'm gonna come to your
restaurant with a machine gun

and kill everyone inside,
and like,

cut your guts out and watch you
die on the floor or whatever.

I was like, this is scary.

What I was doing
every single night

was going online and checking Reddit,
checking 4chan.

Reddit had a new subreddit

that had been started
specifically for Pizzagate.

It went from, within a week,
zero followers

to 22,000 people who were subscribed to it,
1,500 of which

were active
at any given point,

growing and growing
and growing and growing.

And even if they only spend
five minutes a day

trying to destroy my life,
22,000 people

have more
five minutes a day

than I have 24 hours
in my day.

There it is.
There it is, guys.

So we're, we're gonna go in,
we're gonna infiltrate

Comet Pizza.

I got a phone call
from someone who said,

hey, I just want to let you know
that I'm a friend of yours,

and a guy named
Jack Posobiec is in there,

filming you right now.

I-I turned it off.

I-I understand
that, to you,

this is maybe like a game.

But considering
that I myself and my staff

- receive death threats--
- It's not a game.

It's not anything.

Are you, are you reading
these things

that people are writing?

I can't control what somebody
posts on the Internet.

I read several posts
on Reddit that said

I've had enough of this.

If I don't post back here
in three hours,

it's because I've been killed.

I'm grabbing my shotgun
and going into Comet.

We were
in real deep fear,

like, serious fear.

These threats were so violent
that I, I sort of, like,

knew something would happen.

So it culminates
with Edgar Maddison Welch

driving up from North Carolina.

He's one of the people who's
been consuming all this stuff,

and he's become convinced that there really is a child rape dungeon

in the basement
of Comet Ping Pong.

He wanted to come up here
and save these children.

He's a father himself.
He had two young daughters.

He was a classic InfoWars
listener, follower.

You know, people want me to look into it.
I may just have to take off a week

and just only research this and actually
go to where these places are and stuff.

In fact, I'm looking at...
getting on a plane.

I can't just say something
and not see it for myself.

They go to these pizza places,
there's like, satanic art everywhere.

Part of the pitch is,
get out there

and help us unearth the truth.

It turns people
into a type of vigilante

in which they're out there seeking what they think is justice.

In the case of Pizzagate,
a guy puts children in danger

because he thinks
he's rescuing children.

We had this restaurant filled with families eating,

Sunday afternoon,
and Edgar Maddison Welch

walks in this front door with
a loaded AR-15 assault rifle,

fully exposed,

also with, like, a handgun
and a knife, it turned out,

and like, walks through
this restaurant.

My young staff, who had been
under online attack,

they immediately see him,

call the police and...

and go, like, table-to-table,

telling each table
that they need to go,

like leave the building, and...

So each table...

...the customers are like,
oh, no, we're fine.

Like, we're here to support you.

It's okay, like...
we'll just keep eating or whatever.

And these kids are like, no, you don't understand,
there's a guy here with a gun.

So they evacuate the building.

This isn't a joke!
Get out of the block!

Police have
shut down the street,

and riot,
SWAT teams are closing the building and the street,

and leaves this gunman alone to search the
restaurant or do whatever he's gonna do.

The first thing that he did
was immediately

walk towards the back room.

I'm not sure what he thought
he was gonna find back here,

but I think that he thought
that this was the place

where Hillary Clinton would be.

Or he was gonna walk back there
and find John Podesta

or George Soros or someone.

Pulling things off of the wall,
trying to pry apart the stage,

flipping ping-pong tables over.

He was trying to break
anything that he thought

was obscuring his view.

But he came over here,

to the only locked door
in the entire restaurant,

which is our employee closet.

He shot through the door,

which is a pretty dirty

but innocuous employee closet,

um, houses our coats.

Realized there were
no children being held here,

came out of the restaurant,
came out with his hands up,

to a sea of police.

Hands! Hands!
- We got a guy coming out right now.

Stand up!

We got a white male subject...
- Hands up--

...coming out of the location,
hands in the air.

Don't nobody move!
Don't nobody move!

Stay where you are!
Bring him towards you!

I got him, Mike. Keep going!
Keep coming to my voice!

Do not turn around!
Stop, stop!

Get down on your knees!

Get on the ground!
Lay prone on the ground!

Sir, do you work there?
- Welch:

Who else is at the location right now?
- Welch:

Nobody else?
- What were you doing in the location?

Officer 2:

Welch:

- Regarding what?
- Welch:

Officer 1:

This could
have been a lot worse.

Someone could have gotten shot.

Anything could have
happened here.

So no one--
This was something that

even some of the most
seasoned crime reporters

had never seen before:

That someone came
in armed for battle,

came in on a suicide mission,

either knowing
he was going to jail

or might end up dead,

but was willing to do that

based off of fake,
erroneous news stories.

Today,
the term "fake news"

has become totally weaponized

and misused to the point that I think it's kind of meaningless.

We saw back in January 2017,

when President Trump stood up
at the news conference

and called out CNN
and called it fake news.

From there, we started to see
the term kind of

just fall apart in terms of use.

Mr. President-elect,
can you give us a question?

Don't be rude.
- You're attacking us. Can you give us a question?

Don't be ru-- No, I'm not
gonna give you a question.

- I'm not gonna give you a question.
- Can you state categorically--

- You are fake news.
- Sir--

Where we're at right now is

fake news has
most effectively become

what Donald Trump
has defined it as,

which is media
that's critical of him.

If you want the fake news media

to finally investigate...

When he talks
about fake news,

that is one of the biggest applause lines that he gets at these rallies.

Usually at that point,
that's when the whole crowd

turns to the media pen and boos.

As a journalist, obviously,
it's disappointing

to see that kind of vitriol
directed at the press.

Don't worry, I don't
like them either, okay?

CNN is in the dumper.

It's become synonymous
with fake news.

Nobody believes it anymore.

We expect politicians to be, uh,

fast and loose with the truth,
depending on the day.

We know that.
It's a car salesman.

But we expect journalists,
newsmen to tell the truth.

That's what y'all-- You're just supposed to report the facts.

And, uh, no, I didn't
vote for Obama.

Give me one thing he did
to help me as a Texan,

heterosexual, a married man.

Did he cut--
lower my taxes? Nope.

Did he increase
my freedoms? Nope.

Did he help my white,
blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid

go to college? Nope.

Donald Trump's trying to stop my culture down here from changing.

Look around.

His style of populism
is working.

We're gonna give him
the benefit of the doubt.

Why? Because
he's given us results.

But y'all don't report that.

The media is the public enemy.

Let me show you the one
I really like I bought tonight.

This sums it up.

That is money well spent
right there.

Because it's fake news,
they don't report the truth.

Truth's reality.

You want to start living right,
report the truth.

That's all we ask for.

Thank you.

Well, I think "fake news" has become a very politicized term

that is being used
to censor conservatives.

Uh, evidently,
because it's published

in the New York Times,
you believe it.

If you do that,
you're believing either

government, uh, propaganda

or mainstream
media-determined truth.

And just because the New York Times published it,
doesn't mean it's true.

Jerome Corsi's this
longtime Republican operative,

and really,
one of the modern creators

of this Internet and media-fueled smear campaign.

In the 2004 election,
he cowrote this book

about John Kerry's behavior
on this swiftboat,

promoting that idea
that John Kerry,

who was this Vietnam war hero,

was actually like
this big coward,

you know, promoting this
really baseless claim.

So now, to swiftboat someone,
since 2004,

means to create a lie
and propagate it

in the idea that
it's gonna torpedo them,

and Jerome Corsi
was the creator of that.

Cut to 2008, 2009,
Jerome Corsi is probably

the most prominent face of
the "birther" conspiracy theory,

so the idea that Barack Obama
was born in Kenya.

It's like all of the giant
conspiracy theories

of the past decade or two,
Jerome Corsi has jumped on,

and either he created them or
he really got into pushing them.

And what's so nice
about this is just with a

laptop computer,
a fairly simple camera,

it gives the average person the opportunity
to establish a voice and to be heard.

I didn't look at CNN
and say, I want to do that.

I didn't go to Fox News
and say, here's my résumé,

I want to put on a suit
and after Tucker Carlson,

I want to sit there
and read my news.

I didn't say that. I didn't
go to the New York Times

and say, I want to write
stories for you.

I looked at all of those things
and I said,

you guys are all fucked up.

Whatever it is that you think is journalism,
I think is fucked up.

So this is how I'm gonna do it.

Wake up, everyone.

If you are forwarding articles
from Newsweek

from the New York Times,

you have become
a zombie propagandist.

I find it intriguing
that even investigating it,

questioning it,
becoming a forensic examiner

of evidence, you get ridiculed.

You are a conspiracy theorist.

You can disagree on all sorts
of interpretations

about a particular subject,
but not when there's falsehood.

When we study false news
and disinformation,

what we see repeatedly

is things that, in theory,
could be just interpretation,

get made up of discrete bits of narrative that are distinctly false.

It's very clear
that what you have here

is a propagandist effort
to try to achieve a result.

So for example,
the Seth Rich case.

Seth Rich was a young guy.

He's working for the
Democratic National Committee,

and he's killed,

in July of 2016.

Police in Washington have said
it appears to have been

a botched armed robbery,
but they don't know for sure what happened.

There were
a lot of robberies

in this neighborhood
around that time.

People were speculating, well,
what kind of a robbery was it?

Because his wallet was
still on him,

his watch was still there.

But when a gun goes off,
that's gonna draw attention.

So his assailant's
not gonna stick around

and try to get those valuables.
They're gonna take off.

And that's what happened
in this case.

Very early on,
he wanted to do stuff

that was involved in trying to make things better.

There was six and a half
years between us.

Hundred percent,
he was very much,

you know,
the annoying little brother.

Then as we got older,
we got a lot closer

just when we both got
to the same spot in life.

If he had problems,
he'd talk to me.

If I had problems,
I'd talk to him.

So, I mean, we were
each other's best friends

and, you know,
always there for each other.

He was the person that I knew
I could always count on,

and he was that not just to me
but also to his friends.

His over-the-top
sense of humor.

If you were having a bad day,
no matter what,

if it became his mission
to make you have a good day,

just give in now.

I had come back early
from a vacation,

and we had been playing
phone tag since I had got back.

Obviously, that is something
that I realize I would regret.

The next morning,
my mom called me.

I remember her telling me
that, um...

uh, he had been shot and killed
late in the night.

I remember, you know,
collapsing on the floor

of our townhome at the time,

um, just in sheer disbelief.

In the political
environment that existed

in the summer of 2016,

having a DNC staffer
that was murdered,

to a certain group of people,

just could not have been
a coincidence.

Somebody hacked
into the DNC computer,

and WikiLeaks
just recently published

a bunch of these emails,
and there are a number

of emails in which
senior officials

of the
Democratic National Committee

can be seen conspiring
against Bernie Sanders.

Seth Rich's murder follows
the leak of emails

from the Democratic Party.

And his death very quickly
is linked to the leak.

The idea is that Seth Rich
himself was somehow

in contact with WikiLeaks,

objected to Hillary Clinton's assertion
of control over the Democratic Party.

He was outraged
and released these emails,

and Hillary Clinton somehow
had Seth Rich murdered.

I want to be clear,
this is baseless.

But certainly,
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks

stoked that, uh, speculation.

Our whistleblower
has gone to significant efforts

to get us material,
and often very significant risks.

He's a 27-year-old
that works for the DNC,

who was shot
in the back, murdered.

That was just a robbery,
I believe, wasn't it?

No, there's no finding--
- Was he one of your sources, then?

- We don't comment on who our sources are--
- Then why make the suggestion?

Julian Assange,
it's convenient for him

because it means he's not kind of a patsy for the Russian government.

It means, you know,
there was this brave whistleblower who gave him the stuff.

Julian Assange
was the catalyst.

And then, online, on websites
and message boards

like 4chan or Reddit,
even Twitter, it blew up.

The Seth Rich thing is really getting suspicious now.

This was an assassination.

This kid was murdered
for political reasons.

I think they want
to do damage control

with the DNC
and the Clinton Crime Unit.

This is exactly
the sort of killing

you would expect
from the Clintons.

The guy got fucking murdered

after he leaked
information to WikiLeaks.

There have
been stories in which

activists in the United States

join forces with the Russians
to push the same stories.

And you know,
the Seth Rich story

is probably
the leading example of that.

They were both eager to deny

that the Russians
were behind the hacking

of the
Democratic National Committee.

Seth had access
to a lot of the IT.

I mean, he had the access.
He had a lot of stuff.

The question is,
we don't know what he did with it.

Frankly, we don't know if Seth
was a good guy or a bad guy.

We don't know
if he was a leaker.

Um, we think he was a leaker.
We just don't know.

There's so many
unanswered questions.

Jack Burkman is one of
the premier hucksters

who has latched
onto this tragedy.

We'll show you in here.
Here's the office over here.

This is, this is it.
This is the nerve center, man.

So we'll come down here.

This is the doggy's room.

Fake news is a weapon,

and, uh, we've even tried
to use fake news.

Fake news is a good way
to drive a story.

You know, you put up a site

instead of New York 1,
New York 2.

And people believe it,
and they reprint it,

and it gets reprinted.

It can be an effective tool
in driving a story, you know?

People use it.
It's become a tool of war.

It's like, uh, it's World War I
and its chemical weapons.

People are using them,
so you use them.

You know?

That's how I'd--
that might be the analogy.

Jack Burkman,
who's a Washington lobbyist,

he sends out some legendary
press releases in Washington.

Reporters are always saying,
did you see the latest Jack Burkman press release?

Because they're so absurd.

In the past,
has attached himself to other dubious causes,

including, he tried to get gay
players banned from the NFL.

One is what the police say.

It was done in the street,
street thugs.

B, the Russians did it.

C, Hillary and the Democrats
did it.

D is kind of everything else.

We're conducting
our own investigation.

He's doing
all these crazy things.

Like, he's doing a reenactment
of the murder.

He teams up with some
undergraduate students

at George Washington
University,

and they come up with the idea that the most obvious explanation

for Seth Rich's death is that a hit squad killed him.
I mean, it's absurd.

You have a dead DNC staffer
that can't defend himself.

It's a good opportunity to make statements and,
you know, try to use them.

And when we ran
sentence analyses of the media,

you really see
how Seth Rich pops up

as an interference pattern
on the right,

when everybody else is talking
Russia and impeachment.

DNC leaks came from the inside.

It wasn't hackers
from the outside at all.

And of course,
Julian Assange has specifically denied

receiving any information from the Russians.

Precisely.

This whole Russian
collusion narrative

which is, I think, actually
quite a foolish narrative,

that the emails were stolen
by Russia from the DNC,

these are premises
that have not been validated.

Yet the left runs with them
as if they were gospel truth.

We know that by January,
you had the entire

intelligence community on board,
saying that it was the Russians.

You know that
the Mueller indictments

have very specifically indicted

both Russians responsible
for the trolls

and Russians responsible
for the hacking.

And when people say, well,
we don't absolutely know with certainty.

What do they want?
Do they want to be in St. Petersburg,

watching every Russian troll
engaging in every act?

I mean,
there are levels of proof that no reasonable person would ask for.

It was the Russians.

The speculation
that you saw online

was given fuel by places
like Gateway Pundit,

InfoWars, Alex Jones,

but you also see it pop up
on Fox News.

Back with a Fox News alert:

a brand-new bombshell
in the murder

of that guy right there,
a DNC staffer.

An investigator now says
Seth Rich

was in contact with WikiLeaks.

Fox News, on the website,

publishes a story

that there's new evidence
that Seth Rich

was, in fact,
the source of the leaks.

And what you see
is the whole network,

from the local affiliate in DC
through the main cable channel,

mobilized around this story.

Newly discovered evidence shows
that the 27-year-old,

former DNC employee was, in fact,
communicating with WikiLeaks.

And we can really trace

how a rumor
that starts on Reddit

ultimately makes its way
to Hannity,

and you can just
literally follow,

from the first to the last,
this propaganda pipeline.

We see the Russians.
We see the alt-right activists.

We see the commercial
clickbait sites.

And then you have,
at the very top

a set of propagandists

whose commercial interest
and political interest

are aligned to go out,
look for all these stories,

and bring them to the
mainstream of Fox News.

If it was true that Seth Rich
gave WikiLeaks

the DNC emails,
wouldn't that blow

the whole Russia collusion
narrative that the media

has been pushing
out of the water?

I mean, Fox does
some good reporting.

There are good,
honorable reporters there that do good reporting,

but Sean Hannity is essentially
a consultant for the president.

By the way, all those people
in the back are fake news.

Spewing the president's views

to his huge audience on Fox,

and it's just like
hook, line, and sinker.

If Sean Hannity says it,
it must be true.

And, of course,
Fox News is in the attention business,

and so,
there's a sort of fake news laundering

that is occurring.

To date,
there has been no "new evidence"

that has come out
that would justify

the original story
in the first place,

let alone this
constant resurgence.

It's not just words,

and you're not just
pushing something,

like, you're having real
effects on real people.

It's hard enough to process the thought
of a family member being murdered.

But it very quickly went to,

you know, that I took money
from WikiLeaks,

that I'm cooperating
with a hostile

foreign intelligence service.

Where is this
even coming from?

Being directly accused of being
involved in any of this,

just turns our world
completely upside down,

that was already
turned upside down

from the rest
of the conspiracies.

I still have not been able
to sit there and really

properly grieve the fact
that he's not there.

The number of times
I've wanted to pick up my phone

and describe this absolute ridiculous situation that's going on,

the person I would call
would be my brother.

After extraordinary
backlash from journalists

and especially the Rich family,
Fox withdrew its story.

They said, it didn't meet
our standards.

What they didn't do
is apologize.

You had a family
who had been told their son

had essentially
committed a crime,

an assertion for which they had
no proof and no evidence.

Sean Hannity not only
hasn't apologized

to the Rich family,

but he hasn't disavowed it.

Out of respect
for the family's wishes for now,

I am not discussing
this matter at this time.

I have no clue why they,
why they won't say it.

Pushing out false statements and not
being willing to accept that they were false

after being proven numerous,
numerous times false, um...

doesn't make sense to me.

Now, the real question is,
who's to blame?

Are we going to say,
oh, look, Reddit did this?

Or are we going to say,
oh, look, Hannity did this?

When people started
looking around, what happened?

The answer always
fell on what's new,

and what's new
was the technology.

Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg will testify

in front of a joint hearing
of the Senate Judiciary

and Commerce Committees today.

Senators will demand answers
from Zuckerberg

about Facebook's failure to protect millions of users' private information.

And they've
actually added extra seats

to this hearing room to accommodate all the senators

who are going to be questioning Zuckerberg today,
44 of them.

Zuckerberg is going to be
in the hot seat for hours.

If you think
about Facebook specifically,

there's more than two billion
people around the world

that log into it every month.

There has never been anything like Facebook in the history of humanity.

There are ads there.
There's news there.

There's your personal life,
your friends.

If he was to honestly say
that he would no longer

be selling any data, um,
and if he would own up to it...

They've done better than
anyone else on the planet

by sucking in every piece
of information about you

and what you do
and what you think.

And it's sort of like
a digital fence,

they've gotten everyone
to paint the fence,

you know, with your data,
and they benefit from it.

It's designed
to actually give

so much information
about us individually

so that Facebook can
turn around and sell insight

into what kind of communication
will best manipulate me

to do what someone else
wants to do.

As Facebook has grown,
people everywhere

have gotten a powerful new tool

for staying connected
to the people they love,

for making their voices heard,
and for building communities and businesses.

But it's clear now
that we didn't do enough

to prevent these tools from
being used for harm as well.

And that goes for fake news,

for foreign interference
in elections and hate speech,

as well as developers
and data privacy.

We didn't take a broad enough
view of our responsibility,

and that was a big mistake,

and it was my mistake,
and I'm sorry.

There's a lot of things that have been
going on at Facebook for a long time,

of people who've covered it
a long time.

And a lot of them are
on privacy violations,

sort of sketchy use of data,

always pushing the envelope--
growth, growth, growth.

We're here because of
what you, Mr. Zuckerberg,

have described
as a breach of trust.

A quiz app used by
approximately 300,000 people

led to information about
87 million Facebook users

being obtained by the company
Cambridge Analytica.

So how is that possible?

I mean, their systems are
very good at detecting

scrapers, spam accounts,
and things like that.

It's kind of mind-boggling that they weren't able to detect this,

and I think the reason is
because they didn't care.

Not that, you know,
they were being malicious,

it's just that it was something
they were not interested in.

They had built a system
where they didn't know

what people
were doing on it, really.

And when malevolent actors
get involved with the platform,

you began to see
how easily manipulable

this platform was just by using it the way it worked.

The Russians, they were
a customer of Facebook.

They were.
They used the tools

that were built
in this country

to create discord
and dissention

across our nation in lots
of very important areas.

And some people
like Donald Trump say,

not one vote was shifted,
but that's not true.

Personally, I think
the idea that,

you know, fake news on Facebook,
of which, you know,

it's a very small amount of,
of the content,

uh, influenced the election
in any way,

I think is a pretty crazy idea.

So they moved from,
it was crazy to think so,

to okay, there was
a little thing,

and then, oh,
there was more, and then--

I don't believe any of it.
I don't, I don't--

The only reason I don't believe it is because I don't think they know.

These unverified,
divisive pages are on Facebook today.

They look a lot like
the anonymous groups

the Russian agents used

to spread propaganda
during the 2016 election.

Are you able to confirm
whether they're

Russian-created groups,
yes or no?

Um, Senator, last week,
we actually announced

a major change to our ads
and pages policies,

that we will be verifying the identity of every single advertiser--

I'm asking about these specific ones.
Do you know whether they are?

I am not familiar with those
pieces of content specifically.

That's the way
it was architected.

It was architected to be
a platform free-for-all,

where nobody had responsibility,
except they got all the money.

Probably a lot of the people
involved in the hearings

didn't actually understand
the technology

and the implications,
and so, you know, it's hard--

If you don't really understand what's happening,
you can't really question.

Let's say I'm emailing about
Black Panther within WhatsApp.

Do I get a Black Panther
banner ad?

Senator, we don't--

Facebook systems do not see
the content of messages

being transferred
over WhatsApp.

Yeah, I know, but that's
not what I'm asking.

Everybody went in
knowing they had four minutes

or whatever to ask questions,
and they were very focused

particularly on
privacy concerns,

and nobody wanted
to waste time on

fake news, on Russia,
on foreign actors.

When you sign up for Facebook,

you sign up
for terms of service.

- Are you familiar with that?
- Yes.

Okay.
It says...

What's about these
terms of service?

What? Like,
as if terms of service

were our biggest
national emergency.

Oh, my God, you can't
read terms of service.

Like, who cares?
Who cares?

Like, they just, we're not
focusing on the problem at hand.

It was just a ridiculous
circus, and so, therefore,

Mark came off well
because he didn't, like,

vomit on the desk or something, like,
he didn't like, fall apart.

He answered questions.

But, you know,
I'll get back to you, Senator.

That's an interesting
question, Senator.

He said nothing,
he said nothing.

It will take some time
to work through all the changes

we need to make
across the company,

but I'm committed
to getting this right.

I don't think
they're malevolent people.

Mark is lovely.
He's polite.

He's earnest.
He wants to learn.

It's just that
their basic premise

is that this is
just a benign platform.

These are the most powerful tools in the history of our planet.

They are. They just are.

When you have these tools,
people are gonna find ways

to use them in ways
that are

more nefarious than other ways,

or at least
experiment around them.

Once you have a gun,
you want to shoot it.

You just do,
like, that's what a gun is for.

A lot of these
technologies are guns,

and they're gonna be shot.

I think if you're Vladimir Putin,
you wake up every morning and you laugh.

Because they did some of
this stuff to us,

but the worst part of 2016

is the stuff
we did to ourselves.

The worst part of
what's happening now

is we're still doing it
to ourselves.

The attack is now coming
from inside the house.

You have small campaigns
using these techniques

where you have individual candidates using these techniques,

where everybody thinks
they need to use data better

and more effectively to target

the unknown voter
or the hardcore voter

or the radicalized voter,
one way or the other.

When this is the environment,

the Russians
don't have to do very much.

We're doing it
to ourselves now.

If somebody
has chemical weapons,

and you deem it necessary to have chemical weapons

to deter the chemical weapons, then,
you know,

this is a classic
Cold War phenomenon.

On the Democratic side,
there was a feeling that

Democrats were
behind in this race

to use social media,
to use technology.

So there were some Democrats,
it turns out,

who are thinking, like,

you know, we have
to catch up in this race.

We have to
understand these tools.

And one of the races
that was sort of a natural

to experiment in was
the special senate race

in December of 2017.

It pitted an extremely
conservative Christian

named Roy Moore, a former judge,
who's a Republican,

against a Democrat
named Doug Jones.

There weren't a lot
of other races going on,

so Republicans and Democrats
were very focused on this race.

You have this old-school,
leveraging racist rhetoric.

All the women who are coming out and accusing Roy Moore

of advances
on under-aged women

and really
inappropriate conduct,

that was feeding into
all of Democrat's fears

coming out of 2016.

What if this
is happening again?

What if these guys
are winning elections again?

So, Reid Hoffman,
a Silicon Valley billionaire,

decides to bankroll his own
pro-Democratic campaign

to dampen Roy Moore's chances.

We got $100,000.

I don't know if that was
Mr. Hoffman's money

or what, what it was.

All I know is
that money arrived,

and it was time to go to work.

The Alabama project,
as I titled it,

was an effort to use Facebook

and emulate some of the tactics
that had been used

against Democrats
in recent years.

Doug Jones didn't know that this
was happening on his behalf.

- Doug Jones!
- Doug Jones!

It was an incredible run.
It was an incredible election.

It was a fun campaign,

nerve-wracking campaign,
got a little weird on occasion,

uh, and then election night
was just amazing.

It is absolutely
deafening in here.

This news just coming across
the screen there...

Your election was
won by about 20,000 votes.

- Mm-hmm.
- A fairly small margin?

Oh, yeah, out of 1.3 million,
I would say

that that was relatively tight.

Doug Jones won, absolutely.

All I did was push a little
from the outside.

Our effort, we were hoping,
would help Republicans

not turn out to vote.

So we created a page
called Dry Alabama,

a conservative,
pro-Roy Moore,

pro-Republican bunch of people
who wanted to make

Alabama dry again because the liquor laws had gotten too liberal.

And our idea was
that if you show this

to moderate
suburban Republicans,

they will say, oh, man,
these Roy Moore supporters, they are crazy.

And if these Roy Moore
supporters are so crazy,

then I just can't support him.

That was the idea.

If you're like me,
you're fearful for the souls

of our brothers and sisters.

We made videos,
and some of the videos

were just mocktail recipes.

Try this moral take
on a sinful beverage.

A righteous mint julep.

I have a knack
for creating new voices,

and in this particular case,
it sounded like a real conservative.

You were pretending to be
somebody that you weren't.

Oh, sure, sure.

Um, I was definitely
pretending to be

a conservative
when I wrote that stuff.

I felt empowered for
the first time ever, really,

to finally give, maybe,
a Republican party

a taste of its own medicine
a little bit.

Fundamentally, the fakery is...
going to happen.

It's happening to me, so why
should it not happen to you?

It was December of 2018

when the New York Times
article came out

in which the allegation was

there was a creation of some
fake news type accounts

to try to influence the election
in my favor.

And I was absolutely,
one, stunned,

two, pretty outraged,
pretty, pretty angry about that

and immediately said so,

and immediately called
for an investigation.

At least two groups
of Democrats

that we've found out about

were experimenting with
essentially Russian techniques.

New Knowledge was part of that,
so was Tovo Labs,

and, it turns out,
so was my little group.

Um, I did not know
that at the time.

The New Knowledge stuff,
some of that seems pretty sketchy to me.

So let's start with the idea
that reality

is a construct of your mind.

And what that means,
in a philosophical context,

is, um, that all of us live
in our own subjective reality.

A little cybersecurity
company called New Knowledge

based in Austin, Texas,
they got some money

from Reid Hoffman
through a pass-through

to this little project.

This group created
a conservative

Alabamian Facebook page

to try to influence
conservatives,

even though they were Democrats,
they were liberals.

These were the guys
the Senate hired

to do a comprehensive report,

which was quite
a well-done report,

on what the Russians
did in 2016.

And here, they're caught doing
a little bit of it

themselves in US politics.

It's very embarrassing for them,
very damaging for them.

Among other things,
they endorsed

a conservative
write-in candidate

to try to draw votes
from Roy Moore.

New Knowledge has
gotten a ton of investment

to conduct research
to counter disinformation,

and they themselves are currently operationalizing disinformation.

It's really problematic.

It's still
a little bit mysterious,

because New Knowledge
and Jonathan Morgan, the CEO,

was, I think, lying to me
about various things.

And it was kind of loosely run
and involved multiple people,

and I think some people had different ideas about it than others.

But everyone's, at this point,
everybody's kind of like,

lying and pointing a finger
at somebody else.

As the secretary of state,

who has to certify
election results,

you must be concerned about

these incredibly
deceptive tactics.

Yeah, but seriously, now.

What we're talking about here
is not anything different

than what has occurred
in US politics

or international politics in the history of political systems.

The only difference is now
people are able to do that,

in many people's minds,
more effectively

because of social media.

So these tactics don't
raise a special kind of alarm?

Well, the problem is, you can't
ever fully address them,

because you can't control
the behavior

of people who are engaging
in that activity.

John Merrill,
Alabama's secretary of state,

is definitely part
of the Republican machine,

and he will settle things
on terms

that are favorable
to the Republican machine.

To some degree, I was hoping
that there would be

more reaction from the right.

I was hoping that
there would be more,

oh, well, that's terrible,
what you did.

But that didn't happen so much.

Are there actions you would take as secretary of state

to defend against
disinformation in elections?

Well, if there were instances
where the law was broken

in regard to campaigning,
we definitely will.

But if it's simply someone

doing a superior job
to another candidate

without going outside
the boundaries of the law,

then we can't pick apart

what certain people are doing,
because at that point,

that's not making the most effective or best use of our time.

I can't say that we actually
made the difference,

I wouldn't go that far.

But think of the math here.

Three million people
saw this ad.

If we affected
one percent of them,

so that they
ended up not voting,

that's 30,000 votes.

Doug Jones won by 21,000 votes.

If we affected one in a thousand
of the people who saw that ad,

that's 3,000 votes,
that's about equal

to Doug Jones's winning margin

in 11 of the counties
that he won.

Imagine a bunch
of these efforts,

each whittling away
just a little bit of the vote.

That what you--
That's all you need

if you're talking about
a close race.

So, yeah, I have
a moral imperative

to use these techniques
against you,

I absolutely have to,
because otherwise,

what's gonna happen
to my political perspective?

It's gonna be
drowned out completely.

The situation is that one side
is obeying a set of rules

that the other side
will never respect,

ever.

And they will not
change the rules

until the rules start
smacking them

in the face a few times.

Two wrongs do not make a right,
that's, that's crazy.

If all of a sudden,
the left sees

we've got to do this because
the right's been doing it,

and they start winning, then
the right's gonna up their game.

Then the left's
gonna up their game.

And the next thing you know,
there is nothing

about this democracy
that is real.

I wonder about how intense the spiral will be.

I wonder if there's not something more toxic with all this.

We don't know the effects
of fake news.

We don't know
where this is going.

It's changing by the day.

It's the industrial revolution,
but faster, bigger,

and maybe more consequential.

We don't know where it's going.

I see myself drowning,

drowning in an ocean that gets
bigger and bigger and bigger.

I would prefer a world
without fake news,

but if others are using it,
I'm gonna use it.

NBC News is reporting tonight

about an apparent effort
to smear Robert Mueller.

The plot appeared
to be the latest

and one of the more bizarre
in a string of attempts

by supporters of
President Trump to discredit

Mr. Mueller's investigation
as a hoax and a witch hunt.

Jacob, I feel like
I've known you for years.

I'm glad you're finally here.
- Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Today, at the press conference,

the main mission is
to set the story straight.

And we have to lay out,
in detail,

the accusations
of our client.

This for us, is not about infamy,
it's about legacy.

We have to get this done.
We have to prove

that Bob Mueller is a sex offender,
and I think we're gonna do that.

We'll do that.

If we were seeking infamy
and publicity,

we'd be doing other things.

- This is too hard.
- Yeah, believe me.

This is too hard.

We put out a notice
offering a reward,

$25,000 reward
for whistleblowers

either within
Bob Mueller's organization

or within the FBI for bad stuff.

We were looking for dirt
on McCabe or Mueller.

Jack Burkman says
he's going to bring forward

a sexual assault accuser
against Robert Mueller.

And the accuser is going to come to this press conference.

And so, this is, obviously,
an explosive charge.

So you saw a lot of interest
from media outlets

willing to look
into this

if this were something that were true,

despite, even, the fact that

these people
are fringe characters.

You're on like,
ten magazine covers.

- Do you know that?
- I'm on the cover, yeah.

- You're on the cover.
- Well, I don't know

how many people,
how many publications

have called me a Nazi
this week, I mean, jeez.

Jacob Wohl is a guy
who rose to fame

by being an obnoxious
character on Twitter.

Jacob Wohl is a charlatan

who is part of the bizarro-world Trump-verse information machine.

He has wanted to be more important than he is for some time.

You know, I think
it kind of hurt Jack's case

to have Jacob
also involved in it,

because he was already such
an untrustworthy character.

Any word from our gal?

Um, yeah, yeah.
She's just, she's--

No, okay, that's fine.

Do you think she'll do it...
Will she pick another day?

- I think there's coin-flip odds.
- All right.

Off we go.

Let's say that she made
a last-minute decision.

I'll just say
in the last 30 minutes,

because of threats
and other things,

she's made a decision
not to appear today.

But we're gonna go over the details of her sworn statement.

She's extremely scared...
- Yeah.

...from a flurry of
death threats, and she's safe.

You could say something like,
we have her in a safe house.

- I'll leave all that to you.
- Yeah.

Yeah, just say
in the last 30 minutes,

because I'm telling all these
reporters she's there.

- Otherwise, they won't come.
- Yeah.

You know this, reporters are--
they're lazy and they're dumb.

- Right.
- They go to Harvard,

but they're dumb.
They're just--

A journalism major,
I mean, come on.

They just
they're dummies.

Here's how
you write an article.

You can learn that
in about 12 minutes.

- Yeah, what do they teach them?
- Yeah, exactly?

Journalism.

What the hell
is this thing here?

- Is this for us?
- It is.

Uh-oh.

Hang on, I got to take a picture of this.
I got to take a picture.

They bused in a mob,
it looks like.

- Look at that, they bused Antifa.
- Really--

- Who's bused--
- They've bused in a mob.

Jesus, look at this, huh?
Wow, we must rate, you know?

- Yeah, I'm Jacob.
- You're Jacob.

- Who are you?
- I'm Adam Goldman.

- New York Times.
- Adam Goldman, that's right.

I think you followed me
on Twitter recently.

- I did.
- Or did you? Yeah.

Yeah, it looks like they have
a rent-a-mob Soros bus here.

- Is that-- How do you know that?
- I just saw it out the window.

So that is a rent-a-mob Soros--
How can you say that?

I'm sitting behind Wohl,

and they're like ha, ha, ha,
here's a Soros-funded bus

bringing protesters in.

And I said to him, I said,
that's just a bus.

It looks to be
that's what it is.

- So, you have no evidence--
- It would fit would fit the profile--

- I said it looks like.
- You have no evidence

to suggest that is
a Soros mob bus,

but, yeah,
you're saying that.

Sorry, you got to be careful
what you say.

This is just chatter
between two guys.

I got you,
right, right, right.

There's a bus outside,
you're making a claim

that it's a Soros mobster bus?

- It probably is.
- Probably.

Then he goes
and tweets it.

Tweets a picture of the bus.
He's just created fake news.

You see the toxicity
that ends up on Twitter,

and other social media,
and these guys are the creators.

It offends me
as a journalist,

somebody who spends
an enormous amount of time

trying to get to the facts that
they're polluting real news.

I'm on the train, Amtrak,
headed to DC

from New York to go
to this press conference.

It's in the Rosslyn Holiday Inn,
where Jack Burkman

normally holds these things,

and... it comes to light that
the accuser's not gonna show up.

It's not surprising that this
isn't panning out, right?

Sommer:

- Will, good to finally meet you.
- Good to meet you.

- You as well.
- See you on Twitter all the time.

Yeah, you as well.
So what's the deal? No accuser?

We're gonna go
right in right now.

- All right.
- Yep, see you in a sec.

- See you soon.
- All right.

You know, what's happened--
We'll talk about this.

I'll let Jacob
tell you about that.

She's got a lot--
a number of them.

Burkman:

Wohl:

Burkman:

Wohl:

Okay, good idea, good idea.
- ...questions, that's the key.

Now, do you want--

Wohl:

Got you.

Wow, boy, this is tough.

This is tougher than NFL gay.
This is tough.

Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Jack Burkman.

This is Jacob Wohl.

There has developed
in the last week

as I'm sure all of you
have noticed,

a rather tragic
and sad backstory

that somehow
I or Jacob or others

paid or attempted to pay
some woman for coming forward.

None of this is true.

So they come out
with this affidavit

from this woman
named Carolyne Cass.

The report is put together
by this organization

called Surefire Intelligence,

and this goes online
before the press conference.

And so, that was where
a lot of people started digging.

On its website,
this looked like

a pretty legitimate
organization at first.

It says that they were former
spies and things like that,

that work at
Surefire Intelligence.

And their numbers,
supposedly different bureaus around the world.

And so,
if you reverse-searched the number,

it was registered
to Jacob Wohl's mother.

We had a reporter here who
was on the phone with Jacob,

and he said, are you sure this
isn't just a front for you?

You're not-- Surefire
Intelligence is a real thing?

And he's, oh, yeah, yeah.
Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

Well, as it turned out,

pictures on Surefire
Intelligence of their employees

were people like Christoph Waltz,
a Hollywood actor.

Some models.
Head of Surefire Intelligence,

he was a kind of shady-looking
guy on his LinkedIn page.

It was really dim,
but someone just

brightened it in Photoshop, and
it was just a picture of Jacob.

So as people kept realizing

how fraudulent
Surefire Intelligence was,

that was the setup
for the press conference.

Jacob and his firm went through
the most intense vetting

of any woman in one
of these situations,

and I've represented other women
in these situations,

as you know,
that I have ever seen.

And we determined that
the accusation was credible,

or we wouldn't be here today.

First of all, I want to stress,
no one is questioning Ms. Cass's account here.

We didn't know her name
until 20 minutes ago.

Okay, we're questioning you two,
both very uncredible people.

- Here's what I want to know--
- Why are you saying we're uncredible?

You know,
you had all the Seth Rich stuff, whatever.

My question is for Jacob.

Why were you so shady
about Surefire Intelligence?

You told one of our reporters
you didn't run it.

There was this alias.
There's all these made-up people.

What's going on there?

The investigation,
at that point,

was still in flux, and it was
important that I preserve

my anonymity
as I move through it.

But if you want your anonymity,

then why are you doing
this press conference now?

Like, you could have just gone to the New York Police Department, right?

Well, a lot of that--
A lot of that is up to Carolyne.

At the time, she made
a decision, for whatever reason,

we didn't know her at the time,

to not, to not
report it to police.

But is she reporting it
to police now?

Like, are you going to the cops?
- Yes.

We're, we're in the process
of doing that now.

- Let me say something about--
- When do you expect that to be wrapped up?

This is ongoing.
This is ongoing.

Newsman:

Probably, I would think,
by the end of this week.

At the end of next week,
next Friday.

You filed that, you filed
that with the NYPD, correct?

We haven't,
we have not done it yet.

A lot of those decisions
are up to my client.

I'm just the lawyer.

We are still in the process
of gathering evidence.

The idea was that Carolyne Cass
had met Robert Mueller

when she was at a hotel bar
in New York a couple years ago.

And she claimed
that Mueller basically

made her go up to his room

and sexually assaulted her,
raped her.

Now, there were a couple
holes in this story.

Probably the biggest being that
there was a newspaper article

about Robert Mueller
being in DC that day

because he was doing jury duty.

There's an item
in The Washington Post

from that day,
uh, that spots him.

It's one of those
sightings-around-town columns

that shows someone saw him
at jury duty on that date.

Are you suggesting
the special counsel

planted a story in The Washington Post nine years ago?

You have information in front
of you as to his whereabouts.

Wait a second.
Was he only at jury duty?

Sometimes, people go to jury duty,
but they're also somewhere else.

Was he only at jury duty?

No, instead of--
Hang on, it's not funny.

This is not
a laughing matter.

He basically, literally, said,
someone can be in two places at once.

It felt like
you had left reality

and entered the right-wing media universe, like,
a physical version of it.

Maybe I had
gone through a portal

when I walked into the hotel
and ended up

in this weird right-wing place

where Jack Burkman and
Jacob Wohl were holding court.

Is the whole point of this
to discredit Bob Mueller?

And, and if that is the case,

do you really think that would shut down the Russia investigation?

Uh, no, the point of this is
not to discredit anyone.

The point of this
is to get to the truth.

Reporter:

- It's spelled with an "E."
- It is with in "E"?

- That's correct, that's right.
- It is with an "E"?

- Wait, there's--
- Hang on.

You'll figure it out.
Okay, Ms. Cass is--

No, no, no, no,
you don't get to say that.

You brought us out here.
Tell us her name

and all of the identifying information.
- Her name's right below...

You know, we go
to a lot of press conferences,

and they can be adversarial.

You can have this back and forth debate during these news conferences,

but you know you're dealing with

genuine people
on the other side.

You're just not confronted with this blatant bullshit conspiracy.

And you ask yourself,
I'm a reporter.

I've been doing this for 20 years.
Why am I... Why am I sitting here?

You know, my mission here
is not to establish a narrative.

It's not to follow an agenda--

Wait a minute.
You just established a narrative

- and you put it in front of us.
- Hang on, hang on.

Excuse me.
It's to bring forth the facts

and let the facts speak for themselves,
and that's what we've done here.

Wait, one last question.
This is important.

Where was, where was--
Hold on, I've got this.

Where, where was Mueller's
security detail

on the day he was
hitting on this woman?

Guys, you know what?
We got to wrap it. Thank you all.

We'll see you guys
on the way out.

We've done enough, guys.
I think that's enough for today.

We have another, we have another conference coming soon.
- When?

With Carolyne, as soon as
we get her schedule.

You always say there's another press
conference where you're really gonna give us--

What's going on with the Seth Rich conspiracy,
by the way?

- It worked out well because--
- Where's your witness for that?

You said you were gonna
bring a witness last time--

We're only here to discuss
Carolyne today.

- Not other matters.
- I want to discuss your credibility.

You don't have much
credibility because--

- Who's credibility?
- Your credibility.

Oh, my credibility.
- You said you were gonna bring witnesses--

- We've got some civilians.
- All right.

Why can't you
show us the document

showing that
you're representing her?

Uh...
- How are we supposed to know

that you're representing this person?
We have no evidence.

Well, we do.

Sommer:

It seems like
he had the person first.

Then he came to you,
or what happened?

Uh, we'll just say
it's synergistic.

We'll, we'll leave it
at synergistic.

The whole thing
was a circus.

The only serious thing was what they were trying to do,

which is slime
Robert Mueller

with one of the worst things
they can accuse him of.

He got people talking about
Robert Mueller

and a sexual assault allegation
in the same sentence.

They meant to tarnish
Bob Mueller's reputation

to undermine his investigation
into the president.

What Burkman
and Wohl were doing

was not only
knowingly dishonest

and they know that,
it was corrosive

and destructive.

This was about
throwing shit on the wall.

That's all
they were attempting to do.

To throw shit on the wall and
get somebody to write about it.

They would have been
very satisfied

if the Times had just written,
"This is nonsense."

Because they would Google Jacob

and he might have come up
on the top search

and he doesn't care what
context his name is used in.

Does he?
It doesn't seem like it.

Are we trending?
That's the real question.

Are we trending?
I'm sure we're trending.

I mean, I really was
offended by the whole thing.

You know, I could come back
to the Times,

and the Times
trusts my judgment,

and I said,
I'm not writing about this.

I'm gonna do my due diligence.

I'm gonna go try
to find this woman

to see if there's
any there, there.

It's the same standard we would
treat Kavanaugh's accuser.

We need to find the victim,
talk to the victim,

interview the victim,
and then determine

if this is actually real.

Uh, but I'm not writing
about this news conference.

Mainstream media
needs to understand

that it is operating in a propaganda-rich environment.

There are no two realities.

There is an intentional
deception on one side,

and there is an honest
if imperfect process

of trying to get as near to the truth as we can on the other.

Today in the red chair again,
in the same place

we talked two years ago
is Tristan Harris,

the cofounder of the
Center for Humane Technology.

We spend about a fourth
of our lives now

in artificial social systems.

Meaning, in these
digital environments.

And that's just onscreen.
I mean, when you're off-screen,

- you're still thinking thoughts.
- Right.

That came from that
artificial social environment.

- Mm-hmm.
- Conspiracy theories on these,

you know,
magnified by these platforms,

times billions of people,

it has completely
fragmented our truth,

and more importantly,
the scale

of the disinformation
and misinformation,

people tend to underestimate.

Um, I don't think you've had
Guillaume Chaslot--

No, I haven't, but--
- but he's ex-YouTube recommendations engineer.

He works with us,
and his research showed that

Alex Jones was recommended
15 billion times.

- Right.
- There's a cover-up going on.

They are pulling videos
of this young man,

a David Hogg.

He's on the fake news, CNN,
known for staging things,

and he says over and over again,
I am not a crisis actor.

I am not a crisis actor.

Right-wing conspiracy
theories going viral

about David Hogg, a 17-year-old
Parkland shooting survivor.

The unsubstantiated claims
say he's a crisis actor,

a trained actor
who takes advantage

of tragedies
for political gain.

Tuesday, the conspiracy
went viral on Facebook,

Instagram, Twitter,
and YouTube.

Were they crisis actors?
I mean, I don't know.

I think the possibility exists.

A picture of Emma Gonzalez tearing what appeared to be a Constitution.

Was it really a Constitution?

Was it--
What do I think about it?

I think it's pretty disgraceful.

Why would you tear up
the Constitution?

Well, so, in fact,
that photograph was fake.

- It was Photoshopped.
- Okay.

She wasn't holding up--

I got you, I got you.

Knowing that
that was purposely

Photoshopped and faked?

Yeah, that's more upsetting
than the fact

that she was allegedly
tearing up the Constitution.

Facebook,
it's a city without signs

and police forces and garbage.

That's the city they built.

What company wouldn't shut down

absolutely provable
false information?

They create the platform
where it gets spread,

and then are like, oh,
what can we do?

They hide behind
the First Amendment

and they are not
the government.

They can make choices,
they just don't want to.

To say fake news,
in other words,

I don't want your news
because it's fake,

is antithetical to the principals of the First Amendment.

You can't say "fire"
in a crowded theater

when there's no fire.
That's what Justice Holmes said.

Because it could lead to people
being hurt.

But if someone gets up
and preaches revolution

and there's no
imminent likelihood

that there's gonna be any
violence resulting from that,

then that speech
has to be tolerated.

The First Amendment says the government can't suppress speech,

but there's no reason that
platforms or communities

can't say this kind of
commentary's beyond the pale,

and people who
insist on saying this

are gonna suffer a penalty.

They're not the
federal government.

It's not a public square.
These are private entities.

They can do what they want.

It's just more convenient
to do nothing.

It's more profitable
to do nothing.

I'm worried about the future
for others.

Because what happened to me
can happen to anyone.

A more vulnerable person
or institution like Comet

would have been taken down
right away.

These online weapons

that are directed at different
people and institutions

have lasting consequences
and do destroy people.

In the case
of Pizzagate,

now, to my mind, when Facebook
finds something like that,

they should shut it down.

Why did you build tools
that allow someone

to do that, or allow it to
iterate and iterate and iterate?

What tools could you build
where that isn't iterated

again and again?

White men, younger,
run Silicon Valley

If you don't ever feel
unsafe in your life,

you do not understand
lack of safety.

You do not build that in.

I had someone at Twitter
talk to me about,

they had gotten attacked online,
the first time it happened.

And they were like,
oh, that was pretty bad.

And I'm like, welcome
to the world of women.

Welcome to the world
of people of color.

Welcome to the world
of marginalized people.

You know, this is
what it's like every day.

If you can think of
a really awful thing

that could happen
with your product,

you need to figure out ways that it doesn't have as much damage.

They have not spent
enough time doing that.

Oliver Darcy from CNN.

InfoWars is pretty, I mean,
I don't know

if you've been to the page,
but they pretty much

make stuff up to get clicks
and generate revenue

and scare people.

And I can't understand
how Facebook can say,

we're serious about
fighting fake news

and false information,
but allowing InfoWars

and Alex Jones to profit
off your platform

by using it to generate
a lot of clicks.

That was
an ongoing debate

that was happening about
Alex Jones.

When I did the podcast
with Mark,

we were starting to talk
about Alex Jones.

The principles
that we have on what

we remove from the service
are if it's going to result

in real harm,
real physical harm,

or if you're
attacking individuals,

then that content shouldn't
be on the platform.

- Mm-hmm.
- But then, there's

broad debate, and--

Okay, Sandy Hook
didn't happen is not a debate.

It is false.
You can't just take that down?

I agree
that it is false.

But overall, I mean, let's take
this a little closer to home.

- Right, so I'm Jewish.
- Mm-hmm.

Um, and there's
a set of people who

deny that
the Holocaust happened.

- Yes, there's a lot.
- Right, I find that

- deeply offensive.
- Mm-hmm.

But I don't believe
that our platform

should take that down because
I think that there are things

that different people
get wrong,

um, either,
I don't think that they're intentionally getting it wrong,

- but I think that they--
- In the case of

the Holocaust deniers,
they might be, but go ahead.

Holocaust deniers
don't mean to lie.

And I was like, but they do.

So that, that, that to me was sort of like, oh,
you're not even sophisticated enough

to understand that they mean
to lie, that's the whole point.

If someone who is running
the biggest

communication system
in the history of the world,

someone who cannot
be fired,

someone who has complete
control over that system,

does not understand
what he just said,

it's really--
it really struck me as,

it was a big
uh-oh moment for me.

The implication that
they aren't malevolent--

he knows they're malevolent,
come on.

You can take them off.
Like, it's okay.

He's gonna get flak for it,
but he gets paid

the big bucks, right?

Alex Jones,
he is the founder of InfoWars,

and he is now
feeling the heat himself.

YouTube, Facebook, and Apple
all announcing

they are removing his content
from their platforms.

What changed
in that summer?

Apple did it.
When Apple was like,

you know, enough, basta.
That's done.

Everybody else then goes,
oh, no, now if they do it,

I guess it gives us
cover to do it.

Apple last night
removed the entire library

of Alex Jones's podcast
from their store.

And then, we saw, we've seen
throughout the day, actually,

tech platforms just basically
remove Alex Jones

from their websites.

He had been banned by most
platforms except for Twitter.

And so, he's on Capitol Hill,

yelling about censorship
and conservatives under fire

and oppression and all of this
Alex Jones' stuff.

And so, I was going
to cover Jack Dorsey,

the Twitter CEO, testifying
in front of a House Committee,

and I'm standing in line,

waiting to be
let into this room,

and out comes Alex Jones.

Look at this right here.

The guy that goes
around policing,

and calling for censorship,
and then claims that

Trump's wrong,
there's no censorship

of conservatives or patriots.

You are incredibly shameful.

- How are you doing, Alex?
- You are just, look at you.

You are literally
an anti-American

anti-free speech coward.

You're gonna go down
in the history books

at the Criminal News Network.

This is one of the main,

this is one of
the main people right here.

He comes over
and starts berating me.

He sticks multiple cameras
in my face.

There's a crowd that gathers
of his right-wing supporters.

Come on over here, Drew.
I want to get this guy on tape.

This is unbelievable.

I was literally saying,
I don't see the

Criminal News Network here.

But indeed we do,
right there at the front of the line at the trough.

And for about ten
or 15 minutes,

he is just yelling in my face.

I mean, look at
those eyes, folks.

If you want to see
the eyes of a rat.

Alex Jones has chosen
to latch onto

Oliver as a hate figure.

He'll pick people, and frankly
I don't think it's an accident,

that it's often a woman
or a person of color.

Just look at this
guy's eyes, man.

That is who
will ruin your life.

Look, I mean,

he's even more
evil-looking in person.

Something to think about,
the decisions that you've made.

The next day, Twitter bans him,
and what their reasoning was

to my understanding,
it's because he

livestreamed him berating me.

He used a Twitter service
to do that, Periscope.

It violated Twitter's rules
against targeted harassment,

and so,
that was his last strike.

That whole thing
was sort of ironic.

Yelling and complaining about
losing his platform

ended up leading to him losing his last remaining platform,
being Twitter.

USA, USA!

You're the classic, hateful,
vicious leftists

that just wants to go out
and attack people.

- Shame on you, shame on you.
- You were telling lies, bro.

- You don't know nothing.
- You're disgusting.

You're unbelievably
anti-free speech as well.

You know nothing.
Nothing.

Reporter:

He's a public figure,
in his job,

in a public space.

He's lied about me,
and actively

full-time lobbied to have me
removed off platforms

and bragged about it.

And so, I see
a modern book-burner,

who also misrepresents
what I've said,

and I tell him that I think
he's the embodiment of evil,

a big corporation working
behind the scenes

and publicly to silence people.

He is a book-burning monster.

When I first
visited Alex Jones,

he told me that there were
snipers on the roof,

which he then called me
the next day to clarify

he had made that up
and there actually

aren't any snipers on the roof.

His offices
are in a part of Austin

he doesn't want you
to reveal or talk about.

It's smoked windows.

It's surveillance
video cameras everywhere.

He has a kind of genius
business model.

He spews out these theories,

and then,
at the beginning and end

of every program,
he's selling you something.

And what he sells
feeds that sense of paranoia

and feeling of being besieged

that a lot of his listeners
and followers have.

This is a guy who sells
vitamin B,

male virility products,
and special kooky foods

by spreading these theories
that damage people's lives.

Sandy Hook, it's got inside job
written all over it.

These are dead children,
and he put out

all this
false information about it.

And kept saying,
"It's free speech, free speech!"

No, it's not.

The Sandy Hook families

have been begging for years

to have this or that piece
of video removed,

this or that Facebook post,
this or that tweet.

And often times, they feel like
that fell on deaf ears.

"Deplatformed" is such
a bloodless term, you know?

I've been deplatformed.
What does that even mean?

And when you talk with
the families, they'll say,

you know what
that means to me?

For the first time, it means
I'm not afraid to open my mail.

You know, that I'm gonna see
a threat from someone.

And that threat
coming in my mailbox

means they know where I live.

Just like James Alefantis,
just like Seth Rich's family,

they want to know.

Does the First Amendment
actually protect

the types of claims
that have caused us

such damage and such harm?

And you know,
had one of them said,

you know, this makes me
feel like in 30 years

truth will be what pops up first
when you search on Google.

You know, if you type
Sandy Hook into Google,

and this content
isn't taken down,

and the purveyors of
this content aren't taken down,

the first thing you'll see
is that it was a hoax.

So then these people have
actually changed reality.

The only way you fight
this sort of fake news

is with the truth.

I mean, I don't know of
any other way to do it.

You certainly don't fight it
with fake news.

You don't win that battle
by, um, playing their game.

One of the most
important targets

of propaganda,
and this is true of Russian propaganda in Russia,

it's true of propaganda
in the United States,

is to achieve this state
of disorientation,

this denial of the idea that
there is a truth of the matter.

Challenging what is knowable

is a fundamental way
of upending a system

and making it impossible
to govern.

It's also a way to ensure that
you and I can't ever

come to compromise on anything.

This community
is really somewhere

that's based in truth

and reality.

An online community
is one thing,

but a physical place where
you're playing ping-pong

with someone, eating,
breaking bread over the table,

you're able
to actually communicate

with the people around you.

So if someone were to say,

wow, this crazy thing
is happening.

Did you hear about it?

Across the table, one might say,

oh, that thing
isn't really happening.

God is going to
throw you into Hell.

It is hard, still.

We've been under
continued threat.

The daily messaging
that I get now

about people wanting to kill me
or that I should be dead

is, you know,
a hard thing to deal with.

So that's just
part of my life now.

But the community saved us.

Like, it's the community.

They, like,
saved the restaurant, basically.

And also were, like,
you need to open.

On Monday.

And I was like...

we're not opening on Monday.

We're, we're never opening.

Like, this restaurant
is not gonna be open again,

was my thought, feeling
and response.

We called a meeting
of the staff

and was like,
what do you want to do?

And I said to them,

you know, I can take
every precaution.

We would have armed guards
at the doors,

police surrounding the building

to open our pizza place
when we can.

But I was like, I don't
want to really open

because I'm scared.

And, you know, in my head,
but I'm like,

but what do you want to do?

And this
20-something-year-old staff

was like, we need to open.

Because...

Comet is not gonna be
defeated or something.

Or like,
this community needs us.

So we were able to open

because they wanted to.

And the support
of this community

who also were calling
the restaurant

saying we want to come there
right now.

Like, a gunman has come through,

and literally, they're calling,
being like,

when can we bring our kids
to have pizza?

You can't close.

Like, it's a simple recipe:

It's family,
community and truth,

like that's what,
that's why we're here.