As Sondland testified, a misleading Ukraine story spread among conservatives on social media
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • 5 years ago • 31 commentsBy: Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny
For the record, Interfax has not yet rated by Media Bias/ Face Check and is a Russian publication. As such, it is allowed but should be held questionable.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A misleading claim about the head of the Ukrainian energy company at the heart of the House impeachment inquiry went viral across conservative pockets of social media Wednesday, receiving hundreds of thousands of retweets and shares from some of the president’s most ardent online supporters.
The incorrect story, first disseminated by the finance blog ZeroHedge, claimed that Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, had been indicted over money laundering related to the Biden family. Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, was previously on Burisma’s board of directors.
In fact, there was no announcement of an indictment. Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, announced in October his office would conduct a wide-ranging review of all previous cases involving Burisma, and Wednesday said he was including possible embezzlement in the investigation, according to Reuters .
ZeroHedge apparently misconstrued the original Russian article from the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency, which did not mention an indictment. The Interfax-Ukraine News Agency operates as part of Interfax, a Russian news outlet.
But that didn’t stop allies of President Donald Trump from widely disseminating the false account of an indictment, seizing on some truthful elements while wildly extrapolating others to offer conservatives and Trump loyalists a welcome alternative to the day’s news, in which Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, implicated numerous members of the Trump administration in the ongoing impeachment inquiry.
Hunter Biden’s work with Burisma has been the subject of scrutiny from Republicans as well as far-right conspiracy theories that have been widely debunked .
Within an hour of ZeroHedge publishing its story, the claim of an indictment had been spread on Twitter by tens of thousands of users. According to results on the Twitter analytics tool Hoaxy, the indictment claims were propelled by Charlie Kirk, the leader of the conservative group Turning Point USA, as well as a conspiracy theorist, Jack Posobiec, and the anonymous @BreakingNLive, an account that has become notorious for spreading misinformation. The account also boasts of being retweeted by the president.
More than 10,000 users engaged with the ZeroHedge story on Facebook, which was shared to dozens of pages that totaled more than 3 million followers.
One minute before the ZeroHedge article was published, the anonymous account that inspired the QAnon conspiracy theory — generally known as “Q” — linked to the same Interfax-Ukraine article.
QAnon supporters believe that “Q” is an anonymous government official sharing information about a mysterious war against the deep state, which they believe will end in the mass arrests of Satanic cannibals who are secretly running the U.S. government. It is unclear how ZeroHedge and Q came to post the same obscure Ukrainian news release at almost the same time.
The false claim appeared at the top searches for “Burisma” on both Google and Facebook in the late afternoon, citing Kirk’s tweet and a website called “magadailyreport.com” respectively.
The original Interfax article reported on a press conference at the news agency headquarters where two Ukrainian members of parliament demanded the U.S. and Ukraine investigate allegations of financial crimes by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Interfax-Ukraine’s article does not have a byline. Requests for comment from Interfax-Ukraine’s press office were not returned at press time.
Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation researcher for the The Wilson Center and a former adviser to Ukraine’s foreign ministry, told NBC News that claims of a new indictment appear to be a misinterpretation of a press conference related to an already existing corruption probe.
“There’s been an investigation into Burisma for a long time,” Jankowicz said. “The allegations are about corruption with Burisma’s head, which have been well known for a long time.”
Jankowicz said Burisma and its owner, Zlochevsky, have been under investigation several times in the last decade . She said she believes the press conference might have been political maneuvering by two Ukrainian politicians eager to gain Trump’s attention.
“It certainly seems like these two guys are trying to influence that already existing investigation, probably to curry favor with the Trump administration,” Jankowicz said.
Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who researches kleptocracy in Russia, called the two Ukrainian members of parliament, Oleksandr Dubinsky and Andriy Derkach, who pushed the new allegations, “not credible.”
“These two both are professional disinformers,” Aslund said. “This is generally known in Ukraine. This is not outstanding news. Anybody who’s anybody knows about these two. They are not credible.”
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Then, that happened!
C'mon, what that...? Can' every now and then, there be a really rare coincidence, that just by coincidence, people around that letter, feel it is their " “Q” as an anonymous government official sharing information about a mysterious war against the deep state, which they believe will end in the mass arrests of Satanic cannibals who are secretly running the U.S. government. It is unclear how ZeroHedge and Q came to post the same obscure Ukrainian news release at almost the same time."
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WTF they talking about Willis ! ? ! EVERYBODY knows about the mysterious cannibals secretly running our deeply stated voices into echo chambers filled with cavernous craniums with imagination gone wild, like girls, but boys to men who should have been girls, as their testicular Fortitude, fell asleep just B'Cosby gave them an E Lude strategy that had them hitting the Roofies so hard, they nearly cracked the glass ceiling, that screens the sun with sun screen so their feeble minds won't evaporate or Eviscerate into dehydrated brain mushing dogs to pull Santas as they sleigh down the mountain of Morons less than intelligent to compensate the comprehension fairy who twinkled his toes over what so many can't knows despite their inability to face a nation in crisis , not due to oh mighty ISIS, but our own treasonous GOP"Z a tempting Christ to over achieve whence it's become their Godd given right to be wrong and deceive thaose that might believe the unbelieva bull ship they did launch to consume or over 8 till benign is a point made all dewey dismal decimal day lon46 g on spinning yarns of lies at their feat, of all the GOP deceit frepeat after repeat about an unbelievable realm of artificially unflavor to savor like a fantasy gone all dry and non humid as the drier the truth, the more brains they wish to washy,
without
A Happy Ending for this country of toolz,
who allow 46 and 2 to rule over half a chromosome pictured in a polaroid, but in antarctica with some Arctic monkeys uncle whose fax machine has honed the truth to where it does lie
as in
Everywhere after this abortion portion of history displayed by those who did play
here's hoping to the having to pay dearly every fckn day of the rest of their LYING LIVES without a death sentence to end their agony, as it was posed as a question they could never satisfy,
and a country that never ever could have been left to ratify,
the existance of a bleached stain on our countries name,
such a sham till such a shame
and
we might know who is at fault, and possibly,
who we should blame
Hi Igknorantzulz, I am going to 'meditate' and take my time with this one! (Smile.)
I;ll send you a North Dakota ring
straight from South Pierre
so it always hits the Bismarq
NBC fake news...
We saw that ''fake news'' story posted on NT and the ''deep state idiots'' ate it up.
Pretty normal these days for the right.
There are dozens of reports from different agencies and news outlets that corroborate data, facts and details, and those on the right invariably pick the one fabricated story that fits their narrative as gospel.
Normal like when Schiff thinks he is talking to Russian contacts to get dirt on Trump when he actually was talking to comics on a radio show?
What....Schiff is "the right" now?
lol, subtle.
Those Americans who serve as Vlad Putin's and Russia's "Willing Dupes" by spreading rank anti-American propaganda on American Social media should be ashamed of themselves but they are shameless. They think it is funny, a joke. I bet they won't think it is funny when they finally face the consequences. Such despicable behavior has no legit place in a free society. They disgust me. I cannot understand why such intolerable behavior is allowed to continue. I guess some thinks it is cute and funny. It is not. It is unAmerican and unfaithful to The USA and its people.
Interfax is fakeass no good low down anti-American Russian State News or the Pravda of today! No decent reputable believable American internet news sites would ever, EVER, allow themselves to be used as a conduit for such fake news, willful misinformation and harmful anti-American propaganda.
thats why Fox guards the hen house, and the White House veers far right from reality
This is going to be a bad day for Trump and the Republicans.
Instead of showing your ignorance on the internet maybe you should tune into the damning testimonies of David Holmes and Fiona Hill playing out on live TV right now. These two were eye witnesses to just some of Team Trump's corruption and crimes. Enough though to impeach, convict and remove both Trump and Pence...forthwith. It looks more and more likely Nancy Pelosi will have to finish out Trump's term now. She'll do just fine...
The right wingers on this site regularly speak in a fact free way. We are all numbingly used to it by now.
Rightwingers? On NT? Who let them in? /s
? We? Where? It must be on another planet.
David Holmes just sunk the SS Trumptanic...
You are getting ahead of your skis. Schiff's Impeachment Committee is currently on an extended break. Holmes and Hill haven't been questioned by committee members yet.
Happy dreams are cozy but unrealistic.
Moe …….Curly.
Actually, there is no proof that is true of the news agency. Hence why it's still under evaluation by the MBFC and why I opened with that.
There is evidence Interfax is The New Pravda!
Interfax - Wikipedia
Interfax Ltd. (Russian: Интерфакс) is a privately-held independent major news agency in ... Interfax also opened subsidiaries across the post-Soviet states ...
Owner: Senior management
Headquarters: Russia; 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya str. 2, Moscow
Number of employees: Over 1,000
Founded: September 1989
ImageInterfax.com › news
Interfax news - Interfax - Interfax.com
INTERFAX RUSSIA AND CIS BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS ... U.S. to swiftly, timely issue visas to all representatives of member states - resolution ( Part 2).
Interfax Information Services Group provides news and other information products ... Moody's Interfax Rating Agency assigns national scale ratings, which can ...
ImageEncyclopedia.com › books › interfa...
Interfax News Agency | Encyclopedia.com
Oct 20, 2019 · Interfax News Agency is Russia's leading independent news agency.
Putin dissolves state news agency, tightens grip on Russia media
interfax is russian state news agency from mobile.reuters.com
Dec 9, 2013 · Putin's decree had little effect on the two other major Russian news agencies, state-run Itar-Tass and private Interfax, ...
Interfax News Service - Ifax.ru
The Interfax Financial and Business News Service ( Full Version) brings the most detailed coverage of finance and economics in Russia and the CIS.
ImageKremlin.ru › ru › events › news
Congratulations on Interfax news agency's anniversary • President of Russia
Sep 30, 2019 · Vladimir Putin congratulated the Interfax news agency staff and veterans on the agency's 30th anniversary.
Wouldn't you at least agree that the exact fakeass propaganda story exposed herewith which was spread here and everywhere yesterday is evidence that Interfax is actively attempting to misinform Americans?
Your own citation would appear to disagree.
In a few minutes from now, Fiona Hill, a national security expert on Russia, is going to testify that Russia is behind much of the disinformation connected to all of this this, including what Trump wanted done in Ukraine (an investigation of "2016").
There is a story in the Daily Beast that Giuliani's thug Lev Parnas assisted Devin Nunes is one of Nunes investigations into the "deep state" last year. Parnas is a Russian mafia stooge.
Russia is STILL manipulating right wing fever dreams.
An article was seeded on NT yesterday proposing that these two fake news hoaxers from Ukraine should be believed.