This article is practically dripping with Narrative:
The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, one of multiple congressional panels examining Russia’s intervention, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that there was “circumstantial evidence of collusion.” There also is “direct evidence . . . of deception, and that’s where we begin the investigation,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California.
U.S. intelligence agencies charged in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the offensive, in which cyber operatives also hacked tens of thousands of emails from Democratic National Committee staff, Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta and other Democrats.
A top priority of investigators is to determine who delivered those hacked emails to WikiLeaks, a London-based transparency site that published them online, the sources said. News stories about the emails embarrassed Clinton at key points in the campaign. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied that the Russian government was the source of the email dump.
As for the bots, they carried links not only to news stories but also to Democratic emails posted on WikiLeaks, especially those hacked from Podesta and made public in October, said Philip Howard, a professor at the Oxford University Internet Institute who has researched the bot attacks.
Howard said that, as an example, bots had spread links to fictional stories that accused Clinton of involvement in running a child-sex ring in the basement of a Washington pizza parlor. The posts inspired a North Carolina man to drive to Washington and fire an assault weapon in the restaurant, according to police reports.
I’m frankly astonished that they haven’t tried to claim that the Russians are responsible for putting the evil murder art in the Podestas’ houses yet.
Notice how all these stories do the same thing and exaggerate the actual accusations in order to try to make it look ridiculous and unworthy of investigation. I don’t recall anyone ever saying Clinton was actually running anything at Comet Pizza. Let’s face it, she’s so inept that if she’d ever tried to run a child-sex ring, the videos would have somehow ended up being broadcast live on Nickelodeon.
And it seems a little strange that no one ever seems to ask why someone would drive from North Carolina to Washington DC for the express purpose of not shooting anyone. Did the guy ever even get charged?