#MacronLeaks hashtag started in US, apparently launched by Alt-Right figure Jack Posobiec

[CousinIT]

MacronLeaks hashtag started in US, apparently launched by Alt-Right figure Jack Posobiec (are these Trump's helpers/operatives for the Trump campaign - the ones who fed hacked data to Wikileaks?)

Link to tweet

With less than two days to go before the final round of the French Elections, an emerging hashtag campaign, #MacronLeaks, was amplified throughout multiple social media platforms. #MacronLeaks reached 47,000 tweets in just three and a half hours after the initial tweet. This hashtag guided users to an alleged, possibly 9 GB, leak of Emmanuel Macron’s “campaign emails,” reportedly showing evidence of offshore accounts, tax evasion, and a slew of other nefarious activities.

Through a machine analysis, DFRLab tracked the onset of the campaign to the Twitter account of Jack Posobiec, the Washington DC Bureau Chief of an obscure, alt-right website, theRebelMedia. Posobiec’s bio on theRebel.media reveals that “in 2016, Jack was the Special Projects Director for Citizens for Trump, the largest Trump grassroots organization in the US,” and he is “a proud member of #SlavRight,” a nationalist Slavic movement.

Posobiec’s first tweet about the leaked Macron “campaign documents” occurred at 14:49 EST (18:49 UTC). This was then retweeted fifteen times in the first minute and 87 times in five minutes, suggesting the use of automated bots to amplify the signal.

The amplification of this “leak” came a day after Jack Posobiec claimed he was “being sued” by Emmanuel Macron. The hashtag also appeared hours before midnight in Paris when the official deadline to halt campaign activity was set.
Bots certainly came into play to help spread this hashtag from the US to France. Posobiec’s initial tweet was followed eight minutes later by one from user, William Craddick, another alt-right influencer whom the DFRLab has already identified as a fake news actor (see our post Spread It On Reddit). This was retweeted just over 200 times.

Some 90 minutes after Posobiec began tweeting, his posts were retweeted by two of nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen’s most active and aggressive online supporters, @Messsmer and @AudreyPatriote, both of whom the DFRLab has identified as the leaders of numerous pro-Le Pen hashtag drives (see here and here).

These accounts then began posting their own tweets, sharing WikiLeaks’ posts.

https://medium.com/dfrlab/hashtag-campaign-macronleaks-4a3fb870c4e8

[dalton99a]

1. These Putin stooges need to be exposed

[uponit7771]

2. Not the first time racist and traitor went together in America

[Sculpin Beauregard]

3. I hope he's arrested and extradited to France. They don't fuck around.

[SunSeeker]

4. K & R for exposure of fascist Putin stooges. nt

[CousinIT]

5. RELATED: Russia, the far right, and anti-Macron bots

Thousand of automated social network accounts are being used to spread fake news attacking centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron ahead of the French presidential run-off on Sunday (7 May).

Fake news often originating on Russian news outlets such as RT and Sputnik has for weeks targeted Macron, who is opposed to Russia-backed far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

Ben Nimmo, a researcher who investigated all posts mentioning or retweeting RT France and Sputnik France, found that some of the accounts spreading the fake news were openly pro-Russian, but most were "strongly French nationalist and opposed to Emmanuel Macron".

Nimmo, a senior fellow on information defence at the Washington-based Digital Forensic Research Lab, told EUobserver these accounts were also not united in their French political views. Some supported Le Pen, others supported Francois Asselineau, another anti-EU candidate who failed to make it to the run-off.

https://euobserver.com/elections/137756

Same M.O. as what was done to Dems/HRC in the US in 2016 - including hacking, stealing data and feeding it to Wikileaks for publication - likely done by pricks like Posobiec and other alt-right Trump operatives.