On Nov. 7, the hashtag #pizzagate first appeared on Twitter. Those emails showed that Podesta occasionally dined at Comet Ping Pong. Over the next couple of days, the wild accusations against Clinton gradually merged with a new raft of allegations stemming from WikiLeaks’ release of Podesta’s emails. policy in Syria.Īccording to YouTube, that video has been viewed more than 427,000 times. I just can’t hold back the truth anymore.” Jones eventually tied his comments about Clinton to U.S. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. “When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her,” Jones said in a YouTube video posted on Nov. On the far-right site Infowars, talk-show host Alex Jones repeatedly suggested that Clinton was involved in a child sex ring and that her campaign chairman, John Podesta, indulged in satanic rituals. The notion quickly moved to other social-media platforms, including 4chan and Reddit, mostly through anonymous or pseudonymous posts. Two days later, someone tweeting under the handle cited rumors that the new emails “point to a pedophilia ring and is at the center.” The rumor was retweeted more than 6,000 times. New emails had been found on a computer belonging to disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Comey told Congress that he was reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Welch did not shoot anyone in the disturbance on Connecticut Avenue NW, but he delivered a troubling message about the shattering of trust in a troubled time. His actions Sunday in one of Washington’s wealthiest neighborhoods reminded Americans that last month’s election did not quite conclude the strangest political season in the nation’s history. What brought Welch to the District on a crisp Sunday afternoon in early December was a choking mix of rumor, political nastiness, technological change and the intoxicating thrill that can come from running down a mystery.
Pizzagate - the belief that code words and satanic symbols point to a sordid underground along an ordinary retail strip in the nation’s capital - is possible only because science has produced the most powerful tools ever invented to find and disseminate information.Ĭomet Ping Pong owner, James Alefantis, addresses reporters during the reopening of his restaurant days after a gunman entered with an assault rifle, firing it at least once. It’s a tale of a scandal that never was, and of a fear that has spread through channels that did not even exist until recently. The story of Pizzagate is about what is fake and what is real. What was false were the rumors he had read, stories that crisscrossed the globe about a charming little pizza place that features ping-pong tables in its back room. He found no hidden children, no secret chambers, no evidence of a child sex ring run by the failed Democratic candidate for president of the United States, or by her campaign chief, or by the owner of the pizza place.
What was real was Welch - a father, former firefighter and sometime movie actor who was drawn to dark mysteries he found on the Internet - terrifying customers and workers with his assault-style rifle as he searched Comet Ping Pong, police said. What was finally real was Edgar Welch, driving from North Carolina to Washington to rescue sexually abused children he believed were hidden in mysterious tunnels beneath a neighborhood pizza joint.