LinkedIn co-founder apologizes for funding propaganda campaign against Roy Moore

Jessica Chasmar
Washington Times
Fri, 28 Dec 2018 13:55 UTC

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman

LinkedIn's billionaire co-founder Reid Hoffman apologized Wednesday for funding a group that's been linked to a misinformation campaign against Republican candidate Roy Moore in the 2017 Alabama Senate runoff election.

During Mr. Moore's failed Senate bid against now-Sen. Doug Jones, Mr. Hoffman provided funding for American Engagement Technologies, a firm led by former Obama administration official Mikey Dickerson that was part of an effort to falsely portray Mr. Moore's campaign as being supported by the Russian government, The New York Times reported last week.

Mr. Hoffman denied knowing the group's motives in a Medium post on Wednesday, saying he was "embarrassed" he didn't vet the group more thoroughly.

"The Times articles imply that I had knowledge of it and that I endorsed its tactics. Let me be absolutely clear: I do not," he wrote. "I categorically disavow the use of misinformation to sway an election. In fact, I have deliberately funded multiple organizations trying to re-establish civic, truth-focused discourse in the US. I would not have knowingly funded a project planning to use such tactics, and would have refused to invest in any organization that I knew might conduct such a project."

Mr. Hoffman insisted that he wants Democrats to win elections based on their merits and not by the manipulation of facts.

"That I had no knowledge of the actions the Times' describes does not absolve me of my ethical responsibility to exercise adequate diligence in monitoring my investments," he wrote. "Senator Doug Jones has called for an inquiry into this alleged operation which, from reading the Times, I agree is a good idea. We cannot permit dishonest campaign tactics to go unchecked in our democracy - no matter which side they purportedly help."

Mr. Jones said he's "outraged" by The Times' findings and wants a federal investigation into the project.

"I'd like to see the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department look at this to see if there were any laws being violated and, if there were, prosecute those responsible," he told Fox News. "These authorities need to use this example right now to start setting the course for the future to let people know that this is not acceptable in the United States of America."

Comment: RT reports more on how easy it is for 'cybersecurity' firms to meddle in elections while hiding behind Russian bogeymen:

American Engagement Technologies (AET), which Hoffman gave $750,000 to put $100,000 of the entrepreneur's money towards New Knowledge, a cybersecurity firm which fabricated some 1,000 Russian language Twitter accounts to follow Moore.

The company used the tactic to link the controversial Republican to so-called Russian influence campaigns and then fed it to the mainstream media. They also created misleading Facebook pages urging Republicans to support a 'write-in' candidate instead of supporting Moore. The ploy was revealed by New York Times earlier this month.

"I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing," Hoffman told the Washington Post. "For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET - the organization I did support - more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject."

AET is ran by former Barack Obama administration official, Mikey Dickerson, who previously helped the US government with its adoption of new technology.

Last week, Facebook suspended five accounts linked to the operation for "engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior."One of the accounts belonged to the CEO of New Knowledge, Jonathon Morgan, who claims he was acting alone as a researcher and not on behalf of the company.

Morgan is also one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 dashboard, a tool that purports to look into ongoing Russian social media operations by monitoring Twitter accounts, the list of which is too secret to be disclosed.

Hamilton 68 has been used by US publication Mother Jones to bolster a December 2017 article titled: 'Russian Propagandists Are Pushing for Roy Moore to Win.'

Senator Doug Jones, the Democrat who narrowly defeated Moore last May, has called for a federal investigation. A move supported by the chastened Hoffman. "What is obvious now is that we have focused so much on Russia that we haven't focused on the fact that people in this country could take the same playbook and do the same damn thing," stated Jones.