McKew has been honing her Russia-bashing skills on social media over the past year, repeatedly touting "Evil Russia" narratives and nefarious Moscow conspiracies. McKew has already claimed in tweets that Russia supports Daesh and that Russia uses YouTube to find those susceptible to being radicalized to promote Kremlin "propaganda."
— Molly McKew (@MollyMcKew) October 4, 2017
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 10, 2017
Just two months ago, McKew told audience members at a Harvard University forum how a "Russian information operation" tapped into the American psyche via the internet to shift US opinions.
All of which makes McKew's latest endeavor a head-scratcher: she's joining a conference that's partially funded by Alfa Bank, a prominent Russian bank that was once a brick in the Russiagate wall.
In 2016, Slate published an ‘exposé' linking US President Donald Trump to Alfa Bank to suggest that 45 was taking orders from the Kremlin. Russiagate supporters flocked to this notion, including McKew.
It didn't take long for netizens to notice the irony.
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) November 19, 2017
— Lt. Comrade Pinballius (@GhostPinballer) November 19, 2017
— Adam Carter (@with_integrity) November 20, 2017
According to the Slate article, anonymous cybersecurity researchers were on alert following the release of private DNC emails and began to scavenge the web to see if any Russian hackers were making moves to "attack other entities central to the presidential campaign."
"We wanted to help defend both campaigns because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election," one of the researchers told Slate at the time. But while the techies were looking for malware perps, they found themselves with an "odd" find that linked Alfa Bank to Trump.
Researchers eventually found an "irregular pattern of server look-ups," which they claimed "resembled the pattern of human conversation." Noting that the interaction only took place during business hours in Moscow and New York, they then surmised that it had to indicate a "sustained relationship" between Alfa Bank and Trump.
Cue the shocked faces of theorists around the world.
The "connection" was later dismissed because while "server look-ups" were detected, they never found any concrete evidence to suggest there was any communication going on between Russia and the Trump team. Looking up a number in a phone book, for example, is not evidence that a call was ever made.
This by no means stopped Russiagaters like McKew from musing as to how Russia managed to sneak its way into the 2016 election. Perhaps now she can take her theories directly to the source at Alfa Bank?
