Dan Scavino, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media, addresses the virtual Republican National Committee convention on August 27, 2020. (Photo Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)
Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
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Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson said the pair “played key roles in the ex-president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.” Scavino has refused to sit for any interviews or share documents with the committee since he was subpoenaed last September. For years, QAnon influencers and decoders have been using Scavino’s social media content as some sort of cipher, believing that he was using it to send them messages directly from the former president.
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In June 2020, Scavino posted a clip of a video showing a lightning strike hitting Washington, D.C. The video, which originally came from WUSA, was edited by Scavino before he posted it to highlight what appears to be the lightning making the shape of a Q. Scavino’s deceptively edited clip has been viewed 1.6 million times and QAnon believers reacted as you’d expect, given their belief that a “storm” is coming to take out their enemies. He also posted a “pro-American, Christian” music video in May 2020 that includes references to numerous QAnon phrases, including “where we go one we go all’, “dark to light,” “mockingbird,” and “clowns.”
And it wasn’t just Twitter. On Facebook, Scavino posted an image that was sent to him by a QAnon supporter that includes the letter Q.
And Scavino’s efforts even extended to using the Trump’s hugely influential Twitter account, which Scavino himself sometimes managed.
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The Jan. 6 committee may have been alerted to Scavino’s links to the QAnon community, by Ron Filipkowski, a former Marine and federal prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney in Florida, and who closely monitors Trump supporters’ activity via his hugely popular Twitter account. “When I met with the J6 Committee, I told them about QAnon-connected activity I had seen for several months in 2020 from Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino, and gave them specific examples,” Filipkowski tweeted on Monday night. “It was interesting to hear Liz Cheney tonight say they have concluded that was true.”Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.