Media’s Favorite Russian Theorist Pushes Conspiracy Boundaries

A former FBI agent has bashed President Donald Trump in a series of interviews for allegedly citing fake news and testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee to suggest Trump has acted in Russian interests.

But an examination of social media and writings shows the former agent, Clint Watts, has a fondness for dubious stories and theories.

“Follow the trail of dead Russians,” Watts told the Senate committee.

Watts, a Robert A. Fox Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s program on the Middle East, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, where he argued to lawmakers that American voters are malleable enough to be swayed by Russian social-media programs, also known as “bots.”

Watts has been saying for months the Kremlin influenced the 2016 election, echoing a partisan talking point frequently wielded by Democrats. But his work goes far beyond the Russian hysteria espoused by most in the mainstream. Watts suggests the Russian connection goes much further than the simple pro-Trump cyber-influence campaign touted by most on the left.

In his online writings, Watts suggests it’s possible the Russians have blackmail material on Trump.

In a March 6 post titled, “Is Trump Russia’s Manchurian Candidate? No. Here’s Why,” Watts says there is only a “low” probability that Trump is a “Manchurian candidate,” a U.S. politician totally subservient to Russia, so named for the 1959 book and the 1962 film about the Soviets controlling a Republican presidential candidate and his stepson.

Instead, Watts said is it more likely — a medium possibility — that the Russians have compromising material on Trump, as an unsubstantiated dossier funded by the president’s campaign opponents states. Watts rates as a “high” probability that Trump is a “useful idiot,” someone the Russians exploited when they saw an opening.

It’s apparent Watts follows Twitter users who push conspiracy theories about Trump, and his feed demonstrates his fondness for anti-Trump comedians and commentators.

One is John Schindler, a national security writer for the Observer, who tweeted on February 15 that an anti-Trump source within government told him: “Now we go nuclear. [Intel community] war going to new levels. Just got an EM [from] senior IC friend, it began: [Trump] will die in jail.”

Watts has written and spoken prolifically about the methods Russian activists used to promote Trump online both during and after the presidential race.

On December 13, in a Politico op-ed he co-authored with Andrew Weisburd, Watts wrote: “The Kremlin’s canny operatives didn’t change votes; they won them, influencing voters to choose Russia’s preferred outcome by pushing stolen information at just the right time — through slanted, or outright false stories on social media.”

That implication should sound familiar, as it is the same talking point used Wednesday by U.S. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who appears to believe American voters are so unintelligent that Russian bots on social media can persuade them to change their votes.

During his testimony to the Senate committee, Watts also suggested the Russians use social media regularly to influence Trump to this day. Watts told Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) on Thursday that Russian spies, working on social media, know when Trump is online and tweet conspiracy theories at him in the hopes that the president could retweet their stories or talk about the conspiracies.

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Watts’ eagerness to bash the president has made him a small media star.

His theories have also made the news media less shy about dubious suggestions related to the Democrats’ Russia narrative. Before Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” introduced Watts on his show Sunday, Todd compared the Russian efforts to influence the 2016 campaign to this season’s plot of the Showtime drama “Homeland.” In “Homeland,” a CIA operative teams with a U.S. business, post-election, to use bots to deride the new president.

Watts told Todd the Russians created automated programs, or bots, that mimic armies of online Americans and push political stories. This is not a new claim; Democrats often use it in their explanations of how Hillary Clinton managed to lose the presidential race on November 8.

When asked if there was actual collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russians, Watts could only point to two known instances where Trump or his campaign manager (at the time, Paul Manafort) may have cited Russian propaganda. Watts did not say the Trump team knew of hacking into Democratic computers before it happened.

While Watts derides “fake news,” he has his own conspiracy theories about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and even what they are doing to cover up their tracks. While the implications Watts makes are explosive, the evidence is skimpy.

“Follow the trail of dead Russians,” Watts told the Senate committee. “They are dropping dead even in Western countries.”

Yet it’s not clear where the trail would go. Many of the reported incidents aren’t even remotely linked to the alleged Russian hacking of Democratic emails.

If Watts was referring to a CNN report on March 25 by Marshall Cohen and Jose Pagliery, three of the dead Russians may have been critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged corruption — but none had links to alleged election hacking, Trump’s associates or any of the bots that are supposedly trolling Trump’s feed.

And one of the dead Russians was an ambassador to Turkey. Andrey Karlov, 62, was assassinated by a Turkish police officer on December 20.

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Watts, for all his criticism of the content Trump digests on social media, appears to be a consumer of a very slanted set of information — at least on Twitter.

Aside from following the account of John Schindler, who tweeted “[Trump] will die in jail,” Watts follows hopeless Never-Trumper Evan McMullin, rapid anti-Trump late night host John Oliver, and Trump critic and actor Seth Rogan.

Watts follows some Democrats involved in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, notably House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) but not his Republican counter-part Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).