As the Department of Justice begins to look at the role of RT and russian state media in maligned activities.
I thought it best to roll back to the tape to the first time russia media and [@realdonaldtrump](https://micro.blog/realdonaldtrump) collaborated.
Birtherism*
(unless you count Central Park Five)
There were so many players involved in Birtherism, names you :
Rush Limbaugh
Dick Morris
Glenn Beck
Sheriff Arpaio
Alan Keyes
Jerome Corsi
And lesser known names
Andy Martin
Ali Pahlavan
Orley Taitz
Alen Berg
Robert Schulz
Gary Kreep
Wiley Drake
Russian media all over it
We don't have to explain how it worked...tons of studies went into spilling words to explain what we know
Birtherism was about othering and anger over a Black Man becoming President
Pushed by people who wanted friendly oil deals with russia and a more aggressive approach in Iran
How did this birtherism stuff all begin?
Well you gotta roll tape back two decades and Barack Obama in 2004
and the story gets started with a crazy FOIAble happy wingnut Andy Martin 
Martin, who studied to be a lawyer, but was denied a license
The Illinois bar blocked Martin after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”
That's weird 
In fact in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits,"
He helped to invent the @judicialwatch approach of trying shutting everything down by choking agencies with FOIA requests
See back in 1991 a publisher made a mistake with Obama's biography in a pamphlet.
Andy Martin discovered is and in 2004 started to make some noise.
web.archive.org/web/2012070609…
After Martin started to push his Press Release, the Free Republic dot com website, or Freepers, as the liked to be called ran with it for a hot minute
Then in 2006, before substack sent you too many email notification you had email chains
Martin's rumors resurfaced during Obama’s run for Senate but took off in a viral e-mail campaign in 2006. One e-mail called Obama “The Enemy Within"
He was Muslim
latimes.com/archives/la-xp…
All over the Internet blogs started popping up that Barack Obama was a Muslim
Like Ted Sampley
Not only was he soft on Iran...but he even liked their non-Christian God
Stick to the Abraham story .....will ya..otherwise we get Sharia in Arkansas 
Things went quiet.
Looking through the Freeper archives and blogs the Obama was a Muslim stuff was always an under current but the Islamophobia of Pamela Gellar and Robert Spencer took Precedent
Until Ali Pahlavan in 2006
Then Birhterism be popping
See in February 2008 on a random legal theory blog someone posited a hypothetical about Barack Obama being born in Kenya
Ali Pahlavan somehow took this out of context and spread it like wildfire, with help.
Pahlavan was a wildly anti-Muslim play write in California 
On June 8th 2008 an account using the nickname FARS, a Pahlavan sock puppet, posted a message to the Free Republic Forums. 
My apologies date wrong in above tweet
It Was March not June
Pahalavan also blogged under the psuedonym Alan Parsons and he began to spread the Obama Birther conspiracies 
Parsons, meaning Pahalvan, took another listicle going around the @GOP email listserves at the time and added the bit of about Obama being born in Kenya
These were then blasted all over the Freeper blogosphere
Obama was African, but not Black, a secret Arab 
@GOP Parsons then reposted the Laundry List of Lies to a more "mainstream" Conservative blog
"WakeUpAmerica"
It was dicussed in depth, a day later someone would send an email to Snopes asking for it to get debunked 
@GOP Then June 8, 2008 Jim Geraghty, in a National Review Opinion piece calls for Obama to his release birth certificates
Noting nefarious, just to shut up the weirdos
The opposite happened
web.archive.org/web/2008061009…
@GOP Of course Larry C Johnson gets involved and published an article on World News Daily 
@GOP It would be right about here I would be looking for russian involvement at the nexus of Bill Binney
Some more on Larry C Johnson en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_C._…
@GOP Pamela Gellar would get involved:
She was at the nexus of a fifty million dollar Islamophobia campaign spread in America 
@GOP This is the problem with disinfo in America
It gets hard to separate that paid for by the Mellons and Kochs and coordination with russian allies in places like RT
was RT just copying or colluding?
FreedomWorks hopped all over Birthers
@GOP Jerome Corsi would write a book, of course, if there is anyone who needs to get scopped up for decades of collusion on russian disinfo
It's Jerome Corsi
@GOP The Tea Party really took off with Birtherism...folks like to pretend it was a "tax revolt" and had nothing to do with the Black Guy"
They lie to themselves
Birtherism is about othering
@GOP Then the lawsuits started coming. Hundreds of suits saying Barack Obama wasn't eligible to run
Phiilip Berg
Andy Martin
Orley Taitz
Bob Schulz
Wiley Drake
Alan Keyes all went birther crazy with lawsuits
@GOP Wiley Drake was a hoot:
Wiley Drake
-Supporter of Mike Huckabee’s campaign
-Protested the first Disney Gay Day
-2008 ran as Alan Keyes running mate
-2008 prays for Obama’s death 
@GOP Orley Taitz was a washed up russian swimsuit model turned conspiracy legal activist
@GOP Bob Schulz deserves a much closer look. He was a broke grifter wanted for tax evasion at the time and helped to organize the Fash Forward Jekyll Island meeting
@GOP He was under indictment from the Department of Justice at the Time.
He filed so many lawsuite 
@GOP Then you have Gary Kreep, he was elected to be a judge for a hot minute
but got in trouble because he is a racist and sexist liar
washingtonpost.com/news/post-nati…
@GOP They didn't need to win the lawsuits
Isn't why folks like @judicialwatch file lawsuits.
They need the racism to be the undertone so folks like Rush Limbaugh would say:
Obama was “more African in his roots than he is American.”
@GOP @JudicialWatch In fact by 2008 all the major Salem Media and @GOP aligned radio hosts were repeating birther lies
Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Brian Sussman, Lars Larson, Bob Grant, Jim Quinn, Rose Tennent and Mark Davis
All of them. Massive Birthers
@GOP @JudicialWatch Savage would say on radio "Getting ready for the Communist takeover of America with a noncitizen at the helm - I love it,"
Obama was a Muslim Kenyan Communist and they were all coming for your guns
totes promise...now buy some prepper pancake batter and cheap steal rounds
@GOP @JudicialWatch In 2008 Bob Schulz..remember the guy that owed all the back taxes
He would take out full page ads in
Chicago Tribune
Washington Examiner
and Looney Mooney's Washington Times
@GOP @JudicialWatch Schulz would get fined for contempt in Court that same year 
@GOP @JudicialWatch Phillip Berg's case would make it all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Justices refused to hear it
Who was pushing the case
Justice Clarence Thomas, of course 
@GOP @JudicialWatch By 2008 alone: 842 Birther lawsuits were sought a stay in Obama's election
Only 60 were heard 782 were denied
You think the lawfare tactics of the Kraken and Rudy were new? No...MAGA didn't come from nowhere
This is what folks like Andy Martin and Tom Fitton do
@GOP @JudicialWatch And Birthers help to drive militia growth
@GOP @JudicialWatch And more militia growth:
@GOP @JudicialWatch And this is where is gets hard to separate the "Family" and russia disinfo
Did RT just feel what Corsi was putting down or was there a greater role in funding birtherism coming from russia?
@GOP @JudicialWatch I mean the @GOP got so bad when John McCain had to explain to someone during a Town Hall that Barack Obama wasn't an Arab
The crowd boed
That kind of narrative shaping is just nativisim
politico.com/story/2008/10/…
@GOP @JudicialWatch And to this new "Organic" thing called the Tea Party really took off with Birtherism:
@GOP @JudicialWatch Dinesh D'Sousza would write in Forbes
“From a very young Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction.”
@GOP @JudicialWatch Andrew C. McCarthy, A Sharia Law author, wrote a 2010 book called The Grand Jihad, arruing Obama wanted to impose Taliban-style Islamic law on the West.
Where does russia begin? What is just legal lying?
Will we ever know the level of collusion?
@GOP @JudicialWatch Field Searcy and other Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists hopped all over Birtherism
@GOP @JudicialWatch In 2010 Glenn Beck started to espouse his Birther lies on @FoxNews and his radio show
Going back to Roger Ailes was there ever a time @foxnews wasn't in the bag for russia?
Who did Rupert Murdoch just marry? 
@GOP @JudicialWatch @FoxNews And it worked. By 2010 1/3 of Americans said Barack Obama was a Muslim
A vast majority of @gop members surveyed said Obama wasn't Christian
politico.com/story/2010/08/…
@GOP @JudicialWatch @FoxNews In fact Obama addressed the issue at the National Prayer Breakfast
By now Obama had to know how in bed the Family and NRA was with russia
looking back he is addressing that audience
huffpost.com/entry/obama-ta…
@GOP @JudicialWatch @FoxNews But wow did that nascent network, called Russia Today at the time, and not just RT run with it:
Tomorrow we will start in 2011 and [@realdonaldtrump](https://micro.blog/realdonaldtrump)'s new love Birtherism
@GOP @JudicialWatch @FoxNews [@realDonaldTrump](https://micro.blog/realDonaldTrump) Yo, @threadreaderapp unroll this please