Unintentional Trap: A Parody Account Reveals a Connection Between a Foreign Propaganda Arm and a Fox News Host

Over the weekend, Donald Trump’s most devoted and adoring propaganda pimp, Sean Hannity, saw his Twitter account disappear for a few hours.

It caused such a social media firestorm that it was the top trending topic on Twitter, with the tin foil hat brigade out in force, hilariously dissecting and attempting to figure out the coded language of his final tweet.

As often happens, upon his brief disappearance, several fake Sean Hannity accounts sprung up. Some of them were even convincing.

In particular, @SeanHannity_ was quite successful, and quickly picked up those Twitter followers that would normally have followed the real Hannity.

The creator of the account was actually a bored technical writer from Texas, named Dell Gilliam. Gilliam was home with the flu and thought it would be funny to troll another fake Hannity account.

She played the part quite convincingly, rabidly frothing about justice and answers for the sudden account drop.

In fact, she played it convincingly enough that she flushed out some of Hannity’s tick-tock contacts.

Like Julian Assange.

You know that guy. He’s the one Hannity once railed against and wanted imprisoned for giving away troop movements in the Middle East, threatening the lives of our soldiers in harm’s way.

I guess when a non-state actor for a hostile foreign government is working to benefit Hannity’s liege, all of his proven moves to destabilize the U.S. don’t seem so bad, anymore.

Gilliam-as-Hannity got a direct message from Assange at about 4am on Saturday morning. He thought he was talking to the real Sean Hannity.

According to the Daily Beast, Gilliam felt bad, and kind of panicked, but she apparently didn’t feel too bad.

“I can’t believe this is happening. I mean… I can. It’s crazy. Nothing can be put past people,” Gilliam, posing as Hannity, wrote to Assange. “I’m exhausted from the whole night. What about you, though? You doing ok?”

“I’m happy as long as there is a fight!” Assange responded.

Gilliam reassured Assange that she, or Hannity, was also “definitely up for a fight” and set up a call for 9:30 a.m. Eastern, about six hours later.

It sounds like they (Hannity and Assange) were familiar with each other, doesn’t it?

“You can send me messages on other channels,” said Assange, the second reference to “other channels” he made since their conversation began.

“Have some news about Warner.”

He was apparently referencing Democrat Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, currently investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

Less than 48 hours later, Warner made headlines claiming that the Senate intelligence committee received “end-of-the-year document dumps” that “opened a lot of new questions” about Trump and Russia.

The Daily Beast reached out to Warner’s office about those documents, and about WikiLeaks.

“Give me a break. WikiLeaks is a non-state hostile intelligence service with longstanding ties to the Russian government and Russian intelligence.”

So what “other channels”? He sure said that as if Hannity knew what he was talking about.

Citing mysterious sources and to-be-revealed bombshells, Hannity has been alleging he will unveil “the biggest scandal in American history” for weeks on his primetime Fox News show that has devolved into mostly a recitation of conspiracy theories about a “secret society” and the “deep state.”

Both Hannity and Assange’s WikiLeaks have pushed similar document drops and hashtag campaigns since before the 2016 election, most recently the push to release a confidential memo about government spying under the hashtag “#releasethememo.” Last year, Hannity even invited Assange to guest host his radio program. Both participated in baseless speculation about the murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich, which Hannity later dropped after advertisers dropped his program.

Hannity seems to have forgotten the animosity that he so openly spewed against Assange, at one point, and he was right to do it, at that time.

The thing is, Assange and WikiLeaks are no less disruptive now. Their motives should always be seen as corrupt.

And Hannity is a willing, even eager participant in working with a Russian propaganda machine.

OH – if there was ever a time to restart the House Un-American Activities Committee, now would be that time, and if Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning are criminals, so is Sean Hannity. He’s now actively working with the Kremlin, via WikiLeaks.

You can’t have it both ways.

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