Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced Thursday that he is examining disinformation tactics used to undermine Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore during the special election to see if they violated state campaign laws.
According to a Thursday Washington Post report, the Republican attorney general learned of the effort, called Project Birmingham, from news reports, but has not launched a formal investigation.
Efforts to confuse voters included creating a misleading Facebook page curated to attract Republicans who did not want to vote for Moore.
Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), Moore’s successful opponent, has called for a federal investigation into Project Birmingham.
Southern AGs finally focusing on election — oh.
The Alabama AG better find that everything was kosher otherwise he will have to indict the whole Trump campaign.
It might be more fruitful if he investigated why Roy Moore got himself banned from the local mall. Those then-teenagers deserve a measure of justice.
If I understand this effort - it was at trying to create the impression that there was a Russian Bot campaign supporting Moore.
And part of the AG interest is to determine if these social media manipulation had an impact on the outcome of the election.
To suspect this, I would have to believe that a voter would be more persuaded to vote against Moore because of alleged Russian bots that I would due to his predatory actions and assaults of teenage girls, his being deemed disqualified and thrown of the State Supreme Court - twice, and his fraudulent self-enrichment from his ‘Foundation’. That seems quite the stretch in logic.
That said - I do think all instances of serious voter manipulation should be looked into. Included voter ID laws, altering early voting times and places that convenience some and make it exceptionally hard for others to vote, etc.
“Efforts to confuse voters included creating a misleading Facebook page curated to attract Republicans who did not want to vote for Moore.”