Decoding a series of false "grooming" allegations against Tim Walz

Probably the most sophisticated job by John Dougan and Storm-1516

Oct 19, 2024

Episode 1: presented by Dougan himself on RedPill78 stream

First episode was thoroughly deconstructed by NewsGuard.

On October 5 in a stream on RedPill78 Rumble channel, Dougan personally presents a supposed foreign exchange student with altered voice who was “groomed” by Tim Walz. At time, it didn’t get a lot of traction outside of RedPill78 follower base.

Dougan also likely tried to get additional traction via what seems to be his alternative X account “MiamiChronicle”, which matches a name of one of his fake media websites.

Episode 2: presented by X/Twitter account DocNetyoutube (“Black Insurrectionist”)

This is the most puzzling episode for us, since there was no clear connection to Dougan, Storm-1516, or other related entity.

A series of tweets with were posted on October 13 in DocNetyoutube account making similar allegations of “grooming” by Tim Walz by a “different person”:

[0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [+1]

RedPill78 and DocNetyoutube referenced each other stories in affirmative way:

RedPill78: “and I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this story”

DocNetyoutube: “they did an interview with a foreign exchange student, the behavior described in their interview is almost identical to what my person described. I firmly believe this story”

DocNetyoutube account has been deleted after a few days since the story was published. Affiliated YouTube account still exists.

This is not a first case of a completely fabricated narratives being propagated from this account: “MAGA Pushes Claim of 'ABC Whistleblower' After Harris-Trump Debate”.

Some publications speculate that this account might be related to Ali Alexander and claim that account deletion might be connected to their identification, but evidence base seems to be lacking.

Episode 3: presented by QAnon account

Story was posted by TheWakeninq X/Twitter account on October 16/17, which includes a video where a person who introduced himself as Matthew Metro making a “grooming” allegation against Tim Walz.

It was swiftly debunked by exposing the glaring difference of appearance between real Matt Metro and the person in the video.

Video bears typical visual traits of Storm-1516 campaigns, even though this time it wasn’t propagated through the usual channels.

All roads lead to MAGAstan

On October 19, the same story was posted on at least 102 websites of MAGAstan fake media network, which is operated by John Dougan. For each website story was rewritten with ChatGPT or a similar tool to make a unique text, but story structure remains the same. Full list of known publications may be found in appendix.

Story elaborates on all three episodes of false allegations and claims an established pattern of “grooming” by Tim Walz. It also includes embedded recording from RedPill78 stream with Dougan and a video from third episode of “Matt Metro” uploaded by Qanon76 Rumble account (which is related to TheWakeninq X/Twitter account).

MAGAstan is a fake media network previously covered by our team, also identified as part of CopyCop network by Recorded Future and is affiliated with John Dougan.

Conclusion

Even though the second episode is hard to attribute individually, we believe with high confidence that this is a Storm-1516 campaign with clear personal involvement of John Dougan.

It is not entirely clear what is the purpose of MAGAstan employment and we are assuming that it might be a preparation for an upcoming and possibly imminent large scale distribution campaign.