\n<\/a><\/span>Newsweek.com<\/p>\n
The FBI\u2019s widening investigation into Russian subversion is now looking into continuing threats against a Washington, D.C. pizza shop targeted by right-wing conspiracy mongers.<\/p>\n
Comet Ping Pong Pizza, a popular, family-oriented shop in an upscale northwest Washington, D.C. neighborhood, came under relentless\u00a0online attack last year because of its owner\u2019s friendship with senior members of the Hillary Clinton campaign as well as David Brock, founder of Media Matters for America<\/a>, a website that tracks press coverage critical of the Clintons.<\/p>\n The perpetrators of the harassment alleged\u2014without any evidence\u2014that Comet pizza owner James Alefantis and the Clintons were operating a child-sex ring in the restaurant\u2019s basement. Last December the flood of tweets, supercharged by anonymous online \u201cbots,\u201d motivated a 28-year-old North Carolina man, Edgar Madison Welch, to enter the shop with a loaded automatic rifle and fire off three rounds in search of the nonexistent basement sex chamber. Welch reached a plea deal<\/a> on March 15 and is scheduled to appear in court Friday for sentencing.<\/p>\n According to McClatchy News<\/a>, the FBI\u2019s Russian-influence probe agents are exploring whether far-right news operations, including the pro-Donald Trump sites Breitbart News and Infowars, \u201ctook any actions to assist Russia\u2019s operatives.\u201d \u00a0Trump\u2019s ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn<\/a> and his son, a member of the Trump transition team, were among those who boosted the so-called \u201cPizzaGate\u201d pedophile conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n Related: PizzaGate Resurfaces an Old Anti-Semitic Slander<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n As part of that probe, FBI agents on Monday interviewed a neighborhood friend of Alefantis. Newsweek<\/em> is withholding the woman\u2019s identity at her request. She told the agents that her mother had received a threatening call about her grandson Monday night, following the House intelligence committee\u2019s daylong televised hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 elections and connections between unnamed Trump associates and the Kremlin.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was horrifying,\u201d the woman said of the anonymous telephone call, in which a man relayed private details about her son. \u201cIt was an escalation\u201d of the PizzaGate campaign, she said. \u201cSomeone\u2019s spending time and money to harass me.\u201d<\/p>\n The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n One of the principal proselytizers of the PizzaGate conspiracy appears to be David Seaman, a one-time unpaid Huffington Post contributor and author of Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz: How to Attract Massive Attention for Your Business, Your Product, or Yourself.<\/em> Seaman’s personal YouTube<\/a> channel has been viewed over 6 million times since October 2016, when he began writing about PizzaGate.<\/p>\n According to one account<\/a>, he is also “the founder of Shutterline Interactive, a vehicle for rapidly deploying publicity stunts.\u201d In a 2008 YouTube interview<\/a> to publicize his book, Seaman said, \u201cI would protest gravity if I thought it was going to get me buzz.\u201d<\/p>\n In an online March 3 video<\/a>, he talked about his \u201cJourney from HuffPo to PizzaGate.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/0320jamescomey01-1024x627.jpg\")
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