Republican Congressman Devin Nunes—unhappy with his ability to spread false stories only through press conferences, television appearances, and “memos” drafted up by his staff working in tandem with the White House—had to come up with a new way to spread more lies more quickly. So he turned to his friends for inspiration.
The campaign committee for House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has been funding a website billed as a local news outlet.
The site, CARepublican.com, features headlines ranging from national politics stories to state and local matters and college football. Many of the posts link out to conservative sites like National Review and The Federalist, and the Facebook page for the site labels it a media/news company that is focused on “delivering the best of US, California, and Central Valley news, sports, and analysis.”
Working in exactly the same way as fake news sites created by Russia sources previous to the election, Nunes sprinkled his fake news site with stories in praise of Devin Nunes and attacking Democratic representatives.
Resembling a local, conservative news site, “The California Republican” is classified on Facebook as a “media/news company” and claims to deliver “the best of US, California, and Central Valley news, sports, and analysis.”
But Nunes’s site isn’t local and it’s not news—except the news that it’s another Nunes-generated fake. And once the truth about “The California Republican” came out, the site went down.
“Due to heavy traffic and an attack on our servers, you may encounter an error message when attempting to reach The Republican,” a message on the Facebook page for the “California Republican” read on Sunday evening. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”