PIZZERIA NAMED IN CLIINTON PAEDO SCANDAL IS JUST THAT: A PIZZERIA

Those emails launched a massive campaign that the alt right used to smear the Democratic hierarchy as paedophiles. This helped Trump.

But it wasn't true.

Days before the presidential election, James Alefantis, owner of a local pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong, noticed an unusual spike in the number of his Instagram followers.

Within hours, menacing messages like “we’re on to you” began appearing in his Instagram feed. In the ensuing days, hundreds of death threats — one read “I will kill you personally” — started arriving via texts, Facebook and Twitter. All of them alleged something that made Mr. Alefantis’s jaw drop: that Comet Ping Pong was the home base of a child abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John D. Podesta.

When Mr. Alefantis discovered that his employees were getting similar abusive messages, he looked online to unravel the accusations. He found dozens of made-up articles about Mrs. Clinton kidnapping, molesting and trafficking children in the restaurant’s back rooms. The articles appeared on Facebook and on websites such as The New Nationalist and The Vigilant Citizen, with one headline blaring: “Pizzagate: How 4Chan Uncovered the Sick World of Washington’s Occult Elite.”

None of it was true.

Fake news sites said this pizzeria was part of a child abuse ring linked to Hillary Clinton. None of it was true. https://t.co/2DyJdm80Wz

— The New York Times (@nytimes) 22 November 2016