Alabama Democratic operative claims using Russian tactics for Doug Jones was ‘a moral imperative’

In yet another revelation of “Russian tactics” meant to boost Doug Jones’ candidacy in 2017, an Alabama based Democratic operative admitted he viewed his deceptive efforts as “a moral imperative.”

On Monday, The New York Times wrote about a second “false-flag” operation used against Republican candidate Roy Moore. This time, Matt Osborne, “a veteran progressive activist who worked on the project” and lives outside of Florence, admitted the operation happened.

At the center of this operation was the fake “Dry Alabama” Facebook page, which attempted to trick people into believing that prohibitionists were boosting Moore’s candidacy.

Excerpt from the NYT article as follows:

The “Dry Alabama” Facebook page, illustrated with stark images of car wrecks and videos of families ruined by drink, had a blunt message: Alcohol is the devil’s work, and the state should ban it entirely.

Along with a companion Twitter feed, the Facebook page appeared to be the work of Baptist teetotalers who supported the Republican, Roy S. Moore, in the 2017 Alabama Senate race. “Pray for Roy Moore,” one tweet exhorted.

In fact, the Dry Alabama campaign, not previously reported, was the stealth creation of progressive Democrats who were out to defeat Mr. Moore — the second such secret effort to be unmasked. In a political bank shot made in the last two weeks of the campaign, they thought associating Mr. Moore with calls for a statewide alcohol ban would hurt him with moderate, business-oriented Republicans and assist the Democrat, Doug Jones, who won the special election by a hair-thin margin.

Osborne, for his part, claimed to want the type of tactics he used banned from American politics one day. However, until then, he views it as “a moral imperative” to use them to support Democrats.

“If you don’t do it, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back,” Osborne said. “You have a moral imperative to do this — to do whatever it takes.”

This latest revelation comes after “Project Birmingham” was unmasked by the leaking of its internal report to the NYT, The Washington Post and BuzzFeed News. Read more about Project Birmingham here.

The Dry Alabama effort, just like Project Birmingham, received $100,000 in out-of-state liberal funding. Dry Alabama was backed by two unnamed Virginia donors who wanted to defeat Moore.

Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn