Conspiracy theorists used a tweet from former FBI Director James Comey to shut down a school fundraiser, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. The wingnuts supposedly thought Comey's late April tweet—which used the hashtag #FiveJobsIveHad ("Grocery store clerk...FBI Director, interrupted") —was a “coded false flag message” referring to jihad. The internet sleuths also decided that the first letters in each of the jobs Comey listed (still with us, here?) matched up with California's Grass Valley Charter School Foundation. Upon realizing the school was hosting a Blue Marble Jubilee fundraising event in honor of Earth Day, the conspiracy theorists contacted the school and local law enforcement, warning of a threat. Sgt. Brian Blakemore of the Grass Valley Police Department told the Chronicle many of the callers didn't sound like “tin foil hat in the dungeon type” people. “The school never received a direct threat; it was people warning them about this plot,” he said. The conspiracy theorists also reportedly contacted Nevada County sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents in the Chico field office.
Blakemore said school leaders and officials were more concerned about people coming to the festival “to guard the place,” so the celebration was canceled out of an abundance of caution. The newspaper reports that some of the Twitter users raising the alarm about the event were followers of QAnon—a wide-ranging, complex conspiracy theory that claims President Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are working together to stop other political figures from committing pedophilia and other crimes.
Read it at San Francisco ChroniclencG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEnZiipKmXsqK%2F02eaqKVfpq6vu81mp5qmmZh6sMLEq2SjmZ2awG6vzqacsmWkrLKmwIysn66so2KxsMPNZpqapJmbvLO6yJpkrJuYpLytecWupZ2qkZ7Apr4%3D