Though the group claims to be run by citizens across 14 states, researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found it was all managed by the same unknown person or small group of people.
Dennis Hayes, a retired builder in Townsend, Montana, had strong libertarian leanings and a bone to pick with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Then he got an unexpected tap on the shoulder.
The call came from a man in Arizona identifying himself as a volunteer for the Patriots Run Project, a group recruiting right-leaning conservatives to run for office. Would he run for Congress?
A donor provided the $1,340 he needed to register. Since that call in February, Hayes has been running against incumbent Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Trump-friendly Republican who he is challenging from the right.
Just one problem: The Patriots Run Project, according to a new research report, is a fake grassroots group that was running numerous accounts on Facebook without any identifiable people behind the operation.
Though the group claims to be run by citizens across 14 states, researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that researches disinformation, found it was all managed by the same unknown person or small group of people who cross-posted content and all listed the same address at a UPS store in Washington.
The network of accounts ran for nearly a year until Meta removed them last week for violating its policies against inauthentic accounts misleading users.
Hayes, however, is still running for office, in a bizarre example of how fake groups online can shape politics in the real world.
The website for the Patriots Run Project offers no contact information, and the group did not respond to multiple emails sent to the address listed on its Meta ad library page. The phone number listed was disconnected.
Hayes provided a phone number for the Arizona volunteer, who did not respond to multiple calls.
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A reportedly fake group recruited a real candidate for Congress https://t.co/jM9QgC8QwE
— POLITICO (@politico) June 14, 2024
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