Larry Johnson came onto my radar a few years back when I penned a book about Benghazi with Brandon Webb.  We were the first ones to really tell the story behind what happened that night in Libya, and it certainly caused a bit of a dust-up.  Larry Johnson took to his website and described us both as unwitting dupes who were being played for fools.

Now I know it is not nice to gloat, and I should not be smugly chuckling to myself here, but there is a kind of irony I can’t ignore in watching Larry Johnson implode in the national media.  Over time his blog (which has recently been removed from the internet) became a mecca of weird conspiracy theories and raving lunatic warnings.  Larry it seems, went way down the rabbit hole.

Larry Johnson is another one of those weird cats who is a “former” something (CIA analyst in this case who left the agency in the 90’s) who has become a media commentator.  Much like others I’ve profiled in the past, these people rely on an appeal to authority when they go on the news and insist that they have the truth because they have big three-letter agency background.

Previously, he had made the claim that there was an audio recording of Michelle Obama making statements about hating white people, a claim which turned out to be false.  The pièce de résistance came just recently though when Larry went on RT news, our favorite state-sponsored Russian propaganda outlet, to claim that British intelligence was illegally spying on Donald Trump with John Brennan and Jim Clapper’s knowledge.  Larry also appeared on Info Wars with Alex Jones to make similar claims.  Judge Napolitano at Fox News took these claims at face value and reported them on-air.

In some interviews, Larry Johnson repeats a completely bullshit claim that the CIA spied on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  SOFREP was the first to publish the real story on the Rendition, Detention, Interrogation network.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMkR_5Sesgg

No less than Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary picked up on the claim after hearing it on Fox News from Judge Napolitano.  So here is the path that this information took: Larry Johnson>RT>Judge Nap>Fox News>Sean Spicer>White House.

The British government pushed back hard, stating, “Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”  At this point, it is hard to say what is more scary, that Larry Johnson is used as a source for anything or that the White House repeats fictitious claims about our closest ally based on outlandish statements made by people like Johnson which are propagated by known Russian disinformation outlets.

Both Larry and Judge Nap seem to have tucked their turtle heads in and disappeared for the time being.  Hopefully in the future, Judge Nap will be a bit more cautious about where he gets his information from.  So should the White House.

As for Larry, brother, I can’t even…