Author’s note: Since writing this story, I have researched Mike Cernovich’s Twitter feed more thoroughly and it appears now that he may have genuinely been leaked the news about Susan Rice ahead of Eli Lake’s story as he asserts, thereby justifying his claim to a “scoop”. If this is true, my own assertion that Cernovich used the information gathered by Circa and made a lucky guess about the Rice reveal (throwing shit against a wall, so to speak) is false.

However, since Cernovich, by his own admission, broke this story by swiping a reporter’s work product before it was ready for prime time, I still assert that this makes him a fraud, perhaps more-so, for his lack of ethics.

I will leave the material below as is and let you decide.

…

In the sticky, graffiti covered toilet stall that is the alt-right media sphere, a minor buzz surrounded Internet celebrity Mike Cernovich on Monday for allegedly breaking a story that today has legitimate news outlets interested.

The only problem is that the story broke three days before Cernovich discovered it.

On Sunday, April 2nd, Mike Cernovich (recently featured on a 60 Minutes segment concerning “fake news”)  wrote a blog post claiming to have uncovered proof that Obama intelligence adviser Susan Rice had “unmasked” the identities of Trump associates swept up in legal surveillance of Russian officials during the Trump transition.

When the same story was revealed a day later by Bloomberg reporter Eli Lake, the sketchy world of self-styled right wing journalism ran with Cernovich’s spin that the MSM were chasing the footprints of “Scoop” Cernovich. Sites like Gateway Pundit, Daily Caller and The American Spectator all gloated that their hated enemy–actual reporters–had been one-upped  by the man who had so recently made a mockery of the press by refusing to confirm for 60 Minutes that he is a shameless bullshit artist.

But Cernovich himself has offered no reason at all to believe that he performed any investigation of his own to uncover this story. Instead, his blog post seems to depend entirely on this article written for the website Circa by John Solomon and Sara Carter, which contains nearly every fact Cernovich alleged to have “broken” and which dropped on March 29, three days before Cernovich’s piece.

In fact, the only hint Cernovich gives that he used any resource more highly placed than Google to conduct his research comes at the end of his blog, when he states

This reporter has been informed that [NYT reporter] Maggie Haberman has had this story about Susan Rice for at least 48 hours, and has chosen to sit on it in an effort to protect the reputation of former President Barack Obama.

According to Alex Pfeiffer of the Daily Caller, the New York Times called Cernovich’s claim “100 percent false.” Cernovich has since claimed that he knows for a fact that Eli Lake also “sat” on the story. His proof? ZeroHedge quotes Cernovich as saying

I have spies in every media organization.  I got people in news rooms.  I got it from a source within the news room who said ‘Cernovich, they’re sitting on this story, they’re not going to run it, so you can run it’.

This is obvious crap, squeezed out by a minor self-made celebrity with no journalistic credentials and no history of ever breaking any legitimate news story. And while it is unknown if any of the real reporters who have run with this story depended on the piece written for Circa, none of the people singing Cernovich’s praises have thus far acknowledged Solomon or Carter with doing the work that Mike Cernovich is now taking credit for.

Mike Cernovich

For those unfamiliar with Mike Cernovich, or his body of work, he is a professional self-promoter, a fitness buff who first emerged from the “men’s rights” movement as a kind of agro Stuart Smalley (complete with lisp). Using his website, videos and Kindle products he encouraged pussies to level-up to cavemen. Then, as Trump began his rise, Cernovich segued into the same alt-right kookery that propelled the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos to heights of infamy (and, like Yiannopoulos, Cernovich is also a bit consumed with pedophilia, so stay tuned for an upcoming fall from grace).

After becoming one of Donald Trump’s biggest boosters on Twitter, Cernovich and friends celebrated the victory of their candidate with the Deploraball, one of the many DC festivities held to fête Tribune Trump on the day of his inauguration. First, however, Mike had to shed some dead weight, namely Timothy Treadstone, aka Baked Alaska, who helped Cernovich organize the event but then turned out to have taken the “red pill” of the alt-right movement’s anti-Jewish attitudes too seriously. Cernovich sent his fellow alt-righter packing in order that the ball would have a clean image. This did not prevent Nazi imagery from appearing on the official website, however, nor did it keep neo-Nazi Richard Spencer from attending. (See this video— Spencer is the man on the left in the tan coat).

Cernovich now divides his time between authoring “books”, conducting fraudulent journalism and, of course, spreading hoaxes. This last sidelight nearly ended in tragedy after the “Pizzagate” scandal (a manufactured story alleging that a DC pizza parlor was also HQ for a child prostitution ring led by Hillary Clinton campaigner John Podesta) inspired a crank to pick up a rifle and “self-investigate” the claims. A shot was fired at the family restaurant but no one was harmed. Cernovich heavily promoted the conspiracy and still has not repudiated it.

Since the Susan Rice story has taken off, Cernovich has begun spreading the manure again, claiming that he “exclusively reported” the story he plagiarized and demanding tribute from every news source that did not fall for his ersatz journalism.

Unfold your futon, Milo. Mike may be arriving early.