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Left-wing NBC intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance was tapped by House Democrats Wednesday to testify at a hearing about domestic terrorism in spite of his history of promoting conspiracy theories and blatant falsehoods.
Nance repeatedly discussed the danger of far-right conspiracy theories before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, citing the anti-government fanaticism of 1995 Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Yet Nance was one of the chief proponents of Russia-related conspiracies on MSNBC during the Trump administration, and he is a frequent guest of such hyperpartisan hosts as Joy Reid and Lawrence O'Donnell. He has long claimed former President Donald Trump was an "asset" of the Russian government.
Nance once suggested on air that Trump was compromised by Russia as early as 1977, and also claimed Russia had successfully waged a disinformation campaign to the point the U.S. would "welcome an invasion." Shortly before Robert Mueller released his investigation's findings that there was no proof of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia to influence the 2016 election, Nance declared Trump's conduct was on the scale of notorious traitor Benedict Arnold and the data on his treachery was "unassailable."
Nance has a long history of other controversial and false statements not related to conspiracy theories.
In 2017, Nance infamously tweeted that the ISIS terror group should carry out a suicide attack on Trump Tower in Istanbul. He deleted the tweet but did not apologize, according to The Federalist. He also said any veterans who supported Trump lacked honor due to Trump's scathing remarks about Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Nance was also sharply criticized for falsely claiming in an interview with Reid that 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein had a show on RT, the Kremlin propaganda network. He also called Glenn Greenwald a "Fox News contributor" in an interview with the New Yorker, which was not true.
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Nance repeatedly defended Reid in the wake of her implausible claim in 2018 that homophobic and other offensive blog posts attributed to her in the 2000s were the result of a hack. Making Reid's claim even more dubious was the fact that she had already admitted to writing similar posts during the same time period just months earlier.
"Clearly there is a Discredit & Humiliate campaign afoot," Nance tweeted. "Apparently all progressives are secretly anti-gay bloggers. This has Wikileaks & AltRight written all over it. Expect more."
An investigation found no proof of Reid's claim she was hacked, and she apologized for the posts while simultaneously claiming she did not believe she wrote them.
Yet in a 2019 interview with The New Yorker headlined "Malcolm Nance on the danger of conspiracy theories," Nance continued to suggest Reid had indeed been hacked.
"There are people who have an agenda on Joy Reid ... I am a former cryptologist from the National Security Agency," he said. "If there is anything that I personally can assure you as an American citizen, it’s that there is nothing in this world that is digital that cannot be manipulated."
In 2019, he tweeted he was "convinced" Carter Page, the former Trump campaign aide at the center of the FISA abuse scandal, was an "FBI double agent."
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The hearing Wednesday was led by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.