30 Monday February 21 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
Trump called his
rival DeSantis “duil
and gutless” while a
leading Trump ally
said the Florida
governor was a “Yale
Harvard fat boy”
Forensic linguists believe they have dis-
covered the identities of the two men
behind the QAnon conspiracy theory
that inspired a right-wing movement
and scores of attacks across the US.
Two teams of experts using different
methods to analyse linguistic and writ-
ing styles have named the South Afri-
can tech journalist Paul Furber, 55, and
the internet message board operator
Ron Watkins, 24, as the likely creators
of the movement that began with a
string of cryptic, anonymous online
posts in October 2017.
QAnon evolved into a sprawling con-
spiracy theory that claimed Donald
Trump was waging a secret war against
paedophiles within America’s political,
Donald Trump will take to the stage at
the Conservative Political Action Con-
ference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida,
this week, ready to go back on the offen-
sive as criminal inquiries close in on the
former president and his business.
Under investigation in New York for
business fraud, in Georgia for election
fraud and in Washington for inciting a
riot to try to overturn his election
defeat, Trump will seek to rise above
the storm on a wave of adulation from
devoted supporters.
“If you don’t mind, get a bigger ball-
room this year,” Trump said to the con-
ference organisers. “Last year it was
packed and there were thousands of
people outside, and they said, ‘We’re
going to get a real big one.’ So I’ll see you
soon. Let’s have fun.”
Trump used last year’s CPAC for his
first major address since leaving office
and he is certain to use this week’s event
to tease his expected attempt to take
back the White House in 2024. Inside
the conference hall, however, all eyes
will be on a probable showdown with
Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor,
who at 43 is a rising Republican star
seen as the most formidable challenger
to Trump, 75, for the party’s presidential
nomination.
The former president had aimed to
arrive at CPAC after the
launch this week of Truth
Social, his social media plat-
form, billed as a rival to
Twitter, which suspended
Trump rallies fans
on American right
as troubles mount
to his resort at Mar-a-Lago, and there
were reports that he flushed papers
down a White House lavatory.
Brazen as ever, the former president
dismissed the removal of White House
documents as “routine”, insisting he
had been too busy “destroying Isis,
building the greatest economy Amer-
ica has ever seen” and, in a jab at Biden,
“making sure Russia didn’t attack
Ukraine”. Removing classified docu-
ments is against the law.
Despite Trump’s legal troubles, the
line-up at CPAC underscores his domi-
nance in the Republican party. Once
ruled over by conservative grandees,
this year’s event is in the grip of the ex-
tremist pro-Trump right wing, includ-
ing House representatives Lauren Boe-
bert and Madison Cawthorn. They are
joined by Ted Cruz, the Texas senator,
and Mike Pompeo, the former secre-
tary of state, who harbour presidential
ambitions if Trump drops out.
Although Trump remains the front-
runner for the nomination, polls have
indicated that voters may be weary of
him. A CNN survey showed that nei-
ther Trump nor Biden has the full
support of their party for 2024.
Trump’s lead over DeSantis has also
narrowed. He led the young pretender
by 40 points in October, but that advan-
tage had shrunk to 25 last month.
Irked by DeSantis’s popularity,
Trump has taken to trashing him as
“dull” and “gutless”. The Trump loyalist
Roger Stone has called the governor a
“Yale Harvard fat boy”.
DeSantis has continued to rise in the
polls, however, while tacking even
harder to the right on culture war
issues. The governor’s defiance of coro-
navirus vaccine and mask mandates,
along with radical bills such as the “Stop
Woke Act” and “Don’t Say Gay” bill
have played to the Republican gallery.
All eyes will be on Florida’s two most
popular Republicans this week.Trump’s account last year after the Jan-
uary 6 attack on the Capitol Building.
Testing has begun on the app but its
introduction has been delayed until
next month. Donald Trump Jr released
a screen grab of his father’s first post on
the platform last week, which bore a
striking similarity to Twitter but with
blue ticks replaced by red. “Get ready!
Your favourite president will see you
soon!” he wrote.
Other troubles continue to mount.
Last week a judge in New York ordered
Trump and Donald Jr and Ivanka, his
eldest children, to be questioned under
oath regarding “copious evidence of
possible financial fraud” within the
Trump Organisation.
The ruling came days after Mazars,
Trump’s longstanding accountants,
announced the firm would no longer
work with him. It said that ten years of
financial statements that it prepared for
the former president “should no longer
be relied upon” in light of evidence un-
covered by Letitia James, the New York
attorney-general.
Trump has continued to rail against
the New York investigations
as a “witch-hunt” and he has
called his tormentors
“racist”. On Friday, how-
ever, the former president
lost an attempt to throw out
lawsuits in which he is
accused of inciting the
Capitol riot. The
deluge of rev-
elations con-
tinued last
week, when
the
National
Archives
confirm-
ed that
Trump
took classi-
fied documentsUnited States
Hugh Tomlinson Washington
t
fffffiVoice experts name QAnon plot suspects
business and media elites. Many of its
followers were already obsessed with
the “Pizzagate” theory that left-wing
Satanists led by Hillary Clinton were
running a child-abuse ring from a
Washington pizza restaurant.
Contacted by The New York Times,
which has seen both linguistic studies
investigating Q, the leader of the con-
spiracy, Furber denied he was behind
the posts. He acknowledged that his
writing resembled Q’s but insisted that
Q’s messages “took over our lives.” “We
all started talking like him,” he said.
Watkins, a conspiracy theorist who
ran the 8kun website where messages
from Q began appearing in 2018 and is
now running for Congress in Arizona,
also said: “I am not Q.”
The studies, one Swiss and oneFrench, used a mathematical approach
known as stylometry to break down the
messages from Q and compared them
with replies and messages from Furber
and Watkins. The Swiss team said it had
identified the men’s writing with 93 per
cent accuracy. The French scientists
said their software had correctly identi-
fied Watkins’s writing in 99 per cent of
tests and Furber’s in 98 per cent.
Trump, the hero of the movement,
avoided endorsing the conspiracy, but
said its followers were “people who love
our country”. When Trump supporters
stormed the US Capitol on January 6
last year, QAnon followers were among
the most prominent figures in the riot,
including Jake Angeli, better known as
the QAnon Shaman, now serving three
and a half years in prison.Hugh Tomlinson
Final flourish The curtain came down on the Winter Olympics in Beijing with a
at the very last, some medals for Great Britain. Thomas Bach, the IOC president,Madoff sister and husband die
in apparent murder-suicide
The sister of Bernie Madoff, a fraudster
who ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in
history, has been found dead with her
husband in a shooting that police in
Florida described as a murder-suicide.
Sondra Wiener, 87, and her husband
Marvin, 90, who counted themselves
among the victims of her brother’s
$65 billion fraud, died of gunshot
wounds at their home in Boynton
Beach.
Their deaths are the latest attributed
to the “curse” of Madoff, a former Nas-
daq chairman and wealth manager
who became the world’s biggest swind-
ler. He died from kidney disease in pris-on last year, aged 82, while serving a
150-year sentence for a fraud that
conned 37,000 people in 136 countries
out of their savings.
Madoff’s son Mark, 46, hanged him-
self in 2010. His other son, Andrew, 48,
died of lymphoma in 2014. Madoff and
his wife, Ruth, survived after they took
an overdose of pills on Christmas Eve
2008, three months before he pleaded
guilty in a New York court.
Palm Beach sheriff’s office did not
confirm which of the Wieners had fired
the fatal shots but said that the
husband’s side of the family had asked
to invoke Marsy’s Law, state legislation
that shields the name of a crime victim
from being released.Jacqui Goddard Miami