This past Wednesday, a group of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee presented an amendment calling for an investigation into alleged misconduct on the parts of Hillary Clinton and James Comey. It was a way to frustrate Democrats, but, more than that, it provided an opportunity to publicly discuss their very favorite thing: the many bygone misdeeds of Crooked Hillary. The amendment may sound to some readers like it's been ripped out of a conspiracy forum, because that's exactly what happened.

Sponsored by first-term Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), the amendment itself sought to hijack what began as a resolution from Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) asking for information about Comey's firing. In response to Jayapal's proposal, Gaetz and a few fellow Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee effectively replaced the Democrats' resolution with one of their own. The new amendment (which you can read in its entirety here) asks for an investigation into things like "the propriety and consequence of immunity deals given to possible Hillary Clinton co-conspirators" and "James B. Comey’s refusal to investigate then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding" a number of matters, including many of which may have come directly from r/The_Donald.

Thursday night, three Twitter users discovered that a staffer for one of the resolution’s sponsors attempted to crowdsource a number of the resolution's salient points from r/The_Donald, a subreddit notorious for playing host to unfounded conspiracy theories and anti-Islam tendencies. In other words, not a conventional source of legislative inspiration.

"If the purpose of oversight investigations is to get to the truth," one longtime legislative staffer explained, "then using baseless conspiracies as your starting point is completely counterproductive to a direct investigation."

Devinm666

Three Twitter users—@regress_ceej, @espressoself, and @TrashWeightlift—first identified the possibility that a staffer was using Reddit for legislative CliffsNotes, after Reddit user and frequent r/The_Donald visitor Devinm666's unique comment history caught their attention. Though the account has since been deleted, it included threads like this one:

Reddit

The insider references to subpoenas, the legislative process, and working in Congress (as well as allusions to taking down Crooked H) prompted some additional digging. The three Reddit sleuths then saw that Devinm666 had actively solicited other r/The_Donald members for assistance with the upcoming amendment. Representative Gaetz has confirmed that that Devinm666 is in fact legislative aide Devin Murphy.