A right-wing 501(c)(4) organization funded by Robert Mercer tried to make an ad on behalf of Ted Cruz that would have featured a man pretending to be Iranian President Hassan Rouhani endorsing his Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke. They posted an ad for a voiceover artist to impersonate Rouhani, but the company pulled the ad because it was fraudulent.





A neoconservative foreign policy group appeared to try and get audio recorded claiming erroneously that Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s (D-TX) Senate campaign was endorsed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The campaign appears to have not made it into production, and maybe never will, as the site where the group posted a call for voice actors took down the solicitation on the grounds that the script was clearly false. Before it was removed, a screenshot of that posting—which was made on the website Voicebunny in August—was provided to The Daily Beast on an anonymous tip line. According to the posting, the company producing the ad was “trying to do a voice dubbing of the Iranian President, so the voiceover needs to sound middle eastern and stern.”

This was the script for the ad:

“Hello, I am Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the script read. “Today, it is my pleasure to endorse Beto O’Rourke for U.S. Senate. As a Congressman, Beto was a strong supporter of President Obama’s Iran Deal—which gave billions of dollars to my country of Iran.”

And the evidence of who is behind it:

However, both the anonymous source and certain elements of the request suggest strongly that it could have been made by the group Secure America Now, an organization with financial ties to some major donors in the 2016 presidential election. According to the source, who had access to requests for voice auditions, the ID number associated with the listing, “26655,” matches a number of previous listings that include references to “SAN” or, in one instance in 2014, “Secure America Now: Benghazi.” The same source noted that client 26655 had 17 prior projects completed on the platform, which is visible in the screenshot.

This group is funded by Robert Mercer, who also was the primary benefactor for Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Cambridge Informatics, the group that pulled all sorts of illegal things during the 2016 campaign. This should tell you how incredibly desperate the Republicans are to keep Cruz in office and how seriously they’re taking the challenge from O’Rourke. Cruz is out there lying and claiming that he would ban BBQ in Texas if elected, making dishonest commercials making it falsely look like O’Rourke supports flag burning, and now this. Sounds like a great reason to vote for O’Rourke and send a donation to his campaign.

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