Fake News Delivers Real Gunman to Pizzeria Caught Up in Alt-Right Conspiracy Treory

The real-life consequences of a made-up conspiracy theory swirling around a popular D.C. pizzeria became all too real when a gunman walked into the venue Sunday afternoon.

During the presidential campaign, some elements of the alt-right began fueling the conspiracy that Comet Ping Pong was in fact the site of a pedeophilia ring used by high-ranking members of the Democratic Party, deeming that supposed conspiracy “Pizzagate.”

The D.C. Police Department announced that a 28-year-old man from Salisbury N.C. armed with an assault rifle had been taken into custody outside the kid-friendly pizza and music venue. Witnesses say that man, who’s yet to be named, went through the restaurant carrying the gun and tried to enter a staff area in the back of the building. He reportedly fired multiple shots inside, though no one was injured.

One employee speculated that the gunman was looking for the supposed tunnels where children were stashed and tortured, according to the conspiracy theory. That “theory” came from hacked private email exchanges including Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta that were and published by WikiLeaks in troves during the final weeks of the presidential elections.

Conspiracists began seizing on pizza-related emails in the leaks, suggesting that it was evidence of something nefarious and arguing that ”pizza” was actually a code for illegal sex trafficking. An email Podesta received about pizza at Comet Ping Pong was about pedophilia, they reasoned.

The conspiracy is untrue and easily disprovable. For example, the sex ring is supposed to be run out of the restaurant’s basement, but the owner told the BBC “We don’t even have a basement.”

The fake news began proliferating on websites like 4chan and Reddit, especially a Reddit forum frequented by Trump supporters and the alt-right. The Reddit community ‘Pizzagate,’ created for the purpose of discussing the supposed conspiracy, was banned recently because individuals began posting personal and confidential information there. The fake news became so prominent that even Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who Donald Trump has chosen to be his National Security Adviser, shared the story on his Twitter account.

The conspiracy theory prompted a flood of threats into Comet Ping Pong. Death threats began arriving over texts, Facebook messages and on Twitter, The New York Times reported. One man, who has not yet been identified, apparently took the conspiracy theory seriously enough to go to the pizzeria himself.

“A lot of us saw he had a gun and we all started getting our families out,” Sharif Silmi, who was present during the incident, told Washingtonian. He later Tweeted that he held alt-right figures Roger Stone and Alex Jones “responsible for putting my family in danger today.”

Patrons may think twice about visiting the family-friendly venue now that an armed man has been taken into custody there. Just this week, the pizzeria announced that it would now have security at all its music concerts due to the threats it had received. Several staffers had left their jobs after pictures of their families were posted around the internet by conspiracists.

And for Podesta and other Democratic Party officials who have been fond of eating and holding fundraisers there, it is yet another slap in the face. They not only lost an eminently winnable presidential election, but now their favorite pizza parlor is under siege too and arguably for the same reason: fake news.