Long before the riot at the Capitol and over two months before ‘Q Clearance Patriot’ would first appear on 4chan, the Internet Research Agency promoted a link to an obscure blog. A “fellow Patriot” of an IRA troll shared this blog post.

When that t.co link is unshortened, it leads here.

Upon visiting that page via the Wayback archives, readers are greeted by a rather odd header image.

Further down, we find a story that QAnon observers will find very familiar. I am going to present this material slightly out of order from how it is presented in this blog post.

“He” is a reference to Mueller, as we’ll see in the next screenshot. As @QOrigins found recently, there were a few lost ‘Q’ posts that contain additional claims by ‘Q’. Within those posts, ‘Q’ referred to the idea that Mueller was corrupt and not helping Trump voluntarily. That same idea is found above, as well as the now very familiar claim which alleged that Mueller was working with Trump.

In the first 4chan post, we find a prediction of upcoming arrests and indictments. We also are introduced to the idea that Manafort would not be indicted. I’m sure this rings some bells.

The phrase “there ARE more “good guys” than bad ones” might also ring some bells. It should. A nearly identical phrase is found in drop #4.

Referring back to the initial 4chan post we reviewed, you’ll also find a directive to “have faith,” just as Q directed in drop #4. Next, we find another directive to have faith and the assertion that Mueller is their guy and has been all along.

Much of the remainder of the blog post is lifted directly from another obscure blog, which is linked near the bottom of that page. It contains descriptions of members of Mueller’s team and is ultimately not the focus here.

The material above reads as a developing narrative, not yet in the nearly final form it would attain three months later. I must emphasize the word “nearly,” since even some of the later Q content would be lost and never mentioned again by Q. Thus, this narrative was still being refined as Q was telling it.

You may be unsurprised to learn that this blog site would go on to post about QAnon. The entire post is a copy/paste from 8chan which asserts that Q is the real deal.

This blog sprung to life in February 2017. A significant portion of the content that was included in various blog posts would reappear in Q posts. One blog post declared John McCain to be a traitor, just as Q would do in drop #732. Within that same blog post, a picture of McCain in a meeting in Syria is showcased. A variant of that same image, minus the text and red circles, appears in Q drop #732.

Two additional images within that blog post would later appear in Q drops. The image to the right is identical to the image Q posted and the one to the left is from a set of outdoor pictures which Q also sampled from. Q did not include the border or the top and bottom text.

In the earlier referenced Q drop #732, Q links to a donor list on the McCain Foundation’s website. The Cyrus Report links to the same URL in this blog post. The post also references Lynn Forester De Rothschild, the very same individual that Q referenced repeatedly. Much of the content in the second half that blog post was lifted directly from the second half of this Your News Wire post with very little alterations. Your News Wire posted those allegations the day before The Cyrus Report.

On November 5, 2017, Your News Wire would falsely allege that Tony Podesta had been arrested the day before and arrest warrants had been issued for Hillary Clinton and John Podesta. This matched the prediction that Q made in drop #34, wherein Q claimed, “On POTUS’ order, we have initiated certain fail-safes that shall safeguard the public from the primary fallout which is slated to occur 11.3 upon the arrest announcement of Mr. Podesta (actionable 11.4)” (emphasis added). The supposed events would also fulfill the general premise of Hillary Clinton being arrested, as Q indicated.

It just so happens that Your News Wire is known to experts in the US and Europe to be a proxy outlet for Russian disinformation. It also so happens that their false story was published around two weeks before any major US outlets would begin reporting on QAnon.

The Cyrus Report has had several accounts on Twitter, none of which are @TheCyrusReport, which is a Miley Cyrus fan account. The since-suspended Twitter accounts from 2017-18 are the @RealCyrusReport and @OnlyCyrusReport. Before the handle was updated to @OnlyCyrusReport, it was initially @Cyrus_Report. All three of these handles were promoted by the Russian troll operation.

The t.co URL in the final screenshot leads to a @cyrus_report tweet. As shown throughout this piece, the Russian trolls were promoting content from The Cyrus Report both before and after Q. We also find that The Cyrus Report was using QAnon hashtags at least as early as November 12, 2017.

The Cyrus Report also had posts about “Clinton Corruption and Associated Pedophiles“, Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, Seth Rich being the perpetrator of the DNC theft, and even a mention of the Deep State and the Kraken. Within the last linked post, there was even an assertion that “Enormous raids are netting illegal gangsters and American pedophiles at a rate never before seen.”

For those who have already read my earlier pieces on QAnon, the images we’ve covered in this piece are likely very familiar to you. For those who have not, I would certainly recommend clicking through, as this imagery was promoted by the Russian trolls before QAnon. Some of these talking points also appear within that piece.

Couple all that we’ve covered here and in the earlier piece with the fact that the IRA trolls interacted with Tracy Beanz before Q appeared and then immediately promoted her first video about Q. This narrative existed before Q. It continues to exist even when Q doesn’t post. And it will likely adapt and continue existing if Q never posts again. It was never quite as dependent on this Q persona as some might otherwise think.