A couple weeks ago I learned that Rausch, while the subject of a federal grand jury investigation, left the country by returning to the US Army reserves, and deploying to East Africa. His deployment coincides with his attacks and seems to have begun as soon as he arrived on base.
What is Rausch doing when he's not attacking American journalists? He's the Information Operations Team Chief, managing a propaganda campaign for the Army that includes leaflets dropped on foreign soil and the monitoring of social media posts by enemies of the state.
The Army's Information Operations units are intimidating. Their missions include psychological warfare, military deception, and electronic warfare. And while managing a propaganda campaign for the Army, I believe Rausch was simultaneously managing one against free American citizens to his own benefit.
Among other things, I believe he created fake twitter accounts and Reddit handles which were used to spread misinformation about the allegations against him in DC and the journalist who reported it.. If this is true, and he did it while acting as a project manager for an Army propaganda campaign, Rausch is in a whole lot of trouble.
In recent months, coworkers at Camp Lemonnier have accused Rausch of abusive and vindictive behavior, with one telling me, "I looked into his eyes and what I saw terrified me." He has been accused of transferring people off base who knew about the allegations against him in DC. This shows a pattern of behavior that can be traced back to Maura Murray, whose friends were actively trying to get her to break up with him, sighting his controlling and abusive behavior.
Here are a couple examples of the sort of social media misinformation Rausch has spread since he was deployed. All of this is untrue. Rausch and I had a cordial relationship, speaking on the phone and via email, until the woman he attacked came forward and I reported on it. I stopped by his parents' place once, at the beginning of my reporting, to speak to his mother. That conversation was cordial as well. Last night he tweeted out my unlisted phone number and was immediately locked out of Twitter for violating terms of service.
