14 Facts About Pizzagate

Pizzagate is generally considered a predecessor to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, said that a disproportionate number of tweets about Pizzagate came from the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam, and that some of the most frequent retweeters were bots.

Some of Pizzagate's proponents, including David Seaman and Michael G Flynn, evolved the conspiracy into a broader government conspiracy called "Pedogate".

Pizzagate-related harassment of businesses extended beyond Comet Ping Pong to include other nearby DC businesses such as Besta Pizza, three doors down from Comet; Little Red Fox cafe; bookstore Politics and Prose; and French bistro, Terasol.

East Side Pies, in Austin, Texas, saw one of its delivery trucks vandalized with an epithet, and was the target of online harassment related to their supposed involvement in Pizzagate, alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Illuminati.

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Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Pizzagate-related threats in March 2017 as part of a probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

Pizzagate surrendered after officers surrounded the restaurant and was arrested without incident; no one was injured.

Pizzagate was charged with two additional offenses, with the grand jury returning an indictment charging him with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.

Pizzagate said he threatened Besta to "save the kids", and "finish what the other guy didn't".

Pizzagate had posted a video referencing QAnon prior to the arson.

Pizzagate said, "The epidemic of malicious fake news and fake propaganda that flooded social media over the past year, it's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences".

Pizzagate became a pillar of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017 and incorporated its beliefs.

In 2020, as the broader QAnon movement became an international phenomenon, Pizzagate gained new traction and became less US -centric in nature, with videos and posts on the topic in Italy, Brazil, Turkey and other countries worldwide each gaining millions of views.

Rotzank's video gained 3 million views in two days and led "Pizzagate" to become a trending topic on the Spanish-language Twitter.