went from zero to 100 in a condensed period. over 24 hours, we saw it promoted heavily by accounts that we've seen historically associated with russian disinformation campaigns. >> jonathan morgan is the ceo of new knowledge. digital media experts who monitor the internet looking for things like suspicious hash tags to help online communities defend themselves from outside manipulation. his team saw release the memo picked up so much momentum that it began capturing the attention of a major media organization in part because of bots or automated accounts. >> i'd go so far as to say the release the memo hash tag was more important than the memo itself in creating this air of suspicious around the mueller investigation and i think that's ultimately the goal is to create the idea that something might be wrong to give people the impression that where there's smoke, there's probably fire. >> reporter: now with the men yoel old news, researchers say