OPINION — “As I have already said, we favored Mr. Biden, the current President, but they took him out of the race. That said, he advised his supporters to support Ms. Harris. So, we will act accordingly and lend her our support…She has a very contagious laughter, which shows that everything is fine for her. And if this is the case…Take Trump – no other President has ever imposed so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia. But if everything is so great for Ms. Harris, maybe she would refrain from acting this way?”
That was Russian President Vladimir Putin answering a reporter’s question last Thursday about his “preferred candidate” in November’s U.S. presidential election.
I’m quoting Putin because he clearly put out a bit of misinformation during a week in which the public has been confronted with misinformation stories and their threat to the upcoming election from a variety of sources, including Justice Department indictments, which I will discuss below.
As for Putin’s alleged support for Harris, I turn to former President Donald Trump, who last Saturday in a Mosinee, Wisconsin rally claimed, “I knew Putin, I know him well. I don’t know if you saw he endorsed Kamala. I was very offended by that. I wonder why he endorsed Kamala? No, he’s a chess player. He endorsed Kamala. Should I be upset about that? No. Was it done with a smile…I think it was done with a smile. Who the hell knows?”
The first indictment
More serious in terms of Russian disinformation were the Justice Department indictments announced publicly last week.
One involved the seizure of 32 internet domains that had been used by the Russian government and Russian government-sponsored actors to engage in foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as “Doppelgänger.” Since 2022, under the direction and control of the Russian Presidential Administration, Doppelganger attempted “to reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster pro-Russian policies, and influence voters in U.S. and foreign elections by posing as citizens of those countries, impersonating legitimate news outlets, and peddling Russian government propaganda under the guise of independent media brands,” according to the indictment.
To evade detection, Doppelganger created sophisticated so-called cybersquatted domains, which meant registering names that are identical or confusingly similar to well-known brands. In this case, the Russians used names similar to legitimate news outlets such as Fox News, CNN and The Washington Post, as well as others.
In general, according to the indictment, the cybersquatted domains used similar layout and design, as well as logos of the legitimate media, and attributed false articles found on the cybersquatted domain to real journalists with the journalists’ photos and bylines.
One cybersquatted domain described in the indictment is washingtonpost[.]pm, nearly identical to washingtonpost.com, the real website — but that Russian-originated website has been taken down.
According to the indictment, FBI agents located six articles published on Doppelganger’s washingtonpost[.]pm, one of which was headlined, “White House Miscalculated: Conflict with Ukraine Strengthens Russia.” It purported to be authored by a Washington Post reporter and stated in part, “It is time for our leaders to recognize that continued support for Ukraine is a mistake. It was a waste of lives and money, and to claim otherwise only means further destruction. For the sake of everyone involved in the conflict, the Biden administration should just make a peace agreement and move,” according to the indictment.
To distribute such material, Doppelganger created U.S. citizens or other non-Russians on social media who then posted comments on social media platforms with links to the cybersquatted-generated stories such as the one above, to trick viewers into believing they were visiting a legitimate news outlet.
One internal Russian document, according to the indictment, envisioned “the creation of social media profiles posing as American citizens ‘living in a small town,’ which would post comments linking to the article in order to influence the views of actual American voters. That document also provided suggested English-language comments for use in distributing the article on social media.”
Another component of Doppelganger, and part of this first indictment, started in the fall of 2023 and specifically targeted the 2024 U.S. federal elections. It was called “The Good Old U.S.A. Project,” And according to the planning document for the project, “The U.S. should target their effort towards addressing its domestic issues instead of wasting money in Ukraine and other ‘problem’ regions.”
The document described the Democrats as “U.S. Political Party B,” and as being in power and “trying to maintain the current foreign policy priorities, and the Republicans as “U.S. Political Party A,” in opposition and “criticizing these priorities.”
The Russian document says, “It makes sense for Russia to put maximum effort to ensure that the U.S. Political Party A point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of Candidate A or one of his current internal party opponents) wins over the U.S. public opinion.” Candidate A refers to Donald Trump.
The document described the proposed position as “provisions on peace in Ukraine in exchange for territories, the need to focus on the problems of the US economy, returning troops from all over the world, etc.” It’s a list fairly close to Trump’s own positions.
No surprise, then, that the goal listed for The Good Old U.S.A. Project in the document is “To secure victory of a U.S. Political Party A candidate [Trump]…at the US Presidential elections to be held in November of 2024.”
Target: the swing states
The Russian document also named specific U.S. audiences in six swing states to be targeted through social media groups, social media advertising, and influencers. Other target audiences listed were “residents of conservative states where traditional values are strong…U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent, American Jews, [and] Community of American gamers, users of Reddit and image boards, such as 4chan (the ‘backbone’ of the right-wing trends in the US segment of the Internet),” according to the indictment.
The document specifically referred to content to be distributed as “bogus stories disguised as newsworthy events,” as well as “text comments and memes” on Facebook, Instagram, and X (Twitter), which it described as “resources free from “democratic censorship” and “the main channels to influence the target audience of the project.”
The second indictment
A second Justice Department indictment last Wednesday charged two Russian employees of RT [Russia Today] with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and conspiracy in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russia Today was forced to cease formal operations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The federal indictment stated that in November 2023, two RT employees launched a U.S. Tennessee-based company, which they called Tenet Media, which would feed material into American conservative social media platforms. As part of the operation, they hired some already popular conservative influencers, apparently without letting them know that Russian money was financing the operation. According to the indictment, their company has produced and distributed nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone.
According to The Wall Street Journal, “Tenet…reportedly attracted the attention of prominent Americans, including billionaire Elon Musk, who on his platform X, interacted with several of the influencers more than 100 times.”
Although much has been written about this effort, for me the operation also showed Russia’s sense of irony because the name they chose for this misinformation startup is also the surname for past CIA Director George Tenet.
A third indictment
Another serious Justice Department indictment, released last Thursday, involved Dimitri Simes, a well-known Washington figure who emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1970s from the Soviet Union. He later became a U.S citizen and an informal foreign policy advisor to former President Richard Nixon. In 1994 Simes became president of the Washington-based Nixon Center, a think-tank Nixon founded, which has since changed its name to the Center for the Public Interest. Simes left the Center in 2022.
During the 2016 election, Simes helped arrange Presidential-candidate Trump’s early foreign policy speech and introduced him when he delivered it at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak attended the event. Simes was a Trump 2016 campaign advisor and informally advised President Trump when he was in office.
According to last week’s indictment, back in May 2018, Simes signed with Channel One Russia, a state-controlled television channel for which he agreed to serve as host of a program eventually called “The Great Game.” As part of that contract, Channel One Russia also provided Simes with a salary of $67,814 a month, business-class tickets to and from Washington and Moscow, and health insurance.
On May 8, 2022, Channel One Russia was sanctioned by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) which made it illegal for anyone to do business with it without getting a specific license. Since that time Simes has received more than $1 million, according to the indictment.
Simes recently has been living in Moscow where he has “a personal car and driver, a stipend for an apartment in Moscow, Russia, and a team of 10 employees from Channel One Russia following its designation by OFAC,” according to the indictment.
These three indictments, taken together, serve as a sign that the Biden administration takes seriously the threat of Russian-originated misinformation. Coming in the midst of a presidential campaign in which one candidate, Trump, has clearly shown tendencies toward Russian positions and President Putin individually, the administration’s actions could be called “political” by its critics.
In another sense, the misinformation allegations raise First Amendment issues.
We have entered dangerous territory for democracy.
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