Tag: 2020 Russian election interference

Facebook Confirms Russia Is Intervening In 2020 Election

It’s no secret that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin are hoping that President Donald Trump will defeat his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in November — as they rightly view Trump as much more sympathetic to Russian interests. The Trump administration has already confirmed that they are intervening once again. And according to Facebook, Russian operatives are trying to manipulate U.S. voters this year on the social media platform just as they did during the 2016 presidential election.

CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan reports Facebook announced that a St. Petersburg, Russia-based troll group that interfered in the 2016 election, the Internet Research Agency, is trying to interfere in this year’s election as well. O’Sullivan notes that a “network of Facebook accounts and pages” that the social media platform removed was “set up to look and operate like a left-wing news outlet.” Facebook removed the Russian troll pages after receiving a tip from the FBI.

“This is the first publicly available evidence that people connected to the Russian troll group, which is known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), are using unwitting Americans in an attempt to meddle with the 2020 election and stir discord,” O’Sullivan reports. “The operation seems to have been shut down before it could get much traction on Facebook or the rest of the internet.” Continue reading.

Facebook takes down Russian operation that recruited U.S. journalists, amid rising concerns about election misinformation

Washington Post logo

The social media giant acted against a small network of pages and accounts that directed users to a fake left-leaning news site called Peace Data

Facebook removed a network of fake accounts and pages created by Russian operatives who had recruited U.S. journalists to write articles critical of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris, in an apparent bid to undermine their support among liberal voters.

Facebook said it caught the network of 13 fake accounts and two pages early, before it had a chance to build a large audience — an action that the company said was evidence of its growing effectiveness at targeting foreign disinformation operations ahead of the 2020 election. The takedown emerged as a result of a tip from the FBI and was one of a dozen operations tied to the Russian Internet Research Agency or individuals affiliated with it that Facebook has disrupted since the last presidential election, when IRA-backed pages amassed millions of views on the platform. The pages had about 14,000 followers.

“They’ve gotten better at hiding who they are, but their impact has gotten smaller and smaller,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said of the foreign operations. Continue reading.

Besieged on all sides, Ron Johnson says his probe ‘would certainly’ help Trump win reelection

A spokesman for Biden says “that Ron Johnson’s disgraceful conduct is the definition of malfeasance.”

Sen. Ron Johnson this week said his probe of Obama-era intelligence agencies would help President Donald Trump win reelection, igniting fury from Democrats who say it was an explicit admission he’s using his committee to damage Joe Biden’s candidacy for president.

“The more that we expose of the corruption of the transition process between Obama and Trump, the more we expose of the corruption within those agencies, I would think it would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden,” Johnson said in a little-noticed Tuesday interview with Minneapolis-based radio hosts Jon Justice and Drew Lee.

Democrats compared the remark to comments made in 2015 by House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who boasted that the Republican-led Benghazi investigation was successful because it had helped tank Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers. Facing sharp criticism, McCarthy later walked back those comments. Continue reading.

Ron Johnson signals some GOP senators concerned about his Obama-era probes

The Hill logo

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) signaled Wednesday that some Republican members on his committee have voiced concerns about his investigations related to the Obama administration and Hunter Biden, the son of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. 

Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, was asked during an interview with Fox News whether there are Republican senators on his panel who do not want him to subpoena former FBI Director James Comey. 

“I wasn’t going to name names. There are legitimate concerns, and, again, I was happy to try to obtain these documents on a voluntary basis,” Johnson said, asked about potential pushback from GOP members.  Continue reading.

A Bible Burning, a Russian News Agency and a Story Too Good to Check Out

New York Times logo

WASHINGTON — For some of President Trump’s loudest cheerleaders, it was a story too good to check out: Black Lives Matters protesters in Portland, Ore., had burned a stack of Bibles, and then topped off the fire with American flags. There was even a video to prove it.

The story was a near-perfect fit for a central Trump campaign talking point — that with liberals and Democrats comes godless disorder — and it went viral among Republicans within hours of appearing earlier this month. The New York Post wrote about it, as did The Federalist, saying that the protesters had shown “their true colors.” Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, said of the protesters, “This is who they are.” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, tweeted that antifa had moved to “the book burning phase.”

The truth was far more mundane. A few protesters among the many thousands appear to have burned a single Bible — and possibly a second — for kindling to start a bigger fire. None of the other protesters seemed to notice or care. Continue reading.