Tag: Russian election interference

Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

New York Times logoMoscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.

WASHINGTON — Republicans have sought for weeks amid the impeachment inquiry to shift attention to President Trump’s demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit.

The Republican defense of Mr. Trump became central to the impeachment proceedings when Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating “a fictional narrative.” She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it.

In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.

View the complete November 22 article by Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg on The New York Times website here.

Inaction by U.K. and Allies Over Russian Meddling in U.S. Elections Emboldened Russia: Report

Inaction by the United Kingdom and some of its allies after Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections may have emboldened Russia, according to a new report by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The report says British members of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) were told that the failure to respond to the meddling by the U.K. and some of its allies may have led to grave acts, including the poisonings of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in March 2018. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is now suing the British government for access to the ISC committee report on potential Russian interference into its own upcoming election. Prime Minister Boris Johnson blocked the publication of the report until after elections next month despite a final clearance and vetting being given for its release.

View the November 16 article by Barbie Latz Nadeau on the Daily Beast website here.

Roger Stone joins the remarkable universe of criminality surrounding President Trump

Washington Post logoOn Friday, President Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone was found guilty on seven criminal charges related to testimony he gave to Congress as part of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Those charges included five counts of offering false statements, one of obstruction and one of witness tampering. Stone is scheduled to be sentenced early next year.

Stone was with Trump at the very beginning of the president’s time in politics. In fact, Stone long pushed Trump to enter into the political world, encouraging him repeatedly to announce presidential bids in previous cycles. He was sidelined during Trump’s 2016 run after either quitting or being fired; as with many things related to Stone, details are murky.

Friday’s convictions seem to bring to an end the high-profile criminal probes stemming from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The convictions also contribute to a truly remarkable universe of admitted, proved or alleged criminal behavior involving people linked to Trump.

View the complete November 15 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Roger Stone Trial Testimony Ends With Talk of Outreach to Jared Kushner

WASHINGTON — Testimony in the colorful trial of Roger Stone — featuring talk of dognapping and Godfather references — wrapped up Tuesday with a top Trump campaign official telling jurors that Stone tried to contact Jared Kushner to “debrief” him about hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

While Stone’s trial in Washington didn’t produce the bombshells about President Donald Trump that some expected, the testimony over the last week reinforced that those at the highest ranks of the Trump campaign were eager to gather information about WikiLeaks’ plan to release the damaging emails and saw Stone — who had repeatedly inferred he had inside information about those plans — as the best person to gather that intelligence.

Stone, a longtime Trump friend and ally, is charged with witness tampering and lying to Congress about his attempts to contact WikiLeaks about the damaging material during the 2016 presidential campaign.

View the complete November 12 article on the Time website here.

Roger Stone trial: Former top Trump official details campaign’s dealings on WikiLeaks, and suggests Trump was in the know

Washington Post logoRoger Stone was the linchpin of a months-long effort by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to discover damaging information on Hillary Clinton to be released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, an effort that began before the hack of Democratic emails was publicly known, Stone’s trial has shown.

Testimony over four days ending Tuesday also revealed engagement by Trump and top aides in making use of Stone’s claims that he knew emails detrimental to Clinton’s campaign would be released.

The trial in federal court in Washington turns on accusations that Stone lied to Congress about his attempts to learn more about what WikiLeaks would publish and when it would do so. But some testimony also raises questions about the president’s written assertions under oath that he did not recall being aware of communications between Stone and WikiLeaks or recall any conversations about WikiLeaks between Stone and members of his campaign.

View the complete November 12 article by Spencer S. Hsu, Rachel Weiner and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.

Ex-Trump campaign official testifies Stone gave updates on WikiLeaks email dumps

The Hill logoPresident Trump‘s former deputy campaign manager told a jury on Tuesday that Roger Stone was giving the campaign updates on WikiLeaks’s plans to release damaging emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s campaign chairman.

Richard Gates, who is facing up to ten years in prison under a plea agreement for various fraud charges, testified in Stone’s criminal trial on Tuesday, saying that the longtime Trump associate was telling the campaign about WikiLeaks’s plans as early as April 2016, months before the DNC had announced it was hacked.

It had not been previously known that Stone was updating the campaign about WikiLeaks that early.

View the complete November 12 article by Harper Neidig on The Hill website here.

Stone Trial Links Trump More Closely to 2016 Effort to Obtain Stolen Emails

New York Times logoNewly revealed calls between President Trump and Roger Stone dovetailed with key developments in the theft of Democratic emails, prosecutors said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump was more personally involved in his campaign’s effort to obtain Democratic emails stolen by Russian operatives in 2016 than was previously known, phone records introduced in federal court on Wednesday suggested.

Federal prosecutors disclosed the calls at the start of the criminal trial of Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longtime friend, who faces charges of lying to federal investigators about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. Russian intelligence officers had funneled tens of thousands of emails they stole from Democratic computers to WikiLeaks, which released them at critical points during the presidential race.

The records suggest that Mr. Trump spoke to Mr. Stone repeatedly during the summer of 2016, at a time when Mr. Stone was aggressively seeking to obtain the stolen emails from Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. The prosecutors noted that they did not know what Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump had discussed. But they stressed that the timing of their calls dovetailed with other key developments related to the theft and release of the Democratic emails.

View the complete November 6 article by Sharon LaFraniere on The New York Times website here.

Prosecutor says Roger Stone lied ‘because the truth looked bad for Donald Trump’

Washington Post logoProsecutors fired their opening salvo Wednesday in the trial of Roger Stone, tying the combative political consultant directly to President Trump by revealing a series of 2016 phone calls that they said showed Stone later lied to Congress “because the truth looked bad for Donald Trump.”

Stone’s lawyer, in turn, argued that his client never meant to lie to lawmakers about his efforts to gain insights about Democrats’ hacked emails ahead of the presidential election. In an unusual gambit, Stone’s lawyer Bruce S. Rogow argued that Stone’s public claims about connections to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks were false, and therefore he did not make false statements later to Congress.

Stone’s trial is the last case filed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and prosecutors wasted little time drawing a straight line from Stone’s alleged crimes to Trump’s political interests.

View the complete November 6 article by Spencer S. Hsu, Rachel Weiner and Devlin Barrett on The Washington Post website here.

African Americans top targets of 2016 Russian info warfare, Senate panel finds

Panel says campaigns, media outlets need to verify source of viral social media posts before sharing

The Senate Intelligence Committee has confirmed the extent of the Russian government’s expertise at exploiting racial divisions in America.

Among the key takeaways of the second volume of the committee’s study of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election is the extent to which minorities were targeted.

“No single group of Americans was targeted by [Internet Research Agency] information operatives more than African-Americans. By far, race and related issues were the preferred target of the information warfare campaign designed to divide the country in 2016,” the unclassified version of the report from the intelligence panel said.

View the complete October 8 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.

Senate Intel releases 2nd volume of report on 2016 Russian interference

Axios logoThe Senate Intelligence Committee released Tuesday the second volume of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which focuses on the social media disinformation campaign led by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency.

Why it matters: The report, which provides further bipartisan evidence of Russia’s election meddling in 2016, finds “the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.”

    • It also says that the IRA’s activities were “part of a broader, sophisticated, and ongoing information warfare campaign designed to sow discord in American politics and society” and that IRA activity increased, rather than decreased, after Election Day 2016.

View the complete October 8 article by Zachary Basu on the Axios website here.