Tag: Russian election interference

Boyfriend of admitted Russian agent charged with fraud

A Facebook image shows Maria Butina, the girlfriend of Paul Erickson who pleaded guilty to infiltrating American politics as an undeclared Russian agent. Erickson has been indicted in South Dakota for an investment fraud scheme unrelated to her case. Obtained by The Washington Post

The American boyfriend of an admitted Russian influence agent has been indicted in South Dakota for what prosecutors say was an unrelated investment fraud scheme.

Paul Erickson became the subject of public interest after his girlfriend, Maria Butina, was charged last year and pleaded guilty to conspiring with a senior Russian official to infiltrate American conservative political circles as an undeclared agent for the Kremlin.

Butina, 30, agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of a plea deal that will probably see her sent back to her native Russia. According to her plea deal, Butina began acting on behalf of the Russian government in 2015 and continued her work after moving to the United States to attend graduate school at American University in 2016.

View the complete February 6 article by Devlin Barrett and Rosalind Helderman on The Washington Post website here.

New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep

Some of the Facebook ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process and stir up tensions around divisive social issues. Credit: Jon Elswick, AP

The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to analyze the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.

The report, obtained by The Washington Post before its official release Monday, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel also released a second independent report studying the 2016 election Monday. Lawmakers said the findings “do not necessarily represent the views” of the panel or its members.

The first report — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details of how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for interfering in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.

View the complete December 17 article by Craig Timberg and Tony Romm on The Washington Post website here.

Roger Stone Sold Himself to Trump’s Campaign as a WikiLeaks Pipeline. Was He?

Senior Trump campaign officials have told investigators that they viewed Roger J. Stone Jr. as a conduit to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. Credit: Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — When the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, appeared on a video link from Europe a month before the 2016 presidential election and vaguely promised to release a flood of purloined documents related to the race, the head of Donald J. Trump’s campaign, Stephen K. Bannon, was interested.

He emailed the political operative Roger J. Stone Jr., who had been trying to reach him for days about what Mr. Assange might have in store. “What was that this morning???” Mr. Bannon asked on Oct. 4.

“A load every week going forward,” Mr. Stone replied, echoing Mr. Assange’s public vow to publish documents on a weekly basis until the Nov. 8 election.

View the complete November 1 article by Sharon LaFraniere, Michale Schmidt, Maggie Haberman and Danny Hakim on the New York Times website here.

Russian woman charged with interfering in midterm elections

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday charged a Russian woman with participating in a conspiracy to influence next month’s midterm elections, underlying the degree to which Moscow is seeking to interfere in the United States.

The timing of the complaint, which was unsealed as U.S. intelligence officials issued a warning on foreign influence campaigns, sends a dire message to voters on the scope of the efforts to sway U.S. opinion, even as no evidence points to interference with U.S. election infrastructure.

“We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies,” the joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security said. “These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections.”

View the complete October 19 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on the Hill website here.

McConnell actually helped cover up Russia’s interference for Trump

A new book reveals how Sen. Mitch McConnell sought to undermine the CIA as it tried to address Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election.

Mitch McConnell, R-KY., 2018. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

A new book reveals further details of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) attempts to undermine the CIA as it raised alarms about Russian attempts to help Trump in the 2016 election.

Russia directly interfered in the 2016 election to influence the outcome. The Russian regime, at the direction of leader Vladimir Putin, sought to help Trump’s campaign and deny Hillary Clinton the presidency.

And the Trump campaign, at its highest levels, met with Russian operatives as it sought dirt on Clinton.

View the complete October 2 article by Oliver Willis on the ShareBlue.com website here.

Mueller’s ‘speaking indictments’ offer clues to strategy

The following article by Morgan Chalfant was posted on the Hill website August 24, 2018:

Special counsel Robert Mueller has made use of an unusual legal tool that has allowed him to build a narrative about Russian interference in the presidential election while quietly pressing forward with his investigation behind the scenes.

Mueller has made frequent use of “speaking indictments” — a colloquial term used by attorneys and legal experts to describe indictments that go into more detail, and provide more facts, than what is required under law.

“A speaking indictment comes from the idea that the indictment does more than that — it speaks, it tells a story,” said Jack Sharman, a former special counsel to Congress during the Whitewater investigation.

View the complete article here.

Microsoft Says Russian Operation Targeted U.S. Conservative Groups As Midterms Loom

The following article by Colin Dwyer and Sasha Ingber was posted on the NPR.org website August 21, 2018:

Credit: Raphael Satter, AP

Updated at 11:44 a.m. ET

A familiar cyberattack suspect linked with the Russian intelligence service has resurfaced in the months leading up to the U.S. midterm elections, according to Microsoft. The tech giant announced overnight that last week it executed a court order to disrupt six fraudulent websites set up by a hacker group known by many names — most often APT28, but also Fancy Bear or Strontium, among others.

The unit has been associated with the Russian spy agency GRU and blamed for a raft of high-profile hacks across the world in recent years — including the breaches of the Democratic National Committee’s network during the 2016 presidential election.

In this case, Microsoft says the group established a half-dozen domains meant to be confused with two conservative groups, the U.S. Senate and even Microsoft’s own suite of products. Two of those targets, the nonprofit International Republican Institute and the Hudson Institute research center, have criticized the Kremlin.

View the complete article here.

There’s a big tell in Trump’s latest defense of Donald Jr.

The following commentary by Greg Sargent was posted on the Washington Post website August 13, 2018:

Despite President Trump’s tweets, meeting with a foreign power to get ‘dirt’ is not opposition research, argues deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

President Trump has spent the past year and a half emphatically declaring that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, adamantly and angrily insisting that any suggestion to the contrary is nothing but a “hoax.”

Trump is now trying out a new line, which looks a little something like this: There was “no collusion” … “to the best of my knowledge.”

The Post has a remarkable piece reporting that Donald Trump Jr.’s presence on the campaign trail is in major demand among GOP candidates. Trump Jr. energizes the Trump base, in spite of the fact — or rather because of the fact — that he may be in legal jeopardy, as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III scrutinizes Trump Jr.’s role in the Trump Tower meeting and its aftermath. For many Trump voters who have been relentlessly told that Mueller is leading a “deep-state coup” against the president, Trump Jr. represents a galvanizing, heroic figure who is both resisting and getting unfairly persecuted by that coup.

View the complete article here.

Want to Know More About … the Mueller Investigation

John Berman: “This May Be The Last Best Chance For President Trump To Get Face To Face With Robert Muller, At Least According To Rudy Giuliani.”

JOHN BERMAN: “This may be the last best chance for President Trump to get face to face with Robert Muller, at least according to Rudy Giuliani. The Trump legal team has submitted this new offer of terms to the special counsel on just how the president would be willing to answer questions in the Russian investigation. “ [New Day, CNN, 8/9/18;Video]

John Berman: “For A Man That Is No Stranger To High Profile Interviews, This Really Could Be The Highest Stakes Yet For The President If It Ever Happens Which Is Honestly A Major Doubt. What His Team Is Mostly Concerned About Is The President Could Get Caught Lying.”

JOHN BERMAN: “For a man that is no stranger to high profile interviews, this really could be the highest stakes yet for the president if it ever happens which is honestly a major doubt. What his team is mostly concerned about is the president could get caught lying. They want to limit the scope of questions as much as humanly possible to avoid what they call a perjury trap. Giuliani says the investigation he wants it to end in the next three weeks, that Mueller has all the information he needs but if the probe drags on till November, Giuliani they says that Republicans will be the ones to benefit politically that’s his claim.” [New Day, CNN, 8/9/18; Video] Continue reading “Want to Know More About … the Mueller Investigation”

President Admits Trump Tower Meeting Was Meant to Get Dirt on Clinton Image

The following article by Michael D. Shear and Michael S. Schmidt was posted on the New York Times website August 5, 2018:

President Trump with son Donald Jr. Mr. Trump denied a report he is worried about the legal exposure for his son, who hosted a June 2016 meeting between some of Mr. Trump’s top campaign advisers and a Kremlin-connected lawyer. Credit: Samuel Corum for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Sunday that a Trump Tower meeting between top campaign aides and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was designed to “get information on an opponent” — the starkest acknowledgment yet that a statement he dictated last year about the encounter was misleading.

Mr. Trump made the comment in a tweet on Sunday morning that was intended to be a defense of the June 2016 meeting and the role his son Donald Trump Jr. played in hosting it. The president claimed that it was “totally legal” and of the sort “done all the time in politics.”

But the tweet also served as an admission that the Trump team had not been forthright when Donald Trump Jr. issued a statement in July 2017 saying that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children.

View the complete article here.