13 Russians Indicted as Mueller
Reveals Effort to Aid Trump
Campaign
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, at the Capitol in
June. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times.
Matt Apuzzo and Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times Online Edition, February 16,
2018.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department charged 13 Russians and three companies
on Friday in a sprawling indictment that unveiled a sophisticated network designed to
subvert the 2016 election and to support the Trump campaign. It stretched from an
office in St. Petersburg, Russia, into the social feeds of Americans and ultimately
reached the streets of election battleground states.
The Russians stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political activists and
used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaign in
which those issues were already particularly divisive, prosecutors said.
Some of the Russians were also in contact with “unwitting individuals associated with
the Trump campaign,” according to court papers. Robert S. Mueller III, the special
counsel leading the investigation, made no accusation that President Trump or his
associates were knowingly part of the conspiracy.
"Russian Interference in U.S. Presidential Eections"
“The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the
United States and undermine public confidence in democracy,” Rod J. Rosenstein, the
deputy attorney general overseeing the inquiry, said in a brief news conference. “We
must not allow them to succeed.”
The 37-page indictment — handed up by a federal grand jury in Washington —
amounted to a detailed rebuttal of Mr. Trump, who has sowed doubts that Russia
interfered in the election and dismissed questions about its meddling as “fake news.”
The Justice Department said Mr. Mueller’s work was not complete. The indictment does
not address the hacking of Democratic email systems or whether Mr. Trump tried to
obstruct the F.B.I. investigation into Russian interference. Mr. Mueller is negotiating
with the president’s lawyers over the terms of a possible interview.
The Russian operation began four years ago, well before Mr. Trump entered the
presidential race, a fact that he quickly seized on in his defense. “Russia started their
anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President,” he
wrote on Twitter. “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign
did nothing wrong - no collusion!”
The Propaganda Tools Used by Russians to
Influence the 2016 Election
Thirteen Russian nationals have been charged with illegally trying to disrupt the
American political process through inflammatory social media posts and organized
political rallies.
But Mr. Trump’s statement ignored the government’s conclusion that, by 2016, the
Russians were “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J.
Trump” and disparaging Hillary Clinton, his opponent. Working out of the office in St.
Petersburg, the Russians described waging “information warfare against the United
States of America,” according to court documents.
Mr. Mueller has gathered extensive evidence of contacts between Russia and the Trump
campaign: Mr. Trump’s eldest son met with a Russian lawyer in hopes of receiving
political dirt on Mrs. Clinton; one adviser has admitted being tipped off in advance to
Russian hacking of Democratic emails; another was in contact with a Twitter account
used by Russian hackers; a federal judge found probable cause that a third adviser was
an unlawful Russian agent. And the Trump campaign repeatedly and falsely denied any
contacts with Russia.
Whether any of that violated federal law is the weightiest question facing Mr. Mueller,
and Friday’s indictment did not answer it. But it painted a picture of a Russian
operation that was multipronged, well financed and relentless.
Russian operatives traveled across the United States to gather intelligence and foment
political discord. They worked with an unidentified American who advised them to focus
their efforts on what they viewed as “purple” election battleground states, including
Colorado, Virginia and Florida, the indictment said.
In August 2016, prosecutors said, Russians posed as Americans and coordinated with
Trump campaign staff to organize rallies in Florida.
Such anecdotes are rare examples of how intelligence agencies work covertly to
influence political outcomes abroad. The C.I.A. has conducted such operations for
decades, but both Mr. Mueller’s indictment and an intelligence assessment last year
present a startling example — unprecedented in its scope and audacity — of a foreign
government working to help elect an American president.
The indictment does not explicitly say the Russian government sponsored the effort, but
American intelligence officials have publicly said that President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia directed and oversaw it. The indictment notes that two of the Russian firms
involved hold Russian government contracts.
“This is clearly a message document,” Robert S. Litt, the former general counsel to the
director of national intelligence, said of the indictment. “Mueller wants to end the
debate over whether there was Russian interference in the election.”
The Russian nationals were accused of working with the Internet Research Agency,
which had a budget of millions of dollars and was designed to reach millions of
Americans. The defendants were charged with carrying out a massive fraud against the
American government and conspiring to obstruct enforcement of federal laws.
None of the defendants were arrested — Russia does not generally extradite its citizens
to the United States. But prosecutors use such indictments to name and shame
operatives, making it harder for them to work undetected in the future. If they travel
abroad, they risk capture and extradition.
Russian computer specialists, divided into day teams and night teams, created hundreds
of social media accounts that eventually attracted hundreds of thousands of online
followers. They posed as Christian activists, anti-immigration groups and supporters of
the Black Lives Matter movement. One account posed as the Tennessee Republican
Party and generated hundreds of thousands of followers, prosecutors said.
Separate divisions of the Internet Research Agency were in charge of graphics, data
analysis and information technology, according to the indictment.
“I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by
their people,” one of the Russians, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, wrote as the operation
was being unmasked.
Their tasks included undermining Mrs. Clinton by supporting her Democratic primary
campaign rival, Bernie Sanders, prosecutors said. Those instructions were detailed in
internal documents: “Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except
Sanders and Trump — we support them).” Mr. Mueller identified 13 digital
advertisements paid for by the Russian operation. All of them attacked Mrs. Clinton or
promoted Mr. Trump.
TRANSCRIPT
0:00/5:03
Inside Russia’s Network of
Bots and Trolls
How do bots and trolls work to infiltrate social media platforms and influence U.S.
elections? We take a closer look at these insidious online pests to explain how they
work.
They hide behind Twitter hashtags, Facebook ads and fake news stories.
They’re the work of bots and trolls, and one of the most skilled
countries at deploying them is Russia. So how do these entities actually
work to spread disinformation? We asked two experts. This is St.
Petersburg-based activist Ludmila Savchuk. She has tracked
disinformation campaigns and even gone undercover to learn how they
work. And this is Ben Nimmo, a London-based analyst who focuses on
information warfare. Let’s define what’s what. A bot is short for robot.
It’s an automated social media account that operates without human
intervention. During the 2016 presidential election, suspected Russian
operators created bots on Twitter to promote hashtags like
#WarAgainstDemocrats. A troll is an actual human being, motivated by
passion or a paycheck to write social media posts that push an agenda.
In 2015, Savchuk worked undercover for over two months at a troll
factory in Russia that has gone by many names, including Glavset and
the Internet Research Agency. Troll accounts are usually anonymous or
pretend to be someone else, like hipsters or car repairmen. But it can
even get stranger. Trolls can also set up bots to amplify a message.
Facebook is one common platform for Russian trolls and bots, which, in
2016, used fake accounts to influence U.S. elections. Here’s how some
experts think that played out. American officials suspect Russian
intelligence agents of using phishing attacks to obtain emails damaging
to the Hillary Clinton campaign. They then, allegedly, created a site
called DCLeaks.com to publish them. A troll on Facebook, using the
name Melvin Redick, was one of the first to hype the site, saying it
contained the “hidden truth about Hillary Clinton.” An army of bots on
Twitter then promoted the DC Leaks, and in one case, even drove a
#HillaryDown hashtag into a trending topic. Facebook believes that ads
on divisive issues created by Russian trolls were shown to Americans
over four million times before the elections. Russian-linked trolls and
bots also tried to exploit divisive issues and undermine faith in public
institutions. Federal investigators and experts believed Russian trolls
created Facebook groups like Blacktivist, which reposted videos of
police beatings, or another, Secured Borders, which organized antiimmigrant
rallies in real life. “Today, Russia hopes to win the second
Cold War through the force of politics as opposed to the politics of
force.” How can you stop them? You can’t. Even Vladimir Putin seems
to agree. But ID’ing their tactics helps contain their influence. If a
suspicious account is active during the workday in St. Petersburg or
posting dozens of items a day, those are red flags. Decode the
anonymity. Look for alphanumeric scrambles in a user’s name, and try
Googling its profile picture. Look at the language. If an account makes
grammar mistakes typical for Russian speakers, or changes behavior
during times of strained Russian-U.S. relations, then congratulations.
You might have caught a bot or pro-Kremlin troll.
How do bots and trolls work to infiltrate social media platforms and influence U.S.
elections? We take a closer look at these insidious online pests to explain how they work.
“Hillary is a Satan, and her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is,” one
advertisement stated.
In summer 2016, as Mrs. Clinton appeared headed for a decisive general election
victory, Russian operatives promoted allegations of Democratic voter fraud. That echoed
Mr. Trump’s own message that he was the victim of a rigged political system.
After the election, the Russians kept up their efforts to foment dissent. In November,
they staged two rallies in New York on the same day. One had the theme, “Show your
support for President-Elect Trump.” The other was called, “Trump is NOT my
President.”
The indictment does not say that Russia changed the outcome of the election, a fact that
Mr. Rosenstein noted repeatedly. American intelligence officials have said they have no
way of calculating the effect of the Russian influence.
The Federal Election Commission started its own inquiry into the Internet Research
Agency last year, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, after
Facebook revealed that the firm had paid more than $100,000 for politically themed
ads, including ones promoting “Down With Hillary” rallies.
The commission’s inquiry was prompted by a complaint filed by the government
watchdog group Common Cause that claimed that the Facebook ads violated the
prohibition on foreign spending, as well as requirements mandating the disclosure of
campaign spending.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told the RBC news website that Russian
officials have not familiarized themselves with the document yet.
Mr. Mueller also revealed Friday that Richard Pinedo, of Santa Paula, Calif., had
pleaded guilty to identity fraud in a case involving the sale of bank accounts over the
internet. According to court papers, some of Mr. Pinedo’s customers are foreigners who
are targets of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. Mr. Pinedo has pleaded guilty and is cooperating
with Mr. Mueller, court documents show.
Scott Shane and Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting from Washington, Michael Schwirtz from
New York, and Ivan Nechepurenko from Moscow.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 17, 2018, Section A, Page 1 of the New York
edition with the headline: Indictment Bares Russian Network To Twist 2016 Vote.
Russia’s Fake Journalist Web
As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications
online to discredit Ukraine’s leader and undercut aid. Some have a Hollywood-style plot
Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times National Edition, Published March 18, 2024;
Updated, March 21, 2024, March 22, 2024.
A young man calling himself Mohamed al-Alawi appeared in a YouTube video in August.
He described himself as an investigative journalist in Egypt with a big scoop: The
mother-in-law of Ukraine’s president had purchased a villa near Angelina Jolie’s in El
Gouna, a resort town on the Red Sea.
The story, it turned out, was not true. Ukraine denied it, and the owner of the villa
refuted it. Also disconnected from reality: Alawi’s claim to being a journalist.
Still, his story caromed through social media and news outlets from Egypt to Nigeria
and ultimately to Russia — which, according to researchers, is where the story all began.
The story seemed to fade, but not for long. Four months later, two new videos appeared
on YouTube. They said Mohamed al-Alawi had been beaten to death in Hurghada, a
town about 20 miles south of El Gouna. The suspected killers, according to the videos:
Ukraine’s secret service agents.
These claims were no more factual than the first, but they gave new life to the old lie.
Another round of posts and news reports ultimately reached millions of internet users
around the world, elevating the narrative so much that it was even echoed by members
of the U.S. Congress while debating continued military assistance to Ukraine.
Ever since its forces invaded two years ago, Russia has unleashed a torrent of
disinformation to try to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine
the country’s support in the West.
This saga, though, introduced a new gambit: a protracted and elaborately constructed
narrative built online around a fictitious character and embellished with seemingly
realistic detail and a plot twist worthy of Netflix.
“They never brought back a character before,” said Darren Linvill, a professor and
director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, who has extensively studied
Russian disinformation.
The campaign shows how deftly Russia’s information warriors have shifted to new
tactics and targets as the war in Ukraine has dragged on, just as Russian forces on the
ground in Ukraine have adjusted tactics after devastating battlefield losses.
Groups with ties to the Kremlin continue to float new narratives when old ones fail to
stick or grow stale, using fake or altered videos or recordings and finding or creating
new outlets to spread disinformation, including ones purporting to be American news
sites.
A video appeared on TikTok last month claiming to show a Ukrainian doctor working
for Pfizer accusing the company of conducting unlawful tests on children. On the social
network X, a man claiming to be an associate producer for Paramount Pictures spun a
tale about a Hollywood biopic on Mr. Zelensky’s life.
The tale attributed to Mohamed al-Alawi is not even the only baseless allegation that
Mr. Zelensky had secretly purchased properties abroad using Western financial
assistance. Other versions — each seemingly tailored for a specific geographic audience
— have detailed a mansion in Vero Beach, Fla., and a retreat in Germany once used by
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda.
The Russians have “demonstrated adaptability through the war on Ukraine,” Microsoft
wrote in a recent report that disclosed Russia’s fraudulent use of recorded messages by
famous actors and celebrities on the Cameo app to try to smear Mr. Zelensky as a drug
addict.
Even when debunked, fabrications like these have proved exceedingly difficult to
extinguish entirely.
YouTube took down the initial video of the character Mohamed al-Alawi, linking it to
two other accounts that had previously violated the company’s policies. The accusation
still circulates, however, especially on platforms, like X and Telegram, that experts say
do little to block accounts generating inauthentic or automated activity. Some of the
posts about the video appear to have used text or audio created with artificial
intelligence tools; many are amplified by networks of bots intended to create the
impression that the content is popular.
What links the narratives to Russia is not only the content disparaging Ukraine but also
the networks that circulate them. They include news outlets and social media accounts
that private and government researchers have linked to previous Kremlin campaigns.
“They’re trolling for a susceptible (and seemingly abundant) slice of citizens who
amplify their garbage enough to muddy the waters of our discourse, and from there our
policies,” said Rita Katz, the director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an American
company that tracks extremist activity online and investigated the false claims about the
villa.
The Making of a Fake Journalist
The video first appeared on Aug. 20 on a newly created YouTube account that had no
previous activity and almost no followers, according to the Institute of Strategic
Dialogue, a global nonprofit research organization in London, which traced the video’s
spread.
I
Credit... Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times
The man appeared in a poorly lit room reading from his computer screen, which was
reflected in his thick glasses. He appeared to be a real person, but it has not been
possible to verify his actual identity. No one by the name of Mohamed al-Alawi appears
to have produced any previous articles or videos, as would be expected of a journalist.
According to ActiveFence, an internet security company, the character has no
educational or work history, and no network of friends or social connections online.
The video, though, showed what purported to be photographs of a purchase contract
and of the villa itself, creating a veneer of authenticity for credulous viewers. The
property is, in fact, part of a resort owned by Orascom Development,
whose website highlights El Gouna’s “year-round sunshine, shimmering lagoons, sandy
beaches and azure waters.”
An article about the video’s claim appeared two days later as a paid advertisement,
or branded content, on Punch, a news outlet in Nigeria, as well as three other Nigerian
websites that aggregate news and entertainment content.
The article had the byline of Arthur Nkono, who according to internet searches does not
appear to have written any other articles. The article quoted a political scientist,
Abdrulrahman Alabassy, who likewise appears not to exist except in accounts linking
the villa to the corrupt use of Western financial aid to Ukraine. (Punch, which later
removed the post, did not respond to requests for comment.)
A day later, the claim made its first appearance on X in a post by Sonja van den Ende, an
activist in the Netherlands, whose articles have previously appeared on propaganda
outlets linked to the Russian government, according to the Institute for Strategic
Dialogue. (She also served as an election observer in an occupied territory of Ukraine
during Russian parliamentary elections in September.)
Within days, reports about the villa appeared on X in French and Romanian, and in
English on three different Reddit forums.
According to Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence for Blackbird.AI, an internet
security company, nearly 29 percent of the accounts amplifying the reports appeared to
be inauthentic bots, an unusually high number that would normally indicate a
coordinated campaign.
Eight days after the video appeared, Russia state television networks like Channel One,
Rossiya 24 and RT (in Arabic and German) reported it as a major revelation uncovered
by a renowned Egyptian investigative journalist.
The story seemed to stall there. Naguib Sawiris, the scion of the Egyptian family that
owned the development, curtly denied the sale in a reply on X.
And no more was heard from or about the character called Mohamed al-Alawi — until
late December.
That was when two new videos emerged on a YouTube channel called “Egypt News,”
claiming that he was dead.
The channel had been created the day before. One video showed a man identified as
Alawi’s brother, Ahmed, answering questions from another man.
The police, he said, told him that they suspected his brother had been beaten to death by
“Ukrainian special forces who acted on behalf of President Zelensky or another highranking
official.”
He spoke with his hand cupped over his face to obscure his identity. The other video
showed what was said to be the site of an attack, though the images were indistinct. “I
can’t tell you anything else,” he said in the video, which YouTube later removed. “I’m
afraid for my family.”
The video also tried to explain away some of the obvious holes in the initial story,
including why there was no evidence online of Alawi’s previous work. “It was his first big
assignment,” the man said.
The new episode spread as the first video had. A day later, an article about the death
appeared on an obscure website created last year called El Mostaqbal, a name similar to
but unrelated to the actual news organization in Lebanon.
“A reporter who announced that Zelensky’s mother-in-law brought a luxury villa has
died under mysterious circumstances,” the headline read. Other reports that followed
dropped any uncertainty and began referring to his “murder.”
In fact, Egypt’s Ministry of the Interior said there were no reports or evidence that
anyone resembling the man in the video had been “subjected to harm.” The statement
went on to note that the property itself had not been sold.
Still, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, posts about the supposed killing
were viewed a million times on X on Dec. 25.
It also appeared on the website of the Middle East Monitor, or MEMO, operated by a
well-known nonprofit organization in London and financed by the government of Qatar.
A journalist who once reported from Moscow for The Telegraph of London, Ben Aris,
cited it at length on the platform, though, when challenged, he said he had just made
note of the rumor. “I don’t have time to check all this stuff myself,” he wrote.
It appeared in English on a site, Clear Story News, that Mr. Linvill of Clemson’s Media
Forensics Hub had previously linked to Russia’s disinformation efforts. (The site lists no
contact information)
Mr. Linvill described the process as a form of “narrative laundering” — moving false
claims from unknown or not credible sources to ones that, to the unwitting at least,
seem more legitimate.
More Elaborate Narratives
Credit... Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue studied three other complex narratives about
Ukraine, as well.
One featured a French journalist who claimed that the son of George Soros — a regular
target of Russian and far-right political attacks — had secretly acquired land for a toxic
waste dump in Ukraine. An unnamed doctor in Africa said in another that an American
medical charity, the Global Surgical and Medical Support Group, was harvesting the
organs of wounded Ukrainian soldiers for transplants for NATO officers.
Then there was the case of a man calling himself Shahzad Nasir, whose profile on X
identifies him as a journalist with Emirates 24/7, an English-language news outlet in
Dubai, though he has no apparent bylines on the site.
In November, he claimed that cronies of Mr. Zelensky bought two yachts — Lucky Me
and My Legacy — for $75 million. His evidence, like Mohamed al-Alawi’s, includes
photographs of the vessels and purported purchase agreements.
In fact, as the BBC documented in December, the yachts had not been purchased and
remained for sale. Despite numerous efforts by fact checkers to dispel it as rumor, the
claim circulated extensively.
Last month, the character Nasir reappeared in another video. This time he had a new
version of the tale, claiming that the purchases had been scuttled after he exposed the
secret deal.
The ramifications of these campaigns are difficult to measure precisely. There are signs,
though, that they resonate even when proved false.
Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican of Ohio and an outspoken critic of Ukraine aid,
seemed to embrace the claim in December during an interview on “War Room,” the
podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald
J. Trump.
“There are people who would cut Social Security — throw our grandparents into poverty
— why?” Mr. Vance said. “So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?”
That prompted a public rebuke this month from a Republican colleague, Senator Thom
Tillis of North Carolina, who ridiculed those who repeat unproven allegations.
“They’ve heard somebody say that if we pass this bill, that we’re all going to go ride to
Kyiv with buckets full of money and let oligarchs buy yachts!” he said of critics of the
assistance to Ukraine, in what he later called a reference to Mr. Vance’s comments. “I
wonder how the spouses of the estimated 25,000 soldiers in Ukraine who have died feel
about that? I mean, really, guys?”
Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting. Audio produced by Parin Behrooz.
A correction was made on
March 19, 2024
:
An earlier version of this article misstated, in one reference, the name of a
group at Clemson University that studies disinformation. It is the Media
Forensics Hub, not the Digital Media Hub.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error,
please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation for The Times. He has worked in Washington,
Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing, where he contributed to the articles that won the Pulitzer
Prize for public service in 2021. He is also the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign
of Vladimir Putin.” More about Steven Lee Myers
U.S. Announces Plan to Counter
Russian Influence Ahead of 2024
Election
American spy agencies have assessed that the Kremlin favors former President Donald
J. Trump, seeing him as skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland with Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, and Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy
attorney general, at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force in Washington on Wednesday.
Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Julian E. Barnes, Glenn Thrush and Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times Online
Edition, September 4, 2024.
The United States on Wednesday announced a broad effort to push back on Russian
influence campaigns in the 2024 election, as it tries to curb the Kremlin’s use of staterun
media and fake news sites to sway American voters.
The actions include sanctions, indictments and seizing of web domains that U.S. officials
say the Kremlin uses to spread propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine, which
Russia invaded more than two years ago.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland detailed the actions taken by the Justice
Department. They include the indictment of two Russian employees of RT, the stateowned
broadcaster, who used a company in Tennessee to spread content, and the
takedown of a Russian malign influence campaign known as Doppelgänger.
“The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political
activities or seeks to influence public discourse,” Mr. Garland said.
The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on ANO Dialog, a Russian nonprofit that
helps run the Doppelgänger network, as well as the editor in chief of RT, Margarita S.
Simonyan, and her deputies.
The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information pertaining to
foreign interference in an American election. The department specifically said it was
seeking information on a group known as Russian Angry Hackers Did It, or RaHDit.
The State Department also said it would designate five Russian state-funded news
outlets, including RT, Ruptly and Sputnik, as foreign government missions and restrict
the issuance of visas to people working for Kremlin-supported media institutions.
American officials have stepped up their warnings about Russian election influence
efforts. American spy agencies have assessed that the Kremlin favors former President
Donald J. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the November contest, seeing
him as more skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine.
An RT broadcast in Moscow in 2019. The United States has said that Russian intelligence agencies have been using
the state-owned broadcaster to spread disinformation. Credit...Misha Friedman/Getty Images
The United States was caught flat-footed in 2016 as its spy agencies learned about
Russian efforts to influence the vote on behalf of Mr. Trump and were late in warning
the public. In subsequent elections, U.S. intelligence officials more aggressively called
out Russian, Chinese and Iranian efforts to influence American elections.
Officials say that fighting election interference has been more difficult this year. Some
Americans, particularly Mr. Trump’s supporters, see accusations that Russia is
spreading disinformation as efforts to undermine their views.
Mr. Garland said the charges announced on Wednesday were not the end of the case:
“The investigation is ongoing.”
The Justice Department and the F.B.I. have also been investigating a handful of
Americans accused of knowingly spreading false Kremlin narratives. But officials have
emphasized that they are not aiming to curb free speech. Americans who merely repeat
or spread stories they see on Russian state media are not being investigated as part of
the efforts, officials said.
The officials say that RT has spread disinformation through bots and other means, but
that they are looking more closely at how the Kremlin and its spy agencies influence the
election.
As news of the indictments broke, RT posted a sarcastic response on its website from
Anna Belkina, its deputy editor in chief. “There are three certainties in life: death, taxes
and RT’s interference in the American elections,” the response read in part.
The indictments on Wednesday charged two Russian employees of RT, Kostiantyn
Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents
Registration Act. They are accused of spending $10 million to secretly pay the unnamed
Tennessee company to spread nearly 2,000 English-language videos on YouTube,
TikTok, Instagram and X.
Disinformation experts have long struggled to measure the effectiveness of Russian
influence campaigns, but Justice Department officials said the videos, most of which
support the goals of the Russian government, have gained 16 million views on YouTube.
Mr. Garland said the videos were “often consistent with Russia’s interest in amplifying
U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Russian interests,
particularly its ongoing war in Ukraine.” The Tennessee company, he said, never
disclosed its ties to the Russian government.
-p0pl-o
After a terrorist attack on a concert venue in Moscow in March, Ms. Afanasyeva directed
the company to focus on the false narrative that Ukraine was responsible.
Justice Department officials declined to identify the firm, but the one in the indictment
uses the same slogan as Tenet Media, a company registered in Tennessee that publishes
videos and other content broadly supportive of Mr. Trump. The company — and its most
prominent commentators — did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The indictment does not directly accuse the company of wrongdoing but said that it had
ties to RT and that its founders referred to their sponsor as “the Russians.”
Critics of the U.S. moves said the indictments raised free speech issues and the
possibility that the Biden administration was trying to censor pro-Russian commentary.
7
Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, was among those hit with sanctions. Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The
New York Times
Paul M. Barrett, the deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights
at New York University, said the government had to tread carefully to distinguish
between foreign election interference and First Amendment protections of free speech.
“The dividing line is when you identify activity, particularly concealed activity, that is
circumventing established regulations for how we try to prevent foreign interference in
our elections,” he said. If that line is crossed, he added, “that’s a complication, but it’s
not a reason to just run up the free speech flag and throw up your hands and we’re
helpless in the face of Vladimir Putin’s very clever operatives.”
The United States has already taken action against Russian organizations it believes are
trying to influence American politics. In March, the Treasury Department imposed
sanctions on a Russian group that has aided efforts to create fake news sites that spread
misinformation, and in July it seized two internet domains that it also linked to RT and
the Federal Security Service, a successor of the Soviet K.G.B.
The Justice Department action builds on that, saying it was seizing 32 more domains
that were used to covertly spread Russian propaganda. According to the government
affidavit, the Doppelgänger campaign is run by Sergei Kiriyenko, a former prime
minister who is now President Vladimir V. Putin’s first deputy chief of staff.
Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, said the fake news sites had been seized by the
government as of noon.
“When we learn that adversaries overseas are trying to hide who they are and where
their propaganda is coming from, as part of campaigns to deliberately sow discord, we’re
going to continue to do everything we can to expose their hidden hand and disrupt their
efforts,” Mr. Wray said.
Mr. Garland said a Russian internal planning document stated that “the aim of the
campaign is securing Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.”
The document, produced for the Social Design Agency, outlined plans to influence U.S.
voters without identifying that the content was coming from the Russian government.
It lays out a plan to target voters in swing states (as determined by The New York
Times’s polling efforts), as well as voters in conservative states like Alabama, Texas and
Kansas. The document says U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent, Jews and video gamers
would also be targeted.
The goal, according to the document and the indictment, was to push Americans to
support the idea that the United States should focus on “addressing its domestic issues
instead of wasting money in Ukraine.”
The Justice Department blocks out the names of the candidates the Russians support,
but the document says that “it makes sense for Russia to put a maximum effort” into
ensuring that the Republican Party’s view, and in particular the opinions of Mr. Trump’s
supporters, “wins over U.S. public opinion.”
The Doppelgänger network used sites that impersonated legitimate news entities and
fake social media profiles impersonating Americans.
The fake news sites targeted specific audiences in the United States by mimicking sites
like Fox News and The Washington Post. The posts on the fake Post site had a proRussia
and anti-Ukraine viewpoint, according to the court papers.
Reporting was contributed by Edward Wong, Alan Feuer and Zolan Kanno-Youngs from
Washington, and Paul Sonne from Berlin.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The
Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E.
Barnes
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice and has also written about gun violence, civil
rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons. More about Glenn Thrush
Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining
The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing
and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 5, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York
edition with the headline: U.S. Responds To Interference By the Kremlin.
Russian Cash, And Influence On
Influencers
Federal prosecutors say Russia paid an American media company to push pro-Kremlin
messages from social media influencers including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave
Rubin.
Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan, founded Tenet Media in Tennessee in 2022. Russian money has
accounted for most of the company’s revenue in recent months, the Justice Department said. Credit...Jason
Davis/Getty Images
Steven Lee Myers, Ken Bensinger and Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times National
Edition, September 8, 2024, 1, 19.
In early 2022, a young couple from Canada, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, registered
a new company in Tennessee that went on to create a social media outlet called Tenet
Media.
By November 2023, they had assembled a lineup of major conservative social media
stars, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, to post original content on
Tenet’s platform. The site then began posting hundreds of videos — trafficking in
pointed political commentary as well as conspiracy theories about election fraud, Covid-
19, immigrants and Russia’s war with Ukraine — that were then promoted across the
spectrum of social media, from YouTube to TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram and
Rumble.
It was all, federal prosecutors now say, a covert Russian influence operation. On
Wednesday, the Justice Department accused two Russians of helping orchestrate $10
million in payments to Tenet in a scheme to use those stars to spread Kremlin-friendly
messages.
The disclosures reflect the growing sophistication of the Kremlin’s longstanding efforts
to shape American public opinion and advance Russia’s geopolitical goals, which
include, according to American intelligence assessments, the election of former
President Donald J. Trump in November.
The Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, center, accused two Russians of helping finance
a Tennessee media company’s pro-Kremlin programming. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
In 2016 and 2020, Russia employed armies of internet trolls, fake accounts and bot
farms to try to reach American audiences, with debatable success. The operation that
prosecutors described this week shows a pivot to exploiting already established social
media influencers, who, in this case, generated as many as 16 million views on Tenet’s
YouTube channel alone.
Most viewers were presumably unaware, as the influencers themselves said they were,
that Russia was paying for it all.
“Influencers already have a level of trust with their audience,” said Jo Lukito, a
professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s journalism school who studies Russian
disinformation. “So, if a piece of information can come through the mouth of an existing
influencer, it comes across as more authentic.”
The indictment — which landed like a bombshell in the country’s conservative media
ecosystem — also underscored the growing ideological convergence between President
Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia and a significant portion of the Republican Party since Mr.
Trump’s rise to political power.
The Kremlin has long sought to exploit divisions on both sides of the American political
spectrum, but contentious conservative voices provide ample fodder for its own
propaganda, especially when it involves criticism of the Biden administration or, more
broadly, of the country’s foreign policy, including support for Ukraine in its war against
Russia.
The federal investigation that led to the indictment unsealed on Wednesday is part of a
broader government effort, first reported in The New York Times, to combat Russian
disinformation, election interference and cyberattacks. Administration officials have
said the effort could lead to more charges.
The indictment detailed the lengths Russia went to try to make Tenet a player in the
country’s political discourse, while obfuscating the fact that it was footing the bill.
That included transferring at least $9.7 million from Russia through shell companies in
countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Mauritius. Those payments
accounted for 90 percent of the company’s revenue from last October to August, the
indictment said.
Prosecutors have not, so far, charged Ms. Chen and Mr. Donovan. It is unclear where
they are, and they did not respond to requests for comment. The indictment did note
that neither they nor Tenet had registered as a representative of a foreign government, a
requirement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA.
Tenet’s influencers all described themselves as victims of the Russian ruse, and at times
disparaged the federal investigation. They emphasized that they took no direction from
Russians, though the indictment details various efforts by the company’s sponsors to
sow specific narratives, some of which appeared in the content they posted.
In one instance, Mr. Johnson, a former journalist with 2.4 million subscribers on
YouTube, suggested on his own show that Ukraine might have been responsible for a
deadly attack at a concert hall in Moscow in March, reflecting a since-debunked Russian
claim. (A branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility.)
Another influencer on Tenet’s roster, Lauren Southern, a far-right Canadian
commentator with more than 1.2 million followers between YouTube and X, produced a
video mocking the Summer Olympics in Paris in July, echoing Russia’s efforts to
denigrate the Games and their French hosts.
The Russians even pushed Tenet to highlight a video from Tucker Carlson, the former
Fox News star who now produces his own online show. He made it during a visit to
Moscow this year, marveling about the abundance on display in a supermarket in the
city.
A producer working for Tenet, in a message cited in the indictment, thought Mr.
Carlson’s video “just feels like overt shilling” but, after being pressured by Tenet’s
owners, agreed to post the clip in any case.
A building in Nashville that, according to Tennessee state records, houses the office of Tenet Media. Credit...Seth
Herald/Reuters
Nina Jankowicz, a co-founder of the American Sunlight Project, an advocacy group in
Washington that fights disinformation online, said that “this is a classic case of
information laundering.”
“The Russians and other foreign actors have used it for decades to obscure the source of
influence operations,” she went on. “In this case, they chose influencers who were
already engaging in rage bait, exploiting the pre-existing fissures in our society for
clicks.”
Flush with Russian cash, Tenet certainly compensated some of its influencers well. It
paid at least $8.7 million to the top three influencers, who were not named but who
appear to be Mr. Rubin, Mr. Pool and Mr. Johnson based on details in the indictment,
such as the number of followers on social media.
According to the indictment, Mr. Rubin received $400,000 a month, plus a $100,000
signing bonus, to produce four videos a week on Tenet’s YouTube channel. Mr. Pool was
paid $100,000 per video, which he produced weekly.
The contracts put those three on the same pay scale as some of those on Forbes’s “Top
Creators 2023” list, though Mr. Pool portrayed his payment as standard in an interview
on “The Ben Shapiro Show” on Friday.
Under terms of their arrangements, the influencers could keep producing other content
separate from the work they did for Tenet.
A representative of Mr. Johnson declined to comment but provided details of the
timeline and nature of his contract with Tenet. On X, however, Mr. Johnson said he had
acted “as an independent contractor” under what he termed “a standard, arms-length
deal which was later terminated.”
Mr. Rubin, who is the creator and host of “The Rubin Report,” a political talk show on
YouTube and Blaze Media, a conservative media company, said in a post online that he
had no knowledge of connections between Tenet and Russia.
So did Mr. Pool, who has promoted Mr. Trump’s election fraud conspiracies and
portrayed Ukraine as an “enemy” on his popular online show. In his response on X, he
directed a crude insult to Mr. Putin. On Thursday, he said that the F.B.I. had invited him
to a “voluntary interview” and that he would cooperate with the investigation.
Prosecutors said the two Russians charged on Wednesday, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and
Elena Afanasyeva, had violated FARA and laws against money laundering. The pair are
employees of RT, the Russian global television network.
In a response to a request for comment about the indictment, the network replied
sarcastically. “We eat U.S. D.O.J. indictments for breakfast,” its statement said. “With
lots of sour cream, usually.”
Mr. Donovan, 30, Tenet’s co-founder, appears on corporate records in Tennessee as a
founder of Roaming USA Corporation, the company that later created Tenet. His
account on X, which has not posted any messages since July, describes him as Tenet’s
president. Among those who shared his posts, along with the company’s, was the owner
of X, Elon Musk.
Tenet appears to have ceased operations since Wednesday. YouTube, in a statement on
Thursday evening, said it had taken down its account on the platform, along with four
others associated with Ms. Chen.
Ms. Chen, who is married to Mr. Donovan and is also 30, worked for RT from March
2021 until February 2022. RT’s website still describes her as a YouTuber who was “most
passionate” about topics that “include dating culture, family values, individual liberty,
gender equality and issues surrounding race.”
She also produced podcasts on Blaze Media and served as a contributor to Turning Point
USA, the conservative organization run by Charlie Kirk. Her profiles on Mr. Kirk’s
site and on Blaze Media’s disappeared this week. Her account on X, which remains
active, has nearly 600,000 followers.
In a statement, Blaze Media’s chief executive, Tyler Cardon, said, “Lauren Chen was an
independent contractor, whose contract has been terminated.”
For at least two of the influencers, the offer to join Tenet appeared to raise concerns
about the origins of such generous contracts.
The indictment detailed how they questioned the company’s backers. In response, Mr.
Kalashnikov and Ms. Afanasyeva, along with Ms. Chen and Mr. Donovan, provided a
profile page of a fictitious European banker, Eduard Grigoriann.
They also arranged a phone call with someone purporting to be the banker. That was
enough, apparently, to assuage any concerns.
“It’s lamentable that these influencers conducted so little due diligence,” Ms. Jankowicz
said. “When something seems too good to be true — in this case, getting paid $100,000
per video for content you were already making — it probably is.”
Another of those who worked for Tenet was Tayler Hansen, who is perhaps best known
for filming the shooting of Ashli Babbitt in the U.S. Capitol during the violence on Jan.
6, 2021.
For years, he scraped by financially by licensing his footage, selling branded
merchandise and soliciting donations from supporters as he gradually built a following
of more than 170,000 on X.
When Tenet approached him last year and offered the opportunity to work for a
biweekly salary, he jumped at the chance, he said in an interview. Tenet also hired Mr.
Hansen’s producer and covered his travel expenses.
“I had full autonomy, and there’s really no point in not working with a company that
grants you full autonomy,” Mr. Hansen said. “I’ve never had as much freedom.”
Asked how he thought Tenet made money, he said simply, “Donors.”
Martin J. Riedl, a journalism professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who
studies the spread of misinformation on social media, said the case of Tenet spotlighted
gaping regulatory holes when it came to the American political system.
While the Federal Election Commission has strict disclosure rules for television and
radio advertisements, it has no such restrictions for paid social media influencers.
The result is an enormous loophole — one that the Russians appeared to exploit.
“Influencers have been around for a while,” Mr. Riedl said, “but there are few rules
around their communication, and political speech is not regulated at all.”
Nico Grant and Kitty Bennett contributed reporting
Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining
The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing
and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers
Ken Bensinger covers right wing media and national political campaigns for The Times. More
about Ken Bensinger
Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large for The Times and The New York Times Magazine and writes
most often about media and politics. More about Jim Rutenberg