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Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team on Friday released an indictment alleging that 13 Russians and three Russian organizations participated in a conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
This list contains a combination of points from articles in The Hill and BBC. Links to the articles can be found below. 1. This was a broad, well-organized effort. Beginning as early as 2014, the defendants began to track and study U.S. social media sites related to politics and social issues. They used false personas to contact U.S. persons, and to pay them using accounts created through identity theft to conceal the origin of the payments. They controlled hundreds of social media accounts created under false pretenses. (One account impersonated the Tennessee GOP on Twitter.) 2. Defendants allegedly communicated with Trump campaign members. The indictment states that these campaign members were unwitting participants in the conspiracy. 3. Suppressing votes for Clinton was an important part of the operation. The indictment asserts that the aim of the conspiracy was to promote presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and to disparage Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. 4. Defendants took steps to cover their tracks. Multiple false personas, fake accounts, and shell companies were created to conceal the origin of money and information. The creation of these accounts involved identity theft, mail fraud, and wire fraud. 5. The indictment describes serious crimes - visa fraud, identity theft, wire fraud, bank fraud. In addition to Friday’s indictment, an indictment against an American citizen, Richard Pinedo, was unsealed Friday. Pinedo has pleaded guilty to selling personal information stolen from U.S. persons to the defendants. 6. There were real people paid by the defendants to organize rallies, build props, and wear costumes at multiple events in multiple states. At least one person was paid to build a cage for use at a rally, and another was paid to dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and stand in the cage. 7. This operation did not end on election day. After the election, persona accounts continued on social media to sow discord among U.S. persons regarding the election and presidency of Donald Trump. There is credible evidence that Russia-controlled personas were involved, this past weekend, in promoting discord among Americans regarding gun violence, in the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Rod Rosenstein, deputy director of the FBI, presented the indictment in a press conference Friday. The press conference can be seen here. https://www.c-span.org/video/?441317-1/deputy-attorney-general-rod-rosenstein-announces-indictment-russian-nationals The Hill article can be found here. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/374305-five-things-to-know-about-the-russian-indictments MSNBC contributor Matt Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman, told Mike Allen of Axios: "Friday’s indictment established the legal architecture for possible future charges. Once you’ve established there was a conspiracy, you can charge anyone who was aware of the conspiracy and took an overt action to further it." The Axios article can be found here. https://www.axios.com/mueller-investigation-russia-facebook-future-7ab6695e-0012-4af5-99a3-d55c665b7796.html The BBC article can be found here. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43093260 The indictment can be found here. https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download
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The Strange Case of #NeverHillary: Why Did Michael Flynn Push Russian Propaganda at the RNC?2/19/2018 OPINION  The Republican National Convention, held July 18 to 21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio, was a spectacle. On display was over-the-top partisan behavior that was shocking in its brazenness and intensity. One thing stood out for me as I watched in horror 19 months ago: Michael Flynn, retired U.S. Army general criticized Hillary Clinton, suggested that she should resign from the campaign, accused her of unspecified crimes, and whipped the crowd into a frenzy chanting, “Lock Her Up.” That was all stunning to observe; the part that stood out for me, however, was this line: “I use hashtag Never Hillary,” Flynn, 58 years old at the time, said. Why would Trump supporters want to know what hashtag Flynn used? Why was Flynn using a hashtag? What did this mean? I know a lot more now than I knew at the time about how social media can be used to push propaganda. The indictment released Friday in the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the presidential campaign may provide an answer to the questions that have haunted me since that disturbing day in 2016. On page 20 of the indictment, a table provides information about political advertising bought by the defendants, Russian nationals, who used “fictitious U.S. personas created and used by the ORGANIZATION on social media.” (from page 19) An advertisement was purchased June 30, 2016, with this content: "#NeverHillary #HillaryforPrison #Hillary4Prison #HillaryforPrison2016 #Trump2016 #Trump #Trump4President” An ad was purchased by at least one persona account created in Saint Petersburg, and three weeks later Michael Flynn pushed the hashtag out at the Republican National Convention. Why might he have done this? At the time I heard him say it, I wondered how many Trump supporters were following Flynn on Twitter or Facebook. Maybe, I thought, the Trump campaign and the GOP had harnessed the power of social media and turned angry white voters in the Midwest and coal country into tech-savvy influencers. Somehow, that did not seem reasonable to me. (That is the story Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner, self-styled data geniuses of the Trump campaign, told to numerous reporters in the months after their team's surprise win.) There is another reason to signal the use of a hashtag from the podium of a worldwide-televised event. When Flynn announced that hashtag, he may have been signalling cells of paid troll warriors, in Russia, the U.S., and other places, to head to that hashtag to connect with newly created propaganda - memes, ads, and talking points - to push in the coming days and weeks. I did a search to see what kind of content was attached to this hashtag when Flynn promoted it at the RNC. Any content that has since been deleted would not show up in an advanced search, but the content I did find was very interesting. I cannot definitively say that all the content was created by paid professionals working on the Russian operation, but it looks like much of it may have been. It is important to note that the memes created were designed to appeal to potential voters who did not want to vote Clinton. The Russian information war was “primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.” (from page 17 of the indictment). Alternatives to Clinton - Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, and Gary Johnson -were pushed hard in July of 2016, using hashtags #BernieorBust, #DemExit, and #NeverTrump. The #GameofThrones hashtag is used, possibly to bring in people who were fans of the television show who might not otherwise be interested. One post uses the hashtag #Milo in combination with #NeverHillary. Another post links to Prison Planet, sending interested content-pushers to wingnut conspiracists Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, and InfoWars. This would help the paid trolls, Russian and American, find the content Flynn (or those directing him) wanted them to push. Did Michael Flynn knowingly push a hashtag created under fraudulent circumstances in a U.S. election, which would be a violation of federal election law? I don’t know, but I would bet that the special counsel’s team does. Flynn referring to the Russian-created hashtag occurs 56 seconds into this video from the Republican National Convention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx94428MYcc A link to the 37-page indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies (with numerous shell companies created to hide fraudulent personas and ad buys) can be found here. https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download An article in USA Today from August 2016 highlighted some of the issues involved when retired military leaders speak out politically. In the article former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, a four-star Army general, explains that running for office, like Dwight Eisenhower did after a military career, is different from advocating for a particular side in a political contest: "'If they choose to run themselves, they become accountable to voters,' he wrote in Defense One, a website that focuses on defense and national security trends. 'In simply advocating — or giving speeches — they are not.'" Not accountable to American voters, but perhaps accountable to his handlers in the Kremlin? The USA Today article can be found here. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/08/04/retired-generals-partisan-politics/88009492/ Michael Flynn pleaded guilty on December 1, 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials. A detailed timeline of his actions related to his plea can be found here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/12/01/michael-flynns-guilty-plea-a-comprehensive-timeline/?utm_term=.f172c076717b A selection of available content from Twitter using the hashtag #NeverHillary during the period of the Republican National Convention is included below.   Note the nonstandard plural spelling - "commys" instead of "commies" - that may be a sign of foreign-created content. Also, this may be an early use of the word "libtard." which was popular among harassing trolls during and after the campaign.  This meme accuses Clinton of wanting to build a wall. This may be an example of a paid content creator who got the messages mixed up.   #FreeMilo - perhaps mixing up Julian Assange, currently hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid charges, with Milo Yiannopoulos, alt-right provocateur?  Criticism of Clinton's hair has been a theme of critics since the 1990s.  The anti-fracking message is designed to appeal to left-leaning voters and encourage them to vote against Clinton. They would never be swayed to vote for Trump, but convincing people to vote for Sanders, Johnson, or Stein, or to simply stay home, became a very common theme by November.
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