President Joe Biden’s administration launched new accusations of election interference at Russia nine weeks before the 2024 election.
The Department of Justice alleged Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered several Russian companies to target Americans through the use of influencers and social media pages to spread propaganda and interfere with the election in a campaign titled “Doppelganger.” As a result of the indictment, the DOJ is charging two Russian-based employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, with “conspiring to commit money laundering and to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” according to a press release.
Some internet domains discussed in the indictment, according to the DOJ, were used to try to influence American voters and push Russian propaganda to lower international support for Ukraine and sow discord.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland (C) accompanied by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaks during an Election Threats Task Force meeting at the Justice Department on September 4, 2024 in Washington, DC. Garland, who launched the task force three years ago after a steep increase in violent threats to election workers, reaffirmed his commitment to safeguarding election workers domestically and also announced two actions against Russia for attempted covert influence operations. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
It’s not clear that the operation made a dent in American political discourse. One account cited in the indictment, a Twitter profile named “CNN California,” had just 7 followers. The indictment laid out a scheme to hire American political commentators for a new YouTube Channel, which garnered only 16 million views in nearly 2,000 videos across 10 months, for an average of just 8,000 views per video.
In all, the scheme had a budget of around $10,000,000, according to the DOJ.
The accusations come just two months before the presidential election and days after Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he regretted censoring social media posts at the behest of the Biden administration around the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic.
EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS NOW ON CNN: Biden administration to accuse Russia of sustained effort to influence 2024 election. https://t.co/n0YRreyCP3
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) September 4, 2024
The Wednesday news made its way to CNN before the indictment became public, which left social media users drawing parallels to the 2016 election. In 2016, CNN was among the outlets that extensively covered the conspiracy theory pushed by Democrats that Russia and the Trump campaign were colluding. (RELATED: ‘Uncorroborated Intelligence’: Durham Report Torches FBI, DOJ For Handling Of Trump-Russia Probe)
“This is deadly serious and we are going to treat it accordingly,” Garland said Wednesday of skepticism towards the claims following the 2016 conspiracy theory push.
This marks the third election cycle in a row that Democrats have made an issue out of foreign election interference.
After the 2016 election, Democrats pushed Big Tech to censor information pertaining to COVID-19 and the Hunter Biden laptop story on social media platforms. In a series titled the “Twitter files,” Elon Musk released documents detailing how the social media platform suppressed a New York Post story regarding Biden’s laptop. The decision was influenced by former Democratic-appointed intelligence officials who falsely alleged that the laptop story had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.
Many Democrats also claimed Trump had not legitimately won the 2016 election due to vague instances of “Russian interference.”
Man I hate when they try to hype up reruns https://t.co/ojnAPzl0Z3
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) September 4, 2024
This is what Democrats do when they’re losing. Yes, it’s insane and destructive how much they’re willing to lie and smear to retain power, but it’s also hilarious that their playbook only has one page, and the only person they could get to run the play is this idiot. https://t.co/dHWyh2VNsh
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 4, 2024
“Today’s announcement exposes the scope of the Russian government’s influence operations and their reliance on cutting-edge AI to sow disinformation,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a press release.
“Companies operating at the direction of the Russian government created websites to trick Americans into unwittingly consuming Russian propaganda. By seizing these websites, the FBI is making clear to the world what they are, Russian attempts to interfere in our elections and influence our society. The FBI will continue to work with our partners to expose and shutdown these covert influence campaigns,” he continued.
In August, it was revealed that the Iranian government had been behind a hack of the Trump campaign.
