Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic nomination, and as American media still saw Trump as a longshot to emerge from a crowded Republican field, the Internet Research Agency began secretly buying online ads to promote its social media groups.īy February 2016, they were ready. By late 2015, as Clinton sparred with Vermont Sen. The Russian trolls set up accounts that appeared to be associated with Black Lives Matter, the Tennessee GOP, Muslim and Christian groups and the American South. They began preparing networks of fake accounts they would use like sock puppets to masquerade as U.S. to conceal the true origin of the disinformation they planned to pump into America’s social media blood stream. They bought server space and other computer infrastructure in the U.S. traveling through states such as Nevada, California and Colorado - to collect on-the-ground intelligence about an America that had become deeply divided on gun control, race and politics.Īs they gathered the research, the trolls began planning an elaborate deception. The organization surreptitiously dispatched employees to the U.S. Starting in mid-2014, employees began studying American political groups to see which messages fell flat and which spread like wildfire across the internet. (Prighozin’s company has denied the charges). It would use deception, disinformation and the expansive reach of the electronically connected world to spread “distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.” Ultimately, it would carry a budget in the millions, bankrolled, according to an indictment, by Yevgeny Prighozin, a man so close to the Russian president that he is known as Putin’s chef. Using a game plan honed on its own people, the troll farm prepared to pervert the social networks - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram - that Americans had come to depend on for news, entertainment, friendships and, most relevantly, political discourse.
#TRUMP PRAISES RUSSIA FOR HACKING DNC SERVER FULL#
It’s up to Attorney General William Barr, who hasn’t committed to releasing the full report but says he will inform Congress of Mueller’s “principal findings” as early as this weekend. We know this, though the full, final report on the investigation, turned over to the Justice Department on Friday, may never be made public. We know this, though Mueller didn’t make a single public comment since his appointment in May 2017.
It was just one small part of a sophisticated election interference operation carried out by the Kremlin - and meticulously chronicled by special counsel Robert Mueller. That very day, hackers working with Russia’s military intelligence tried to break into email accounts associated with Clinton’s personal office. “Russia, if you’re listening,” said Trump, looking directly into a television camera, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” - messages Clinton was reported to have deleted from her private email server.Īctually, Russia was doing more than listening: It had been trying to help Republican Trump for months. But on July 27, 2016, midway through a news conference in Florida, Trump decided to entertain the thought for a moment. The Democrats had blamed Russia for the hacking and release of damaging material on his presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Donald Trump was in full deflection mode.
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