Mother Jones illustration; Alexander Kazakov/AFP/Getty; Evan Vucci/AP
The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
“I hate saying, ‘I told you so.’” That is one of the biggest lies. I, for one, enjoy saying it. That is, on the right occasions. And I’d like to point out that in recent months I have repeatedly warned that Russian tyrant and war criminal Vladmir Putin intended to mess with the US election to help Donald Trump once again. (See here, here, and here.) This week, in a pair of actions, the Justice Department outlined elaborate schemes mounted by covert Moscow operators to influence the 2024 campaign. But in each instance, the feds declined to explicitly state the obvious: The Kremlin efforts have been designed and mounted to aid Trump’s bid to regain power.
In one case, the Justice Department seized 32 internet domains used in a Russian operation called “Doppelganger” to spread disinformation in the United States. These sites mimicked legitimate American news sites. (One example: washingtonpost.pm—as opposed to washingtonpost.com.) The Russians, the DOJ noted, “used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections.” The sites often posted legitimate stories but would include a false piece that would aim to undermine US support of Ukraine. (One fake Washington Post article claimed the paper had obtained secret video showing that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was scheming with Washington regarding dangerous biolabs.)
In a released statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said of this covert project: “As alleged in our court filings, President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle…directed Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation and state-sponsored narratives as part of a campaign to influence the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. An internal planning document created by the Kremlin states that a goal of the campaign is to secure Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.” But Garland did not specify Moscow’s preference.
In the other action, the Justice Department indicted two employees of RT, the Russian state-controlled media operation, for allegedly secretly funneling $10 million to an American right-wing media outfit. The goal, as Garland put it, was to “create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” The indictment did not name the firm. But as soon as the indictment was released on Wednesday, I and other journalists quickly found one big fat clue: The document noted that the unnamed media outlet identified itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.” That’s how Tenet Media, an operation created last year featuring the work of right-wing and libertarian firebrands such as Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson, describes itself. It was easy to Google the phrase and discover that only Tenet popped up. (Meanwhile, the Justice Department also indicted Dimitri Simes, a Soviet-born American citizen, longtime foreign policy think-tanker, and Trump campaign adviser in 2016, for making more than $1 million by working for a sanctioned Russian television channel.)
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco characterized this clandestine operation as an attempt “to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences” and “to illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.”
The RT-Tenet story was quite a bombshell: A clutch of far-right and generally pro-Trump commentators influential on social media, particularly among younger people, has allegedly been covertly subsidized by Moscow. One of the founders of the company, Lauren Chen, a right-wing influencer, has been associated with Turning Point USA, the rabidly pro-Trump outfit run by Charlie Kirk, and with Blaze Media, the outlet founded by conservative wild man and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco characterized this clandestine operation as an attempt “to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences” and “to illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.” The statement released by the Justice Department to announce this indictment did not mention the 2024 election.
The Justice Department was avoiding saying that these covert Russian ops were attempting to get Trump back in the White House. But it’s not hard to add two and two here. If you’d looked at the YouTube channel for Tenet Media, you would have found one video after another bashing Kamala Harris. While months ago, Tenet was posting all sorts of provocative right-wing material on the US-Mexico border, Ukraine, Black history month, culture wars, and other hot-button issues, while denigrating President Joe Biden—Pool has decried Ukraine as the United States’ greatest enemy and exclaimed, “We should apologize to Russia!”—it has in recent weeks become largely focused on assailing Harris.
Moreover, the affidavit in support of the seizure of those 32 domains includes as attachments internal documents from the Doppelganger operation that state the program’s intent. Where an American presidential candidate or political party was mentioned, the Justice Department redacted their identities and referred to them as “Candidate A” or “Candidate B” and “Political Party A” and “Political Party B.” But one need not be Sherlock Holmes to suss out that “A” represents Trump and the Republicans and “B,” Biden and the Democrats. Thus, the meaning is clear when one of these quasi-redacted documents states, “It makes sense for Russia to put a maximum effort to ensure that [Political Party A] point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of Candidate A supporters) wins over the US public opinion.” (Bold in the original.) This Russian document cites the operation’s goal as to “secure victory” for the GOP candidate. It lists as targets swing state voters, American Jews, Latinos, and the “community of American gamers, users of Reddit and [messaging] boards, such as 4chan (the ‘backbone’ of the right-wing trends in the US segment of the Internet).”
The Doppelganger project, according to these documents, has been bent on exploiting all the various social media platforms and amplifying media persons on YouTube and elsewhere to exacerbate political conflict within the United States and spread an assortment of talking points: The United States is a country in decline, US support of Ukraine is bankrupting the United States, the Democrats are corrupt and dishonest losers. A list of “campaign topics” in one planning document included “record inflation…risk of job loss for white Americans, privileges for people of color, perverts, and disabled…threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants.” Memes, social media posts, comments on social networks and in group chats, and video content (“including news stories in the Fox News style”) promoting all of this were to be directed at Republican voters, Trump supporters, “supporters of traditional family values,” and “White Americans representing the lower-middle and middle class.” The alleged operation to finance Tenet Media would be in sync with these overarching aims.
Earlier this year, according to the indictment, the Russians allegedly running the Tenet Media operation succeeded in encouraging Tenet to promote video of Tucker Carlson gushing about a Moscow supermarket during a visit to Russia to interview Putin—a visit for which Carlson was rightfully and mightily mocked.
The affidavit and the indictment are chock-full of fascinating details illuminating the ins and outs of this clandestine Russian campaign. Earlier this year, according to the indictment, the Russians allegedly running the Tenet Media operation succeeded in encouraging Tenet to promote video of Tucker Carlson gushing about a Moscow supermarket during a visit to Russia to interview Putin—a visit for which Carlson was rightfully and mightily mocked. (Two years ago, I revealed Kremlin memos showing that Putin’s regime pressured Russian media outlets to feature Carlson in their propaganda reports on the war in Ukraine.) One Russian document attached to the affidavit spells out a social media plan to make Mexico seem like a threat to the United States to help Trump’s candidacy.
As they have done for eight years, Trumpers rushed to declare all of this no big deal and nothing but a Biden administration/Deep State effort to smother the speech of right-wingers. David Sacks, the Silicon Valley bigwig who’s raising money for Trump, huffed, “Even by the standards of Russia, Russia, Russia hoaxes, the Tenet Media/Lauren Chen case makes no sense…As far as Red Scares go, this one seems pretty lame and people are seeing through it. Hopefully this means we’re at the end of Russiagate hoaxes.”
On Fox, host Laura Ingraham, not surprisingly, dismissed the seriousness of the alleged Russian intervention: “The DOJ seems to be back to Russia, Russia, Russia because they announced indictments against Russians for alleged election interference…Are they laying the groundwork for more censorship?” Her guest, failed GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, embraced the Russia denialism that has infected the Republican Party for eight years: “The reality is that they already did this in 2016. So they have a historical practice. When they are afraid of Donald Trump coming back to office, they invent every figment of imagination of Russia or somebody else putting him there without actually paying attention to the threats coming from our administrative state to free and fair elections in the United States.”
On Friday, Trump referred to the indictment and the seizures of the domains as a “scam.”
For their part, Tim Pool and Benny Johnson maintained they were unaware they were receiving Moscow gold and depicted themselves as victims. They did not publicly reflect on why the Kremlin wanted to prop up them and their comrades with millions of dollars.
With Trump and his political allies either dubious about or opposed to US assistance to Ukraine, Putin has more motivation than ever to try to aid his longtime admirer.
This is the third American presidential election in a row in which Putin has waged covert information warfare against the United States to help Trump. In 2016, he ordered a hack-and-leak operation and a clandestine social media campaign to hinder Hillary Clinton and boost Trump. Four years later, Ukraine officials tied to Russian intelligence spread disinformation designed to smear Joe Biden. He’s one for two and back for the rubber match. With Trump and his political allies either dubious about or opposed to US assistance to Ukraine, Putin has more motivation than ever to try to aid his longtime admirer.
In its public statements, the Justice Department avoided a simple declaration: Russia is secretly screwing with the American information ecosystem to assist Trump. Garland wants to keep these cases from appearing political. But they are deeply political. Russia is conniving to put a lying, misogynistic, chaotic, narcissistic, right-wing authoritarian into the White House—and Trump World is once again denying this reality and, thus, abetting a foreign adversary’s attack on the United States. There should be immediate congressional investigations and hearings. This ought to be front-page news for weeks and fundamentally shape the final leg of the campaign. But if the past is any guide, it won’t. That means Putin has a shot at winning. Even exposure of his plot by the Justice Department might not be enough to thwart it. If Moscow succeeds, it will be not because of any Russian brilliance but due to American decline and weakness.
David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, is available in an expanded paperback edition.
