Tag: Russian election interference

Ex-Justice Dept. official says Michael Flynn secretly ‘neutered’ Obama’s moves on Russia

Washington Post logoFormer deputy attorney general Sally Q. Yates told Congress on Wednesday that President Trump’s incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn in late 2016 had secretly “neutered” Obama administration actions toward Russia, prompting an investigation that consumed the early days of Trump’s presidency.

Yates has been a target of Trump and many Republicans for her brief oversight of the investigation of Russia’s election interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign four years ago. She testified via video before the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), has been highly critical of the FBI’s handling of that case.

Trump attacked Yates before the hearing began, tweeting that she “has zero credibility” and declaring her “part of the greatest political crime of the Century, and ObamaBiden knew EVERYTHING!” Continue reading.

Yates spars with GOP at testy hearing

The Hill logoRepublican senators sparred on Wednesday with former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates over investigations into former Trump aides that were related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. 

Yates testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of Chairman Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) probe into the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation and former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Graham is one of two Senate Republicans running probes into the Obama administration’s investigations of Russia. 

The hearing, however, also had overtones of the 2020 election. Graham is a key Senate ally of President Trump, and the investigations are ramping up with less than 100 days to go before the 2020 election. Trump is badly trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in national and key swing-state polls. Continue reading.

Foreign threats loom ahead of US presidential election

NEW YORK (AP) — As the Nov. 3 presidential vote nears, there are fresh signs that the nation’s electoral system is again under attack from foreign adversaries.

Intelligence officials confirmed in recent days that foreign actors are actively seeking to compromise the private communications of “U.S. political campaigns, candidates and other political targets” while working to compromise the nation’s election infrastructure. Foreign entities are also aggressively spreading disinformation intended to sow voter confusion heading into the fall.

There is no evidence that America’s enemies have yet succeeded in penetrating campaigns or state election systems, but Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign confirmed this week that it has faced multiple related threats. Continue reading.

October Surprise Part II: How Ron Johnson Unwittingly Exposed Trump’s Ukraine Plot

The Ukraine Scheme

In April 2018, Trump hired Rudy Giuliani, as his personal attorney, who in turn hired two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Russian born businessmen living in Florida, where they had contrived a variety of sketchy schemes. (One of Parnas’ firms, Fraud Guarantee, which had no identifiable customers or office, paid Giuliani a $500,000 consulting fee.) At a dinner at the Trump Hotel on April 30, Parnas reportedly told Trump that the U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was “unfriendly to the president and his interests,” that her presence stood in the way of the Giuliani operation. Trump vehemently repliedthat she should be fired.

The effort to discredit and oust Yovanovitch was launched immediately. On May 9, Parnas and Fruman got Congressman Pete Sessions, a Republican of Texas, to write a letter to the State Department demanding her dismissal, claiming she had “spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current Administration,” in exchange for a promise to raise $20,000 in campaign contributions through a pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action. Sessions appeared as “Congressman-1” in the federal indictment of Parnas and Fruman. “Parnas and Fruman committed to raising those funds for Congressman-1. Parnas met with Congressman-1 and sought Congressman-1’s assistance in causing the US Government to remove or recall the then-US Ambassador to Ukraine,” the indictment stated. Continue reading “October Surprise Part II: How Ron Johnson Unwittingly Exposed Trump’s Ukraine Plot”

Roger Stone Is A Wise Guy — So Treat Him Like One

Even amid the endless torrent of malevolent incompetence that characterizes the Boss Trump regime, some days stand out. One such was his Friday night commutation of career lowlife Roger Stone’s 40-month sentence for lying to Congress, obstructing a congressional investigation, and witness tampering. The federal judge who handed it down described Stone’s crimes as “covering up for the president.”

Specifically, he obstructed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In the immediate aftermath, Stone bragged to veteran journalist Howard Fineman about why he lied and who he was protecting. “He [Trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”

Turn on him, that is, by fully describing his own and Trump’s conversations about Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign when Julian Assange served as a cat’s paw for Russian intelligence by publishing the Democratic National Committee’s stolen emails. Trump testified that he has no memory of talking with Stone about it, although two witnesses overheard them. He also swore that his son Donald, Jr. never told him about meeting Kremlin operatives promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in Trump Tower. Continue reading.

Report: Twitter’s Top ‘Reopen’ Accounts Are Propaganda Bots

Russia’s 2016 campaign in support of Donald Trump included many different means of inserting false information into the national conversation. It featured ads on radio stations in key cities intended to suppress Black support for Hillary Clinton, faux local news sites filled with fabricated stories supporting Trump, and fake Black Lives Matters sites on Facebook meant to increase the fear of rural white voters. There were targeted ads that leveraged online tools to plant false stories directly into critical districts, and direct intrusion into voter databases that did … who knows what. But one key component of the 2016 campaign was a vast army of ‘bot’ accounts, managed by a team of Russian military hackers. That effort filled Twitter, Facebook, and other sites—and in the process became some of the most influential accounts in social media.

Now it appears that it’s happened again. A new study shows that when it comes to forcing workers to go back into offices, stores, and factories, almost half the online voices shouting for the “reopening of America” were, and are, bot accounts. Of the accounts that have tweeted most on this topic, more than half are bots. Of the most influential, almost all are bots. And behind the bots … is someone still unknown.The report comes out of Carnegie Mellon University. Digging through over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus, researchers focused in on the most influential accounts—those most active, most retweeted, and most liked. Out of the top 1,000 accounts, 62% are bots. Perhaps even more amazing: of the 50 most influential accounts on this topic, 82% are bots. Continue reading.

A staggering percentage of top accounts supporting reopen push are bots in ‘a propaganda machine’: report

AlterNet logoRussia’s 2016 campaign in support of Donald Trump included many different means of inserting false information into the national conversation. It featured ads on radio stations in key cities intended to suppress Black support for Hillary Clinton, faux local news sites filled with fabricated stories supporting Trump, and fake Black Lives Matters sites on Facebook meant to increase the fear of rural white voters. There were targeted ads that leveraged online tools to plant false stories directly into critical districts, and direct intrusion into voter databases that did … who knows what. But one key component of the 2016 campaign was a vast army of ‘bot’ accounts, managed by a team of Russian military hackers. That effort filled Twitter, Facebook, and other sites—and in the process became some of the most influential accounts in social media.

Now it appears that it’s happened again. A new study shows that when it comes to forcing workers to go back into offices, stores, and factories, almost half the online voices shouting for the “reopening of America” were, and are, bot accounts. Of the accounts that have tweeted most on this topic, more than half are bots. Of the most influential, almost all are bots. And behind the bots … is someone still unknown.

The report comes out of Carnegie Mellon University. Digging through over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus, researchers focused in on the most influential accounts—those most active, most retweeted, and most liked. Out of the top 1,000 accounts, 62% are bots. Perhaps even more amazing: of the 50 most influential accounts on this topic, 82% are bots. Continue reading.

Researchers: Nearly Half Of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Likely Bots

Nearly half of the Twitter accounts spreading messages on the social media platform about the coronavirus pandemic are likely bots, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said Wednesday.

Researchers culled through more than 200 million tweets discussing the virus since January and found that about 45% were sent by accounts that behave more like computerized robots than humans.

It is too early to say conclusively which individuals or groups are behind the bot accounts, but researchers said the tweets appeared aimed at sowing division in America. Continue reading.

House releases transcripts of closed-door Russia probe interviews

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released thousands of pages of transcripts from more than 50 of its closed-door interviews from the panel’s two-year Russia investigation in 2017 and 2018.

The transcripts posted online Thursday, along with some of the committee’s correspondence, marked another endpoint to an investigation into Russian election interference that was marred by partisan infighting, setting the stage for an even bigger fight over the Ukraine impeachment inquiry, led by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat.
The transcripts include interviews that the committee, then chaired by GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of California, conducted with key members of the Trump team and President Donald Trump’s family, including Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Corey Lewandowski, Hope Hicks, Brad Parscale and Carter Page. Continue reading.

It sure looks like Bill Barr gave Trump the absurd idea he has ‘total authority’ to force states to reopen

AlterNet logoBack on April 13, President Trump made an astonishing declaration, even for him, and he’s made some doozies. You may recall that this was the briefing at which he showed a strange campaign-style video featuring compliments from Democratic officials, which had clearly been inspired by a very similar compilation shown the night before on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, already a de facto Trump celebration hour.

It was also the appearance in which he repeatedly made the claim that he had “total authority” to reopen the government and blathered on about how he’d saved hundreds of thousands of lives when he supposedly “closed” the country in the first place.

Kaitlan Collins of CNN asked him a question I think we all were wondering at that point: Continue reading.