Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The plot thickens on the Russian propaganda side of the Trump/Russia story as Facebook has turned over evidence to Congress that political ads on the social network bought by Russian front companies were targeting voters in Michigan and Wisconsin.

A number of Russian-linked Facebook ads specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, two states crucial to Donald Trump's victory last November, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the situation. 
Some of the Russian ads appeared highly sophisticated in their targeting of key demographic groups in areas of the states that turned out to be pivotal, two of the sources said. The ads employed a series of divisive messages aimed at breaking through the clutter of campaign ads online, including promoting anti-Muslim messages, sources said. 
It has been unclear until now exactly which regions of the country were targeted by the ads. And while one source said that a large number of ads appeared in areas of the country that were not heavily contested in the elections, some clearly were geared at swaying public opinion in the most heavily contested battlegrounds. 
Michigan saw the closest presidential contest in the country -- Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by about 10,700 votes out of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast. Wisconsin was also one of the tightest states, and Trump won there by only about 22,700 votes. Both states, which Trump carried by less than 1%, were key to his victory in the Electoral College
The sources did not specify when in 2016 the ads ran in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Those two states aren't enough to have given Clinton the win, but if this included Pennsylvania, then yes, that would have been her win in the electoral college.

The focus on Michigan and Wisconsin also adds more evidence that the Russian group tied to the effort was employing a wide range of tactics potentially aimed at interfering in the election
Facebook previously has acknowledged that about one quarter of the 3,000 Russian-bought ads were targeted to specific geographic locations, without detailing the locations. The company said of the ads that were geographically targeted "more ran in 2015 than 2016." In all, Facebook estimates the entire Russian effort was seen by 10 million people.

The Russians knew exactly where to hit us.  I'm thinking that would have been much more difficult without some assistance from the Trump campaign.

It's looking more and more like our worst fears about the 2016 election are true. No wonder then that Trump's allies are now pushing Republicans in the House and Senate to end their investigations. Greg Sargent:

The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a news conference on Wednesday afternoon to provide a “progress report” on its investigation into Russian sabotage of the 2016 election and possible Trump campaign collusion with it, CNN reports. According to the committee’s Republican chairman, Richard Burr of North Carolina, the presser is intended to brief the public on “the things we are either close to closing the book on or have closed the book on.”

But I have learned new details about why this presser is actually happening, and they do not exactly inspire confidence in the future of this investigation, or at least in how Republicans are going to handle it going forward. 
According to a senior aide to a Democratic senator on the committee, the reason this presser is happening is that Burr had initially moved to issue an interim report on the progress made by the probe.

But Democrats on the committee balked at this, the aide tells me. They worried that releasing a report would be premature and that Burr’s desire to do so might be rooted in political pressure he is feeling to wrap up the probe faster. 
So after Democrats objected, a compromise was reached to hold this presser instead. 
The reason this is worrisome is that Republicans are turning up the volume on their efforts to scuttle the probes. In a good piece this morning, Politico reports that pro-Trump Republicans are angry with the GOP leadership for allegedly allowing these probes to get out of hand. Some Trump allies are even claiming that this is happening because the GOP leadership allegedly opposes Trump. As one put it: “Of course, the Republican leadership is behind these probes. The Republicans cannot get over the fact that Trump won and is our president.”

Remarkably, these Trump-allied Republicans are explicitly asserting that GOP leaders are betraying Trump by failing to squelch ongoing efforts to get to the bottom of a hostile foreign power’s apparent sabotage of our democracy, in addition to the possibility of Trump campaign collusion with it. These probes are also designed to establish whether there was Russian interference, and if so, how it happened.

The bottom line is that Roy Moore's primary win in Alabama last week just gave Trump's friends on Capitol Hill significant ammunition to fire back at the House and especially the Senate committees investigating the Trump/Russia story.  The threats are now promises: if you don't pull the plug, we will primary you and nobody will be able to save your career.

It's about to get ugly, folks.  Stay tuned.

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