The Justice Department on Friday brought charges against a Putin ally in a Russian plot to interfere in the 2018 elections. This is not a drill, this is the DoJ charging Russians with trying to mess with our elections right now.
Russians working for a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin engaged in an elaborate campaign of “information warfare” to interfere with the midterm elections, federal prosecutors said on Friday in announcing they had charged one of them in the plot.
The woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, was involved in an effort “to spread distrust towards candidates for U.S. political office and the U.S. political system,” prosecutors said.
Ms. Khusyaynova managed millions of dollars for a company owned by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who was previously indicted on charges of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, to finance foreign influence activities directed at the United States. Some of the money was spent on advertising on social media in the United States, buying internet domain names and “promoting news postings on social networks.”
The conspirators seized on divisions in American politics, prosecutors said, including immigration, guns, race relations, women and even the debate over the protests by National Football League players during the national anthem. They adopted a variety of ideological perspectives, writing on varied topics and from opposing views, prosecutors said. No one was named in court papers besides Ms. Khusyaynova.
The conspirators “took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists,” prosecutors wrote.
Russian bots are purposely making our divisive society worse by picking fights, and them amplifying those fights using social media. And let's not forget that for the last two years, the Trump regime has been not only actively denying that this was happening, but going out of their way to make our elections more vulnerable.
The bigger issue is that these attacks are going on and Trump is doing nothing to stop them. It's good then that the FBI is working to try to defend the country, but they sure aren't going to get any help and any support from Trump. Remember, for two years, Russian meddling in the elections has been "fake news".
Now we have federal charges filed that not only say that it's not fake news, but that it's happening now, in real time, and most likely is still happening.
The Russians are attacking our elections now. Right now. Openly.
And Ms. Khusyaynova here? The accountant paying for all of this.
Prosecutors said Khusyaynova is the chief accountant for a Russian umbrella effort called Project Lakhta, funded by a Russian oligarch whose Concord companies were named in the July indictment brought by Mueller involving attempted meddling in the 2016 election.
Concord Management is owned by Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, also known as "Putin's chef," who is closely linked to the Russian president. It provides food services at the Kremlin.
Mueller has indicted Prighozin as part of his probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Mueller's office indicted Prighozin and 12 other Russian nationals in February on charges including interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In June, Mueller said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that the government believes foreign "individuals and entities" are continuing to "engage in interference operations like those charged in the present indictment." The filing sought to protect evidence requested by Prighozin's company.
Follow the money, and you'll find Vlad behind it, I guarantee.
Stay tuned.
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