Russia, and China and Iran, are attempting unlawfully to influence the outcome of our November election. Beware! According to Attorney General Merrick Garland – never one to speak precipitously -- Moscow once again has a “preferred outcome” in the presidential race and has been caught red-handed in its attempt to influence how Americans perceive the leading candidates. (Putin also has a spoiler candidate in the presidential contest – just in case.)
Russia is doing its level best to subvert American voters. Putin favors Trump, and a range of Russian outreach operations, now curbed by Garland, show the over the air and over social media methods that Moscow employs. It also employs crypto hacking.
A Treasury official monitoring Russian fakery declared that state broadcaster RT (Russia Today) and other Russian propagandists had employed a "nefarious campaign to covertly recruit …American influencers in support of their malign activity". That referred to Tenet, a Nashville-based social media producer that was paid $10 million to post thousands of English-language videos and promote well-known right-wing American commentators – a classic example of information laundering. The videos were supplied by Moscow. They elicited at least 16 million views on YouTube.
FBI head Christopher Wray explained: “RT…used people living and working inside the U.S. to facilitate contracts with American media figures to create and disseminate Russian propaganda…The content was pitched as legitimate independent news when, in fact, much of it was created in Russia by RT employees who work for the Russian government." RT and others also “created media websites to trick Americans into unwittingly consuming Russian propaganda."
Garland explained that the Kremlin directed Russian agencies to obtain website domains and spoof popular U.S. news outlets like Fox and the Washington Post, ‘fooling American voters into reading Kremlin-produced news content that they thought was produced in the US.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that RT was “being used to advance covert Russian influence actions." In addition to attempting to sway Americans for Trump, Russia was trying relentlessly to reduce U. S. popular support for Ukraine, to improve understanding and backing for Russia and Russian policies more generally, and to take the steam out of criticism of Putin. Naturally!
Garland sanctioned the head of RT and two of her Moscow-based managers who paid content creators and “influencers” in Nashville to “pump” disinformation about Russia, the war in Ukraine, and Trump to American audiences. They were also accused of engaging illicitly in "activities that aim to deteriorate public trust in our institutions." What could be a greater or more dangerous goal, echoing 2016?
Garland said (at long last) that "The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country's free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts.”
Garland restricted visas for Russian media operatives and seized internet domain names that had been used "covertly [to] promote AI-generated false narratives" targeting specific US demographics and regions on social media. He offered a whopping $10 million reward for information leading to the detention of the crypto Russian Angry Hackers Did It (RaHDit) perpetrators.
This was not the first foreign attempt to interfere with the US political process. In June, a group of hackers linked to the Iranian government successfully breached Trump's campaign and leaked internal documents. In July, Garland disclosed a Russian operation to disseminate fake news from 1,000 separate social media accounts employed by Russians to spread disinformation about the U.S. election. China then joined in; at least via its own attempts to insert ideas favorable to Beijing’s interests. Let us not forget, too, that in 2016 Putin’s men hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and leaked stolen documents; they succeeded in undermining Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and in boosting Trump’s winning chances.
This year, as in 2016, the Green Party is on the ballot and may obtain a small but again decisive few percentage points of the total vote. In 2016, those minuscule shares of the vote nevertheless conceivably tilted the final tallies against Clinton. The Green Party was less decisive in 2016 than Ralph Nader’s total votes were in Florida in 2000, but this year, in key states, its votes could easily tip the result away from Kamala Harris.
As in election years past, physician Jill Stein, 74, is the Green Party candidate. She is also a friend of Putin and Russia, although Garland has not mentioned her and Senate investigations in 2019 simply reported that Russian troll farms had backed her. Last week, Stein was in Tampa to support the Uhuru 3, Russian propagandists who are being tried in Federal court for “conspiring to covertly sow discord,” spread Russian propaganda, and intervene illegally in the U. S. election. (The Uhuru 3 more formally are members of the African People’s Socialist Party, also known as the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement.) She has expressed support for the Uhuru 3. The U. S. Department of Justice terms them “malign foreign agents” working for Putin. They were indicted along with three Russian agents and another American.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report disclosed that Russia’s Internet Research Agency employed social media to promote Stein’s presidential ambitions in 2016. In 2015, she went to Moscow as a guest of RT and attended a gala dinner promoting its television network. She sat at the head table along with Putin and Michael Flynn, Trump’s sometime security official.
This summer, a spokesperson for the U.S. Democratic National Committee termed Stein “a useful idiot.” “A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump,” he said. Polls now suggest that she may not even obtain 1 percent of the votes in November, a percentage she exceeded easily in 2016. But, this year, as a stridently pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, candidate, she is polling much better among Muslims, and could seriously shave Democratic numbers in Michigan, a critical Muslim voting state. In 2019, Hillary Clinton suggested that Stein was a “Russian asset.” Stein replied that she was not “a Russian spy.”
In fact, Stein, the daughter of European emigres fleeing Hitler, was raised a Reform Jew in Chicago. She studied social relations as a Harvard undergraduate, graduating magna cum laude. She graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1979 and practiced internal medicine, first at Beth Israel Deaconess hospital and then at Simmons College. Later, she worked with Physicians for Social Responsibility of Cambridge to campaign against pollution from coal fired electrical plants in the greater Boston region and their endangering of the health of children.
She ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, finishing third. In 2004, she ran for state representative for Lexington and Waltham (Mass.), losing badly. Then she ran for a place in Lexington (Mass.)’s representative Town Meeting, winning easily in 2005 and again in 2008. (She spoke very infrequently, making little impression on the members of that legislative body, of which I was one.)
In 2006, she lost a race for Mass. Secretary of State. In 2010, she ran again for governor, losing badly to Deval Patrick. She has since been running for president – in 2012, 2016, and now. During the 2016 campaign she called Trump “a magnet for crime and extortion.” But this year she has been very critical of U. S, policy in Gaza and Israel and parrots nearly all of Putin’s talking points regarding the invasion of Ukraine, blaming it (falsely) on NATO’s provocation and on the rise of Nazism in Ukraine.
Whether or not Stein is a “useful idiot” or not, she is a friend of Putin and her Green Party candidacy is as little “green” as before. She could, once again, dangerously be a spoiler in Putin’s favor. In many ways, she is just as much worth guarding against as the Tennessee and similar Russian disinformation initiatives.
A new report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations finds that Lexington resident Jill Stein — the Green Party candidate who could disrupt the election — is leading Harris among Muslim voters in several battleground states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.
Perhaps Jill Stein might be an early target of your International Court for Corruption (ICC-prime)!
Ad interrum, simply 'outing' her is a worthwhile endeavor!.... so Bravo, professor!!
Thanks for writing this.
And she lives in Lexington, one of the bluest communities in ever blue MA.
A new report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations finds that Lexington resident Jill Stein — the Green Party candidate who could disrupt the election — is leading Harris among Muslim voters in several battleground states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.
Obviously they don't understand that Stein is a ##PutinPuppet and just out to benefit the orange felon.
BTW I'm looking forward to your OWLL course.