If you’ve spent any time on the internet or any social media platform this year, you know that there are a lot of weird political narratives being amplified. The same thing happened in 2016, a fever-dream of campaign email hacks and Russian bots. In the past eight years, Russia and other foreign actors have gotten more sophisticated in their disinformation campaigns. By that I mean, Russia has apparently fully co-opted several American conservatives to do their part to disrupt the presidential election. The Biden administration just announced a sweeping set of criminal charges and investigations into Russia’s ratf–king operation, all of which are designed to help Donald Trump.

The Biden administration announced a sweeping set of actions to tackle a major Russian government-backed effort to influence the 2024 US presidential election on Wednesday, including unveiling criminal charges against two Russian nationals, sanctions on 10 individuals and entities, and the seizure of 32 internet domains.

At Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direction, three Russian companies used fake profiles to promote false narratives on social media, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. Internal documents produced by one of those Russian companies show one of the goals of the propaganda effort was to boost the candidacy of Donald Trump or whoever emerged as the Republican nominee for president, according to an FBI affidavit.

Separately, two employees of RT, the Russian state media network, were indicted in a US court for allegedly being part of a scheme that funneled nearly $10 million to set up and direct a Tennessee-based front company to produce online content aimed at sowing divisions among Americans, according to the Justice Department. The scheme targeted millions of American news consumers with what Attorney General Merrick Garland described as “hidden Russian government messaging.”

Taken together, the actions represent the Biden administration’s most significant public response yet to alleged Russian influence operations targeting American voters. After the US accused Iran of trying to hack both the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns last month, Wednesday’s actions are a reminder that US officials continue to see Russia as a prominent foreign influence threat to November’s election, sources familiar with the matter said.

One of the three Russian companies allegedly behind the internet domains seized by the Justice Department is a company called Social Design Agency (SDA), which the Treasury Department previously sanctioned for allegedly running fake news sites in Europe on behalf of the Russian government.

[From CNN]

You can read more at CNN – the FBI affidavit is 300 pages long, full of details about domain seizures and Russia’s moves to sow discord in general and support for Trump and Republicans specifically. In 2020, “Moscow conducted a range of influence operations in support of Trump and aimed at denigrating Joe Biden,” and they thought they could do the same thing this time. Russia is playing into white identity politics, saying that Kamala Harris will take away white jobs (lmao) and that Ukrainian immigrants are a huge threat (lol).

Here are the American Heartland voices being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to parrot Kremlin talking points:

A recently unsealed SDNY indictment alleges Tenet Media—which pays exorbitant sums to Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, and others—is a front for the Russian government. https://t.co/b6CrfzAPJz

The indictment: https://t.co/3URzvj5BXn

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) September 4, 2024

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.