World News Russian ‘propaganda on steroids’ aimed at 2016 US election - lawmaker
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia mounted a campaign of “propaganda on steroids” seeking to influence the 2016 US presidential election, the top Democrat on the US Senate Intelligence Committee said yesterday, listing several areas of concern about possible links to Republican Donald Trump’s campaign.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin again denied that Russia tried to influence the election, but in doing so he made reference to the wrong US president in answering a question at an Arctic forum.
“Once, Reagan, while discussing, I think, taxes, told the Americans: ‘Read my lips: ‘No!’”
His reply recalled what George H W Bush told Americans during his 1988 presidential election campaign, “Read my lips: No new taxes.”
Trump has dismissed suggestions of links with Moscow as Democratic Party sour grapes about his surprise November defeat of the party’s candidate, Hillary Clinton. US intelligence agencies said Russia hacked emails of senior Democrats and orchestrated the release of embarrassing information to hurt Clinton’s campaign.
“I will not prejudge the outcome of our investigation,” Senator Mark Warner told an intelligence committee hearing on the allegations. “We are seeking to determine if there is an actual fire, but so far there is a great, great deal of smoke.”
Putin also said yesterday that contacts Russian diplomats had made in the United States were merely part of routine work.
At the hearing, lawmakers warned of the danger that Russia could interfere in elections in France and Germany this year and in future US campaigns. Cyber security experts at the rare day-long public hearing detailed what they described as the dissemination of disinformation and cyberattacks on both Democratic political operatives and Republicans.
Lawmakers and cyber experts mentioned stories that were being spread to discredit German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And they said Britain’s “Brexit” vote last year on leaving the European Union should be examined.
Clinton Watts, a security consultant and former FBI agent, told Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican committee member, that he may have been a victim of Russian activity during his unsuccessful campaign for the 2016 Republican nomination against Trump.
Rubio later said he would not comment. But he told the hearing that in July 2016, after he announced he would run for reelection to the Senate, former members of his presidential campaign team were targeted by an unsuccessful cyberattack from Russia.
He said former campaign staffers were also targeted unsuccessfully from within Russia within the past 24 hours.
“We’re all targets of a sophisticated and capable adversary,” said Senator Richard Burr, a Republican who heads the intelligence committee.
Democrat Warner, who was a technology executive before entering politics, described a sweeping Russian campaign using trolls and botnets, or networks of hacked or infected devices, to spread large amounts of disinformation.
The campaign of “fake news” was particularly targeted at traditionally Democratic-leaning states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Trump defeated Clinton by narrow margins that were not predicted by opinion polls, he said.
“This Russian ‘propaganda on steroids’ was designed to poison the national conversation in America,” Warner said.
Citing concerns to be addressed in the committee’s probe, Warner listed the prediction by a Trump associate about the release of hacked emails weeks before they were released, a change in the Republican Party’s platform to water down language on Ukraine, and Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and other Trump associates being forced to step down over ties to Russia.