Feds charge Russian in scheme
Troll farm figures in indictment over 2018 election effort
WASHINGTON — The U.S. accused a Russian woman Friday of helping oversee the finances of a sweeping, secretive effort to sway American public opinion through social media in the first federal case alleging foreign interference in the 2018 midterm elections.
The criminal complaint against Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova alleges that Russians are using some of the same techniques to influence U.S. politics as they relied on ahead of the 2016 presidential election, methods laid bare in an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign.
Justice Department prosecutors allege that Khusyaynova, of St. Petersburg, helped manage the finances of a hidden but powerful Russian social media effort aimed at spreading distrust for American political candidates and causing divisions on hot-button social issues like immigration and gun control.
Since at least 2015, the group created thousands of fake social media profiles and email accounts that appeared to be from people in the U.S. and were designed to “create and amplify divisive social and political content,” including on significant current events, such as deadly shootings in South Carolina and Las Vegas, prosecutors said in court papers.
The Justice Department unsealed the criminal complaint on the same day that U.S. intelligence agencies, in a rare public statement , asserted that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in continuous efforts to influence American policy and voters in the upcoming elections and beyond.
In the criminal complaint, prosecutors say Khusyaynova worked for the same social media troll farm that was indicted earlier this year by Mueller.
Prosecutors say the conduct singled out Friday runs afoul of laws that bar foreign nationals from attempting to influence American elections or engaging in political activities without first registering with the attorney general.
The Russian organizers of the conspiracy advised that the posts should reflect various viewpoints, and they gave specific instructions, prosecutors said.
After one news article targeting Republican Sen. John Mccain appeared online with the headline “Mccain Says Thinking a Wall Will Stop Illegal Immigration is ‘Crazy,” members of the group were told to brand him as “an old geezer who has lost it and who long ago belonged in a home for the elderly.”
Mccain died in August of brain cancer.
The new prosecution was brought by the Justice Department’s national security division and prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia.