PEDAL TO THE MEDDLE
Whatever Don may say, his buddy Putin’s Russia is again sticking its nose into our prez election
The Russians aren’t coming back for Election Day 2020. They just never left.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, in his appearance before the House Homeland Security Committee last week, bluntly confirmed Russian election interference was alive, well and deeply involved in the White House race between President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden — just as in the 2016 contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
“We certainly have seen very active — very active — efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020 … to both sow divisiveness and discord … primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden,” Wray told the committee.
“In many ways, what concerns me is the steady drumbeat and misinformation.”
While Trump routinely dismisses the idea of Russian interference, Wray warned the ongoing “level of noise,” if unabated, could spawn a lack of confidence among American voters in the U.S. electoral system.
“I think that would be a perception, not a reality,” he said. “I think Americans can and should have confidence in our election system and our democracy.”
A report posted earlier this year on the Brennan Center for Justice website offered insights into the ongoing meddling, citing the use of methods employed four years ago and new techniques rolled out for 2020 by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA).
“Russian trolls pretended to be American people, including political groups and candidates,” read the report. “Much of their activity seemed designed to discourage certain people from voting, and they focused on swing states.”
Among some of the new techniques are that “trolls have gotten better at impersonating candidates and parties, more closely mimicking logos of official campaigns,” the report noted. “They have moved away from creating their own advocacy groups … and they’ve increased their use of seemingly nonpolitical content and commercial accounts, hiding their attempts to build networks of influence.”
The Brennan Center report suggested the IRA remained focused on divisive hot-button issues includi ng race, patriotism, immigration, gun control and LGBT concerns.
“The IRA is well-versed enough in the history and culture of our politics to exploit sharp political divisions already existing in our society,” the report said. “The IRA campaigns often create an ‘us vs. them’ discourse, feeding fear to activate or demobilize those who consider an issue personally important.”
Wray said such tried-andtrue efforts continue as the nation prepares to cast ballots.
“Most widely reported these days are attempts by adversaries — hoping to reach a wide swath of Americans covertly from outside the United States — to use false personas and fabricated stories on social media platforms to discredit U.S. individuals and institutions,” he said.
Google, Twitter and Facebook all acknowledged interference by foreign governments in the ongoing campaign.
Twitter, in a statement released on the day of Wray’s testimony, announced proactive account security measures for certain high-profile, election-related accounts across the U.S. The new measures include more sophisticated detections and alerts to help Twitter “respond rapidly to suspicious activity,” along with improved log-on security to “prevent malicious account takeover attempts.”
Facebook confirmed its August removal of “a small network of 13 Facebook ac
counts and two pages linked to individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA).”
In the past three years, Facebook yanked more than 100 networks worldwide for coordinated efforts of “inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign entity.”
“The first network we took down was linked to the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA), and so was the 100th we removed in August,” the social media giant said. “In total, our team has found and removed about a dozen deceptive campaigns connected to individuals associated with the IRA.”
Trump, an unabashed admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, refuses to accept the findings of his own intelligence community and the confirmation by Twitter and Facebook. His response to all questions about the Russian influence is unchanging: “Fake news.”
Earlier this year, a former top intelligence official at the Homeland Security Department alleged that he was told to withhold intelligence regarding Russian interference because it “made the president look bad.” There were reports around the same time of Trump berating his then-intelligence director after a congressional briefing about Moscow’s interference.
The Department of Homeland Security denied the allegation, while the White House issued a statement citing past presidential actions against the Putin regime. And the president remains resolute in his refusal to accept the premise of Russian electoral interference.
“Do you know these Russian hackers you’re talking about from Moscow?” he asked in 2018. “They have nothing to do with me. How many people are they? Only 28 people?”
Trump’s tweet following last week’s appearance by Wray pointed fingers at China while raising his own questions about the validity of the election Nov. 3.
“Chris, you don’t see any activity from China, even though it is a FAR greater threat than Russia, Russia, Russia,” wrote Trump. “They will both, plus others, be able to interfere in our 2020 Election with our totally vulnerable Unsolicited (Counterfeit?) Ballot Scam.”