Russia Tried Swinging The Midterm Elections Towards It's Allies
On Monday, the government released the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, singling out, in the 39-page unclassified version, 4 countries clearly identified as enemies: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. In the Forward, the authors pointed out that “Efforts by Russia, China, and other countries to promote authoritarianism and spread disinformation is helping fuel a larger competition between democratic and authoritarian forms of government. This competition exploits global information flows to gain influence and impacts nearly all countries, contributing to democratic backsliding, threats of political instability, and violent societal conflict through misinformation and disinformation.”
In the section of the report dedicated to the threats specifically from Russia, the authors have a section called “Malign Influence Operations” and in that section they pointed out that Russia is still working to undermine American democracy, although they carefully tip-toe around pointing to Russia’s continued bolstering of the Republican Party and efforts to influence Fox News.
“Russia,” they wrote, “presents one of the most serious foreign influence threats to the United States, because it uses its intelligence services, proxies, and wide-ranging influence tools to try to divide Western alliances and increase its sway around the world, while attempting to undermine U.S. global standing, sow discord inside the United States, and influence U.S. voters and decision-making. Moscow probably will build on these approaches to try to undermine the United States as opportunities arise. Russia and its influence actors are adept at capitalizing on current events in the United States to push Moscow-friendly positions to Western audiences. Russian officials, including Putin himself, and influence actors routinely inject themselves into contentious U.S. issues, even if that causes the Kremlin to take a public stand on U.S. domestic political matters.
• Moscow views U.S. elections as opportunities for malign influence as part of its larger foreign policy strategy. Moscow has conducted influence operations against U.S. elections for decades, including as recently as the U.S. midterm elections in 2022. It will try to strengthen ties to U.S. persons in the media and politics in hopes of developing vectors for future influence operations.
• Russia’s influence actors have adapted their efforts to increasingly hide their hand, laundering their preferred messaging through a vast ecosystem of Russian proxy websites, individuals, and organizations that appear to be independent news sources. Moscow seeds original stories or amplifies preexisting popular or divisive discourse using a network of state media, proxy, and social media influence actors and then intensifies that content to further penetrate the Western information environment. These activities can include disseminating false content and amplifying information perceived as beneficial to Russian influence efforts or conspiracy theories.
Kind of related, Russian asset Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor and an admitted criminal who was pardoned by Trump before serving any prison time, is suing the U.S. government on grounds of wrongful prosecution, seeking $50 million in damages.
Another Russian asset in the U.S. is, of course, Tucker Carlson. There are no Tucker Carlson shows without lies and many of them push the Kremlin line against the U.S. Last year, just before the midterms, Carlson was whining, as he always does, about sanctions against Russia for its invasion Ukraine. He claimed he had the “real” reason for the sanctions and told his viewers that “This week Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, of Bethesda, answered that question. Russia is an orthodox Christian country with traditional social values and for that reason it must be destroyed no matter what the cost to us. So, this is not a conventional war, this is a Jihad. Jamie Raskin said that out loud but many in Washington agree with him."
That was a bold-faced lie, of course. Newsweek reported that the “segment became widely shared across social media, especially by Russian figures. Some, like Russian media analyst Maria Dubovikova, attributed whole parts of Carlson's alleged summation to Raskin directly. The truth, however, was not quite as the popular Fox host suggested it. While Carlson did not specifically cite where the comment from Raskin came from, he most likely referred to a blog post the congressman published on October 25, in which he said that opposition to Russia's plans for Ukraine doubled as opposition to Russia's regressive societal norms. ‘Moscow right now is a hub of corrupt tyranny, censorship, authoritarian repression, police violence, propaganda, government lies, and disinformation, and planning for war crimes,’ Raskin wrote. ‘It is a world center of antifeminist, antigay, anti-trans hatred, as well as the homeland of replacement theory for export. In supporting Ukraine, we are opposing these fascist views, and supporting the urgent principles of democratic pluralism.’ Newsweek's own fact check of Carlson's claims concluded that they were a false misrepresentation and that Raskin never said that Russia should be destroyed.” Here's another Tucker classic:
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