Which Members Of Congress Have Been Taken In By The Kremlin’s Disinformation Campaign?

It Isn't Only Marjorie Traitor Greene And Lauren Boebert

With 2 top GOP committee chairs, Michael McCaul (Foreign Affairs) and Mike Turner (Intelligence) going very public about how Russian propaganda has gained a strong foothold among Republicans, all reports mention just one member of Congress— QAnon nitwit Marjorie Traitor Greene. She screeches her support for Putin from the rooftops but no one wants to mention any of the less obvious Russo-Republicans by name. Totally typical example was a March 1 NY Times piece by David Leonhardt and Ian Philbrick, Republicans Who Like Putin, which noted that “Large parts of the Republican Party now treat Vladimir Putin as if he were an ideological ally,” but fails to name a single one from the GOP, not even Traitor Greene! And where MAGA Mike stands in this regard is especially hard to pin down.

In a Senate speech in February, Sen Chris Murphy (D-CT) emphasized that “the Republicans lifting up Putin are the same ones trying to destroy Democracy… Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. “Trump's admiration for Putin, it's turned into a collective right wing obsession. Turn on Tucker Carlson virtually any night and you're going to hear him lionizing Putin, and pushing often line for line Russian disinformation. Elon Musk uncritically blasts out Russian propaganda about the war to his 120 million plus followers. Steve Bannon says that Putin is the leader of the anti-woke fight globally. Donald Trump Jr., I follow him on social media, he's relentlessly making fun of Zelensky online. QAnon sites say that Russia’s war in Ukraine is righteous because it's just the next front of the war against these global sex traffickers that apparently are operating out of pizza parlors in Northwest DC and Ukraine… [T]here's literally a wing of the Republican Party that is lifting up Putin as an example to follow, is claiming that he's involved in a righteous fight. That same element of the Republican Party is trying to destroy American democracy. They’re not hiding that fact. They're being transparent about it. Some of the most influential thinkers on the right today are literally monarchists.”

Yesterday, a Washington Post report, for example, began by reminding readers that last August, when Biden proposed an additional $24 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine, “Moscow spin doctors working for the Kremlin were ready to try to undermine public support for the bill, internal Kremlin documents show. In an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment, Kremlin-linked political strategists and trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions, according to a trove of internal Kremlin documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by the Washington Post… One of the documents reviewed by The Post called for the use of Trump’s Truth Social platform as the only way to disseminate posts ‘without censorship,’ while ‘short-lived’ accounts would be created for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.”

These manufactured “news articles” also form part of the foundation for Trump’s platform and the MAGA cult’s belief system. “One of the political strategists, for instance,” wrote Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn, “instructed a troll farm employee working for his firm to write a comment of ‘no more than 200 characters in the name of a resident of a suburb of a major city.’ The strategist suggested that this fictitious American ‘doesn’t support the military aid that the U.S. is giving Ukraine and considers that the money should be spent defending America’s borders and not Ukraine’s. He sees that Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.’ The documents— numbering more than 100 and dating between May 2022 and August 2023— were provided to The Post to expose Kremlin propaganda operations aimed at undermining support for Ukraine in the United States, as well as their scale and methods. The files are part of a series of leaks that have allowed a rare glimpse into Moscow’s parallel efforts to weaken support for Ukraine in France and Germany, as well as destabilize Ukraine itself.”

Russia has been ramping up its propaganda operations as part of a second front that current and former senior Western officials said has become almost as important for Moscow as the military campaign in Ukraine— especially as congressional approval for further aid has become critical for Kyiv’s ability to continue defending itself.

“It is Russia’s top priority to stop the weapons, so they are throwing things at the wall to see what sticks,” said one Republican staffer on Capitol Hill. “We are seeing a broad-based campaign that has multiple lines of effort, some of which work better than others. The Russians don’t care. They are just trying to seed the environment.” The staffer and other Western officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive assessments.

The campaign has attempted to paint Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as corrupt, emphasized the numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, called for border security to be funded over any aid to Ukraine, and described “white Americans” as the principal losers because of foreign aid, the documents show.

The strategy promotes views from the far-right wing of the Republican Party and calls for some of the messaging to be voiced by American “public opinion leaders and politicians,” one of the documents shows, but it does not name any people who could be enlisted to do that.

…The campaign is part of an increasingly sophisticated strategy that has built on nearly 10 years of Kremlin efforts to elevate the voices of populist anti-establishment politicians opposed to the U.S. global role, analysts and former American officials said.

With the far-right wing of the Republican Party essentially blocking passage of any further assistance to Ukraine since August, the Kremlin’s efforts to undermine support for Ukraine may have so far gained more traction in the United States than anywhere else.

“The impact of the Russian program over the last decade … is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid,” said Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. “They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.”

…Kremlin efforts to interfere in the U.S. political system first became evident in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections, when the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia had deployed a network of trolls— creators of fake social media accounts— to spread disinformation boosting the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and seeking to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, including stories using material hacked from the Clinton campaign. Since then, some social media platforms have sought to tighten scrutiny of hostile state actors, but disinformation campaigns still proliferate.

…The strategists were told to cultivate an environment in which “Americans are not ready to sacrifice their well-being for the sake of the conflict in Ukraine,” as well as representing Russia’s increasingly close relationship with China as a new threat “created by the U.S.’s own activities.”

When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a leading opponent of aid to Ukraine, warned of “a dangerous bipartisan consensus that is leading us into war with Russia” and slammed Washington’s initial $40 billion aid package for Kyiv in 2022 as coming “while Americans go without baby formula,” the Russians singled it out for their trolls as an example of the kind of message that should be amplified.

…Fake news articles alleging Zelensky’s corruption pushed out by Russian-linked websites during the congressional debates on assistance for Ukraine in the fall have resonated. One of the most successful claims was disseminated by DC Weekly— a respectable-seeming internet outlet, which disinformation researchers at Clemson University traced back to domains affiliated with a former American police officer, John Mark Dougan, who has reinvented himself as a pro-Russian journalist in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

Through DC Weekly, a fake news story alleging that Zelensky had bought two yachts with American aid money went viral in November. The claim— patently false and denied by Zelensky’s government— was picked up by far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who linked to a story about the rumor on Twitter.

One pro-Ukraine senator, North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis told CNN that the debate on aid had been halted in part because some politicians said they were concerned about the corruption allegations and the notion that “people will buy yachts with this money.”

But the question remains, which American politicians have been stupid enough to fall for the Kremlin disinformation campaign. First and foremost, of course, is Traitor Greene— who famously advanced a top Kremlin priority, a national divorce— and wound up engaged in politics because of his involvement with the whole crazy gamut of QAnon conspiracy theories. A senior GOP Capitol Hill staffer told us that she’s “a marvel of aggressive ignorance” and that he had never met a “stupider” and more “intellectually backward” member of Congress in the 2 decades he had been working for congressional Republicans. “She’s one walking, talking conspiracy theory and doesn’t have any place in the Republican Party, let alone the United States Congress.”

Traitor Greene denies evolution and climate change and before the Jan 6 attack, told violence-prone militia members that “the only way you get your freedoms back is it's earned with the price of blood.”

Luke Broadwater reported several years ago that “Greene used social media in 2019 to endorse executing top Democrats and has suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was a staged ‘false flag’ attack. [She] also speculated on Facebook in 2018 that California wildfires might have been started by [Jewish] lasers from space, promoting a theory pushed by followers of QAnon.”

He also noted, without singling her out by name, that she was being investigated for whatever role she may have played in the violent attack on the Capitol as part of Trump’s J-6 coup attempt. “Officials have said they are investigating reports from Democrats that a number of House Republicans provided tours of the Capitol and other information to people who might have gone on to be part of the mob on Jan. 6… [I]n signaling either overt or tacit support, a small but vocal band of Republicans now serving in the House provided legitimacy and publicity to extremist groups and movements as they built toward their role in supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election and the attack on Congress. Aitan Goelman, a former federal prosecutor who helped convict the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, said that when elected officials— or even candidates for office— took actions like appearing with militia groups or other right-wing groups it ‘provides them with an added imprimatur of legitimacy.’… Greene has for years trafficked in conspiracy theories, expressed support for QAnon and made offensive remarks about Black people, Jews and Muslims. She also appeared at a campaign event alongside members of the Three Percenters.”

Greene was an early adherent, calling QAnon “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.” Many of her Facebook posts in recent years reflected language used by the movement, talking about hanging prominent Democrats or executing F.B.I. agents.

Greene has also displayed a fondness for some of the militia groups whose members were caught on video attacking the Capitol, including the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters. Speaking in 2018 at the Mother of All Rallies, a pro-Trump gathering in Washington, she praised militias as groups that can protect people against “a tyrannical government.”

Members of the House like Traitor Greene, Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Paul Gosar (R-AZ) Mary Miller (R-IL) have been most full-throttle susceptible to Kremlin propaganda. Like Trump, they and other poorly educated politicians embrace conspiracy theories— from whatever source— because they feel a lack of control and find that even baseless conspiracy theories offer clear explanations, even if far-fetched. People high in traits like narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy— traits linked to suspicion, manipulation and a desire to feel superior— are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories, which also foster a sense of community and belonging for life’s losers.

These far right extremists are seeking out information that confirms existing beliefs and dismisses contradictory evidence, leading them to latch onto information that supports conspiracy theories while ignoring evidence debunking them. All have been noted to see patterns where none exist, connecting unrelated dots to create a narrative, even if the connections are, at best, tenuous. And look at these 4— Traitor Greene, Boebert, Gosar and Miller, plus some of the QAnon-adjacent members like Troy Nehls (R-TX), Josh Brecheen (R-OK), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Matt Rosendale (R-MT), Scott Perry (R-PA) and Clay Higgins (R-LA)— they all have issues with authority, generally distrusting governments, institutions, media, guaranteeing they will be more receptive to conspiracy theories that portray these entities as corrupt or manipulative, easy patsies for the Kremlin assault on weak-minded Americans.

In 2018 Karen Douglas edited a book, The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories, with Michael Wood and Robbie Sutton, an overview of the research on the psychological factors underlying conspiracy belief, covering topics such as cognitive biases, social identity, political ideology and the role of the internet in spreading conspiracy theories. I found this 3-year old American Psychological Association interview with Douglas that you might find enlightening: