The Most Shocking Moments of the New Russia Complaint, from ‘Civil War’ to ‘Fake’ Rubio to ‘Colored LGBT’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-most-shocking-moments-of-the-new-russia-indictment-from-civil-war-to-fake-rubio-to-colored-lgbt

Kevin Poulsen, Spencer Ackerman
10.19.18

Federal prosecutors on Friday alleged that a Russian woman is the chief accountant of Project Lakhta, a sprawling Kremlin campaign to influence politics in the U.S. and European Union. It’s an operation that the FBI, in a criminal complaint, says is ongoing.

The complaint accuses the woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, of keeping detailed records of payouts to a social-media campaign of which the St. Petersberg-based troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, is just one component.

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Amongst the chief themes of the Russian influence campaign has been to exploit American white supremacy. The complaint adds a new level of detail. In addition to well-known Russian trolling on the NFL protests against racist policing, immigration and the Confederate flag, the complaint says that the Russians’ social-media themes included “the Charlottesville ‘Unite The Right’ rally” that killed anti-racist protester Heather Heyer in August 2017.

An unnamed conspirator in Project Lakhta described their goal as to “effectively aggravate the conflict between the minorities and the rest of the population.”

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The Russian influence campaign, as has been widely reported, involved transactionally pretending to be either on the left or the right.

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The messaging also instructed Project Lakhta operatives to emphasize voter fraud, a marginal phenomenon, embraced by Trump, that provides a pretext for voter suppression. “There is an urgent need to introduce voter IDs for all the states, above all in the blue (liberal and undecided) states,” reads an August 2017-era instruction. “State in the end that the Democrats in the coming election will surely attempt to falsify the results.” A Russian-created Twitter account, @amconvoice, tweeted in February 2018: “The only way the Democrats can win 101 GOP seats is to cheat like they always do with illegals & dead voters.”

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Project Lakhta’s support for Trump came with a harder rhetorical edge. The complaint – presumably based on intercepted communications quoted in the document – specifically discusses whipping Americans up into a frenzy over a prospective domestic insurrection to protect Trump.

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But they also played the other side. Project Lakhta account @KeniJJackson tweeted in December 2017: “If Trump fires Robert Mueller, we have to take to the streets in protest. Our democracy is at stake.”

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The Russians also wanted to drive political donations. One of Project Lakhta’s Twitter accounts, @CovfeveNation, tweeted instructions for Americans to donate money to defeat Democratic politicians like Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi.

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