RussiaGate

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Donald Trump lawsuit THROWN OUT as judge says 'no compelling reason' for it to continue

Judge Karen Steyn ruled that the former US president's case could not continue.

She said in a written ruling that "there are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial".

Good stuff.

 

[lpetrich]

Special Counsel John Durham Exonerates Donald Trump of “Russiagate” | Internet Infidels Discussion Board from last year

Were Russian agents very careful to avoid dealing with Donald Trump himself? That would explain the difficulty of finding much more -- many of his underlings are likely much more disciplined than he is.

 

[barbos]

Great logic: "There must be something, cause we did not find anything"

 

[lpetrich]

Office of Public Affairs | Justice Department Disrupts Covert Russian Government-Sponsored Foreign Malign Influence Operation Targeting Audiences in the United States and Elsewhere | United States Department of Justice
noting the affidavit:
doppelganger_affidavit_9.4.24.pdf

The Justice Department today announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as “Doppelganger,” in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws.

...
In conjunction with the domain seizures, the U.S. Treasury Department announced the designation of 10 individuals and two entities as part of a coordinated response to Russia’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Right-wing influencers were duped to work for Russian operation, US says | AP News

An indictment filed Wednesday alleges a media company linked to six conservative influencers — including well-known personalities Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson — was secretly funded by Russian state media employees to churn out English-language videos that were “often consistent” with the Kremlin’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition” to Russian interests, like its war in Ukraine.

...
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.

RT = Russia Today

After the indictments were announced, both Pool and Johnson issued statements on social media, which Rubin retweeted, saying they were victims of the alleged crimes and had done nothing wrong.

“We still do not know what is true as these are only allegations,” Pool said. “Putin is a scumbag.”

...
Though the indictment does not name the Tennessee-based company, the details match up exactly with Tenet Media, an online media company that boasts of hosting “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.” Tenet’s website lists six influencers who provide content, including Pool, Johnson, Rubin, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen.

...
The indictment shows that some of the influencers were paid handsomely for their work. One unidentified influencer’s contract included a $400,000 monthly fee, a $100,000 signing bonus and an additional performance bonus.

Tenet Media’s shows in recent months have featured high-profile conservative guests, including Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake. The nearly 2,000 videos posted by the company have gotten more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, prosecutors said.

 

[lpetrich]

Tim Pool got well-known for documenting the Occupy Wall Street protests, claims that he is still a left-winger, though what his posts is all right wing.

Benny Johnson was fired from BuzzFeed after that company discovered that he plagiarized others' work.

Dave Rubin was originally on the left-leaning "The Young Turks", but he now identifies himself as a libertarian or a "classical liberal". Other podcasters have anecdotes about him, like he was mainly into lifestyle reporting at TYT, and how he seemed rather lazy about journalism. He is homosexual and he is married, and he and his husband now have children by surrogate mothers. When some of his viewers got outraged, he blamed the left.

DOJ says Russia paid right-wing influencers to spread Russian propaganda : NPR

DIRESTA: The influencers have not been indicted. The influencers have released statements on Twitter saying that they were completely unwitting, that they didn't know this was happening. And you can see in the indictment they are not making them say things that they wouldn't necessarily have said from a basic perspective, but they're asking them to do just a little bit. There's a little bit of a nudge there. In one example that you can see in the indictment, they're saying, hey, there was a terrorist attack in Moscow. Let's create some perception that maybe Ukraine was behind it.

SIMON: I mean, isn't the Marxist-Leninist phrase useful idiots?

DIRESTA: It is indeed useful idiots. Yes, absolutely. And the amount of money that they were receiving - so folks are aware - is about $400,000 a month or so for four videos, so one per week, so approximately $100,000 per video. That's an extraordinary rate. So just to be clear, most influencers are not making $100,000 to put out a video. One of the things that you see in the indictment is the influencers, the talent asking for some sort of verification that the supposed donor and funder of this operation was real.

The heads of the media company that were - that knew that Russia was behind it provided kind of a dossier, a one-page biography of the supposed investor, featuring a picture of a man sitting on a private jet. Sort of incredible, actually. If you Google the individual's name, of course, he does not come up. They claim that he works at a bank. If you Google bank in his name, it does not come up. So despite the fact that you do see the influencers taking some basic diligent steps, they ultimately decide to kind of go through with the relationship anyway.

So the money was presented as coming from businesspeople who were really fakes - someone composed biographies of them and added pictures those bios.

 

[blastula]

$100,000 per video would be a glaring red flag that it's some kind of scam, but they were too stupid or too corrupt not to care.

 

[lpetrich]

How Russia covertly hired U.S. influencers to create videos : NPR

The RT staffers, named in the indictment as Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They're accused of funneling nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee company that contracted with online influencers with big audiences.

...
Details in the indictment match Nashville, Tenn.-based Tenet Media, including its website description: "a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues."

Tenet was founded in 2022 by Lauren Chen, a conservative Canadian YouTuber, and her husband, Liam Donovan, whose X profile describes him as president of Tenet Media. Chen hosts a show on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV and is a contributor to right-wing activist group Turning Point USA. She wrote opinion pieces for RT in 2021 and 2022.

...
Tenet publicly launched in November 2023 with six contributors well-known in right-wing media, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, David Rubin and Lauren Southern. The videos they create for Tenet regularly cover conservative staples including "migrant gangs," transgender people, online censorship and attacks on Vice President Harris and President Biden.

"While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia's interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine," the indictment says.

The two RT staffers

told some contributors that the company was being backed by a wealthy European banker named Eduard Grigoriann. "In truth and in fact, Grigoriann was a fictional persona," the indictment says.

The staffers recommended what kind of stories to cover and what slants to put on those stories.

For example, the indictment said Afanasyeva told the company to blame Ukraine for a March terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall, even though ISIS had claimed responsibility. The company's founder said one of the contributors was "happy to cover it."

Afanasyeva also allegedly requested that the company post a video of "a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia" — likely a reference to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who traveled to Moscow in February. According to the indictment, a producer at the company told one of the founders "it just feels like overt shilling" but was told to "put it out there."

 

[lpetrich]

Some more evidence of gullibility on the Right:

Inside the Macedonian Fake-News Complex | WIRED - in Veles, North Macedonia, back in 2016, some young men ran pro-Trump "news sites". They did it for the money, not for ideology, and they were much more successful with the Right than with the Left.

For a week in July, he experimented with fake news extolling Bernie Sanders. “Bernie Sanders supporters are among the smartest people I’ve seen,” he says. “They don’t believe anything. The post must have proof for them to believe it.”

 

[lpetrich]

Exhibit 9A in the affidavit is very revealing about the target audience of this disinformation operation. This document was edited to conceal a lot of identities, but it is easy to work out what is what from the contexts of these edits.

Guerrilla Media Campaign in the United States
1. Introduction

The information situation in the United States differs dramatically from that in all other Western countries. The key to this situation is the high level of polarization of American society which is split between supporters of the U.S. Political Party B and U.S. Political Party A parties. We believe that supporters of the U.S. Political Party B are left-wing and far-left globalists who advocate for perversion of traditional moral and religious values, while supporters of the U.S. Political Party A are normal people whose priority is to preserve traditions of the American way of life. It is important that U.S. Political Party B are also people of color and supporters of "affirmative action" and "reverse discrimination", i.e. infringement on the rights of the white population of the United States, while U.S. Political Party A are the victims of discrimination by people of color.

U.S. Political Party A = Republican Party
U.S. Political Party B = Democratic Party
Also implying that USPPA is the party of white people, people who are discriminated against by USPPB.

Moreover, although the Candidate B is an appointee of the most numerous and influential group in the leadership of the U.S. Political Party B he currently enjoys the approval of less than 40% of citizens of the US. It is also important that Candidate B likely rival in the next election, Candidate A is popular among the U.S. Political Party A, primarily poor whites. However, he is not popular with the leadership of the U.S. Political Party A.

Candidate A = Donald Trump
Candidate B = Joe Biden

None of the significant American politicians, including those significantly opposed to the incumbent president, can be considered pro-Russian or pro-Putin. However, there is a widespread opinion among U.S. Political Party A that Candidate B and his government are spending too much money on foreign policy, on confrontation with Russia and on "Lend-Lease" to Ukraine. This is at the time when the United States is suffering from rising prices, primarily for gasoline, historically high inflation and the actual impoverishment of white taxpayers, a significant part of the middle class. Under these circumstances, the recipients of public assistance, unemployed people of color and residents of large cities end up being privileged groups of the population.

Implying that Real Americans are being exploited to support the war in Ukraine and to support the lower classes. Seems like what a Russian influencer might want Americans to believe.

A key characteristic of the American media is its skew towards the U.S. Political Party B influence. While society is split between supporters of the "new globalist socialism" and supporters of traditional values, between a donkey and an elephant is roughly equal, the media is U.S. Political Party B by over 75%. The situation for U.S. Political Party A is made complicated by the censorship on social media and U.S. Political Party B -oriented "new media".

Pure victimhood. Whining that US mainstream news outlets don't follow their party line.

 

[lpetrich]

2. Content of the campaign

We would like to reiterate that in the United States there are no pro-Russian and/or pro-Putin mainstream politicians or sufficiently large numbers of influencers and voters. There is no point of justifying Russia and no one to justify it to. All American politicians and influencers are patriots and supporters of American supremacy. However, there is a feeling among the U.S. Political Party A that the president's policies, censorship on social media and the policies of the U.S. Political Party B government are encroaching on their rights. They are dissatisfied of dramatic decline in the standard of living and large expenditures on offensive policy of the United States in Europe and Ukraine. They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the "American dream." It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in / for the United States.

Except that right-wing Russia-loving extends to some politicians.

3, Campaign Topics

1. Encroaching universal poverty. Record inflation. Halting of economic growth. Unaffordable prices for food and essential goods;

2. Risk of job loss for white Americans;

3. Privileges for people of color, perverts, and disabled;

4. Constant lies of the U.S. Political Party B administration about the real situation in the country;

5. Threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants (including new immigrants from Ukraine);

6. Overspending on foreign policy and at the expense of interests of white US citizens;

7. Constant lies to the voters by U.S. Political Party B in power;

8. Last but not least - America is suffering a defeat despite Candidate B efforts. We are being drawn into the war. Our guys will die in Ukraine.

Implying that the US will send an expeditionary force into Ukraine. But I think that Dave Rubin will enjoy that reference to "perverts".

Though he might claim that that does not refer to homosexual cis people but to trans people.

 

[lpetrich]

4. Target audience of the campaign

1. U.S. Political Party A voters;

2. Candidate A supporters;

3. Supporters of traditional family values;

4. White Americans, representing the lower-middle and middle class.

Republican voters and Donald Trump supporters.

Dave Rubin might like the third one also.


The rest of Exhibit 9A was about the sort of things that these paid influencers were to make.

It was followed by Exhibit 9B. That document is in Russian, and I translated parts of it with an autotranslator. It's close to the English version.

 

[lpetrich]

The U.S. Political Partv is currently advancing a relatively pro-Russian agenda. That could be exploited by posing as ardent U.S. Political Party and relaying the part of their agenda that coincides with ours. One example would be the financial and military support to Ukraine. Simultaneously, it is important to understand that the amount of the highly resonant content and hot topics should not exceed 20 percent of the total volume of all publications.

So it doesn't be too obvious? Or seem like nothing but Russia-loving?

To create and develop a network of 200 accounts in Twitter, four in each of the 50 states: two active and two dormant" ones.

Active accounts in each state will be maintained on behalf of a fictitious individual, who actively supports the U.S. Political Party A and represents "a community of local activists". The feeds will mainly collect the local newsbreaks with occasional coverage of the federal and international ones.

An approximate number of daily publications will be 3-4 in one's own feed and 6-9 comments in other people's feeds (comments, reposts).

Why does one need a fictitiuous individual when one can create an account for some organization?

In order to eliminate the possibility of detection of the "Russian footprint" in the proposed project, a multi-level protection of the infrastructure will be built. It will contain VPN services, physical servers located in the United States, etc.

Exhibit 10B is a Russian version of this one.

Exhibit 11A with Russian translation 11B was about Mexico, suggesting that that nation could become a threat to the US and that Donald Trump is what the US needs to respond.

Exhibit 12A with Russian translation 12B is about outreach to Israel and the US Jewish community.

"Based on this, the key indicator of the effectiveness of the project will be an increase in the number of Israeli citizens supporting Russia in the fight against Nazism" and "Nazism in modern Ukraine".

Exhibit 13A with Russian translation 13B

Disaster 24: The US will soon have its hands full with issues other than Israel

Defense Ministry, United States, war in Gaza

The elections in the United States will lead to an unprecedented internal confrontation. The most pessimistic experts are talking about the possibility of the country's breakup and even a large-scale civil war. How will this resonate in the outside world and, most importantly, in the Middle East?

Then talking about the litigation over barring Donald Trump from running from office because of the 14th Amendment.

 

[lpetrich]

I looked back to the start of these exhibits.

Exhibit 1 is apparently about the sort of news stories that these influencers were to feature.

Exhibit 2A mentions awareness of Russian disinfo efforts. 2B is a Russian translation.

Exhibit 3A mentions performance indicators like 1,000 comments per day per country. 3B is a Russian translation.

Exhibit 4A is about US decline with 3B a partial Russian translation.

Recommendations:

Post a comment of no more than 200 characters on behalf of an American living in a small town. The current US policy to support any regimes dear to the State Department does not sit well with him. He believes that the United States has gone too far and is losing its position as the world leader. He is certain that first and foremost, Washington must restore its influence in Latin America and Africa rather than support Ukraine. He does not see Russia as an enemy. He believes that all this speaks of internal social disintegration in America, and is confident that the United States should focus primarily on its domestic problems.

Exhibit 5A is about what sort of comments with 5B a partial Russian translation.

Exhibit 6A is about "Center S. Comprehensive support for informational and political influence" with 6B a Russian translation: "Center S. Comprehensive support of information and political influence" (Google Translate into English). I couldn't figure out what the S. is, though I didn't bother to read the document in detail.

 

[lpetrich]

Exhibit 7A is about "International Conflict Incitement" with 7B a Russian translation.

The fighting in Ukraine and the "war of sanctions" led to a crisis in the economies of many Western countries, the main blow fell on residents of the European countries, such as Germany, France, Italy, and Great Britain.

Decreasing standards of living, new waves of refugees, rising energy prices and other destabilizing factors have exacerbated dozens of "protracted" internal conflicts in the West, and created new problems.

Among them are intensification of inter-ethnic and religious tensions, the intensification of socio-economic protest, internal political struggle, deepening of contradictions between allies in economic and military-political alliances (for example, the confrontation of the () government led by Foreign Official 4 and the European bureaucracy, the confrontation between the NATO members, Poland and Germany, on reparations, etc.).

The objective of the "International Conflict Incitement" project is to escalate internal tensions in the countries allied with the United States in order to promote the interests of the Russian Federation on the international arena.

To influence real-life conflicts and artificially create conflict situations, it is proposed to use a wide range of information tools to influence public opinion.

So they want to get people to fight each other. That is evident from section titles "Algorithm for Working with Real Conflicts" and "Algorithm for artificial generation of conflicts" titles of sections about how to provoke conflicts.

"Tools" include fakery: "fake videos, documents, and telephone conversations recordings;" and "news and pseudo-news;" and "fake and real quotes from influencers;"

News and pseudo-news? The Russian version is новости и псевдоновостные материалы - novosti i psevdonovostnyye materialy - news and pseudo-news materials

Is "pseudo-news" (псевдоновости) a common translation of "fake news" into Russian?

Examples of narrative lines

Thematic Direction 01: Our country must pursue its own national interests and make decisions regardless of the influence of the United States / NATO / European Union / Anglo- Saxons.

Thematic Direction 2: The root of the conflict lies in the influence of the United States NATO European Union / Anglo-Saxons. It is these forces that benefit from destabilization in our society to strengthen their control.

Thematic Direction 3: The government of our country should focus on solving internal problems and not to direct resources to support the war in Ukraine.

Thematic Direction 4: In Russia, this conflict would be impossible, because there is a healthy society in which the interests of the family and traditional values are protected (a narrative line for conflicts is based on promoting the LGBTQ+ agenda.)

Thematic Direction 5: We are eaten out of our house and home and our last resources are taken away from us. The Ukrainians (refugees) feast on food, our people are almost starving. The diaspora dispute over resources comes at the expense of the country's indigenous people.

 

[lpetrich]

Exhibit 8A is about "The Good Old USA ("Good Old USA") Project" with a Russian translation in Exhibit 8B: Проект Good old USA ("Старые добрые США") - Proyekt Good old USA ("Staryye dobryye SSHA") - Project Good old USA ("Old Good USA")

Seems that the original version is the Russian one, with "Good old USA" first in English, then in Russian.

The English version misspells the name of Siena College "Sienna" College, though the Russian version has only one n.

That document discussed building influence media like

A YouTube Channel that accumulates pro- U.S. Political Party A video content as well as news topics of international media, and presents them in compliance with the goals and objectives of the project. The toolkit will include videotape editing, subtitles, re-dubbing of the video clips, and, in a limited number of cases, augmented reality. The channel will have extensive viral content - music, humor, beautiful girls, etc.

...
While in a "sleeping" state, communities attract an audience through targeted advertising, planting, and organic reaches. At the right moment, "upon gaining momentum", these communities become an important instrument of influencing the public opinion in critically important states and portals used by the Russian side to distribute bogus stories disguised as newsworthy events.

So it's about creating social-media channels and attracting this operation's targets. Once they are attracted, the channels will run articles about how Russia and Vladimir Putin are good and how Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are bad.

These efforts will be concentrated in swing states with the hope of getting out the vote for Donald Trump.

 

[lpetrich]

Reading the main text of the affidavit, Exhibit 1 was about cybersquatting, taking over domains similar to target domains, to try to catch anyone who misspells some site name.

Attached as Exhibits to this affidavit are the original Russian-language SDA documents lawfully obtained during this investigation (see Exhibits 2B through 13B) as well as English-language translations (see Exhibits 2A through 13A). All of the SDA documents were obtained prior to June 1, 2024. Consistent with Department of Justice policy, redactions have been applied to certain identifiers contained within the documents. The terms substituted in place of those identifiers in the English language translations relate to the status of those persons or entities at the time the documents were obtained.

So the Russian ones are original and the English ones are translations.

I suspected that the Russian ones were the original ones with some odd turns of phrase, like repeating "Good Old USA" and using "pseudo-news" instead of "fake news", and that suspicion was confirmed.

Another footnote:

Virtually all records discussed herein were in the Russian language. Throughout this affidavit, italicized quoted language indicates a verbatim translation, whereas plaintext quoted language indicates a summary translation. Exhibits 2B through 13B to this affidavit have been translated verbatim. All translations were completed by FBI linguists.

However, 2B to 13B have the same document formatting. Were the translations made by the disinfo agents?

"SDA also possessed at least 27 invoices for the equivalent of thousands of U.S. dollars’ worth of translation services." -- seems like the translations were theirs.

The affidavit also noted autotranslations “if we can, we need a separate department for fakes - a factory!” and “Two news sites: English-language and German-speaking.”

Seems like the disinfo agents' working language is Russian, with some of their documented translated into English for the convenience of those that they are trying to influence.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Special Counsel John Durham Exonerates Donald Trump of “Russiagate” | Internet Infidels Discussion Board from last year

Were Russian agents very careful to avoid dealing with Donald Trump himself? That would explain the difficulty of finding much more -- many of his underlings are likely much more disciplined than he is.

That's what I have thought all along. The Felon would make a horrible agent, Moscow would be very stupid to attempt to use him directly.

 

[barbos]

Special Counsel John Durham Exonerates Donald Trump of “Russiagate” | Internet Infidels Discussion Board from last year

Were Russian agents very careful to avoid dealing with Donald Trump himself? That would explain the difficulty of finding much more -- many of his underlings are likely much more disciplined than he is.

That's what I have thought all along. The Felon would make a horrible agent, Moscow would be very stupid to attempt to use him directly.

But, but, but but, AlfaBank!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Special Counsel John Durham Exonerates Donald Trump of “Russiagate” | Internet Infidels Discussion Board from last year

Were Russian agents very careful to avoid dealing with Donald Trump himself? That would explain the difficulty of finding much more -- many of his underlings are likely much more disciplined than he is.

That's what I have thought all along. The Felon would make a horrible agent, Moscow would be very stupid to attempt to use him directly.

But, but, but but, AlfaBank!

That is not remotely a rebuttal.

 

[bilby]

Special Counsel John Durham Exonerates Donald Trump of “Russiagate” | Internet Infidels Discussion Board from last year

Were Russian agents very careful to avoid dealing with Donald Trump himself? That would explain the difficulty of finding much more -- many of his underlings are likely much more disciplined than he is.

That's what I have thought all along. The Felon would make a horrible agent, Moscow would be very stupid to attempt to use him directly.

But, but, but but, AlfaBank!

That is not remotely a rebuttal.

Meh. It's barely even a comment; More a placeholder for a comment.

He has concepts of a plan to rebut you.

My advice is: Do not feed.