Today in water is wet reporting:
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are assessing whether Russia is trying to undermine Joe Biden in its ongoing disinformation efforts with the former vice president still the front-runner in the race to challenge President Donald Trump, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
The probe comes as senior U.S. officials are warning that Russia’s election interference in 2020 could be more brazen than in the 2016 presidential race or the 2018 midterm election.
Part of the inquiry is to determine whether Russia is trying to weaken Biden by promoting controversy over his past involvement in U.S. policy toward Ukraine while his son worked for an energy company there.
YA THINK?!?!?!?!
As I delineated way back in September when The New York Time‘s Ken Vogel was peddling his agitprop about Hunter Biden and Vice President Biden with a “I’m just asking questions here…” smirk, the Russians started this disinformation and agitprop based influence campaign against Vice President Biden in 2014. Because they thought that he was likely to run for president in 2016 and they were starting their campaign to dirty up every potential candidate tied to President Obama’s administration and that administration’s actions regarding Russia.
In 2014 Russian propaganda went off-the-rails demonizing Ukraine, w/ a blizzard of fake news to justify annexing Crimea & invading Ukraine after Ukrainians rose up to oust Putin's puppet. Russia's disinformation said Ukr's democracy movement was a US coup, invoking Hunter Biden. pic.twitter.com/uSpicINTHt
— Paula Chertok? (@PaulaChertok) May 11, 2019
The RIA-Novosti, a Russian state backed news outlet, excerpt that Paula Chertok reported on back in May 2019 and posted above is from May 2014. It also includes allegations against Hunter Biden, Vice President Biden, and then Secretary of State Kerry’s step-son. There was informed speculation in 2014 that both Vice President Biden and Secretary Kerry were considering presidential runs in 2016. This initial piece of agitprop and disinformation, casually placed in a Russian state backed news media article, forms the basis for the Black PSYOP that I’ve delineated and written about here over the past several months. A disinformation and agitprop laundry that includes the Republican members of Congress, especially those involved in the impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives, members of the US Senate, and Rudy Giuliani’s OANN documentary.
There can be no doubt that Russia is not just continuing its political warfare campaign, as part of Putin’s undeclared war against the US, leveraging information warfare, cyber operations, and other active measures in 2020 to effect the 2020 campaign, but that the bullshit story about the Bidens and Ukraine is central to it. It is nice to see that both the news media and the US Intelligence Community are now focused on this reality, but it is unfortunate that they are late to the game.
Open thread!