Russiagate

??????
“We uncorked a tiny bottle of champagne … took one gulp each and looked into each other’s eyes …. We uttered almost in unison: ‘We made America great’”
— Operative at Kremlin-directed IRA after Trump won the election, per Senate Intel reporthttps://t.co/tYmyxPIiJt

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) October 8, 2019

Sure, it’s not like anyone paying attention didn’t already know this, but you’d think verification of a long-standing, ongoing attack against America by a foreign power would get some traction in the news, yes?

… The long-pending report by the Intelligence panel concluded that Russia directed an aggressive social media campaign to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Trump in the 2016 presidential election and warns similar efforts to interfere in U.S. politics are still under way. It was a bipartisan endorsement of the finding made by U.S. intelligence agencies and often questioned by Trump.

The report, two years in the making, found that the Internet Research Agency “was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump to the detriment of Secretary Clinton’s campaign.” As part of that effort, it targeted African-Americans through social media more than any other group…

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s top Democrat, warned of more interference to come in next year’s election. “There’s no doubt that bad actors will continue to try to weaponize the scale and reach of social media platforms to erode public confidence and foster chaos,” he said…

Among the findings were efforts by the Kremlin-directed IRA to convert social media into real-world actions. Operatives posing as U.S. political activists also “sought help from the Trump campaign to procure campaign materials and to organize and promote rallies.”…

The panel urged that lawmakers consider expanding to social media the existing transparency requirements for political advertising on TV or the radio. Facebook, Google and Twitter have all put together ad transparency databases, but differences between them persist and legislative vehicles, such as the “Honest Ads Act” that Warner supports, have stalled.

Senator Kamala Harris, a member of the Intelligence Committee who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement that the Russian tactics were “designed to suppress the votes of black Americans in particular” and that social media companies must step up their efforts to fight disinformation. She said they need to “ensure their workforces are diverse enough to identify and understand the cultural nuances that foreign actors exploit to divide and harm Americans.”

(Yeah, I still don’t trust Burr, because he’s retreated to the ‘what could us poor Repubs do? They held a gun to our heads!’ defense. Squeak the f*ck up, at the very least, traitor-enabler.)

NOTABLE: The #1 recommendation from the committee to the Executive Branch: "Reinforce with the public the danger of attempted foreign interference in the 2020 election."https://t.co/T3KD3Y6OPC

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 8, 2019

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Russiagate Open Thread: How Many Repub Senators Does the GRU Already Own?Post + Comments (166)