Before breaking down the latest round of “election interference” accusations, let’s look at what Russia’s “sinister” actions amounted to in 2016 and 2020.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and former U.S. President Donald Trump at rally in Glendale, Arizona, in August. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said last week that the Russian government was using “more sophisticated propaganda” to influence the 2024 election than it has used in previous election cycles.
The Russians, the U.S. intelligence community alleges, are “using authentic U.S. voices” to “launder” Russian government propaganda and to spread socially divisive narratives on social media platforms and fake websites.
The DNI concluded that the Russian action “was consistent with Moscow’s broader foreign policy goals of weakening the United States and undermining Washington’s support for Ukraine.”
It should be so simple.
In the meantime, the Department of Justice has indicted two Russians who live in Moscow on charges of conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and conspiring to launder money.
I’d like to break this down. But first, let’s look at Russia’s “sinister” actions in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
2016 – Mueller Report
I won’t beat the Mueller Report to death, but the bottom line was that there was no meaningful Russian interference in the 2016 election. Would the Russians have liked to play a role and to help get Donald Trump elected? Probably. But they didn’t.
Hillary Clinton lost that election all on her own. And she was probably the only person in America who couldn’t have beaten Donald Trump that year. There were certainly a lot of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, but neither Mueller and his team, nor congressional investigators found anything worth acting against.
Trump and Clinton during presidential election 2016. (Krassotkin, derived from photos by Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The 2020 election was a little more interesting — and a little less certain. How about these comments from that year:
- Then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats: “I believe that Russia and China will both attempt to influence the election.” You believe? Will attempt? Either they did or they didn’t.
- F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray: “The Russians appear to be very active in trying to damage the Biden campaign.” Meaning what? What was the evidence? What did the Russians do to weaken the Biden campaign.
- Unnamed “intelligence officials:” “Operations would be intended to help President Trump, potentially by exacerbating disputes around the results, especially if the race is too close to call.” Would be intended? Meaning that they didn’t happen?
2020 Facebook Ads
What was eventually proven about Russian “interference” in the 2020 election was this:
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress, saying that the company had suspended an unknown number of accounts originating in Russia, but “posing as Americans” and making inflammatory comments about the election. When push came to shove, all that the vaunted Intelligence Community could prove was that organizations “connected to the Russian government” had spent $100,000 on Facebook ads.
Fully half of those ads were bought after the election was over. And the other half targeted Facebook users in states that were very red or very blue. There was no “influence” on the election at all.
Kamala Harris and Biden celebrating his presidential victory, Wilmington, Delaware, Nov. 7, 2020. (David Lienemann, Biden For President, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
That brings us to 2024. RT, the international Russian news network formerly known as Russia Today and that broadcasts in English, Spanish, and other global languages, was put out of business in the United States immediately after the start of the Ukraine war.
There is no RT propaganda in the United States. RT America simply no longer exists.
And Sputnik Radio, where I have a daily midday radio program, went from 35,000-38,000 daily downloads and tens of thousands of internet listeners, to 1,500-1,800 a day, having been thrown off YouTube, iTunes, Spreaker, Spotify, and literally every other platform besides Rumble. There’s almost no way for Russian networks to reach the American people.
The Justice Department last week alleged that the Russian government, through two overt employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, 31, and Elena Afansyeva, 27, both from RT in Moscow, deployed “nearly $10 million to covertly finance and direct a Tennessee-based online content creation company to create and publish videos on multiple social media channels.”
The content was then meant also to be broadcast by far-right podcasters. The “operation” was never carried out.
The thing is, the people who listen to those podcasters and who follow the sites where these videos would have been shown are already voting for Donald Trump. Yes, it’s wrong for a foreign government to try to influence American elections, just like it’s wrong for the American government, including the C.I.A., to try to influence foreign elections, which it has done since 1948.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Lviv, March 3, 2023. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
With that said, let’s keep things in perspective. First, it is certainly not wrong for a foreign news network to express an opinion as to whom it supports or opposes in a foreign election. That network, of course, can’t contribute to a U.S. political campaign, but there is no law against foreign media reporting fact or opinion about the election.
[Related: Free Speech & the Department of Political Justice]
Second, Kalashnikov and Afansyeva will never be arrested. They’re in Russia. The indictment and big public announcement are just a part of Washington’s pre-election showmanship.
Besides, look at the charges.
First, the two are accused of having conspired to violate FARA. What that means in plain English is that they discussed not filling out an internet form at avaialble on the Justice Department website. Seriously. That’s literally what it means. The federal sentencing guidelines for violating this law call for zero-six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.
The two Russians are also charged with conspiring to launder money. They didn’t actually launder any money. They just talked about it. The federal sentencing guidelines for this offense call for a sentence of six-12 months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
For a serious case of election interference, if there had been actual interference, which is not even being alleged, I would have expected to see charges of espionage, at least. But there was none of that. Again, the accusation is that they conspired to not fill out an internet form.
I have never believed that the Russians have interfered or are interfering in our elections. There just isn’t any evidence of any widespread effort, even an ineffective one. As I said, interference is wrong, no matter who is doing it.
But going on every mainstream outlet and claiming a massive interference campaign is just as wrong. Rather than accuse each other of “threatening democracy,” maybe there’s a way to get past it.
I have long maintained that, even in a time of war, there are areas where the American and Russian governments can cooperate. Think counterterrorism, counterproliferation and counternarcotics.
But arresting or charging each other’s citizens and holding them until a prisoner exchange can be negotiated, as has been the case with the likes of Britney Griner, Viktor Butt, Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovitz, and others, is not the way to go.
Neither is interfering with elections or accusing the other side of doing so without tangible evidence. In the end, it is the accusation itself that weakens our democracy.
And, frankly, it makes us look silly.
John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Please Donate Today to CN’s Fall Fund Drive
I’m sure that Mr. Putin, Mr. Xi, et al., know that whoever is elected in November, US policies will not change. Most of us will get poorer with a greater chance of homelessness, giant corporations and the 1 per cent will get more privileges, and a new war will be started. I expect something like the Gulf of Tonkin Incident aimed at PR China.
Didn’t the administration of George H.W. Bush ask the British government to interfere in the 1992 presidential election by trying to find out if Bill Clinton had made an application for British citizenship?
This would have enabled Clinton to stay in the UK and avoid being drafted to Vietnam.
Classic psychological projection, considering the DNC and Hillary’s camp stole the Dem primary away from Bernie.
Meanwhile, look at Israeli and AIPAC serious interference in US elections beginning with Truman. In the current cycle both Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman lost their Congressional seats in Dem primaries…due to massive AIPAC funding to their opponents.
Seems like a relatively simple formula to me – blame what the US ‘deep state’ is doing to ‘influence’ the election, and pin it on the Russians/Chinese/whoever. And, of course, no ‘official’ investigation is going to reveal the truth of this.
This degree of deception is normally only found in very deeply corrupted dictatorships – perhaps this is a clue to what’s coming.
The danger of a Manchurian candidate like we got with Obama is the Democratic party is addicted now. Hilary, Biden and now Harris have not been sanctioned by the people they have been anointed by the party. With the growing independent voters this challenges the way things have been and can go forward. As Obam a said ” Change is good”. It just might not be for the Parties.
All the Russian crap is why the media is not even cocktail talk anymore. Most people who bring up these topics of mental enemas are left standing alone.
African Stream was just banned on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram after Blinken called it nothing but RT-funded “Kremlin propaganda.”
hxxps://x.com/african_stream/status/1836083984863813703
American opinions are being used to influence US elections. This direct meddling exploits our First Amendment rights, exposing the public to disinformation. We must not allow untrusted sources to contaminate the information environment and undermine our democracy.
[VERY slightly exaggerated example of a typical subscriber comment in The Washington Post]
Divide, isolate and eliminate. Welcome to authoritarian America.
We all have been getting played since 11-22-63. However with enough resistance this too can change.
Thanks John
The Zionists don’t even hide it.
Mr. Adams in my opinion the fact they don’t hide their activities is why JFK got murdered at high noon Nov, 22 1963. You know neocon / zionist mentality . It’s just a thought!
Without even mentioning Zionist meddling, for comparison. It’s ridiculous. “Russian propaganda” is merely the Russian point of view. The Russian point of view could be obtained by any American considering the Russian position in the world.
So sick of the RussiaGate BS. My understanding is that Russia currently is detaining a handful of US citizens. The US is detaining more than 1500 Russian nationals. Who is the more authoritarian fascist regime then? FYI: I believe the $100K FaceBook ads were posted during the 2016 campaign. $44K worth before the election and $56K worth after. It is incalculable the damage the Hillary Clinton generated RussiaGate hoax has done to international relations between the west and Russia. The US is seen as quite the joke by the rest of the world.
The many references over many years to those Russian Facebook ads never say what those ads portrayed – why, are they a secret or does the US govt. fear if they are seen again or described?
I would be happy if the Russian were involved in the election. I’m sure they would help the Green party be elected and not the party of deep state/iseral;-)
Thanks JK
I agree with you.
Thanks to both JK and to jo6pac for their comments. I have long supported JK in his constant endeavors to tell the truth.
Seemingly no one in our government wants to listen – not the Republicans nor the Democrats. e
Ursula’s EU allows no Russian media inside the wonderful free democracies making up the EU. As well , Macron banned rumble.
If interference in American elections is sincere, why is Israel never mentioned in this regard? It’s taken as a fact and viewed generally as “appropriate” or “unavoidable.” This is how buying protection looks. The SCOTUS ruling that money=speech, and the bi-partisan consensus among policymakers for lowering taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals yield a great divide between a rich donor class and the public that wants AIPAC out of determining which Americans are permitted to serve in Washington.
The Zionists don’t even hide it.
Interesting the Biden/Harris appear to be doing the same thing Trump did before the last vote. Saying that if they don’t win its only because the election was ‘stolen’. All of this Russian interference stuff could be a setup to overthrowing the elections results when the people vote ‘the wrong way.’
Very easy to understand this topic. When you know you have met a liar in the past, do not listen to them again.
Why would you? You know they are a liar. You know they have lied to you in the past. There is no reason to believe what they say in the future. So, why waste the time even listening to a known and proven liar?
We know the Democrats lie. We know American politicians lie. The shocking news would be if a reporter ever uncovered an American politician telling the truth.
Yes, it is BS. But, you don’t have to listen to the ‘news’, nor read the ‘rebuttal’ to know that. The people telling you this have lied to you constantly over the few decades. There is no logical reason to possibly think that they are telling the truth this time around.
Throwing obviously unbalanced patsies at various persons rocks-of-black want to kill, intimidate, or whatever, does not appear to me to be totally obscuring evidence. Lawsuits are happening anyway. What if one of their goons succeeds, then what? Vance/Kennedy? Vance/Gabbard? Throw it in the house with rfk’s base going to Stein? How does that advance the rocks’ dom/plans? The Russian-scare petered out before. It will again. It is so obvious. Can they tie their own shoes? Or does a butler do it?
The basic question is how can an election be interfered with when the choice is two lackeys serving “deep state” forces with a policy extending back thirty years? That policy is “full spectrum dominance” and “Project for a New American Century.” It’s all about unipolar power politics and getting after other countries’ resources. So, then, with two wings of the same vulture in an “election,” interfering is basically impossible. The intent of this propaganda is to demonize any criticism of the mainstream–guilt by association. Wave the red flag, manipulate.
The narratives coming from the west are not just inaccurate (i.e., lies) they are very unpopular among Americans. The elites know this, and they know that more truthful narratives coming from US citizens commenting online and from foreign governments are much more popular and believable. That is why there is such a panic in the west about interference. It is not interference with our elections the elites mind, it is interference in their narrative management. They spend a lot of time and money on the western narrative concoction, and they don’t want anyone jeopardizing their investments.
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said last week that the Russian government was using “more sophisticated propaganda” to influence the 2024 election than it has used in previous election cycles.”
You could say the current American government is using more “unsophisticated skullduggery” to insert a candidate for their presidential bid.
I remember when the $100,000 on Facebook ads story came out. I thought, “Ridiculous! No way this story lasts more than this one day.” How wrong I was.
Russiagate is one of the most effective psyops in many, many decades. And it could lead us to our demise.
Only one thing is leading to US demise. US global militarism since Vietnam and the dollarization policy using the US created IMF and WB flooding all US vassal countries’ central banks and developing countries with printed dollars uselessly backed with nothing. Michael Hudson explains the scam in “Super Imperialism…”. Russia and RT have had nothing to do with those Washington policies.