Free Republic

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday filed a motion to dismiss charges against a pair of shell companies accused of financing a Russian troll farm that sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors argued that the companies, Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering, were taking advantage of the discovery process to obtain material about U.S. efforts to combat election interference and that a court proceeding was not necessary because it wouldn't lead to "meaningful punishment in the event of conviction." In a nine-page filing, the prosecutors said that the Concord companies were intent on reaping...

Marie Yovanovitch, who testified during House impeachment hearings against President Trump, will be retiring from the U.S. foreign service less than a year after her removal as ambassador to Ukraine. A source familiar with the situation confirmed Yovanovitch's exit on Friday.

[caption id="attachment_1512" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Image source: Wired.com[/caption] See that over-the-top, anti-Obama comment on Facebook or your favorite blog?  It could be a paid Russian troll.  See the picture above?  He's serving a life sentence without parole because he started an illegal website.  He claims to be a Libertarian, but he certainly made a ton of money (the Feds claim over $100 million) selling--well, everything, sort of like Amazon, but much smaller and very much in the shadows of the "dark web." What do Russian trolls have to do with a guy in prison for life?  One of them was caught...

The Alabama attorney general on Jan. 7, called on federal authorities to investigate the state’s 2017 special election for the U.S. Senate. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall made the announcement after conducting an informal inquiry into reports of a false-flag operation designed to boost Democrat Doug Jones, who defeated Republican Roy Moore by a thin margin in a hotly contested race. The New York Times reported in December that a secret social media operation funded by billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman directed thousands of accounts designed to appear like Russian bots to follow Moore. A Facebook page then falsely portrayed...

At a May press conference capping his tenure as special counsel, Robert Mueller emphasized what he called "the central allegation" of the two-year Russia probe. The Russian government, Mueller sternly declared, engaged in "multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American." Mueller's comments echoed a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) asserting with "high confidence" that Russia conducted a sweeping 2016 election influence campaign. "I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process," then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate...

Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized on Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformation during last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but said he was not aware that his money was being used for this purpose. Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgement of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, the...

While the debate rages on over how much Russia really influenced the results of the 2016 presidential elections, one detail put the entire controversy in perspective: Democratic operatives spent an identical amount of money on their project to create a Russian bot “false flag” campaign during the Alabama 2017 special election. Multiple reports detailed the Russian government-backed Internet Research Agency spent up to $100,000 on Facebook advertisements throughout their entire disinformation operation. As The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Wednesday, billionaire-backed Democrats “created more than a thousand Russian-language accounts that followed [Roy] Moore’s Twitter account overnight.” The group of Democrats...

At least three of the events co-organized on Facebook by a group the company now thinks was part of a coordinated disinformation network appear to have been held, and to have been attended by hundreds of people. The events, in New York City and Springfield, Mo., were all co-hosted on Facebook by a group called the Resisters. All three events were critical of President Trump. Archived versions of the event pages showed that 674 people responded on Facebook to say that they would attend the “We Stand with DREAMers! Support DACA!” event in New York on Sept. 9 last year....

More and more, posts and commentaries on the Internet in Russia and even abroad are generated by professional trolls, many of whom receive a higher-than-average salary for perpetuating a pro-Kremlin dialogue online. There are thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte, all increasingly focused on the war in Ukraine. Many emanate from Russia's most famous "troll factory," the Internet Research center, an unassuming building on St. Petersburg's Savushkina Street, which runs on a 24-hour cycle. In recent weeks, former employees have come forward to talk to RFE/RL about life inside the factory, where hundreds of people work...

ST. PETERSBURG -- Last May, Tatiana N decided she wanted a higher salary than the average journalist can expect. After responding to an advertisement in the popular HeadHunter job-search website, she became a Kremlin-paid Internet troll. Tatiana -- who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that her last name not be used -- worked out of a 2,500-square-meter warehouse in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. The job paid 40,000 rubles a month, significantly more than the 25,000-30,000 most journalists make. But it came, she said, "with pain." Tatiana joined a round-the-clock operation in which an army of trolls disseminated...