U.S. accuses Russia of sprawling election interference campaign, seizes dozens of fake sites

Washington — The Biden administration accused Russia of attempting to interfere in the 2024 presidential election, including through a sophisticated influence campaign that involved the creation of fake news sites designed to covertly spread Russian propaganda.

The Justice Department filed charges against two people and seized more than two dozen internet domains used in a foreign malign influence campaign, allegedly directed by the Russian government, officials said. The State and Treasury Departments are set to announce a series of parallel actions against Russia.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the efforts at the start of a meeting of the Election Threats Task Force that included FBI Director Chris Wray and top Justice Department officials.

Prosecutors unsealed an indictment in federal district court in New York charging two Russia-based employees of RT, a state-controlled media outlet, of conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate the Federal Agents Registration Act. 

Garland said RT and the two employees implemented a $10 million scheme to fund and direct a Tennessee-based company to publish and disseminate information favorable to the Russian government. The content was consistent with Russia’s goal to push U.S. divisions and anti-Ukraine content, according to Garland.

“The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda,” he said.

Garland also announced that the Justice Department seized 32 internet domains that the Russian government and pro-Russian actors used to engage in what he said was a “covert campaign to interfere and influence the outcome of our country’s elections.”

The attorney general said the two schemes “make clear the ends to which the Russian government, including at its highest levels, is willing to go to undermine our democratic process.”

“This is deadly serious and we are going to treat it accordingly,” Garland said.

The “Doppelganger” campaign

According to a 71-page affidavit unsealed in federal district court in Pennsylvania, the seized 32 internet domains have been used by the Russian government and government-backed actors to engage in foreign malign influence campaigns called “Doppelganger,” in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws. The filing includes more than 200 pages of exhibits showing documents and images related to the scheme.

Federal investigators said Russian companies have used the domains, some of which impersonated legitimate news entities and unique media brands, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda, and did so at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration since at least 2022.

Garland said Putin’s “inner circle” directed Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation and state-sponsored narratives as part of efforts to influence the upcoming presidential election. He said an internal planning document created by the Kremlin stated one of the campaign’s goals is “securing Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.”

The campaigns involved using “cybersquatted” domains, which are intended to mimic another entity’s domain name and trick visitors into believing they are visiting the legitimate website. These sites, Garland said, were designed to look like major U.S.-based news outlets such as the Washington Post or Fox News, by using the same layout and design, but were fake sites spreading Russian propaganda created by the Kremlin.

Among the goals of the campaigns are to “reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster pro-Russian policies and interests, and influence voters in the U.S. and foreign elections” while concealing the Russian government and its agents as the source of the content, according to the court filings.

The Justice Department accused Doppelganger of using “influencers” worldwide, paid social media advertisements and fake social media profiles purporting to be U.S. citizens to drive viewership to the domains, “all of which attempted to trick viewers into believing they were being directed to a legitimate news media outlet’s website.”

Projects directed at the U.S. include the “Good Old USA Project,” “Guerilla Media Campaign,” and “U.S. Social Media Influencers Network Project,” according to court filings.

The Justice Department obtained notes, project proposals, planning documents and other records during its investigation, some of which detail objectives, target audiences and campaign topics. The department redacted the names of the political parties and presidential candidates, labeling them only as U.S. Political Party A or B, or Candidate A or B, but the documents include information that makes them identifiable.

Objectives of the “Good Old USA” project include boosting the percentage of Americans who believe the U.S. is “doing way too much to support Ukraine,” and lowering President Biden’s confidence rating down to at least 29% in the lead-up to the November election, according to documents submitted by the Justice Department. The document appears to have been prepared in late 2023, when Mr. Biden was still seeking reelection.

Target audiences included battleground-state residents whose votes will impact the outcome of the presidential contest, residents of “conservative states where traditional values are strong who more often vote for candidates of” an unidentified political party, gamers, Jewish Americans and Hispanic Americans, according to the filings. Though redacted, the document appears to be referring to the Republican Party.

Documents associated with the “Guerilla Media Campaign” call for a variety of fears and views held by an unnamed political party — again, believed to be the GOP — to be exploited, including concerns about the cost of living and “losing the American way of life.” It lists campaign topics as “risk of job loss for white Americans”; the threat of crime from people of color and immigrants, including those from Ukraine; and overspending on foreign policy “at the expense of interests of white US citizens.”

“Target supporters” are an unnamed political party, supporters of an unnamed candidate, “supporters of traditional family values” and White Americans. While the party and candidate names are redacted, context makes clear the project is referring to the Republican Party and former President Donald Trump.

Documents about the “U.S. Social Media Influencers Network” describes the GOP as “currently advancing a relatively pro-Russian agenda” that can be “exploited by posing as ardent [Republicans] and relaying the part of their agenda that coincides with ours.” 

A proposal for the project calls for creating and developing a network of 200 accounts on Twitter, now known as X, with four in each state. Two of those four will be “active” and two will be “dormant,” according to the documents.

The proposal states that active accounts would be maintained on behalf of a fake person who supports the GOP. It calls for building a “multi-level protection” of infrastructure in order to “eliminate the possibility of detection of the ‘Russian footprint,'” that includes virtual private network services and physical services in the U.S., the documents show.

The European Union sanctioned seven Russians and five Russian entitles for their roles in “Doppelganger” in July 2023, and accused them of running a “digital information manipulation campaign” called Recent Reliable News designed to spread propaganda in support of Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

Election interference warnings

Wray and other Biden administration officials have warned that the Russian government and other foreign adversaries have continued trying to interfere with the electoral process.

“They’re still at it,” the FBI leader told the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing in July. “We’ve seen that in election cycle after election cycle.”

Already, the FBI has disrupted a Russian AI-enhanced social media bot farm that spread disinformation in the U.S., which was designed to be an influence operation. Some of the fictitious profiles from bots purported to be Americans.

Wray said such efforts to influence U.S. elections were not limited to Russia, but also Iran — in 2020 and 2024 — and China.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, also warned about threats related to the 2024 election.

“We can absolutely expect that our foreign adversaries will remain a persistent threat, attempting to undermine American confidence in our democracy and our institutions, and to sow partisan discord,” she told reporters Tuesday. “And that’s why it is up to all of us not to let our foreign adversaries be successful.”

The FBI, CISA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a rare joint statement last month that the agencies have seen “increasingly aggressive Iranian activity” during the 2024 election cycle that specifically involves influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations aimed at presidential campaigns.

Those efforts by Iran include recent activities to compromise former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, the agencies said. The intelligence community is “confident that the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties,” the intelligence agencies warned.

The Russian government has for the last two presidential election cycles mounted influence operations. Their attempts in 2016 were sprawling and sophisticated, analyses of the efforts found, and involved extensive efforts to sow division among Americans and erode trust in democratic institutions through social media.

Thirteen Russian nationals and entities were charged in February 2018 as a result of efforts to interfere with the 2016 election, 12 of whom worked at the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that led the efforts to spread discord in the U.S. 

The U.S. intelligence community said in an unclassified assessment nearly one year ago that Russia waged campaigns in at least 11 elections across nine democracies, including the U.S., between 2020 and 2022.