When I heard the “Breaking News” that Robert Mueller was indicting 13 Russians for interfering in the 2016 US election, my initial reaction was, “here we go” – that the Special Counsel was moving beyond pre-Trump campaign law-breaking of sometime Trump associates, and on to the heart of the matter, tangible Russian interference in the election.
And then, as is my habit, I went to the source document, the 37 page indictment. Flummoxed after the first, read, I read it again. My reaction?
This is it?
After 15 months of non-stop talk about a sophisticated Russian campaign to undermine the American election, this was it?
Yes, the charges against the three organizations and the 13 individuals involved are tangible as far as that goes. It was clearly an organized campaign that sought to influence the election with fairly elaborate efforts to make the conspiracy appear authentically American and to cover its tracks.
But there’s got to be more. Robert Mueller, please don’t tell me that after 20 months, this is what we have been talking about the whole time?
The first thing that jumps out at you is the timeline. This Russian effort, run through the St. Petersburg based Internet Research Agency, and funded by Putin intimate Evgeniy Prigozhin, started work in 2014. That was a full year before candidates began declaring for the presidency, and two years before the election.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it was on Barack Obama’s watch. What on earth was the intelligence community, and particularly the NSA, doing? What did they pick up? When did they determine it’s importance? When did they notify the President?
The Indictment states that, “By in or around April 2014, the ORGANIZATION formed a department that went by various names but was at times referred to as the “translator project.” This project focused on the U.S. population and conducted operations on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. By approximately July 2016, more than eighty ORGANIZATION employees were assigned to the translator project.”
Despite the gravity and seriousness of the charge, some of the specifics are hard not top openly laugh at.
“Defendants and their co-conspirators also traveled, and attempted to travel, to the United States under false pretenses in order to collect intelligence for their interference operations.”
“Intelligence?” You mean, learning how Americans conduct elections?
“In order to collect additional intelligence, Defendants and their co-conspirators posed as U.S. persons and contacted U.S. political and social activists. Defendants and their co-conspirators learned from the real U.S. person that they should focus their activities on “purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.” After that exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators commonly referred to targeting “purple states” in directing their efforts.”
OK, let me get this straight. Russian operatives had to travel to the United States, under cover and at great personal risk, to understand what a “purple state” was? That is simply ludicrous. Did the Internet Research Company have access to the Internet? A proficient researcher could find out relevant information on swing states from Wikipedia.
Having identified “purple states” as a key organizing target, there is little evidence so far that they actually followed through. An analysis of Facebook data showed the following:
- Most of the ad-views occurred after the election (while nobody saw 25 percent of the rest). Ten million people saw the ads, but only about 5 million saw the ads before the election, and most of these views occurred in 2015.
- The vast majority of the ads didn’t mention voting, or any specific politician or political party. They mostly covered divisive cultural issues, such as immigration or #BLM.
- Only about a quarter of the ads were geographically targeted (relatively easy to do on Facebook’s ad service), and more targeted ads ran in 2015 than in 2016.
- The targeted ads were all over the map, with many running in non-battleground states. A statement from Sen. Richard Burr’s office (R-NC) notes that five times more ads were targeted at Maryland than Wisconsin (262 to 55), and that “35 of the 55 ads targeted at Wisconsin ran prior to the Wisconsin primary – before there was an identified Republican candidate…” Not one of those 55 Wisconsin ads mentioned Trump by name.
- The three most heavily targeted states were Maryland, Missouri, and New York, all relatively safe wins for one political party. Washington DC, whose electoral votes always go Democrat in recent years, received more ads than did Pennsylvania, a politically contested state.
- Of the ads that more than one person saw, only about a dozen targeted the contested states of Michigan and Wisconsin, and most of these ads ran in 2015. Of the ads that were seen, the majority were seen by fewer than 1,000 people. Most of the Michigan and Wisconsin ads were less than $10 buys.
- The total ad-spend for Wisconsin was $1,979, and all but $54 was spent before the primary in early 2016. The ad-spend in Michigan was $823. In Pennsylvania it was $300. More than five times the money spent on these states was spent in California.
According to examples in the indictment, the ads themselves seem genuinely unsophisticated. From an Instagram account on October 26, 2016, “[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.” Colloquial American English is obviously not the author’s forte. It’s “people” not “the people.” And the “lesser of two devils”? Come on.
The indictment shares another example, from and Instagram account posted on November 3rd that read in part: “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote.” Can you just see citizens flocking to the pull the lever for the Green Party candidate?
The un-targeted nature of the ads and the relative lack of sophistication of the content doesn’t diminish the issue of interference, but it says an awful lot about results. If the Special Counsel does not have additional Russian indictments in the pipeline, James Comey did more to sway the outcome of the election with his last-minute Hillary investigation than Putin and this campaign ever did.
Beyond the Russian campaign of influence, note that the indictment does not mention any Americans. Indeed, the indictment is specific that those Americans that were contacted by the Russians were unwitting, accomplices, and their names redacted. If there was collusion between Trump or senior Trump campaign officials and this conspiracy, this indictment would have been the place to release it.
There were no Trump or Trump associates named.
Indeed, while the campaign was aimed at Hillary (whom Putin held personally responsible for interfering in Russian elections in 2012), it was not solely aimed at supporting Trump. Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein enjoyed support. And after the election, the Russian operation was catalyzing demonstrations that were both pro and anti Trump. The bias in coverage from the beginning was that Trump was the “Manchurian Candidate,” and insider at the apex of American power that would do Russia’s bidding. That does not appear to be true so far, and clearly hasn’t worked out since the election.
Robert Mueller still holds the cards, but with the public evidence, it appears that Russian interference through social media was real but ineffective, and, importantly, that the Trump campaign had nothing to do with it. Indeed, the Russian operation began a year before Trump declared for office, and a year and a half before he stunned the political world by claiming the nomination.
Imagine this embarrassing narrative: That the Russians ran a covert disinformation campaign against the US to disrupt the 2016 election under the very noses of the Obama administration, which did not become aware of interference until the middle of 2016. Worse, that in many instances, the source of the information on the Russian campaign was rooted in the Steele dossier, claiming collusion between the Russian government and Trump, requested and paid for by Hillary and the DNC.
If this is the best that Mueller’s got, heads need to roll.