President Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ) announced new efforts on Wednesday to crack down on Russian election interference, but Republicans have said they are “skeptical” of the new moves so close to the November election.
“We've seen this before – in 2016, the same people spread the Russia hoax that we now know was a complete hoax. It could be true this time, but I'm extremely skeptical,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, told Fox News Digital.
The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it was seizing 32 websites it said were linked to the Russian government and used to spread disinformation. The Justice, State and Treasury departments also indicted two employees of the Russian state-run media outlet RT.
According to the indictment, RT engaged in a $10 million scheme, through a company believed to be Tennessee-based Tenet Media, to trick US-based influencers into sharing content “perceived as favorable to the Russian government.”
The Department of Justice accused RT of “conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray (right) and Attorney General Merrick Garland (left) announce new measures to crack down on Russian election interference. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Its contents were aimed at “increasing divisions within the United States in order to weaken U.S. opposition to Russia's core interests, particularly the ongoing war in Ukraine.”
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Longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X: “The largest election interference in American history is the Department of Justice weaponizing the national security state to target President Trump, his associates and supporters with surveillance, disinformation, false indictments, raids, mass censorship and the importation of illegal voters. It's a Third World tyranny.”
“The Democratic Justice Department says Russian interference is happening again,” Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X. “I'm tired of trying to get the American people to vote for Trump because they believe that the Democrats and Kamala Harris created this devastating inflation, allowed tens of millions of illegal immigrants to invade our borders, and funded pointless foreign wars because of Russian influence!!”
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Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back against the skepticism and drew similarities to 2016, saying “this is a very serious matter and we will address it accordingly.”
When asked by Fox News Digital about its reaction to the allegations, RT replied, “Of course we've had reactions. In fact, we've had a few, but we couldn't decide on one (we even considered running an internal survey), so we're responding here.”
“2016 is here and the clichés are back,” said one commenter, while others added, “Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT interference in our elections,” “We've got to earn the Kremlin's pay somehow,” and “Somewhere Secretary Clinton is sad that it's not her doing it.”
The Justice Department said Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, is trying to sow discord in the United States by spreading disinformation. (Kirill Kazachikov/Roscongress Foundation via Reuters)
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The indictment included several drafts of internal propaganda plans compiled by the Kremlin aimed at stoking racial discord and stoking the threat of “widespread poverty” due to inflation.
According to the Good Old USA project, the view that the U.S. is “going too far in supporting Ukraine” has risen to 51 percent from 41 percent in a November Gallup poll.
In the “Target Audiences” section, the project says it will focus on Hispanic US citizens, American Jews, American gamers, Reddit users, and residents of battleground states.
The “guerrilla media campaign” said its goal was not to legitimize Russia because no US politician could be classified as “pro-Putin”, but rather to reinforce the belief that the policies of “Candidate B”, presumably Biden, “violate their rights”.
Russians see the Republican Party as “pursuing a relatively pro-Russian policy.”
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The directive instructed agents to focus on spreading content about “record inflation,” “the risk of unemployment for white Americans,” “the privilege of people of color, perverts, and people with disabilities,” “the threat of crime posed by people of color and immigrants (including new immigrants from Ukraine),” and “excessive spending on foreign policy at the expense of the interests of white American citizens.”
The group also aimed to spread the message that “we are at war and our comrades will die in Ukraine,” and called for “minimizing fake news and maximizing real information.”
Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report.
