Rosamond Press

I saw all this coming!

Jon

Pro-Russia Propagandists Are Pushing for Roy Moore to Win

Sanders Mocks Critics of Trump’s Gillibrand Tweet: ‘Only if Your Mind is in the Gutter’

In the run-up to Alabama’s special election, Kremlin-linked news sites and trolls have battled vigorously on behalf of Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for US senator accused of sexual misconduct against multiple women, including teenage girls. Since allegations against Moore were first reported by The Washington Post on Nov. 9, Russian-linked Twitter accounts—including some operated by Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik—have attacked the credibility of the women accusing Moore as well as US news media reporting the allegations. During a week in mid-November, when sexual misconduct scandals were a top focus of these Kremlin-linked accounts, a majority of the content they pushed on the topic was in defense of Moore, according to the cyber security research project Hamilton 68: “Among pro-Moore articles, close to 70% attacked the credibility of the accuser(s), 38% attacked the media in general or the Washington Post in particular, and one story attacked Lindsey Graham for not defending Moore.”

The pro-Moore push has continued apace; this past weekend, #alabamasenaterace was among the top trending hashtags tracked on the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which is operated by the nonpartisan Alliance for Securing Democracy and monitors approximately 600 Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations. Those accounts push out 20,000 to 25,000 tweets every day, according to Bret Schafer, an analyst with the group. “The fact that this has continued for so many weeks means that this is clearly something the accounts have latched onto,”