Russia Reportedly Bought Thousands of Facebook Ads Sought To Stress Racial Divisions (thehill.com)

According to The Washington Post, Russia government actors bought Facebook advertisements during the 2016 election cycle that sought to exploit and divide based on hot-button racial issues. Some of the ads promoted civil rights groups such as Black Lives Matter, while others criticized them in an effort to sow division. The Hill reports: Facebook is handing over some 3,000 ads to congressional investigators as part of probes into the Kremlin's alleged effort to influence the outcome of last year's presidential election. Other ads allegedly highlighted Hillary Clinton's support among Muslim women and promoted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages. Facebook didn't comment on the story, but did refer to a statement earlier this month from its chief privacy officer, Alex Stamos: "Rather, the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the idealogical spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights."

Comments

Timeline of Treason

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the election

Dec. 10, 2015
Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is part of a panel discussion in Moscow for the 10th anniversary of government-backed Russia Today, for which he receives payment (The Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2016). Officials notice an increase in communication between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, following the Russia Today event (CNN, May 19, 2017).

Late 2015
British intelligence agencies detect suspicious interactions between Russia and Trump aides that they pass on to American intelligence agencies (The Guardian, April 13, 2017).

March 19, 2016
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is sent an email that encourages him to change his email password, likely precipitating the hack of his account (CBS News, Oct. 28, 2016).

March 21
During an interview with The Post, Trump lists Carter Page as part of his foreign policy team. Page had been recommended by a son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox (WP, March 21, 2016).

March 28
Political veteran Paul Manafort is hired to help the Trump campaign manage the delegate process for the Republican National Convention. He is recommended by Trump confidante Roger Stone (New York Times, March 28, 2016). Before joining the campaign, Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That deal followed a memo from Manafort in which he offered a plan that could "greatly benefit the Putin Government." His relationship with Deripaska ended in 2009 (Associated Press, March 22, 2017). Manafort also worked on behalf of the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in Ukraine, helping guide the party's leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to the country's presidency. Yanukovych would later be ousted. (WP, Aug. 19, 2016)

April 27
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) may have met with Kislyak at a reception at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington before a foreign-policy speech given by Trump (CNN, May 31, 2017).

June
At a closed-door meeting of foreign policy experts and the prime minister of India, Page praises Putin effusively (WP, Aug. 5, 2016).

June 9
Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he took a position with the administration (Times, July 8, 2017). After the meeting was originally reported, Trump, Jr. admitted that the pretext for the conversation was that he believed Veselnitskaya to have information incriminating Hillary Clinton (Times, July 9, 2017).

June 15
A hacker calling himself "Guccifer 2.0" releases the Democratic National Committee's research file on Donald Trump (Gawker, June 15, 2016). News reports already link the stolen data to Russian hackers (WP, June 14, 2016).

July
At some point this month, the FBI begins investigating possible links between the Russian government and Trump's campaign (Wired, March 20, 2017).

July 7
Page travels to Moscow to give a lecture (NYT, April 19, 2017). The Trump campaign approved the trip (USA Today, March 7, 2017). This trip was likely the catalyst for the FBI's request for a secret surveillance warrant to track Pageâs communications (WP, May 25, 2017).

July 11 or 12
Trump campaign staffers intervene with the committee developing the Republican Party's national security platform to remove language call arming Ukraine against Russian aggression. (July 18, 2016).

July 18
At an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation as part of the Republican National Convention, Sessions and Kislyak have a brief conversation (WP, March 2, 2017).

Flynn delivers a speech at the Republican convention, joining in the crowd's "Lock her up!" chant. "If I, a guy who knows this business, if I

Re: Timeline of Treason

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as I suspected, I laid out the evidence of treason right in front of you and you have simply chosen to ignore it.

June 9
Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he took a position with the administration (Times, July 8, 2017). After the meeting was originally reported, Trump, Jr. admitted that the pretext for the conversation was that he believed Veselnitskaya to have information incriminating Hillary Clinton (Times, July 9, 2017).

Re:Timeline of Treason

[Anonymous Coward]

The left is standing up to Russia while the right wing embraces Russia's attack on our country.

The right is mostly saying wtf are you talking about to the left. While the left is playing right in to the goal to sow division. The "standing up" is actually doing Putin's bidding. The irony is completely missed by ivory tower moral crusaders.

Re:Timeline of Treason

[dave420]

Just turning up to meet the lawyer was illegal, whether they had any information or not. It doesn't matter what happened at the meeting or afterwards - the very act of trying to get the information instead of reporting the offer is illegal. That's it. That's the only piece the wall of text needed to include, and it's damning.

I don't know how you see a Russian-government paid lawyer trying to give information on an opponent in an election as not a foreign country intervening in said election.

Re:So

[DNS-and-BIND]

Guardian proudly sponsors a campaign for foreigners to interfere in the 2004 election

"I'm taking the liberty of asking you, a citizen of a country built upon the principles of democracy but whose very might is in danger of disenfranchising the rest of the world, to use your right to vote, and to vote with all your heart and your mind, in your own name but also in the name of all those millions of people who will be looking to your decision in two weeks' time."

Translation: Think of us first, and the needs of your own country last. F off foreigners, stop trying to influence our votes. Oh, but it was OK when they did it.

Did you RTFA?

[rsilvergun]

they targeted BLM ads to people likely to oppose the movement in order to rile them up. They did the same thing with ads showing Hilary was popular among Muslim women. They were shitposting on an epic scale. What's more they weren't just trying to divide the American people, they were trying to rile up a very specific group of voters (angry white men) in order to get them to oppose a very specific, left wing agenda. That in turn helped Trump win, which is almost certainly the intended purpose.

They were basically trying to get a whole bunch of folks who normally stay home to show up at the polls and without thinking about individual issues, vote their feelings. Worked too.

Re:Did you RTFA?

[ScentCone]

And they probably also tried to keep others home by saying Clinton already had won

No, that was Clinton herself, her very rich supporters, and the vast majority of academia and the press who all supporter and considered her the presumptive winner a year before the election. Clinton was so sure she had already won that she bought the house next door for the Secret Service to use (you know, we can't have them in HER house, those peasants), and couldn't even trouble herself to set foot ONCE in states like Wisconsin, because she assumed they were going to follow her royal edicts and vote for her as demanded. She and her party fell for their own lies about her appeal as a candidate, and got exactly what they deserved.

Re:Haven't they been doing this stuff forever?

[AmiMoJo]

It's much simpler than that. Conservatives like the way things are, because even if they are unfair it benefits them or suits their "traditional" beliefs. The left finds that they can't get married or get an abortion, or at least cares enough that someone else can't, and see that it's because of some fairy tale or tradition or simple bigotry and wants to change it.

I'm not sure where you get the "at any cost" bit from.