Within the whirlpool of uncertainly around the midterm election lies the concern that Vladimir Putin will try to interfere to help Donald Trump and the Republicans.
Though Trump has sought for a decade to dismiss as a “hoax” all talk of Moscow interference in American politics, the evidence is clear that Putin has been waging clandestine information warfare against the United States in elections since at least the 2016 campaign, as I chronicle in my new book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. (For a short history of this skullduggery, see this recent article based on the book.) The Kremlin’s meddling has been most intense during presidential contests, but it has been aimed at off-year elections.
So, while we learn that a Russian oligarch who’s part of Putin’s security apparatus financed Donald Trump Jr.’s recent lavish wedding celebration in the Bahamas, it is reasonable to wonder if Putin’s trolls, operatives, and disinformation specialists are gearing up for the midterm congressional elections, less than seven weeks away. And the first indications have emerged that they have indeed been unleashed.
Last week, MSNOW reported that a Russian disinformation campaign has been posting doctored videos to social media platforms that show Hollywood celebrities dumping on Democrats and endorsing the GOP. In one video, Sarah Jessica Parker seems to say, “When I hear about Democrats, I immediately think of corrupt Nazi whores. If you love America, never vote for Democrats.” In another, Julia Roberts appears to charge that Big Pharma and the Democrats are scheming to promote a trans agenda. A third shows Ed Begley Jr. slamming Democrats as “perverts.”
Disinformation researchers have attributed the videos, which each include a phony CNN logo and the hashtag #AllDemocratsAreCriminals, to a clandestine Kremlin operation dubbed Storm-1679 or Matryoshka. (The latter is the name for the iconic Russian nesting dolls.)
Matryoshka is one of several secret Russian outfits that in 2024 injected disinformation into the U.S. presidential election. After Joe Biden bowed out and passed the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, Matryoshka disseminated a video of tourists strolling through Times Square and encountering an odd and obscene message on an electronic billboard. Against a backdrop of images of scissors, a false claim appeared: “Vote for Kamala Harris! She’s promising free gender re-assignment surgery for your kids, whether they like it or not. Make Boys Girls Again!”
The billboard did not exist in the real world. This fake video with this false claim about Harris was posted on Telegram. Within four hours, it had over 100,000 views on X.
The Matryoshka operation produced numerous social media posts and videos falsely branded as reports from major news outlets (such as Fox News, BBC, and CNN), government agencies, and research outfits. It spewed a barrage of disinformation: Harris had an abortion when she was 17. She was exhibiting early-onset Alzheimer’s. Her grandfather was a communist. Her family was connected to Pfizer and Big Pharma. It also disseminated a report claiming Ukrainian refugees were smuggling fentanyl into the United States, and it generated material to stoke fears of civil war in the United States, post-election violence, and a full-scale conflict between the United States and Russia that could result in nuclear catastrophe.
Storm-1516, another disinformation network endeavoring to affect the 2024 election, created a bogus video that purportedly showed Harris supporters assaulting a Trump rally attendee. It received millions of views. A second video presented an actor sharing the fake story that 13 years earlier Harris paralyzed a girl in a hit-and-run accident, and it, too, drew millions of eyeballs. This video was laundered through a fake website posing as a San Francisco news outlet.
Sometimes these efforts were somewhat ridiculous. Another video attributed to Storm-1516 featured a purported park ranger in Africa who claimed that he had accompanied a diplomatic mission on a safari, during which a woman shot and killed a young rhinoceros named Casuba. The rhino killer, he said, was “a female politician. Her name was Kamala.” The disinformation trackers at the Democratic Party, who kept an eye on all these Russian fabrications, pressed YouTube to take down this ludicrous rhino video — and the platform ignored the request. An AI-enhanced deepfake showed Harris joking about the assassination attempts on Trump — and this video was boosted by the social media account of RT, the English-language Russia propaganda organ.
A third Russian disinformation operation, called Doppelganger, used social media accounts to denigrate Harris and amp up fears about the U.S.-Mexico border. “Aliens are invading our homes,” declared a post it created that was illustrated by hordes breaking through barbed wire fencing.
All told, Russia was engaged in “expansive influence efforts,” declared the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, a unit of the giant tech company that tracked malign online influence campaigns.
The effort that might have had the most impact was a disinformation operation linked to Storm-1516 and seemingly launched by John Mark Dougan, a cop from Florida who, after being indicted for extortion and wiretapping, fled to Russia and set up scores of fake news sites that appeared to be American. These sites posted bogus stories pushing pro-Russia narratives (such as the allegation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was stealing millions of dollars). He and his network pushed the phony charge that when he was a high school teacher, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz inappropriately touched an exchange student. This made-in-Russia false claim quickly spread through right-wing accounts and was amplified by Jack Posobiec, the MAGA activist and onetime Pizzagate proponent then working for the Trump campaign, and Candace Owens, a right-wing influencer and conspiracist.
Millions of voters were exposed to this lie. Did it make a difference in the election? There’s no way to tell. But this one example shows how far Russian disinformation can reach‚ and Moscow’s capability has only improved.
The first indications that Putin intends to mess with the midterms — those videos of Hollywood celebrities — have not yet gone viral. But these fakes are a sign that Putin’s operatives are warming up. And given that Trump, in his second White House stint, has shut down the government units that once tracked and thwarted Russian disinformation and influence operations, we may never know about all the information warfare waged by Russia or other adversaries. Trump has unilaterally surrendered and left the door wide open for Putin’s war on American democracy.
David Corn, the Washington, D.C., bureau chief of Mother Jones, is the author of the just-published How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. He also writes the Our Land newsletter.
He is speaking about his latest book at 3 p.m. on Sept. 26 at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.
