As misinformation propaganda campaigns pick up before the US election date of November 5th in 2024, it’s time to shut out all the background noise and just go vote. For example, as per a recent Hill article, “polling in general has been picking up as Election Day approaches — and in particular surveys from Republican-affiliated firms. Various averages include several polls from Republican-leaning pollsters or with Republican-leaning sponsors but not as many from Democratic-leaning pollsters.” This means that for the next two weeks, polling averages will be shewed slightly in favor of GOP MAGA candidates.

Also, Russia is upping its US election interference shenanigans with assistance from a US citizen. Since 2015, Americans have come to expect Russia to figure out a way to interfere with US elections in order to bolster the GOP MAGA ex-president’s chances to be reelected. Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin is counting on the ex-president’s help to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war with terms that are favorable to Russia, even though it was Russia which militarily invaded the sovereignty of Ukraine in 2022 without provocation.

This is deja vu from July 2016 when the only part of republican party platform that ended up being modified was the policy regarding Ukraine. It was altered to remove any reference to arming Ukraine in its struggles against Russia (which illegally seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014). How many times over the past 8 years has the subject of not arming Ukraine been championed by the GOP MAGA ex-president and his GOP MAGA congressional surrogates?

This sole modification was noteworthy as a policy departure from past US Congressional bipartisan support for Ukraine. Eyebrows were raised because of Donald Trump’s open admiration for Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, and because his campaign manager Paul Manafort had previous business dealings in Ukraine representing Russia’s interests.

As per the August 5th Atlantic report in 2016, Paul Manafort’s past clients in his PR work had notably included the pro-Russian former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. In early 2014. Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia amid protests from Ukrainians demanding his ouster.

But now, according to the October 23, 2024 Washington Post’s exposé by Catherine Belton, there is an American citizen directly assisting Russian propagandists disseminate throughout US social web sites, deepfakes designed to circulate misinformation targeting Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign during the 2024 US elections cycle.

Here are excerpts from the Washington Post’s exposé, “American creating deep fakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show:”

“A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post.”

“Dougan’s contact at the Moscow institute, the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, is its head, Valery Korovin. According to Korovin’s social media page on the Russian version of Facebook, he was awarded a medal by President Vladimir Putin in 2023 for “services to the Fatherland” for “carrying out special tasks.” Korovin also works closely with Khoroshenky, who under his cover name serves as the institute’s deputy director, the documents show.”

“Dougan is responsible for content on dozens of fake news sites with names such as DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle and Atlanta Observer, according to the documents and disinformation researchers. In the months that followed his reboot with the new GRU-facilitated server and AI generator, the sites and fake news videos spread by Dougan and his associates have produced some of the most viral Russian disinformation targeting Harris, according to Microsoft and NewsGuard, including a deepfake audio in August that purported to show Barack Obama implying that the Democrats had ordered the July assassination attempt against Donald Trump.”

“Most recently, Dougan was the initial source for a false claim behind the viral fake video that alleged Walz abused a student at the high school where he taught, and NewsGuard believes Dougan’s network may be behind its further dissemination. Eleven days before a video appeared with what NewsGuard says was probably an AI-generated persona claiming to be a former Walz student, Dougan appeared on a podcast making a similar but separate false claim, presenting an anonymous man claiming to be a former exchange student from Kazakhstan.”

“Other Kremlin-directed efforts to sway the U.S. presidential election have included the Doppelgänger campaign run by Kremlin political strategists that was recently targeted by the Department of Justice for its cloning of legitimate news outlets, including Fox News and The Post — a Russian operation about which The Post had previously reported. The Justice Department has also accused RT, the Russian state media outlet, of funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to American social media influencers to parrot Kremlin talking points.”

“In a telephone interview with The Post, Dougan denied being behind sites such as DC Weekly, and he said he didn’t know Korovin or Khoroshenky or have any connections with Russian military intelligence or the Russian government.”

See: A Bugatti, a first lady and the fake stories aimed at Americans – BBC

As per NYT, there’s a Video Faked by Russia: Federal officials said that a video showing mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania being destroyed was a fake, created by Russia as part of Moscow’s efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election.

This post was updated on October 26, 2024.