‘Something was weird’: Inside the Russian effort to bamboozle Florida

The indictment is packed with details of how Russian nationals duped Donald Trump campaign volunteers and grass-roots organizations in Florida into holding rallies they organized and helped fund with foreign cash. And Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio himself was a target of an effort to “denigrate” him and several other presidential candidates.

…“It was all the social media stuff, that’s where you could see something was weird,” said Johnson, who consulted for Jeb Bush’s super PAC in 2016. “It was syntax errors and odd ways of saying things that were apparent.”

…Beyond the rallies, the Russian scheme also used its social media reach to falsely tie Clinton to voter fraud in South Florida, a region with a long history of voting abnormalities.

Russian-linked Twitter accounts on Nov. 2, well into the state’s early-voting period, blasted out a tweet saying voter fraud was occurring because “tens of thousands of ineligible mail in Hillary voters are being reported in Broward County, Florida.”

Broward County is home to the biggest concentration of registered Democrats in the state.

Mueller also said that Russia-linked social media accounts targeted other presidential candidates, including an effort to smear Rubio, though it did not provide specific examples.

‘Something was weird’: Inside the Russian effort to bamboozle Florida

hmmmm

Leave a comment