Seriously? … Continue reading
Category Archives: chicanery
Ken Doyle for Bloomberg BNA: Political ads on Facebook would have to carry disclaimers stating who paid for each ad, under a new draft advisory opinion set to be considered by the Federal Election Commission. Disclaimer requirements for online political ads have … Continue reading
News from Colorado: Just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, Steve Curtis told his radio listeners “Virtually every case of voter fraud, that I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats or do I not have the facts?” Now … Continue reading
New Yorker’s Jeff Toobin: Does any of this behavior rise to the level of criminality, and, if so, what laws might it have violated? Federal law prohibits political candidates and their advisers from seeking or obtaining contributions from foreign individuals … Continue reading
Politico: Staffers for Senate Republicans’ campaign arm seized information on more than 200,000 donors from the House GOP campaign committee over several months this year by breaking into its computer system, three sources with knowledge of the breach told POLITICO. … Continue reading
AP: The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, The Associated … Continue reading
I’ve already hinted at some of these things in this Politico piece, but I’ve now fleshed it out in the latest draft of my forthcoming First Amendment Law Review article, Cheap Speech and What It Has Done (to American Democracy). … Continue reading
Bob Bauer for Just Security: The WikiLeaks-Trump Jr. correspondence has passed through this round of commentary. I thought that these Twitter exchanges unquestionably deepened the campaign’s legal exposure to liability for aiding illicit foreign national activity in U.S. elections. It seemed to me, as … Continue reading
NBC News: Russian trolls used Twitter to challenge the validity of the U.S. presidential election months before it took place, according to new NBC News analysis. In apparent expectation of a Trump loss, the trolls began sowing seeds of doubt … Continue reading
From blockbuster Atlantic report on emails between Donald Trump Jr. and Wikileaks, comes the following nugget: WikiLeaks didn’t write again until Election Day, November 8, 2016. “Hi Don if your father ‘loses’ we think it is much more interesting if … Continue reading
AP: Disguised Russian agents on Twitter rushed to deflect scandalous news about Donald Trump just before last year’s presidential electionwhile straining to refocus criticism on the mainstream media and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to an Associated Press analysis of since-deleted accounts. … Continue reading
Star Tribune reports. … Continue reading
CNN: A Twitter account misleading Democratic voters in Virginia by telling them they could cast their ballot by text message was active for almost three hours on Tuesday morning before Twitter suspended the account. The account, “MAGA Mike King,” was … Continue reading
Bloomberg: A Russian lawyer who met with President Donald Trump’s oldest son last year says he indicated that a law targeting Russia could be re-examined if his father won the election and asked her for written evidence that illegal proceeds went … Continue reading
WaPo: There’s no evidence that Russians were able to change any votes after they were cast, but at the very least, they succeeded in raising questions about the U.S. voting process — questions that James Norton, a homeland security expert and … Continue reading
Banana republic territory: Frustrated with the Justice Department’s reluctance to investigate his political opponents, President Trump on Friday said he would like the agency to run itself, but he and “a lot of people” are disappointed in the top federal … Continue reading
Philadelphia Inquirer on some absentee ballot vote buying allegations: Voice recorder in his pocket, Rodney Cotton, 51, got out of the private detectives’ car and headed for the Gilliam for Mayor headquarters on Atlantic Avenue. As the two retired state troopers … Continue reading
CBC News reports. … Continue reading
David Cottrell, Michael Herron, and Sean Westwood have written this article for Electoral Studies. Here is the abstract: As Republican candidate for president and later 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump has claimed repeatedly and vociferously that the 2016 … Continue reading
NYT: The guilty plea of a 30-year-old campaign aide — so green that he listed Model United Nations in his qualifications — shifted the narrative on Monday of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia: Court documents revealed that Russian officials … Continue reading
CNN: Facebook will inform lawmakers this week that roughly 126 million Americans may have been exposed to content generated on its platform by the Russian government-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency between June 2015 and August 2017, … Continue reading
NYT: A professor with close ties to the Russian government told an adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in April 2016 that Moscow had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to court documents unsealed … Continue reading
WaPo: When Marc Elias, general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, hired a private research firm in the spring of 2016 to investigate Donald Trump, he drew from funds he was authorized to spend without oversight by campaign officials, according … Continue reading
Weird thing for (especially him) to say. … Continue reading
Lexington Herald-Leader: The recently fired assistant to the director of the State Board of Elections alleged in a letter to some members of the board that the office of Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes improperly gathered voter information from … Continue reading
NYT: The presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paid for research that was included in a dossier made public in January that contained salacious claims about connections between Donald J. Trump, his associates and Russia. A spokesperson for … Continue reading
Philly Inquirer: Two top political strategists for U.S. Rep. Robert Brady (D., Pa.) on Tuesday became the latest targets in a widening federal probe of $90,000 the congressman paid a 2012 primary challenger to drop out of the race. Federal prosecutors accused … Continue reading
WaPo: The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the … Continue reading
NYT: When the state-backed Russian news channel RT became the first news organization to surpass one billion views on YouTube in 2013, it marked the achievement with a retrospective of its most popular videos and a special guest — one of the … Continue reading
Great event coming up, but you’ve got to sign up by Wed. to watch. Details. I’ll be presenting my paper, Cheap Speech and What It Has Done (to American Democracy). … Continue reading
Texas Public Radio: The fantasy of Texas national independence has been stoked for decades but in recent years it has found an ally with Russia. An investigation into a popular pro-Texas secession Facebook page found that it was run by Russians. … Continue reading
Brendan Nyhan and Yusaku Horiuchi for the Monkey Cage: One promising approach is summary fact-checking — an increasingly popular format that presents an overview of fact-checking ratings for a politician. This is distinct from focusing on whether a single statement is true or false; rather, … Continue reading
Wired reports. See my earlier Politico piece, Why Banning Russian Facebook Ads Might Be Impossible. … Continue reading
Editorial. … Continue reading
NYT: Senator John McCain and two Democratic senators moved on Thursday to force Facebook, Google and other internet companies to disclose who is purchasing online political advertising, after revelations that Russian-linked operatives bought deceptive ads in the run-up to the … Continue reading
Daily Beast: Some of the Trump campaign’s most prominent names and supporters, including Trump’s campaign manager, digital director and son, pushed tweets from professional trolls paid by the Russian government in the heat of the 2016 election campaign. The Twitter … Continue reading
Weigel: Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for Senate in Alabama, gained then lost thousands of apparently fake Twitter followers in the space of a few hours — a situation that his campaign blamed on Democrats. “We highly doubt that reporters … Continue reading
Business Insider: Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told Axios’ Mike Allen on Thursday that the company would not have removed the political ads purchased by accounts operating out of Russia if they had been posted by real people rather than fake accounts…. Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance … Continue reading
NYT. One of the questions Facebook did not answer: 12.Your advertiser website lists “success stories” of political campaigns that have used Facebook advertising to increase turnout and win elections. Knowing that Facebook could be used to influence election results, why did you … Continue reading
Ciara Torres Spelliscy: As much as fun as it is to beat up on Facebook, the problem lies far deeper than any social media platform, no matter how ubiquitous. Simply put, 20th century law is being used to regulate 21st technology. The … Continue reading
Politico: Democratic senators such as Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Jon Tester of Montana — who hail from states President Donald Trump won in 2016 — know they’re already facing stiff reelection challenges. Now they’re … Continue reading
Celeste Katz: It happened in Las Vegas, but the weaknesses in U.S. voting equipment uncovered during a summer hackathon are too important to stay there, experts say. They’re a matter of national security. A new report breaks down the lessons learned … Continue reading
Today’s must-read: A New York Times examination of hundreds of those posts shows that one of the most powerful weapons that Russian agents used to reshape American politics was the anger, passion and misinformation that real Americans were broadcasting across … Continue reading
Recode reports: Microsoft is currently reviewing its sales records to determine whether trolls aligned with the Russian government purchased ads on Bing or other company products during the 2016 U.S. presidential race. I’ll be interested indeed to see whether Russians … Continue reading
Here’s a more optimistic assessment of electoral cybersecurity preparedness than yesterday’s version; it’s focused on the 28-member federal-state Election Critical Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council. … Continue reading
Fortune has a different scoop from the same report: Ethical hackers will team up with U.S. governors, academics and others to help prevent election results from being hacked, according to a person familiar with the plan. The coalition’s members include … Continue reading
He’s looking carefully into Russian elections, at least. … Continue reading
In this post, I mentioned that we now had a (redacted) look at the “first 365 days” agenda Kris Kobach was photographed holding after his meeting with President-Elect Trump back in November. A number of outlets have picked up on … Continue reading
WSJ: Facebook Inc. cut references to Russia from a public report in April about manipulation of its platform around the presidential election because of concerns among the company’s lawyers and members of its policy team, according to people familiar with … Continue reading
The Electoral College meets Russia meets the Business Insider. … Continue reading