28
28
72 @McFaul 4/30/16 Tweet (responding to tweet by@Jenn_Abrams).
Roger Stone
Advisor to the Trump Campaign Harm to Ongoing Matter
73 @RogerJStoneJr 5/30/16 Tweet (retweeting @Pamela_Moore13); @RogerJStoneJr 4/26/16
Tweet (same).
profile U.S. persons, including former Ambassador Michael McFaul,72 Roger Stone,73 Sean Hannity,74 and Michael Flynn Jr.,75 retweeted or responded to tweets posted to these IRA-controlled accounts. Multiple individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign also promoted IRA tweets (discussed below).
74 @seanhannity 6/21/17 Tweet (retweeting @Pamela_Moore13).
Michael T. Flynn
National Security Advisor (Jan. 20, 2017 – Feb. 13, 2017), Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (July 2012 – Aug. 7, 2014), and Trump Campaign advisor. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about communications with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016.
75 @mflynnJR 6/22/17 Tweet (“RT@Jenn_Abrams: This is what happens when you add the voice over of an old documentaiy about mental illness onto video of SJWs … “).
76 A botnet refers to a network of private computers or accounts controlled as a group to send specific automated messages. On the Twitter network, botnets can be used to promote and republish (“retweet”) specific tweets or hashtags in order for them to gain larger audiences.
b. IRA Botnet Activities
Harm to Ongoing Matter 76
In January 2018, Twitter publicly identified 3,814 Twitter accounts associated with the IRA.79 According to Twitter, in the ten weeks before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, these accounts posted approximately 175,993 tweets, “approximately 8.4% of which were election-
79 Eli Rosenberg, Twitter to Tell 677,000 Users they Were Had by the Russians. Some Signs Show the Problem Continues, Washington Post (Jan. 19, 2019).