“Operation Doppelganger” – Biden’s Justice Department Goes After Putin’s Information Warfare Campaign

In news that is sure to resurrect haunted memories of “Russian Collusion” (ie: 2016), Biden’s Department of Justice has accused Russia of attempting to influence the 2024 Presidential election.

Today, the Justice Department announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as “Doppelganger,” in violation of U.S. money laundering & criminal trademark laws. pic.twitter.com/zSaxVqrLyS

— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) September 4, 2024

The scope of the information campaign seems to be expansive, including everything from the promotion of false news stories to paying U.S.-based social media influencers to spread the curated content.

Here’s what Fox News is saying:

The Biden administration on Wednesday accused Russia of trying to influence the 2024 U.S. presidential election by targeting American voters through state-run media and other online platforms as part of a campaign referred to as “doppelganger.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking alongside FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, said prosecutors have unsealed an indictment in the Southern District of New York of “two Russian-based employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet” that charges them with “conspiring to commit money laundering and to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

Garland told reporters that in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the editor-in-chief of the RT TV network “said the company had built ‘an entire empire of covert projects designed to shape public opinion in Western audiences.'”

“We allege that as part of that effort, RT and its employees, including the defendants, implemented a nearly $10 million scheme to fund and direct a Tennessee-based company to publish and disseminate content deemed favorable to the Russian government,” Garland said. “To implement this scheme, the defendants directed the company to contract with U.S.-based social media influencers to share this content and their platforms. The subject matter and content of many of the videos published by the company were often consistent with Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Russian interests, particularly its ongoing war in Ukraine.”

My question to Attorney General Merrick Garland would be simple – why now?  Why just weeks before a presidential election do you come forward with something like this?  You’re telling me you SUDDENLY became aware of this much foreign involvement?  Was the operation amazingly covert, and then all the sudden it wasn’t?

Or, like I am guessing, did you sit on whatever information you had until such a time as this, intentionally trying to throw questions into the election process?  Just to be clear – I’m not sure who is interfering with these elections more… the Russians, or Merrick Garland’s Dept. of Justice.

Biden’s favorite Attorney General held the following press conference yesterday when the news broke.  This is the full presser, if you dare:

Already today there are reports that certain media sites have been shut down or otherwise compelled to comply with the DOJ actions being taken against them.  Check out this post by RRNmedia on X.com stating that “THIS WEBSITE HAS BEEN SEIZED”:

The Russian state media network (RT) is specifically highlighted in the press conference, with Garland describing some of the actions the Justice Department is taking, including the seizure of 32 internet domains.  Here is more detail on that from the Fox News story referred to earlier:

In a separate enforcement action, Garland said the DOJ has seized 32 internet domains “that the Russian government and the Russian-sponsored actors have used to engage in a covert campaign to interfere and influence the outcome of our country’s elections.”

“As alleged in our court filings, President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, including Sergei Kiriyenko, directed Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation and state-sponsored narratives as part of a campaign to influence the 2024 U.S. presidential election,” he said.

Strikingly, President Vladimir Putin is directly implicated, as is his “inner circle” in the article referencing the Attorney General’s remarks at yesterday’s press conference.  Allegedly, the information op was conducted directly under the auspices of Putin.

Jumping over to CNN’s current reporting we can see just how laser fixed the DOJ is on Vladimir Putin’s role:

At Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direction, three Russian companies used fake profiles to promote false narratives on social media, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. Internal documents produced by one of those Russian companies show one of the goals of the propaganda effort was to boost the candidacy of Donald Trump or whoever emerged as the Republican nominee for president, according to an FBI affidavit.

Separately, two employees of RT, the Russian state media network, were indicted in a US court for allegedly being part of a scheme that funneled nearly $10 million to set up and direct a Tennessee-based front company to produce online content aimed at sowing divisions among Americans, according to the Justice Department. The scheme targeted millions of American news consumers with what Attorney General Merrick Garland described as “hidden Russian government messaging.”

A nearly 300-page FBI affidavit released on Wednesday describes the domain seizures and lays out a broad, Kremlin-backed effort to seed fake news stories to attack US politicians supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia and stoke tensions in US society.

Already there are rumors on both sides of the American political aisle that this is merely a smoke screen to detract from the integrity of the elections, or even invalidate the results.  Nowadays, things I once dismissed, I merely take with a grain of salt.  What happens next, where this goes, your guess is as good as mine.

This story is still breaking and we’ll bring you further developments as they come available.