WASHINGTON -- The U.S. accused a Russian woman Friday of helping oversee the finances of a sweeping, secretive effort to sway American public opinion through social media in the first federal case alleging foreign interference in the 2018 midterm elections.
The criminal complaint against Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova alleges that Russians are using some of the same techniques to influence U.S. politics that they relied on ahead of the 2016 presidential election, methods laid bare by an investigation from special counsel Robert Mueller into possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump's campaign.
Justice Department prosecutors claim that Khusyaynova of St. Petersburg helped manage the finances of a hidden but powerful Russian social media effort aimed at spreading distrust for American political candidates and causing divisions on hot-button social issues like immigration and gun control.
The Justice Department unsealed the criminal complaint on the same day that U.S. intelligence agencies, in a rare public statement, asserted that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in continuous efforts to influence American policy and voters in the coming elections and beyond. National security adviser John Bolton heads to Russia today.
The U.S. is concerned about the foreign campaigns "to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies," said the statement from national security officials. The statement, which provided no details about any such efforts, said, "These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision-making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections."
The national security agencies said they do not have any evidence that voting systems have been disrupted or compromised in ways that could result in changing vote counts or hampering the ability to tally votes in the midterms, which are 2½ weeks away.
"Some state and local governments have reported attempts to access their networks, which often include online voter registration databases, using tactics that are available to state and nonstate cyber actors," they said.
But so far, they said, state and local officials have been able to prevent access or quickly mitigate these attempts.
In the criminal complaint, prosecutors say Khusyaynova worked for the same social media troll farm that was indicted earlier this year by Mueller. The social media effort outlined by prosecutors Friday largely mirrors Mueller's criminal case against three Russian companies, including the Internet Research Agency, and 13 Russians, including one who is a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prosecutors and the FBI said Khusyaynova kept detailed financial documents that listed expenses for advertising on Facebook and Instagram and "developing accounts" on Twitter.
Court documents show she wielded a hefty budget that totaled more than $35 million between January 2016 and June 2018. Between January and June 2018 alone, prosecutors said, the project's proposed operating budget totaled more than $10 million.
Prosecutors say the conduct singled out Friday runs afoul of criminal laws that bar foreign nationals from attempting to influence American elections or from engaging in political activities without first registering with the attorney general.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement that combatting election interference is a task that requires cooperation from government and private industry. Twitter declined to comment. The messages spread widely on the platforms. Prosecutors say one Facebook page reached more than 1.3 million people, while several of the Twitter accounts had tens of thousands of followers.
Asked about the new accusation against the Russians at an appearance in Arizona, Trump responded that it had "nothing to do with me."
FAKE ACCOUNTS
Since at least 2015, the group created thousands of fake social media profiles and email accounts that appeared to be from people inside the U.S. and were aimed to "create and amplify divisive social and political content," including on significant current events, such as deadly shootings in South Carolina and Las Vegas, prosecutors said in court papers.
One fake persona, registered to "Bertha Malone," made more than 400 Facebook posts containing inflammatory content. Another fake Facebook account, in the name of "Rachell Edison," made more than 700 posts focused on gun control and the Second Amendment.
According to the complaint, Russia's trolls did not limit themselves to either a liberal or conservative position, and often wrote from both viewpoints on the same issue. They developed strategies for blending into partisan U.S. audiences.
"If you write posts in a liberal group ... you must not use Breitbart titles," read one message sent to the Russian group, referring to the conservative U.S. news site. "On the contrary, if you write posts in a conservative group, do not use Washington Post or BuzzFeed's titles."
The group also gave suggestions, some of them racially biased, for reaching specific groups. One member suggested keeping posts simple when they were aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups of color, writing that "colored LGBT are less sophisticated than white; therefore, complicated phrases and messages do not work."
After another article appeared about Mueller last year, members of the troll farm were told to share the article and say Mueller was a "puppet of the establishment" who had connections to the Democratic Party and "who says things that should either remove him from his position or disband the entire investigation commission."
The new prosecution was brought not by Mueller but by the Justice Department's national security division and prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia. There is no allegation in the complaint of coordination with the Trump campaign.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said recently that Russia has no intention of interfering in the midterm elections.
Friday's separate statement about foreign influence in U.S. elections was issued just weeks before the Nov. 6 elections by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
Given the breadth of alleged interference by Russia, which includes the hacking of Democratic email accounts ahead of the 2016 presidential election, it was notable that the intelligence community identified two other nations -- China and Iran -- in the same statement.
Vice President Mike Pence recently blasted China in a speech, saying Russia's influence efforts in America pale in comparison with the covert and overt activities of the Chinese to interfere in the midterms and counter Trump's tough trade policies against Beijing.
But top administration officials have provided little evidence that China's activities are comparable to Russia's large-scale covert measures spelled out in previous indictments obtained by Mueller.
The officials have cited largely public steps taken by China, such as aiming tariffs at politically important states and pressuring U.S. businesses to speak out against the Trump administration.
Intelligence agencies have not publicly released evidence of Iran working to meddle in U.S. elections. In March, however, the Trump administration announced criminal charges and sanctions against Iranians accused in a hacking scheme to pilfer sensitive information from hundreds of universities, private companies and American government agencies.
Lawmakers said the newest criminal complaint is proof that Russian meddling did not stop in 2016.
"Russian disinformation efforts are ongoing and sophisticated, and they are intent on dividing us and weakening our society and political system," said California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Congress needs to set up "much-needed guardrails" on social media.
HELPING STATES
The caution over election security comes as election officials and federal cybersecurity agents tout improved collaboration aimed at confronting and deterring election tampering.
Officials from Homeland Security, the department responsible for helping states secure elections, say the midterms will be the most secure vote in the modern era. They said they haven't yet seen the type of infiltrations that happened in 2016.
Still, cybersecurity experts aren't so sure the improved security and local-federal cooperation will be enough, given the breadth of threats that electoral systems may face.
States run elections, a decentralized process that makes it harder for anyone to conduct a nationwide attack on the electoral system. The downside is there is no national playbook. The 10,000 or so election jurisdictions use a combination of paper ballots scanned into computers, entirely computerized ballots stored online and old-school paper ballots, marked and hand-counted by humans.
With the realization that Russian-backed agents were interfering with the 2016 vote, then-Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson designated election systems as "critical infrastructure," a change that allowed the federal government more leeway to help states. There is no evidence that votes were altered in 2016, but intelligence officials say all 50 states had some type of intrusion, though only a few were compromised, like in Illinois, where records on 90,000 voters had been downloaded.
States are managing antiquated machinery, built by a few unregulated and secretive vendors. The outdated software is highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Online voter registration databases are frequent targets.
Election systems are constantly under fire from efforts to steal sensitive data, disrupt services and undermine voter confidence.
To assist states, Homeland Security offered them vulnerability assessments and help responding to incidents -- so far, 37 states have signed up.
The department this year created the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center to help state and local election jurisdictions share information on cyberthreats and security. The Center for Internet Security runs it, and more than 1,100 counties in 50 states are signed up.
Kammi Foote, head of elections in Inyo County, Calif., said her partnerships with other states have increased her trust of federal officials. She reached out to colleagues in Colorado when she invited federal agents into her county.
"I was still nervous about it," she said. "But when they got here, what really set my mind at ease was these were not partisan, ideologue people. These are the rank-and-file. They're experts in cybersecurity."
Federal officials are handing out security clearances to state and local officials so some can read in on classified briefings, but so far, fewer than 100 have been given. And local officials still know very little about what happened in 2016.
"I never received any information and still -- to this day -- I have no inside access to anything more than what's reported in the media and the general public on what those threats are," Foote said.
Information for this article was contributed by Deb Riechmann, Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo, Colleen Long, Christina A. Cassidy, Frank Bajak and Wilson Ring of The Associated Press; by Adam Goldman of The New York Times; and by Matt Zapotosky, Rachel Weiner, Ellen Nakashima, Devlin Barrett, Anton Troianovski, Craig Timberg, Spencer S. Hsu and Rosalind S. Helderman of The Washington Post.
A Section on 10/20/2018