Russian-linked bots flooded Twitter with political propaganda in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Florida on Wednesday, according to data from a website tracking Russian activity on the social media site.
The website, created by the think tank the German Marshall Fund, tracks the activities of 600 Twitter accounts linked to Russia. And in the days after 17 people were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the website recorded Russian-linked twitter bots tweeting about Parkland, gun control, Florida and Nikolas Cruz, the alleged shooter.
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Nonetheless, over the past year Twitter gave Congress a list of almost 4,000 accounts the company said are related to a group of Kremlin-linked trolls based in St. Petersburg, Russia. In late January, the company said it would notify around 700,000 Twitter users that they had interacted with accounts linked to Russia’s ongoing propaganda efforts. http://www.newsweek.com/florida-shooting-russian-bots-twitter-809000
The NRA Should Disclose Any Russian Ties
The National Rifle Association The NRA Should Disclose Any Russian Tieshas long offered its expertise in politics and public relations to gun groups in Australia, Brazil, Canada and elsewhere. The question now is whether during the 2016 presidential campaign the NRA embraced a very different sort of international mission: serving as a conduit to Donald Trump’s campaign for Russian interests.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly investigating whether the NRA helped funnel money from Russians into the election, which would violate U.S. election law prohibiting the use of foreign money. In recent years the NRA has developed relationships with several well-connected Russians, including Alexander Torshin, an ally of President Vladimir Putin who is deputy governor of the Russian central bank.
Torshin, who has been implicated in money laundering by Spanish authorities, is also an NRA member. In 2016 he is reported to have met with Donald Trump Jr. at the NRA’s annual meeting in Kentucky, and in 2015 NRA leaders met with Torshin in Moscow.
The NRA has said that the FBI has not contacted it about Russian funds. Curiously, however, the gun group has so far failed to take the simple step of denying that it accepted Russian money at all. The NRA reported spending more than $55 million in the 2016 election, including $30 million on Trump -- more than the organization has spent on any candidate in its history.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, has sent letters to the U.S. Treasury Department and to the NRA requesting information on the group’s ties to Putin allies. Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, should do the same.
The public has the right to know if the NRA served as a backdoor for Putin’s sabotage of the election -- especially given the NRA’s role in lobbying Congress and state governments, and funding political campaigns. Did the NRA receive any money from Russia-linked individuals or entities? Did it facilitate meetings between Russians and members of the Trump campaign? To what end?
As a 501(c)(4) organization, the NRA is not required to disclose its donors. Congress should change that law. Regardless, thorough answers from the NRA to each of these questions could resolve any doubts about its conduct, even if they also show that the group chooses its friends poorly.
Did the NRA Channel Russian Money to Trump?
According to the report, the FBI is investigating whether Russian banker and NRA member Alexander Torshin channeled funds through the group to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, in breach of U.S. election laws.
The Putin ally is a lifelong NRA member, and led a delegation of NRA chiefs to Russia in 2015. As the presidential race intensified, he cultivated his links to the Trump campaign, meeting the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., at the NRA convention in June 2016, though he was reportedly unsuccessful in his bid to meet the GOP presidential candidate himself.
