Rep. Maxine Waters, an outspoken advocate for President Trump’s impeachment, claimed Thursday she was the subject of a Russian social media campaign aimed at removing her from office.
“While I have never publicly discussed it before today, I have been aware for some time that I was targeted by Russian operatives whose interests were aligned with Donald Trump,” Waters said in a letter to Twitter demanding to know the extent to which she has been mentioned by Kremlin-linked bots online and the number of times those tweets have been retweeted.
In the letter, Waters details how the “unofficial Twitter account of Tennessee Republicans,” @Ten_GOP, a platform linked to a St. Petersburg troll factory, tried to interfere with a town hall in the California Democrat’s district in May 2017, well after the 2016 presidential election.
“It is most disturbing to me that this Russian account pushed an ‘Impeach Maxine Waters’ hashtag that ultimately trended on Twitter during that afternoon,” Waters wrote. “The hashtag appeared to be coordinated with large, elaborate posters that were posted outside the town hall venue by disrupters, who were probably given the financial resources and assistance necessary to carry out their campaign of disruption.”
BuzzFeed reported earlier in October that the @Ten_GOP account, which has been retweeted by key Trump campaign officials like Donald Trump Jr. and Kellyanne Conway, helped publicize the deadly “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. in August. The account has also been cited by right-wing websites, such as Breitbart and InfoWars.
