The House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as well as the Justice Department, are looking into whether President Trump’s digital operation during the campaign helped direct Russian cyber operatives toward specific voters to target with fake and negative news stories about Hillary Clinton, according to a report.
Several people familiar with the investigations into Russian meddling said investigators are examining whether the campaign’s digital operation, run by Jared Kushner, guided Russian cyber operatives to specific jurisdictions in key states where support for Clinton was weak, according to McClatchy.
Investigators are also questioning whether Trump associates or campaign aides assisted the Russians in releasing a trove of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and other Democratic officials, and published by WikiLeaks.
California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told McClatchy he is interested in learning whether “fake news or damaging stories” spread by Russia were “coordinated in any way in terms of targeting or in terms of timing or in terms of any other measure … with the campaign.”
Schiff said he also wants to know whether there was an exchange of information or financial support given to the organizations spreading the fake and false stories.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview in May he is also interested in learning how Russians knew to target specific states and voters.
“I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots,” Warner said. “Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware [of] really raises some questions. … How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?”
Four intelligence agencies concluded Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election and worked to defeat Clinton, in part by launching a cyberattack to spread fake and negative news about the Democratic presidential nominee on Twitter and Facebook. The cyberattack reached millions of voters, with many living in swing states and key precincts.
The Russian operation used “bots” to increase the reach of the stories about Clinton.
A source familiar with the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian meddling, led by special counsel Robert Mueller, told McClatchy investigators doubt that Russian cyber operatives controlling the bots independently knew “where to specifically target … to which high-impact states and districts in those states.”
Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser at the White House, has been deemed a “person of interest” in Mueller’s investigation. Investigators are examining meetings Kushner held with Russian officials, as well as his financial and business dealings.
A source told McClatchy Kushner’s “role as a possible cut-out or conduit for Moscow’s influence operations in the elections,” including his role as leader of the campaign’s digital operations, will be examined.
