A Facebook group with potential Russian connections attempted to recruit members from a Texas secessionist movement for several anti-immigrant and anti-Hillary Clinton rallies to be held in November 2016, according to a report Thursday.
“When they decided to start doing all these ‘Texit’ rallies, they reached out and wanted us to participate,” Daniel Miller, the president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, told Business Insider. “And we said ‘thanks, but no thanks.'”
The Facebook group, Heart of Texas, was terminated last week after Facebook shut down inauthentic accounts associated with a Russian company that bought $100,000 in Facebook ads during the presidential election.
When the group was initially launched, Miller said an administrator of the page contacted him via Facebook messenger and that several times, administrators of the groups reached out to him. They all seemed to have legitimate accounts.
Originally, the group was primarily posting “Texas pride” memes, but Miller said the content of the page turned more political.
In October 2016, the group organized an event that attempted to bring people from major cities of Texas together to protest “establishment robbers” and “higher taxes to feed undocumented aliens.” Additionally, the group warned that a “Killary Rotten Clinton” presidency would bring more undocumented immigrants, mosques, and terrorist attacks.
Some indicators that the page was operated by a Russian company include a lack of contact information and ads. Additionally, the group posted memes with typos and errors that indicated an unfamiliarity with English.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. Facebook provided copies of the ads in question to Mueller.
