Jack - Naming and Shaming (feat. Grant Stern) plus Part 2 of Vol. 1 of The Mueller Report

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

This week: Allison talks with Grant Stern about Elena Branson and the Russian Center New York; Lev Parnas’ plea change; an extended Fantasy Indictment League; and more; plus Part 2 of Volume 1 of the Mueller Report. Grant Stern:https://twitter.com/grantsternhttps://twitter.com/OccupyDemocratshttp://www.grantstern.com/Follow AG on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gill https://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?https://dailybeans.supercast.tech/Orhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansPromo Codes Find your forever pieces at jennikayne.com. And get 15% off your first order when you use code MSW at checkout. Subscribe to SpyTalk: https://link.chtbl.com/SpyTalk

Hey, it's Kimberly Host of The Start Me Up Podcast. If you like your politics with some loose talk and salty language, you're going to love my show. I interview the coolest people like Mary Trump, Kathy Griffin, and DNC Chair Jamie Harrison. The Start Me Up Podcast has an easygoing, casual style and a strong emphasis on left-leaning politics. We also have Frank discussions about sex and more than a few spirited rants. Just visit patreon.com slash start me up or wherever you get your podcast and start listening today.

Please join me in welcoming our new sponsor to Muller She Wrote, Jenny Cain.com. Create the space you'll never want to leave and get 15% off your first order. Go to J-E-N-N-I-K-A-Y-N-E.com and use my code MSW at checkout. Hey all, this is Glenn Kirschner and you're listening to Muller Shee wrote. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said.

That's what I said. That's obviously what the opposition is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time, a two, in that campaign, and I didn't have, not have, communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for having nothing to do with Putin?

I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. So it is political. You're a communist. No, Mr. Green.

Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest professional capitalist. Hello and welcome to Mueller, she wrote, I'm your host, A.G. We have a pretty epic show for you today. Of course, at the end of this show, we are going to run volume two of our series that came out in 2019 on the Mueller Report Volume 1, so you can get a little more background on the, you know, the totality of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But before we do that, we do have a couple of stories and joining me to discuss this first very important story that got very little MSM coverage is Grant Stern, independent journalist and awesome person. What's up, Grant? Hey, how's it going, A.G. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm doing pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, good. I, and I'm so glad that you're here because you had a broke, you scooped this story a long time ago. And what I'm looking at here is an indictment from the Southern District of New York against Elena Branson, aka Elena Chernick. And basically, she's being charged with 18 violations of 18 U.S. code 371, right?

That's correct. Especially the Friday United States, 951, which we call espionage light. 2001, we all know what that is, 1546, and then 22 U.S. code sections 612 and 618. So you've been reporting on Alaina for quite some time. Tell us a little bit about the background of who this person is, where she's been living. We know she gave 59 bucks to Tulsi Gabard. Everybody's freaking out about. True, she's a Russian asset.

No, it's kidding. Oh yeah, like that's the one thing. Yeah, no's a Russian asset. No, it's kidding. Yeah, that's the one thing. Yeah, no, it's probably all the other things. But in any case, tell us about your reporting on this particular Russian spy. So my reporting has to do with K-Source, the coordinating compatriots of Russia Council, or Council of whatever.

I mean, K-Sources is their nickname and acronym. And they're basically a Russian diaspora group that's meant to draw in ethnic Russians, people born in America who have Russian descent, who want to find out more about their Russian heritage. It's like a heritage group, a social group. And they blatantly violated Farah, at least according to their own statements to the Comer-Sant newspaper over in Moscow, which was the source for the report that I wrote in 2018. It's a report that I co-authored with Patrick Simpson called Grand Old Putin Party.

It's a 20, I'm sorry, 50,000 word, 15 part installment that took us about a year and a half to write and investigate. And that's actually the story, it's the last part of the last story because we write putting all the most juicy, interesting things up front. Like the lead story in this installment was entitled, Republican Setup Putin's Lobby Operation.

And so we discovered K-Sorz and we just wanted to include it because the woman that ran K-Sorz also ran this group called the Russian Center for New York and that's Alan Branson. And she hosted the World Russia Forum for Dr. Edward Luzansky, the man who was the feature of our investigative series, who actually wrote a book on Russian ethnic lobbying in the United States, which was published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia. It was published by their publishing imprint. So we just looked at casers. We were like, well, we have this blatant example of phara violation, right?

And we were looking through the phara logs and we found that this guy, Lozansky, was tied up with a major Russian propaganda initiative called the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation. Oh, that's a stupid name. Oh, even better. They went on RT to explain that these Russian professors were going to lecture the world on democracy.

Okay, cool. You know, I mean, at least Rudy Giuliani and Parnas and Froome and got it right when they called their joint fraud guarantee. That's true. It was. This seems more like essential consulting, right? Set up by Michael Cohen, which was a no way essential to anyone. Oh, no, this, this is major spin right here.

This is major spin. Okay. Um, we're talking about people who are involved with the public relations groups that do the foreign propaganda and some of them register, right? So that was how we kind of, you know, we grouped this together. It some of them register, right? So that was how we kind of, you know, we grouped this together as just foreign influence, right? Just a story on foreign influence and the output, like what happened after we wrote this book? What did he do? And the amazing thing is that we went to a former national security council member, Joe Biden's former national security advisor when he was in the the as the vice president.

And now he's the US ambassador to the OSCE, the organization for security and cooperation in Europe, named Michael Arcarpenter. You know, we went to him as a source as an expert source and brought this case source story to him. And we were just like, we just want to show like one example, right? And we did that. And then we finished, we closed the book. We finished writing this long 25,000 word installment. And, and by the way, in part three, we explained that

Los Ansky was the guy who introduced Alexander Torshin to all the Republicans, you know, the Putin's adversary to the NRA. For some reason, the mainstream media just wants to ignore that. It's literally on the Russian Federation Council's website. So we finished this long story, and then we did it's topped a bottom fact check and copy it. And when we came back a month later, after having gotten comment from Dr. Carpenter, right, K-Source posted a picture on Facebook.

Here's our new board, and look, Dr. Luzansky's on it. Mm, interesting. This is real political science. Yeah, yeah, and you know, Pete Struck shared this on Twitter too, Elena Branson. Over 10 years subverted for an agent registration laws in the United States to promote Russian policies. She also allegedly helped obtain fraudulent visas

for Russians and lied to the FBI before fleeing to Russia in 2020. And the Southern District of New York complaint says that lays that out. And once in Russia, she was interviewed by Maria Bhutan. And we all know that special honey pot. And as we know, turns out Bhutan was a Russian agent. She played guilty and went to jail. And of course, we've got all sorts of Republicans and Congress here backing up

these people. But more recently, Bootna published a video showing how to draw a white Z on one's lapel to show solidarity with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So now it's back to where we are lapel to show solidarity with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So now it's back to where we are in the present. And now a couple of questions for you. It says here in the indictment that in March or April of 2016, at the direction of an official of the government of Moscow, Branson attempted to set up meetings for a Moscow government official with among others, politicians and business persons in the United States. I was wondering if we know who those politicians and business persons are yet or do we not

know? I don't think we have a bead on who those particular persons are, although there is a list of the people from 2015, which are at the world Russia forum that Branson's Russia center New York hosted. So that's actually Dr. Luzansky's annual event. And they suddenly became the sponsoring host of it, like when a nonprofit sponsors a conference or something. And for all I know, and I can't speak to it,

but for all I know that they basically use the nonprofit status of Russia Center or if they had nonprofit, but they use that group to get the money in and to pay for this. Well, this is like how Maria Bootna used the NRA to get and meet with people and have the Mayflower meeting and all that other stuff. I mean, it's, but it's, you know, not 9.51,

which is what this is. Well, you know, Maria Bootina created a front group in Russia, right? And she used that, you know, right to bear arms group in Russia to infiltrate the NRA, which by the way, is absurd. I read the stories and reported on this. I did a three part series on torsion as well. And it's like public opinion is like 1,000% against gun rights in Russia, like regular people gun rights. Putin doesn't want it. The people don't want it. They're like, if you gave

out guns to everybody, they would all go shoot each other. But he was given the mission of pursuing that policy, probably just to launch Putin's career. Yeah. And that's what you do in the United States to so discord as you get into our political, you know, hit points, third rails, and drive wedges between people. Now, why on earth did the Southern District of New York wait until now? Do you think there was some sort of, well, like, why wasn't this person indicted under the bar Trump administration? Or is it just that this investigation has taken this long? Well, we only found out about the investigation last, what, October, and then

November, they shut down after one of their key people passed away. And why now? I think that it's obvious that, you know that they just saw that there was a strategic benefit to making sure that this person is not coming back to the country. The whole point of counterintelligence, at least how I understand the FBI practices, is to get a result. So they're not always looking for a conviction. They're looking for a result. And in this case, they're trying to say, look, watch out for this diaspora group and for the people that were leading it, you know, not necessarily the people that are participating, but the people who were leading it. And so it acts as a deterrent. I mean, essentially,

this person doesn't have to be sanctioned. She's not going to come back. I mean, you know, who would go back to face justice on this kind of thing? I mean, it's just a elaborate way of expelling a spot. Right. It's like why we dropped the mean, it's just a elaborate way of expelling a spot. Right, it's like why we dropped the whole case against Concord Management. For, well, first of all, they were using our court system to, and abusing discovery to try to get, you know, information going back to 1942 about the operator.

Oh, sure, yeah. But October, that's interesting because that is when the new US attorney appointed by Biden got to the Southern District of New York. So that, I think that's an interesting tidbit. Yeah. Well, you know, I would just say that now that there's an active shooting war with Russia on the other side, we could expect to see more of this where they're going and exposing the propaganda networks. I think that's really what this is about. It's about naming and shaming as much as it is about.

I mean, if one day she comes back, well, she's going to be in a lot of trouble, but I don't think they expect her to come back after this. Yeah. And also, I mean, there was a, we do know for a fact there was an effort by the Bill Barr Department of Justice to subvert and mislead Americans on the scope and depth of Russian interference in 2016 and 2018. Oh, we all saw that. Yeah. I mean, we all saw that.

We knew that from when the court decided that a lot of what was redacted in the Mueller report volume one was redacted inappropriately. And they had to remove some of those redaction bars. So, you know, well, we know. Everything that has happened over the last three weeks has pretty much validated what so many of us began writing about in 2015, 16 and 17. And so, you know, it's not the way that anybody wants

to gain vindication, although when indictments are actually, I don't mind those, but everybody sees now that this is not just a threat anymore. No, right. And that it's real and that not just that collusion happened, but that propaganda is necessary to get people to perform acts. You know, I think the saying is, you know, first you have to make them believe in anything before they'll do anything.

I'm paraphrasing terribly here. Yeah. But I know what you mean. But it's like, you know, the thing that makes people most likely to believe a conspiracy theory is having believed one conspiracy theory, right? Yeah.

And so this propaganda is an essential part of the Russian arsenal. Hearts and Minds is a phrase that we use here. And starting in 2014 with Cambridge Analytica, through, let's say, the end of 2017, America was subjected to a psychological warfare program very systematically. And psychological warfare is just all about propaganda. And here we are. Yeah. Propaganda, Reflexive Control, Active Measures. And again, stuff that you and I have been reporting on for four or five, you six, seven years. So another story I wanted to ask you about,

because this just popped up and this is related to the Mueller investigation left. Parnas will plead guilty to conspiracy related to his work with fraud guarantee with his colleagues, including Trump Giuliani. Parnas on Thursday, just a few days ago, asked to change his plea from not guilty to guilty. As we know, he was convicted of campaign finance charges in October after paying for the

favor of 2018 midterm election candidates with money that was linked to businessmen from Russia named Andre Moraviev. Now, Parnas and David Korea were accused of alluding people to invest over $2 million in fraud guarantee and using some of that money for personal and political purposes. Now, I set me straight here, because right now, the Southern District of New York, who just put out this indictment against Branson, is currently investigating Rudy Giuliani for his shit that he did in Ukraine with Parnas and Fruiman. And what Parnas was initially indicted and convicted on has nothing to do with that.

It was separate, right? But now in this particular thing, he's pleading guilty, but is this about what he did with Rudy in, you know, with Fertash over in Vienna and shit like that. So it kind of is, it kind of isn't. It's pretty indirect. I mean, these are our charges of being a bad businessman. I mean, that's what it boils down to. You know, if you use corporate money for your own purposes, you know, you're, you're taking the money away from your investors. I mean, this is the kind of charge that it's just bad bookkeeping and the use of funds. I mean, if he had just given himself a dividend, I don't think he faces these charges, to be

quite honest. But because he used the money for his personal reasons without first putting it in his personal name, that's where this kind of charge comes from. Is it directly related to what he did with Rudy? You know, I mean, the money, yeah, I gave money to Rudy Giuliani, so that's definitely related. But it's not like, you know, it's not like a punishment for the crime, if you say. And you know, he's been very penitent about the whole thing, very open

about it, shared a lot of information. And I'm sure we're going to actually see a lot more information about it because, you know, there's a lot of laws that stop somebody from profiting from a crime that they've committed. But the crime of being involved in this political intrigue is not the crime, you know, he's been charged with. It's not a crime that we know of. And so I think that we're going to see a second act from left partners, you know, the other people in that, those two cases of each gotten about a year for each of the charges. And most likely, he'll probably be asking the judge to give him a year concurrently in each case.

So I would just say that expect to see a book coming from Lev about all of this. I'm just guessing here. I haven't talked to him in a little while, but I'm guessing it'll be called Lev remembers. Probably true. And the subtitle will be and has the receipts because the man does have the receipts. He's shown me things. I mean, he made some big mistakes getting head over heels with Trump and he'd be the first one to tell you that.

But they wouldn't have charged him with the crimes involving the company. We're not for the ironic name and also the fact that he was charged with the other stuff. So yeah. the ironic name and also the fact that he was charged with the other stuff. Yeah. And I'm also wondering if he's going to or is already helping Southern District of New York in their investigation of Rudy. And we know Rudy was rated last April, so if anyone's wondering where that investigation is, and they took a whole shitload of stuff out of Rudy's home in office in April. 16 or 18 devices, computers, thousands, thousands of pages documents. And then so the court appointed Barbara Jones, retired judge, to be

the special master, to go through all of it, to make sure that what was being handed over to the government wasn't covered by attorney client or work product privilege or any of these other privileges. She is the same special master that was appointed to Michael Cohen's case. And she put out a report just this past December for three or four months ago saying, we're just about done. We're handing everything over. So now the government has the full case in the Southern District of New York. So we're still looking at a couple of more months for them to pour through all of this information that she handed over. So that's where we're at with that.

But I'm very interested to know if Parnas is helping in that investigation because he is very penitent and he was involved in a lot of that, especially the stuff with Marie Yavanovich. But we'll see. Again, this is an extremely tight-lipped department of justice, and we don't see indictments coming like we did in the Mueller investigation. Well, I'll say this, somebody doesn't have to technically have an agreement to cooperate.

They can cooperate if they want to. Michael Cohen did that. Case in point, just be me to the punch. Michael Cohen did that. And I don't know if he's cooperated or not, but he's made a lot of public statements. They're out there. Prosecutors have them on record. I wouldn't be surprised if there have been some sort of discussions, but I don't think

that he's necessarily cutting a deal. When somebody cuts a deal, it oftentimes undercuts the value of their testimony, especially if they've been convicted of crimes themselves. So, you know. Yeah, and in his lawyer Bondi did say, you know, a while ago, Rudy should be scared, I think. I thought that was an interesting comment, but also to try and understand Joseph Bondi

and sort of hit the way that he hit his front of the courthouse theatrics are pretty good. Oh, yeah. We'll see what happens. But yeah, and I've spoken to Bondi. He's a cool dude. Yeah, Bondi is a cool dude. He's an interesting fellow.

You know, I'll say this, and this was in the interview that we posted, we put on to the Dorken report earlier this year, which is that, you know, the main artery for all of this was André Ardemenco, like he was the vector. He was the guy, the former Ukrainian, former Ukrainian lawmaker and former Ukrainian, who changed his name to Andy Kuchman, nothing shady there, right? And Kuchman, you know, he, he was really the key vector and Lev told the story of how he warned Rudy not to get involved with this guy. And then Rudy one day called him and said, you know, I'm going to work with him anyway.

So I think that there's a lot of fertile territory right there. Yeah, that. And he worked with Dukach and Dirkach and he worked with Fertash and I mean, it was, you know, Kuchma, who was the conduit. Art of Manco. Yeah, 100% for guarantee. That's according to Lev and, you know, we're talking about somebody does have a lot of receipts.

Good, because that's what we need. You know, we're talking about somebody does have a lot of receipts. Good. Because that's what we need. Hey, everybody, it's AG. And you know that I know that decorating your home isn't always easy. I've been renovating. I've been spending. Gosh, it's been months. But this year I am trusting the expertise of Jenny Kane home to curate the space of my dreams with their incredible interior essentials.

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All right, now if you wouldn't mind sticking around, I would like to now jump into the fantasy indictment league. I'm gonna be a candidate! No it is gonna be okay! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be a candidate! I'm gonna be I don't know if Branson's a technically rando, but to go ahead and give yourself five points, she was indicted on 951. So if you called that, congratulations, I did not have a rando Russian on my team this week, but I am now going to draft some more russians. So I'm just gonna put some rando russians on here. I also am gonna keep my quarterback, who's Matt Gates. And I also, from the, from the Tallahassee High School crew

down there, Sabatini and Engels, and some one named L.A. Key, who had a weird no work contract with Joel Greenberg, who's still cooperating and whose sentencing is coming up on March 29th. I wonder if they're gonna delay it again. It'll be interesting to see. I'm gonna put so that's one, two, three, four, five, and then I'm going to, I don't know what's going on with the Manhattan DA these days. So I will, I will put Trump or super seating from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. I'd also like to keep Sydney Powell because she's been under investigation for her, you know, her super, her packs, defending the Republic and the other one along, you know, she's been under criminal federal investigations to September in the DC US Attorney's Office

there. So what do I got like three left? Let's do Rudy, DeGeneva and Townsig. Those are my picks. What do you think? Do you think there's anybody who you would pick grant to be indicted this week? Oh, man. DeGeneva and Townsig are great choices, just excellent choices.

Most people don't realize that they were working. They were working for the Kurdish Democratic Party at the time that they auditioned to be Trump's lawyers for the Mueller report. And he had said he hired them. But then he said, oh, no, I'm not going to hire them. They have a conflict. Yeah, they were registered for an agent of a foreign political party reporting on the executive branch. So they're a great choice. Can I take them to? Yeah, yeah were registered for an agent of a foreign political party reporting on the executive branch.

So they're a great choice. Can I take them to? Yeah, yeah, 100%. And Sidney Powell, I mean, my goodness, I reported in December that she got in trouble in a second state investigation and didn't tell the first state, which is a violation, felony violation. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and the Texas bar, everyone just recommended that she be punished. Cause remember in Michigan, all of the crack and attorneys judge Parker said, you guys are assholes. You guys use the courts to spread propaganda. You didn't, you don't know how to plead. Your filings were bullshit. Your affidavits were bullshit. You didn't take one step to check to see if any of it was true. That's bad ethical that violates rule 11, et cetera. And so she sanctioned them, made them take classes on election law and beating CLEs, and also find them quite a bit of money, six figures to split between them.

However, they decide that'd be a fun meeting to watch. And like they draw on lots or whatever. to split between them. However, they decide that'd be a fun meeting to watch. Like they draw on lots or whatever. And we're spinning. Plinco, maybe they played Plinco to find out who's going to pay what. But she referred them all to their respective state bar associations for either, you know, for punishment, disbarment or suspension of their law licenses. Of course, Rudy has already been suspended in DC, in New York. So he doesn't have a license right now. Can't practice law, but he's also being considered for disbarment. But the the Texas State Bar finally got around to saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, she violated five rules, you know, and then, you know, of the Texas bars as Asian, and then also rule 11 of federal criminal procedure. So we recommend she be punished. And so the judge will decide whether

she's going to be disbarred or suspended or or nothing. But for the Texas bar association to say you fucked up and and file this lawsuit. Yeah. Sanctions. It's got to be bad. Monster. Yeah. I'm surprised that they're not disciplining her for making false statements in two different states to raise charitable funds. That seems like one of those. She is being investigated for it. Her pack is being investigated as well as Flynn and Flynn's brother who were made directors of her pack.

And of course, Lynn Wood is caught up in that. And we learned about that. That's the only department of justice investigation and to the shit that's surrounding 16, that we know about. And the only reason we know about it is because one of the people who testified to the grand jury Told a reporter So that's that's where we're at with that. So that's why pal is on my oh, she's a great choice

But she's my top choice. I gotta tell you she's your quarterback. Yeah, she's my quarterback for sure Cool. Yeah, but could be gates could be a while still. I mean they Cool. Yeah, but it could be Gates could be a while still. I mean, they they haven't indicted them and they have said, look, this Greenberg proffer after he agreed to cooperate has taken us to unknown uncharted territory and they seem like kind of blown away. And we do have two prosecutors on loan from the DC US attorney's office down in the middle of just middle district of Florida. One of them is a child sex exploitation expert and the other one is a public corruption's expert working on this case. And so they're working hard and I trust them to make a charging decision.

I just have no idea when. Well, that's a monster case because, and this was not something that anybody expected, but someone took a lobbyist, took a whole data dump and gave it to the Orlando Sentinel about Florida power and light, which is the public utility in Florida. They're subsidiary of next-era energy, the big public company.

And they were deeply involved in a fake candidates scandal, right, where they'd run these fake candidates. People who didn't live in the district, uh, change their registration just to run and then, uh, they're backed up by dark money. Well, yeah, and then, yeah, one, yes, the one of them pled guilty, but Matt Gates is packed donated to one of the groups involved in that scam. And a lot of Republicans are involved in that. So this is my guess, my personal guess is that they must have come somehow into the realm of the dark money verse in Florida. And I'm telling you right now, the dark money verse in Florida is much darker than anybody really understands, you know, and the expanse has to be huge and untangling that not that

necessarily charges would come out of that, but untangling it to see whether or not there were any laws broken is going to take quite a while. It certainly could. I mean, just as an example, I found a Republican County Commission candidate getting money from the Republican dark money verse, right? And it's like everything is headquartered at a USPS, you know, like location, like I'm sorry, UPS store location, right? And I put it all together and I just, you know, went through all the registrations and who are these people and what are they doing? And I put it together and I traced it

to Republican Senate leadership. And I called the together and I traced it to a Republican Senate leadership. And I called the candidate. And she said, oh, you mean the money from Tallahassee? I was like, yes, exactly. The state Republican money. She goes, oh, no, no, no, no, wait, wait, that's off the record. It's off the record, right?

I'm like, I already knew it was coming from Tallahassee, but thanks for confirming. Mm-hmm. Was that a US Senator? That was a county commission race down here in Miami Dade. Okay, county commission senator who said, no, no, no, no, this was the count, the candidate herself. Oh, oh, oh, gotcha. And you know what, the dark money helps her win that race. It was a 50 50 district and it helped put her over the edge. She got a lot of cash

from these folks. Yeah, there are a lot of Florida state legislatures and people in power and Republican Florida politics that got there by these dirty means. And we've discussed this on the show quite a bit, quite extensively, Grant, running a sham candidate, running a straw man candidate is not illegal in Florida. However, donating money to them above campaign finance violations are still illegal. So it's again, like I said, with that huge dark money universe in Florida, just untangling it is going to take quite a while. Now, I do think that there are kind of two separate investigations here, one into Matt

Gates by these DC US attorneys on loan. And then the middle district of Florida, local folks are handling all this money and election stuff because they know the middle district of Florida better than than anyone else. So it could take, it could go in two different directions. We'll see, but right now they're super tight lipped. We don't know anything. And it's been quite a while. Yeah, yeah, it has. I mean, look to me, the fact that they called in somebody from DC screams to me that they're looking at something much bigger and the 800 pound gorilla in Florida politics is FPL. Okay. I mean, really it's like a four-legged stool FPL big sugar Disney the NRA. Okay. And DeSantis is sitting on it. Sitting on that stool. And now we need to do one of those like Charlie works episodes of Always Sunny in Philadelphia

where we do the stool trick, the bar stool trick so that when you sit down on it it totally collapses. Yeah, we'll try that. Yeah. And if you haven't seen the Charlie work episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it's pretty stressful. So if you're high stress, maybe don't watch it. But it's a single shot, the entire episode,

and it's one of the funniest, most brilliant pieces of television I've ever seen. Anyway, that's on a side. But this has been super fun, Grant, tell everyone where they can find you and your reporting so that they can follow it because we are gonna see, like you said, especially now with what's going on in Europe,

with Putin, and the crackdown here at home, uncorrupt and Russian and foreign influence and money and phara. We have a whole new phara unit stood up that came out of the Mueller investigation. That's right. And we're going to need to have our finger on the pulse of this reporting. So where can they follow you? So you can go to grandstern.com and that's where you can find my books, the newsletter, all the active columns, and even all the old columns.

I am the executive editor of OccupyDemocrats.com and WashingtonPress.com. Just took over as the editor in chief there as well. And of course, I'm running the Dorken report on the producer over there. And boy, I mean, grandstern.com actually has links to all of that. So go check it out. You, so you do occupy Democrats. I've been memed a few times by them. I got to say, I love it. Oh, I'm glad you like it. And you know, it's, it's a fun crew. And you know, I'm still a senior advisory democratic coalition. So I'm always there with my finger on the pulse,

trying to find out what's going on. We appreciate you. Thanks so much. Everybody, as soon as I'm done signing off here, we're going to play episode two of the 20 part series. We're only doing the volume one because we already know what's in the obstruction. And but we want to remind everybody just the depth and breadth of Russian interference in the 2016 election because it's really, really relevant. And there's a lot of ties between what's going on now and what was going on then. It's still, I think, a continuation of the same scheme. And which is to basically kill NATO, destroy the West,

destroy Western democracies, and install dictators around the world. Anyway, that's the show. And please, you can follow me at Mollershoe Road on Twitter. You can also get these shows ad-free if you want, along with the daily beans. It's like all in one thing. You get daily beans, you get the book club,

everything ad-free at Patreon.com slash Mollershoe Road. Everybody until tomorrow, I'll be back tomorrow with Dana for the daily beans. Please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health, and vote blue over Q. I've been A.G. And this is Mueller, she wrote.

Hello, I'm Jeff Stein. And I'm Jean Muzerve together we host the Spy Talk podcast. Every week we delve into the worlds of intelligence, foreign policy, military operations, and the intersection of all, foreign policy, military operations, and the intersection of all three in national security issues. Spycraft, cyber security, violent extremism, whether at home or abroad, technology's impact on intelligence gathering.

We cover it all, and much more. We interview former Spooks, military officers, government officials, journalists, and national security researchers, leveraging our backgrounds and military intelligence and homeland security, along with our decades of experience as journalists and news organizations like Newsweek, The Washington Post, and CNN. So join us every Thursday for a new episode of Spy Talk,

available wherever you get your podcasts. All members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist. Hello and welcome to Muller She Wrote. This is part two of probably what's going to end up as a ten-part series on the Muller Report. I'm your host A.G. and with me as always, are Julie Sajansen. Hello. And Jordan Coburn. Hello. So today, we're covering the Russian Active Measures section.

That's section two of volume one, and its page is 14 through 35. If you haven't yet, we highly recommend checking out the documentary Active Measures on Hulu, because this is all about that. It's really eye-opening, very informative, kind of scary. You might also read Aasha Rangapa's piece on Reflexive Control, which is another active measure that Russia and propaganda used, and that Trump and Giuliani were using for quite a while.

There are the ones who tricked us into the word collusion. And all you have to do is Google Aasha Rangapa and Reflexive Control, and you should be able to find that article. So let's get going. This section, section two, covers the first part of the two part Russian election interference operations, and that's the active measures. And they came principally from the Internet Research Agency.

And you may hear me referring to the Internet Research Agency as the IRA, which I know has a very different meaning to those of those 70s kids out there. We need this as the Irish Republican Army, but in this case, we mean the internet research agency when we say the IRA. Yes, I imagine Bono wouldn't appreciate the association, bro. No, bro, we're not. Yeah, and actually Bono, if you're listening, if you could write a Tuesday, bloody Tuesday song and memory of the democracy We lost in 2016 that would be fantastic. I would be amazing. Oh, yes You know, I think it is a better assumption though because when I think of the airy

I think of the individual retirement account which is weird because I'm like Like a rock. Ira. Yeah. Ira. Oh, there's a difference. Okay. That explains it. Yeah. I was thinking what if they created this because you could also call it the International Rifle Association planes it yeah i was thinking what if they created this because you could also call it the international rifle association and support from around the world which it is now because i mean they did collect twenty six hundred dollars in russian dues very good point by yes all right so uh... the ira is is funded by you've got to victor of it's progosen according to muller and uh... we and everybody else. We know this guy is Putin's chef or Putin's cook.

He is also Concord Management. He owns Concord Management LLC and Concord Catering, which Mueller says he will collectively refer to as Concord for the rest of the report. And with that, we get to our first footnote of the page, footnote 2, that reads, the office is aware of other reports that other Russian entities engaged in similar active measures operations targeting the United States. Some evidence collected by the office corroborates those reports, and the office has shared that evidence with other offices in the Department of Justice and the FBI.

So I wonder if the accounts for the harm to ongoing matters redactions in this section, because now I'm wondering if there's going to be forthcoming additional indictments from these other agencies that participated in active measures. That are not Concord Management. Right. Or the IRA. Yeah. And that have been referred out to the Department of Justice

and the FBI. So that's interesting. Yeah, what about so, Mueller and I did 13 Russian individuals, right? Could these maybe be entities that those individuals are tied to? No, I think those individuals were specifically internet research agency and concord management individuals, but there could be other individuals and other entities

that could have forthcoming indictments that are redacted from this report because they're ongoing. And he says we've referred those off. I can't imagine they wouldn't be indicted, but I do see and put some beans on more Russian indictments coming. I just don't know what's taken so long. Yeah. Then we get another footnote with a sentence right after that one that says, quote, the IRA conducted social media operations targeted at large US audiences with the goal of selling discord in the US political system.

The first line of the footnote for that sentence is redacted for harm and ongoing matter. The rest of the footnote reads, see also SM-2230634 serial 44 analysis. The FBI case number cited here and other FBI case numbers identified in the report should be treated as law enforcement sensitive given the context. The report contains additional law enforcement sensitive information and that's what the footnote says. And just so you know, law enforcement sensitive information is defined as unclassified information of a sensitive and proprietary nature that if disclosed could cause harm to law enforcement activities by jeopardizing investigations, compromising operations, or causing life threatening situations for confidential informances, confidential informants, witnesses or law enforcement personnel.

I had a question. So since it is not classified, it's just sensitive. Does that mean that we should see that information once those law enforcement operations are concluded or whenever anything that falls under that definition basically kind of ceases to be a thing? It depends on how far out,

how long ago it was, it probably not for years, in years. And it might never be because it could be information that could reveal kind of, well, I guess this is specifically law enforcement activities that jeopardize ongoing investigations or current operations. But it could also reveal how we investigate things, but that seems to be more like the investigative redactions that come up later. Yeah, the language seems a little bit less sort of, I guess, binding. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's true. But yeah, maybe so maybe if like once Valerie Plame was retired, you could say, hey, that Valerie Plame, she was in there and doing the thing, and then it would be fine and safe to reveal that. But you would never want to do that as long as she was an informant. So anybody who's still an informant and the FBI generally continues to use the same informant so we're in over again. They wouldn't want to release that information. Or even after two, because then people would be like, you bitch. Yeah, maybe after they die or something. Yeah, yeah, totally. I thought it was interesting that the IRA, like their whole goal was to so discord in the US

because like mission accomplished, right? Like fascists are so, like they're such overachievers, I feel. Mm-hmm, sucks. Yeah, they really did it. Yeah, they did the damn thing. They went for it and they took out it. So the next sentence in that section reads, quote, these operations constituted active measures, a term that typically refers to operations conducted by Russian security services aimed at influencing the course of international affairs.

And the footnote reads, quote, as discussed in part four below, the active measures investigation has resulted in criminal charges against 13 individual Russian nationals and three Russian entities principally for conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 US code 371. And if it then points to points us to the 18 CR 32 indictment of the Russians. So that's what that referral is referring to. I'm telling you about referring referrals. Now I'm trying to think of why anything involved in the IRA case, the social media disinformation case with Concord Management would still be redacted. And there's a couple of ideas, and we talked about this a little bit first. The Concord Management case is still ongoing in court, even though it's kind of a

farce. And we brought this up in part one. This is the case where Concord has hired U.S. lawyers to try to get Mueller to hand over his all of his stuff to Russia and also Roger Stone is referred to in the indictment of the Russians and his case is still ongoing along with Stone Associate Andrew Miller who's fighting a subpoena in court and of course all of Stone's Penge we call the lot of them Roger Stonehenge Which includes you know Randy credit code Jerome Ci, who's currently suing Mueller, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of Justice.

And then there's Wiki Leaks and Assange, and of course Sam Nunberg. Plus, there might be other redactions as Mueller himself in this report stated that there are other active measures. Russians, besides the IRA, that he's referred out to the Department of Justice and the FBI. So more indictments, as I said, could be on their way. And that could also be part of these redacted because I figured, what could possibly be redacted in the IRA material? We've indicted the 13 Russians in the three entities.

What are you redacting? And now he's actually said, we found other shit and we referred it out. And then of course, Stone is related to this. And he's trying to get his name out of that a lot. Oh yeah, he's like, it's not related. Like I'm not related. I need a new judge. He didn't want to have the same judge.

Yeah. Judge Jackson, if he's nasty. Yeah. So he's trying to get out of that being in the same judge as because the reason he has her is because he's referred to in the indictment of the Russian stuff. That's right. Yeah.

He lied about a guy who's possibly in charge of the whole hacking operation, a Russian operative. So yeah, pretty related. But I was gonna say, do you think that the indictments will be here in time for Christmas? I'm so hopeful. I just really want to spend a good Christmas. I'll wait for Christmas.

I'll wait for Christmas. It's never too early. Fuck summer, I'm ready for Christmas in July. You should go to every mall and sit on every Santa Claus and ask for that. Well, they'll probably get to know me. Yeah. Just do that in tape it.

Yeah. How do you know if it's Santa or just some random guy? I think it's kind of like Santa. It's a Russian. It's a Russian. Russia. Well, I was thinking of the Santa thing and the whole thing with Santa.

Yeah, yeah. Also, could those cases be the, some of the counterintelligence investigations? That's true, too. A lot of this stuff could have been handed off when in the counterintelligence investigations. Remember, there were 40 FBI agents co-located with Mueller and some of them

where they are just as from the counterintelligence unit and taking notes and sending written reports back to the FBI. And there is or was a counterintelligence investigation that we haven't heard about yet. And so it could also be one of those redacted 12 referred cases that we see in Appendix D of volume two. Or it could be something completely different. We just we we simply know no. But that's another option, so good catch. It's the counterintelligence stuff, and that stuff we could never learn is the counterintelligence, because counterintelligence findings aren't crimes.

It's- That is really classified top-secret national? Yeah, they find a person, they determine whether or not they're an asset, or they're somehow compromised by a foreign entity, person, they determine whether or not they're an asset or they're somehow compromised by a foreign entity and then they determine with how much confidence, first of all, how much of an asset are they and how confident are we that they are. It's so interesting that the people who are in charge of the juicy as gossip or such like straight and narrow people, you think like the baddest bitches or something would be

like in the CIA. It's why I could never be in the FBI be like oh my god did you guys hear? I tell everyone everything like don't you have a secret? No, it's not me. Seriously. I'm scared. Well what is it? That's my least scared I've ever seen. Yeah.

If I'm ever applying for the FBI and you're doing a research on my background I hope you find this episode so that I can tell you my own voice right now don't trust me. I mean I got that FBI. I got it. I'm about to be in your first now, don't trust me. I got that FBI. I got it. I'm about to wear it in your first, guys. Don't let me in. I have the biggest mouth.

Now it would be great if you got in and then you played this. Yeah, we got with what Trump's doing to like, you know, traditional positions. You know, it's where you got trouble for leaking. Yeah, I told you guys. The comedian clearly stated in the podcast. I'll break, number two. But not sexual. Got it, got it.

Yeah, that's true. This is a disclaimer and any legal things I need to say to absolve myself of any lawyer problems, I mean, that's what I mean right now. That's official enough, right? Sure, I'll take it. I'll hold up in court. Yeah, yeah, that just happened. How about for you?

Okay, thank you. Like in Big Daddy when. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah, yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll takeE.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L.E.L You put it in the dishwasher, his girlfriend walks out and he slams the glass out of the room. This was one of the first times that the opening wasn't my favorite sketch because that was the political one. But yeah, for some reason, Adam's sketches were my favorite. Like, yeah, the random goofy ones, I loved it. Yeah, I like the Game of Thrones one. The Game of Thrones fan was here. It was a cake with Avengers.

Yeah, it's not like he was bad at that. I'm a group bitch. Yeah, that was hilarious. That was my favorite part. Well, that's telling me the bad. Good job, group. Yeah, I'm not like he was bad bitch. Yeah, I was hilarious. That was my favorite part. Well, I'm talking about the bad group. Yeah, I'm group, sorry. I'm not group bitch. Never shit on us so bad.

I'm group bitch. No, it's bitch. Bitch, I'm group. Yeah. I think it leaves the same thing, isn't it? No, so there's a subtle difference. That's true. Only L.D.

There's more stank in the bitch, I'm group. Bitch, I'm group. Yeah, that's like a billbird bit, right? A billbird bit. Is it something about how like when you're saying something racist, if you say like fucking before or after, or wait, you mother fucker. Yeah, I kinda see where he's going with that.

Yeah, if you say like mother fucking film the blank. Like that's your mother fucker. Is it different from that mother fucking chew? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good one. I think it was so. I think it was, I almost said bill bar. think it was I almost said bill bar. Oh, yeah, I get him confused you bill bar as that too. Go burn. So and also. All right. So let's see. We're we're we

we are talking about nope. That's okay. We were talking about the referrals and then possibly intelligence counterintelligence investigations. And then as we move on, we get the confirmation from Mueller that the IRA began targeting the US in 2014, set up fake social media profiles pretending to be Americans, use divisive political and social issues as a means to reach large US audiences. And if you remember in the book, Russian Roulette, that we covered in the MSW book club, check it out.

McGuy and Charger, the GRU, wrote his new war plan in 2013 that included cyber attacks and active measures. In mid-2014, IRA employees traveled to the US on an intelligence-gathering mission to obtain information and photographs for use in their social media posts. That's dedication to your Insta. By mid-2016, they were focused on helping Trump and hurting Hillary. They bought ads on social media, some communicated electronically with individuals associated with

the Trump campaign and with other activists to coordinate rallies. Mueller says none of these people had any idea they were intentionally being manipulated by Russians. The bit about coordinating rallies has a footnote that's redacted from the IRA indictment, so that must be Concord information or stone information, just to guess, beans. And then by the end of 2016, the IRA had the capacity to reach millions of Americans on social media.

There were Facebook groups and Instagram accounts with hundreds of thousands of users. IRA Twitter accounts had tens of thousands of followers, which included multiple US politicians who often retweeted IRA content. That's so crazy. In November 2017, Facebook, and it's like, I feel like, you know, you have sometimes you have like a work party and somebody comes in and they're like, I sold 20 phones today

and they're like, Bob sold 20 phones and he gets to wear a pen and there's a cake. Yeah. Like somebody comes in and they're like, I trolled me. I trolled me. I trolled me. I trolled me. I trolled me. I trolled me. I trolled me. I trolled me. if somebody comes in and like, the president retweeted my tea today, we'll have a have a have a. Yeah, yeah, or I pissed off like 17 snowflake liberalism. Yeah, I got somebody to walk up and down Fifth Avenue

in a Santa outfit today. Oh, I get, I get, I get, like a day off on, you know, I get an extra day off next month. Yeah, that's amazing. They have like a packer of the month, bolt and board next to the fridge and the break area. Everyone, all winners, we take you to Siberia next month. You get extra bottle of vodka.

It is. Two potatoes. And Vick, they're at the top. Oh my God, that's totally probably anti-Russian. But whatever. Sorry. Much love to the Russian people. Yes, love the Kremlin.

I do feel like, yeah. FTK. Yeah, it's a new like fuck the police. Fuck the Kremlin. I don't know, I don't know the police. Yeah, I have I do feel like, yeah. F-T-K. Yeah, it's the new like, fuck the Creme Lin. Fuck the Creme Lin, and I don't know, I don't know, I don't know the lyrics. Yeah, you have to do it instead of Creme Lin. Fuck the Creme Lin. There you go.

Fuck the Creme Lin. Yeah, yeah, put some Muffin on it. It is hard to not sound, and maybe even be like Rousseffo Bic throughout all of this, you know? Cause I'm not trying to only shit on, and it's not about like the Russian people at all. No, and we don't want to get McCarthy But absolutely definitely these are definitely dozens of people sitting in a room acting like Americans trying to trick us by Saying that they're part of like black activist groups. Right. They clock in the work

They have their smoke breaks and they troll us all day long And this is their job and I think that that actually might be a pretty funny sketch to have this as an office environment, like office space, but for IRA. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, like someone's having like a birthday party in the office. And I should have done that when I was doing it.

The printer gets all over. Jam, they're on it, I bet. Yeah. You know, just like typical office shit, but for the Russian people. Yes, yes. We should make that sketch. All right, so moving along here in November

2017 Facebook testified Remember he came in had a booster seat That they had identified 470 IRA controlled accounts that made 80,000 posts during the election Facebook estimates the IRA IRA reached 126 million people through its Facebook accounts. That's more than one third of Americans. So I had a question on that.

Is it possible that that number talks, is talking about people from around the globe, or is it just Americans, 126 million Americans? It's Americans. Specifically. Yeah, it says people in the report. Yeah, because it seems general, right? It just says people.

It just says people in the report. I wonder. I can't wait until the new social network movie comes out, because the first one was pretty interesting, but like this one's going to be intense. I'll just get the highlight of fuck our lives. Yeah, fuck it so. God, totally.

What a... Just until we're like, we'll be in it for some reason. I'm going to devolve into this very, devolve into this like, very bad thing. Seriously. Seriously, or like, I guess Silicon Valley is pretty close to my character.

Yeah, this will be the sequel. Yeah, they should be working on this now. Yeah, it'll be the only like movie trilogy to cross genres from like drama to horror movies. Yes, dude. I love this idea. And then we could do the office space. Mm-hmm. And with a comedy, round it all out. Yeah, full circle. Yeah, full circle. My stapler. Somebody's got somebody's like that. I've created a jump to conclusions mat. Somebody's got somebody's like that. I've created a jump to conclusions Matt So the IRA also had 170 Instagram accounts with over 120,000 pieces of content and Twitter announced that it had

3,814 IRA controlled Twitter accounts that 1.4 million people may have been in contact with an IRA controlled account On page 15 we move on to the structure of the IRA, and most of this is redacted. It's got a paragraph, like a full paragraph redacted, then it says, the organization quickly grew, and then there was another paragraph of redacted information. Then the growth of the organization also led to more detailed organizational structure,

then more redactions after that. All these redactions are for harm to an ongoing matter, by the way. So the way that the IRA was developed for harm to an ongoing matter, by the way. So the way that the IRA was developed, somehow harms an ongoing investigation, and that could be the counterintelligence one that you were talking about there, Jordan. Then we get the sentence, two individuals headed the IRA's management. It's director, McAill, bystroff, and the executive director, McAill, Birchick, the two McHales. Then another redacted paragraph happens.

And then it says, as early as spring of 2014, the IRA began to hide its funding activities, then there's more redactions. That's like Cohen and Prague. I'm like, hmm, why is that all redacted? Do you think these guys got together because they had the same first name? Like, whoa, we should start a freaking business. Do you think you're Michele? I'm Michele. The Michele research agency. Yeah, yeah. Missed the opportunity to be there.

Yeah, and we've never reported on either of these two guys. I searched the transcripts archive. Yeah, they're kind of randos to us. Yeah, those would be randos. Maybe these guys. Double the randos. Or maybe these guys are going to be, maybe they started a different active measures thing,

and then this one got popular, and maybe this, they've been referred, but I don't feel like they wouldn't be named if it was part of an ongoing grant. Yeah, exactly. Right. Investigation. It goes on to say the IRA's operations are part of a larger set of interlocking operations known as project loctah. Then there's more redactions, and that's interesting.

I've not heard of this project before. No, nor have we reported on it. Loctah. At first I thought that said loctah, and I was like project before. No, nor have we reported on it. Lakta. At first I thought that said Lakka and I was like, I'm an appetator. Yeah. Tasty. Mouthwatering. But no. Lakta.

I wonder what that means. I wonder what that translates into. Yeah, if anyone knows. It's pretty. It's pretty word. Lakta. Interlocking organization. So might mean interlocking. Yeah, I know we have Google right in front of us, but I'm just so lazy.

I just want to keep talking and making assumptions. So it might mean interlocking. Yeah, I know we have Google right in front of us, but I'm just so lazy. I just want to keep talking and making assumptions. Thanks. All right, guys, then we get to section B called funding and oversight from Concord and Progojian. And most of this is redacted as well, likely because of the open and ongoing Concord case. What we can see says, quote,

until at least February 2018, Progojian and two Concord companies funded the IRA and that Pergusion is a rich Russian that heads up the IRA. Pergusion was sanctioned by the US Treasury in December 2016 and Mueller then goes on to connect him to Putin through media reports and photographs. And I thought it was interesting that he mentioned

that he was sanctioned, which sort of seems to say, like why would you mention that unless there was some American investing in this? But that's complete space beans. I mean, you can't, obviously, it's against a law to give money to a sanctioned entity or a sanctioned person, but it's extra against the law to fund this kind of operation. And that's why I'm still like, I've got like my Prague hat on because they found out there were two major Russian hacking things in Prague. Remember, we covered that story. Right. And it turned out that Prague is a hub for Russian hackers.

And so that could be what, you know, indictments against Russians for their operations in Prague. That would be really interesting. I like those beans. You like those beans? Yeah, this whole report is like a beenery. It is. What is it?

Barney's beenery? Yeah. All right, so, and then guys, everything else on the next two pages is fully redacted, except for Mueller's definition of the word troll in a footnote as paid operatives who post in flammatory. It's just operatives, in this case, paid who posted flammatory or otherwise disruptive content

on social media or other websites. I was thinking when I read this, how funny it is, how far the word troll has come in such a small amount of time. I remember when I was in high school and it was just becoming a thing in the mainstream media. Totally. And my physics teacher had told us something that blew our minds.

It's like some Newton shit. I don't know. And then someone in the class raised your hand was like, no way. Are you trolling us? And then he was like, what are you talking about? Stop trying to make fetch haves. Yes. But it was so funny.

Just to think back on like back then, we were explaining it to people. And now it's in a legal document. And now it's in the most consequential legal document of this century. Yeah, I'm sure. 2019 is great. Perhaps the history of the United States so far.

Craze also defined later on in the report. Oh, that's right. Mueller's like, yeah, this whole thing is crazy. Craze, by the way, is professional opinion. Then we learned something I didn't know about. The IRA got a US person to hold up a sign in front of the White House and they got a picture of it that said, happy 55 birthday dear boss

as an homage to Progoshin. And this dip shit's name is redacted to privacy. So I've been hilarious. I wonder why Mueller chose to include that. Yeah, other than, I think he's just describing the depths into which they were able to manipulate Americans to do shit. Yeah, that's a good idea.

So here you have an American holding up a sign as an homage to, and this could be a test too, and this could be behind a lot of this redacted stuff. This could be how, because they talk a lot about a little bit later and we'll get to about how they were monitoring their ability to infiltrate and recruit. And so maybe when a guy comes in, you know, if Gennie comes in and says today, I got a guy, I got an American to stand in front of the White House and wish you a happy 55th birthday and they took a picture of it and they tweeted it out.

Ha, ha, ha. And then points for that. Yeah, it makes me wonder like, if anyone's ever held a boom box outside the White House and like, what song would they play? Yeah. I'm sure. What's that happened?

What would you guys play? What song would you? Well, the Cremel Nanooks is out there right now. Get the fuck out, is that a song? Oh, yeah, it gives you hell by all American rejects. I saw your mommy and your mommy's dead my president. I don't think that's how it was. We've been paying and we've been. Oh shit. No pink. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. Pink and one. Dear Mr. President. Yeah. Lillie Allen had

Fucky very much. There we go. I would play Fucky very much. Yeah. Okay. Is it about the president? Not ready to make nice. Might have been about Bush or her ex. I can't remember. I'm probably thinking of it with it. Yes. There we go. Oh. I like it. Yeah. So I I gotta combine everything. That's just how your brain works. Yeah, I did it. Yeah.

It's like puzzle pieces in the linguistic space. Oliver says they started putting celebrity couples names together. Jar, Jar Vonka. That's the only one I could think of right now. There's beyond, like, makes me think of Jar Jar Binks too. Cos like Jared has that face too. Yeah. Jar Vonka. Oh, the name. Sorry, that quickly it lost you. like makes me think of judge our binks to cause like Jared has that face to yeah. Jarbonka. Oh the name. Oh, sorry. That quickly it lost you. That's my bad.

That's actually just one dude. What are you talking about? Oh, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. The name me second. Jarbonka is a very unsexy relationship name. Indeed. It is. What was the first big one that we had? Brangel. Yeah. Yeah, Brangelyna. Oh, that's a high bar right there. And then wasn't there like Ben Affleck and... Yeah, Benifer. Benifer. Yeah, Benifer and Brangelyna. Are the guys always first?

Is this some kind of Patreon? It depends on how it sounds. Fair enough. I think. Yeah, yeah. Probably not always. Is it a requirement to adopt African orphans if you want to have a combined name? That is true.

And you have 100% weird things like Apple. Did Benifer do that? That's what they broke up. That's why they broke up. I think uh, what's her face and what's his face? Did the guy who kept a vile blood around her? What's her face and what's his face? Yeah, no, you know I'm talking about she uh, uh, Angelita Jolie. Oh yeah. Brad. Oh yeah. Oh, that's Hannah. That guy. Yeah. Really Bob. He's kind of high. Is it, is it me? Oh no, he Oh, that's Hannah. That guy. Really Bob Thornton.

He's kind of high. Is it me? Oh, no, he's super high. Okay, thank you. And a bad boy. Yeah, a bad Santa way. A bad dad. A bad dad.

A bad dad. A bad dad. A bad dad. Yeah, bad dad is great. I love that movie so much. Hey, guys, we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Frances Calier, and I'm Angela V. Shelton. And we're Frantola.

You know what you need in your life? Hmm, the final word podcast. Yes you do. That's right, it is the final word on all things political and pop cultural. Where we make real news, real funny. Where we inspire you so you can hashtag resist. Subscribe and get a new episode of the Final Word Podcast

each week. It's the news we think you need to hear. It's the news we think you need to hear. That's right, we think you need to hear it. Okay. Yeah, that's what we say, so. That's right, and because all we do is give every Thursday, you can listen to our hysterical podcast Idiot of the Week. We round up the stupid because you know what?

Somebody has to. Okay. All we do is give. And then most of page 19 is redacted as well, until we get to section C called the IRA targets US elections, part one. The IRA ramps up US operations as early as 2014, which discusses briefly their consolidation of US operations,

all of the US operations into one department called the translator department. And it's then followed by almost two full pages of redactions. Maybe this is it. Maybe it was two, maybe there's several departments. And those are still all under investigation. Now they're all one department. The Macayles kind of melded.

And they're one Macayle, man. One translator department. And it's then followed by two full pages of redactions for opening on going matters. This could all be Concord, also could be counterintelligence, or could be the other Russians that have been dided. I don't know if that matter will ever close, though, because we probably won't ever get them on American soil to close the case. So the indictment of the 13 Russians and Evgeny Progoshin might always be redacted for

life, because we can't ever close that case. Redacted for life. I feel like there must be, I'll just feel like this. I feel like there must be some process in that scenario then for when it can be determined that they most likely will never come over and the case will never be able to be closed essentially. And then they can decide, is that a thing where they're like, okay, well realistically, it's inconceivable that this case will ever come to an end the way that we wanted to.

There's got to be some process for closing it off because you can't. Yeah, all the cases I know that we've ended up seeing or being unsealed 30, 40 years later and stuff, they're all against Americans. So I don't know what we're good at stalling. I don't know what the protocol good at stalling. Yeah, I don't know what the protocol would be for something like the Russians. I feel like if it were important enough and it's not gonna, you know, jeopardize any sources

and methods and it's not gonna put any ongoing cases at risk, you should let us know about it or at least enough or let the Congress know about it so that they can make laws to prevent against it. But I'm curious if you know the answer to let us know about it or at least enough, or let the Congress know about it so that they can make laws to prevent against it. But, I'm wondering if you know the answer to the law. Yeah, head us up, hello at mullershear.com. Then the Mueller report goes into the trip that some of the IRA employees took to the US

to gather their photographs and intel to help with the social media operations. They claim to be friends, which met at a party, and two of them got visas, named Anna Bogacheva and Alexandra Krilova Muller even has their itineraries and their trip instructions That's crazy and that level of detail is intense you guys

It like the level of detail in the Russian indictment. It's just intense what he got like their flight numbers and their times and their Itinerary and their plans and who their other two friends were that they met at this part, like the fuck do you know that? That is crazy. That would make Mueller Santa, he knows if you've been naughty or nice, he knows everything. All right, then on to part two of section C

on page 22 called US Operations through IRA controlled social media accounts. And we get a couple of paragraphs here saying dozens of IRA employees operated these accounts across social media platforms and that they're referred to as specialists. They use Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. At first they pretended to be American individuals. Then in 2015 they created larger groups and pages that claim to be US political groups and grassroots organizations. In some cases, they mimicked actual organizations like the Twitter account at 10 underscore GOP, which falsely claimed

to be part of the Tennessee Republican Party. Most posed as fake grassroots groups, such as anti-immigration groups, tea party activists, black lives, matters protesters, and other social and political activists. Then we got a bunch of redactions after they mentioned that the IRA closely monitored the accounts. I feel like because they used everything Facebook YouTube Tumblr like, did they use Tinder? Like you think they were catfishing Americans too? Like you porn right? Come on. Hitting all the stops. Yes, that was Maria Bhutanas. That's right. She and Eric said, yeah,

Bhutan is so dry. Tumblr is a weird choice too. It's like a look recruiting Tumblr people. They're all emotines. True. Or like lots of pornography. We don't know where they should play. Yeah.

Yeah. It's totally separate. You porn wants to pick them up and say, you can be part of our, we'll take you. Tumblr as a whole. Yeah. Wow. Or at least the people who got kicked off Tumblr

could be importing. Okay. It's a lot of them. Yeah. So it's interesting that a lot. A lot. Yeah. So it's interesting that a lot of these redactions mention are when they talk about the IRA monitoring the accounts, being able to monitor their performance. Then it gets interesting. By 2016, internal IRA documents detailed support for Trump and opposition to Clinton.

Then it gives some redacted examples as harm to an ongoing matter. And we learned definitively for the first time in the Mueller report that Russia did support the Sanders campaign, quote, main idea, use any opportunity to criticize Clinton and the rest except Sanders and Trump, we support that. Oh, God, that does not look good. That's really sad. But again, Sanders isn't even mentioned as he was being investigated for being a part of this. I don't even see any, unless some of these redacted bits are of Sanders campaign people interacting with Russians,

in which case, whoa, and we just have no idea about it. Yeah. See, that would be crazy, but I think even just like, it's more likely that they were supporting him to split the vote, and that's just sad right now. Right, I think so too. Yeah. But it's interesting that he they were supporting him to split the vote and that's just how it now. I think so too.

Yeah. But it's interesting that he didn't explain anything explicitly because that's kind of an alarming thing. It's like, oh, whoa, now Sanders is someone else that was supported. Right, and they did explain here that the Trump people who were retweeting all this stuff and were being actually spoken to by Russians

had no clue that they were being spoken to by Russians, but they didn't outline any of the Bernie stuff for that. Okay. That's why I'm like bad to just act as someone. God, yeah, that'd be crazy. Molar, then, I personally still do not believe that Bernie Sanders had any knowledge or was a winning member of any kind of interference in the election. I don't think so. Yeah, I don't either. It doesn't follow along like it does with Trump's character. And it might be being investigated and we don't know.

Yeah. More than lays out more evidence from internal IRA documents, internal IRA documents. How do you get those? That they needed more criticism of Clinton. And that they acknowledged that their work focused on influencing the presidential election. So they saw these documents, you know, chastising their specialists for not coming hard enough at Clinton. Then there are more redactions, including the first part of section three called Operations

Through Facebook. And then it comes back in with a list of some of the conservative groups that the Russians posed as, including being patriotic, stop all immigrants, secured borders, and tea party news. Other black social justice groups, including black matters and black divest, and don't shoot us. And finally, LGBTQ groups called LGBT united, and then really just groups such as United Muslims of America. This is why I have trust issues.

This is so bad for me. I'm like, those are all my favorite types of groups. Wow. Yeah, you can't tell anything for Facebook interests anymore. Yeah, except the block all immigrants and secure border people. It's hard to news. True.

But you're like, yeah, blackmatch blacktivists, don't shoot us. Blacktivists is a great name. And our Russians came up with it. And finally, yeah, I think that's- That's your BTQ stuff. I definitely have heard that before the Russians, I'm taking that credit away from them.

They could be wrote it or whatever, they like, made it official. Oh yeah, yeah, it's probably super old school and they just co-opted it. Totally, totally. They branded it as what I was getting at, yeah. Yes. Yeah, and then Mueller talks about a Russian account

under the name Matt Skiver, who organized a pro-truck. This guy did a lot. He organized a pro-t pro Trump rally near Trump Tower and explains that Russia bought over 3,500 ads totaling about $100,000. Oh my God. He adds overtly opposed Hillary Clinton

such as one that read, if one day God lets this liar enter the White House as president, that day will be a real national tragedy. And I'm surprised you should be able to tell these are Russian propaganda ads from their garbage. Dropping serious like dollars on this, like, I would just use that money for self promotion. What's their purpose in life?

They're like screwed up Putin, this is my, this is my stuff, right? They don't need to self promote, they have all the money. Oh, good point. And then they bought an ad on the Black Matters accounts that said, flash mob to take photos with the hashtags, Hillary Clinton for prison 2016 or no Hillary 2016. Mueller then goes into the pro Trump ads,

such as take a picture of your kids with the hashtag Kids for Trump. And other ads bought on Trump supporting Russian groups like being patriotic, stop all invaders and secured borders. Industry that Trump refers to immigrants and asylum seekers as invaders on multiple occasions, as did the mass shooter in New Zealand where Trump echoed that shooter's manifesto

the same day talking about immigrant invaders to America Totally, I'll never forget that day and it's just as it's just amazing to me that they're using a like a Russian-born active measures Language to drive their policies. Yeah, yeah It's insane and kids for Trump is another really weird name. I wouldn't trust that kids for Trump That's a Spicious a fuck and they're in a cage. Yeah, yeah, a lot of different interpretation Possibilities there. I shouldn't joke about that. They just get their little white No, which is coping

Yeah, dude like people wouldn't care unless they were white kids in a cage. That's a sad fact at all. Yep Yep, it's a little white girl in a whale now. It's a cage I used to be really say like the news didn't care unless a white girl in a whale. Now it's a cage. It used to be, remember that? They say the news didn't care unless a white girl fell on the whale. Those are really old days, I guess, with that kind of question. I remember, I remember whales. Baby Jessica in the whale.

And there were like whales in the same, yeah, this new station. Totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah, there's gonna be like movies about this someday. Not that that's like the benefit of this, but like. About the reporter about whales. About like what's happening with the children and the cages and like, oh yeah. I'm telling you that that's like the benefit of this, but about the reporter about what's happening

with the children and the cages and like, oh yeah, I'm telling you, that's the next. The next, yeah, psychological thrillers and stuff I'd imagine, like this is some crazy shit. And Frank's diary, anything that you've seen, any movie you've seen about the Holocaust, you can pretty much write the same script for what the hell is going on at the Southern border right now.

And I'm not doing that the number is the same. Yeah, no, not by a long shot. And the suffering is not the same. But I don't know. It's fair to call it out as similar. The ideas and the message behind it, and the reasons for doing it are exactly the same. Yeah, it's because nothing's original.

Every idea is inspired by something else. And we'd be kind of wrong to not say that Trump is not inspired by, like, not see it's them in the roots of it. I've had a book of Hitler's speeches by his bed, allegedly. By the time the group being patriotic was deactivated by Facebook in mid-2017, you guys. It took a while. It had over 200,000 followers. Secured borders had 130,000.

United Muslims of America, 300,000 followers. And don't shoot us had 250,000 followers. Mollershoe wrote has 6,000 followers. I'm just trying to give you a little on Facebook, right? Like a method, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's not easy to get Facebook followers. No, so that's pretty.

Hundreds of thousands. Pretty impressive. Then we get to section four on page 26, which is about Twitter operations and how a number of IRA employees in the translator department served as Twitter specialists. And there are a few redactions here for open and ongoing matters, but it does say the Twitter operation came in two parts.

Specialists posing as people and automated botnets. And these are the bots that we talk about. Subsection A about the individualized accounts, and it's half a page of redactions to begin with. It then goes on to say these individuals were similar to the Facebook accounts posting original content while communicating directly with US Twitter users through public tweeting or direct messaging.

And then this is what I thought of. Remember when the Concord Management case mentioned a dick pick that Mueller had? Yeah. Basically Concord Management, as we know, who's trying to get the phone Mueller reports and methods and findings so it can send it back to the Kremlin. And we know this because they ended up making an anonymous Twitter account and forging documents saying, these are molars, but they really aren't. And then they tweeted out they were able to hack Mueller.

So they've been trying to get all the Mueller information for a while. And Mueller filed a motion saying, you can't have it because it would reveal all of our investigatory methods to the Kremlin. And the U.S. lawyers for Concord Management's argument to that opposition was how important can your methods of obtaining information and investigating B if all you're getting is nude photos. And this is where I think those nude photos came from. Some US Trump slug sending photos of his junk to female Russian Twitter specialists at the IRA. That's what I think

those naked photos are. Those direct messages between Trump supporters, Americans, and these operatives. Oh yeah, it makes sense. We think it's some details that we already knew about, based on public reporting, about Russian Twitter accounts like 10GOP, the Tennessee group, one called AtGen Abrams claiming to be a Virginia Trump supporter with 70,000 followers. Content. Pamela Moore, 13 claiming to be a Texan Trump supporter with 70,000 followers. Pantilla Moore, 13, claiming to be a Texan Trump supporter with 70,000 followers, and America first, an anti-immigration persona with 24,000 followers. Then a Twitter account called March for Trump,

which organized rallies that are described in the report, but that's all redacted because of harm to an ongoing matter. That's weird. Dude, we've been waiting so long for all this detail because for so long, it's been up in the air sort of how intense their operation was. And now we know that it was incredibly intense.

So I really hope people out there that were like, oh, it was nothing, right? Like it was negligible differences. Yeah, negligible differences. They like look at this shit. Yeah, that's what Junior said. There's a couple of ads. Yeah, no, it's 3,500 ads just on Facebook.

Yeah, dude, you've seen Justin Bieber, okay? Right. This shit makes a difference. Totally, and life's change. If anyone wants to argue that the votes weren't affected, I mean, that's kind of silly to say when the psychology was affected, you know, it's like. The votes were affected.

Yeah, even though one vote is affected oh that's enough that's enough yeah yeah uh... then we get the next sentence which says the u.s media outlets quoted tweets from ira control accounts and attributed them to re or the reactions of real americans and there's a footnote on it that lists the media outlets is the washington post in the u.s. news and world report it goes on to say high profile u persons including ambassador Mike McFaul who we've had on the show Roger Stone, Sean Hannity and Michael Flynn Jr. retweeted or responded to IRA Twitter accounts. Multiple individuals associated with the Trump campaign also promoted

IRA tweets, but that's all redacted as Harmon and ongoing matter and that's got to be counterintelligence, right? Yeah. So here's where I have to wonder about the Fox News Twitter account going dark last November two. There's still a mystery, but that account is still dark. But the Mueller report then turns to section B on page 28 called botnet activity. So presumably the Trump associates were retweeting botnet tweets as all that's redacted. And it comes back to repeat that Twitter found 3814 Twitter accounts associated with the IRA Which posted about 175,000 tweets in the 10 weeks leading up to the election

Yeah, you know Fox News had to have a hand in that they're like the perfect target for these guys You know to feed that information so I wouldn't be surprised if it's connected that would make total sense Yeah, they might have unwittingly retweeted it. Nobody found any winning. Right. I guess that's hard to define. But also it's like, Russia could have done a lot to make sure it was in front of their faces. And so that they did retweet it. I don't know how computers work. I feel like that's something you could do, though. Yeah, yeah. And the last few years, I feel like there's been so many Republicans that have retweeted things like white supremacy and all these ideas that used to be like so, I guess taboo and you know, like how dare you, but like it's, they've all

kind of merged together now. So it makes sense that they had an influence. Like this is where we are. Trump is still retweeting crazy shit, you know? No, I'm gonna do it. Every day. All right, moving on to page 29, section five. Here, it's called US Operations involving political rallies. And this section goes into more detail about the rallies and marches, the IRA organized and how it used existing personas and groups

on Facebook and Twitter to promote the events. The IRA would use direct messaging to reach out to US persons, then ask them to coordinate the rallies and then say, oh, I can't make it because I have a personal conflict. The eye-ishing everyone. The IRA would then contact the US media about the event and then would tell them to speak with the coordinator.

And after the event, the IRA would post photos and videos of the event. Mueller identified dozens of rallies organized this way. One was a Confederate rally in early November 2015 and is identified as one of the first and according to the report, the IRA continued organizing these rallies even after the election. Then we have a full page of redactions that seem to relate to how closely and by what means the IRA monitored the size and reach of these rallies. So all their monitoring of their success is redacted. And it's all paying off, too. It's like clearly in the works, like they're

cooking up something and doing something about it. Well, I'm thinking this is where they explain how the IRA monitored the effectiveness and performance of their employees. And there were similar redactions like this in the earlier section. I mentioned and said, you know, put beans on. And how the IRA monitored social media posts, how they monitored their reach and impact. And I'm a little scared that behind these redactions, maybe are the punishment for poor performance. Really?

Like something in tens, like, Kremlin style? Like, I believe that's not true, but I don't know. That's what I keep thinking. It's all redacted. Hmm. I wonder also like what kind of secrecy contracts they would have to sign with them to make sure that this information wouldn't get out prematurely or at all.

Russians aren't known for slapping on the wrists. Right. I'm terrified of what they, you know, when they're talking about monitoring their performance, what is under those red action bars? That's scary. That freaks me out. That's how I'm like, do they, you know? Anyway.

Yeah, I guess I would be really sad to even think about what it is before you find out for sure, because I think torture that comes to mind. Are they executing people? I don't mean to tinfoil hat up here but like we have we know what they do after the script calls with Nova Chalk they generally throw people out of apartment buildings they you know and somebody must have fell down and hit their heads seven right if you know too much anything along those lines they have no problem murdering people yeah and so that's why I'm like what the fuck is behind these red actions every time they talk about monitoring their performance? Yeah, well, sorry to bring everybody down, but that's just the first time.

It's not you. It's the, it's the, it's the, it's the Kremlin bring us down. Then we get to page 31 and Mueller actually shows us a poster created for a rally organized by the IRA for coal miners for Trump in Philly. It shows a photo of a coal miner and his hat with his light on it. It says, bring back our jobs. How many PA workers lost their jobs due to Obama's destructive policies? And then, of course, it's got the time date and location. Almost all these rallies are anti-Clinon and pro-Trump.

Section 6 on page 31 called targeting and recruitment of US persons, discusses how the IRA employees would recruit the Americans to hold these rallies and amplify Russian disinformation. There's a bit redacted here for harm to an ongoing matter. And it says the Russians would use redacted technique on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram to contact and recruit Americans who followed the group.

What is that? Group chats, psychographics, dick picks. What is that? What's that? It's like a group of dick pick. You know when people put their shoes together, like a little star, like what a group dick pick, be like a little star, dick pick. Yeah, I don't know, man.

But you know, they're saying that there's a technique they used on Facebook a Twitter and Instagram to contact and recruit Americans and this technique is Redacted That's just weird. What is it? Muller even says that Russians targeted it and why can't we know anyway? Yeah, and I'm here You don't want us to do it to each other like it's for our own good. You don't want to know. It's a hypnosis. What the fuck is it? Muller even says that Russians targeted a specific family and a number of black social justice advocates directly.

And their names have been redacted for privacy. They did this using the group Black Matter US. And I'm just gonna read this next part to you. It says in February, 2017, the persona black fist purported to want to teach African Americans to protect themselves when contacted by law enforcement, hired a self-defense instructor in New York to offer classes sponsored by black fist. The IRA also recruited moderators of conservative social media groups to promote IRA-generated content as well as recruited individuals

to perform political acts such as walking around New York City dressed up as a Santa Claus with a Trump mask on. What the hell, that's so crazy. There's another redacted paragraph here for harm to an ongoing matter followed by a brief statement about how the IRA's online audience became larger and so growing, how they grew their audience is all redacted and how they track performance is all redacted. The IRA tracked US persons who were successfully recruited to do these types of tasks. If they got somebody, some sucker to hold up a happy birthday progojan sign, they would keep track of these people.

Then we have half a page of redacted information from an ongoing matter which ends the section on recruitment of unwitting US persons. Then on page 33 we get to number seven about interactions and contacts with the Trump campaign. And Mueller established two main forms of connection between the IRA members and members of the Trump campaign, while simultaneously determining that there were no similar connections between the IRA and the Clinton campaign. So much for Trump supporters talking about Clinton being indicted for conspiring with the Russians.

There are no connections between the IRA and the Clinton campaign. So if you get anyone coming out you say in Hillary was conspiring with the Russians, you can show them page 33 section 7. So yeah, they won't. But the two different, well, because Mueller's deep state. Right, right. That's not a read too. So that's true. So if the check with Trump's Twitter to see if he's DeepStater, if he's an honorable good

man, that's correct. One day he exonerates him next day, his report is bullshit. So the two different ways in which Trump associates in the IRA were in contact were either by Trump people retweeting or reposting pro-Trump anti-hillary IRA posts or by the IRA directly communicating with members of the Trump campaign to seek assistance with IRA rallies. So on the first type with the Trump campaign associate's promoting Russian propaganda, Mueller reports that Trump campaign affiliates promoted dozens of Russian posts, posts from

10 GOP, or that's the fake Tennessee Republican Party Twitter account set up by the IRA. We're shared by Don Jr. Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Mike Flynn. The posts include allegations of voter fraud, which is a Russian talking point as well as allegations that Clinton had mishandled classified information. Interesting thing about the voting fraud Russian talking point. Donald Trump himself, after he won, set up a voter fraud commission, which was disbanded in late 2017. And just last week on May 1st, a federal judge responded to a FOIA request from the Brennan Center for Justice and the Project Democracy, Protect Democracy Project, same one that Jolisse was mentioning earlier. They were asking for emails from two agency officials about Trump's defunct voter fraud commission. The government tried to argue the request was too broad and would put undue work on them.

But the judge said, nah, it's two people, you can do it. The plaintiffs in this case said acting assistant attorney general John Gore and Department of Justice Attorney Maureen Reardon both received information from the members of the Voter Fraud Commission and Gore sent messages about the commission to a member of that commission to her personal email address. The plaintiff also alleged the Voter Fraud Commission was actually a tool used by the Trump administration to put up legal barriers to voting by eligible citizens. The judge agreed the FOIA request was reasonable under the law, especially because it took Gore 84 days to forward messages from his private email account to his work-related account. And the judge also ruled that the Department of Homeland Security and Office of Management

and Budget used search terms that were too narrow to look for the relevant information in the FOIA request for the plaintiffs. So they used the private email accounts, the length of time to forward relevant emails between accounts, and the two narrow search terms to retrieve documents for the plaintiffs were the main reason the judge said yes to this FOIA request. So the idea of voter fraud is Russian propaganda and it's part of their active measures campaign to interfere in our election. Trump has always claimed voter fraud.

He'll do it again in 2020 and he even set up a voter fraud commission which is now defunct but now must hand over documents and emails relating to the voter fraud commission. And if the name John Gore sounds familiar, one of the two guys involved in this case, it should, a couple of weeks ago, the Justice Department refused to honor a congressional subpoena for John Gore to appear to testify about the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 census. Yeah. Do you remember that, fuck?

All right, back to the action. Yeah. Yeah, do you remember that fuck? All right back to the action. Yeah, AG Connect and dots Don June you're retweeted a post from the IRA can The IRA controlled Pamela more account on November 7th 2017 Trump's personal Twitter account responded to a Russian tweet from 10 GOP that said we love you Mr. President Muller also explains that the responses were monitored and gives the example that the Matt Skiber account on Facebook sent a message to its followers telling them Trump posted about their event in Miami. The final paragraph in this section

is redacted for harm to an ongoing matter. What could that be? What about a Trump campaign affiliate retweeting Russian propaganda would be part of an ongoing matter. Yeah, right? Yeah. Unless it's talking about their monitoring, their, you know, awesomeness or lack of awesomeness. Like their performance review. Right. Their annual performance review.

Three stars. The second method of contact between the IRA and the Trump campaign is in part B on page 35. And it says that in each instance of the Russians reaching out to Trump affiliates, they pretended to be Americans and were requesting things like help with signs, money for materials, print materials to use at rallies, as well as requests to help promote and coordinate logistics. Some volunteers agreed to provide the support, but Mueller says there's no evidence that these people knew it was the Russians that were asking. So they were all duped. And that's why this isn't a crime, because Russians convinced the Trump campaign associates that they were Americans

themselves, and Trump supporters fell for it. Yeah, they're pleading, I was bamboozled. I guess that works. It touched, apparently. Then there's a brief closing paragraph summarizing that Mueller established the Russia interfered using active measures carried out by the IRA owned and funded by Progojian, and that the grand jury has alleged that Progojian, his companies, and the IRA violated US law through these operations by undermining

through deceptive acts, the work of federal agencies charged with regulating foreign influence in a US election. Boom! And scene. Nice. I already roasted. Yes. We yielded our time. We... I like that one. That was spicy. It we write and what's really interesting about that is we kind of knew all that. We told you about the parts we didn't already know.

But we sort of knew all that. And we have the fourth of state. We have journalists to thank for that. Definitely. For that knowledge. Yeah. I don't think, honestly, I understood. I knew that it was a lot that they did to influence the elections, but to have it all

laid out, like that really adds a level of adding the gravity to it, I guess, that I don't think fully hit me until I read all of that. I think you did actually mention that when we had gone through the indictment of the Russians, and I remember you being like astounded by the level of detail and how widespread and sweeping the interference was just on social media alone. Totally.

And I know we had talked about in a very early episode that we have no idea how deep this went. And that's one of those tip of the iceberg things. This is just the tip of it. We don't even know the full extent of it. And now we kind of, yeah, how about that picture? It's kind of like when you see, like if you've lost some weight and then you don't even know the full extent of it. And now we kind of, yeah, how about that picture? It's kind of like when you see, like if you've lost some weight

and then you don't realize you've lost weight until you see an old picture of yourself, we didn't realize how deep this went because when we first started hearing bits and pieces about it, like a year and a half ago, two years ago, we're seeing this little, and then little by little, these reports come out and just bit by bit, itch by itch, little by little, these reports come out and just bit by bit, itch by itch, pound by pound, these reports come out.

And we know now how big it is, but if we could look back and remember exactly how we felt when we found out that Russia bought one ad with Rubels on Facebook and we're like, whoa! Yeah, yeah. And compare that to how what we know now, it's pretty intense. Absolutely.

Yeah, and it's like the internet, as it exists now in social media, hasn't been around long enough to even be studied so much sociologically. So there's a level of them being ahead of the game to all of this that it's like, we will one day have a bunch of these written on this subject and how you influence like a global culture potentially or an electorate. I'm sure it'll come now because of this essentially. And at some point it'll be regulated, but right now the internet and podcasting, these kind of things are the Wild West.

We have no regulations. We have no nothing happening. And so it's like deadwood. Everybody's a coxucker up in this motherfucker. And that's what the GRU, they saw that in 2013 when they wrote that we have a new war plan. And this is it, it's the internet, it's social media. And this is how we're gonna do it.

This is how we're actually going to attack other countries, not with bombs, not with missiles. They can shoot those down, they can see that coming. Yeah. And we're gonna use this because first of all, it's completely and wildly unregulated. And this is how we do it. This is the Wild West.

Yeah, it's incredible what they did. You can't take that from them. Yeah. It's absolutely incredible. And now when you think of them teaming up with North Korea, who actually create and bring up and make the most incredible, incredibly talented hackers in the world.

And now they're meeting. And that's what frightens me about 2020. Yep. Oh, all right. Everybody, go on have a good time This has been part two of our probably ten part series I don't know why I thought I was gonna be eight but it's slow going there's a lot in here It's gonna take as many as it's gonna take I'm just gonna call it a ten part series until it's not anymore Yeah, sounds good. Yeah, it sound good and well because we're just playing this by ear as we as we go through a piece by piece

But thank you guys so much for listening. We really appreciate it. Do you guys have any final thoughts? No, I'm just stoked to keep it going. Yeah, I like this. It's a really interesting, it's a beautiful piece of, it's a beautiful work product. Yes, it is. Someone in the FBI was there.

A greenish book of the last 10 years, for sure. Definitely. At least. Yeah, it's got to be the best seller by now, right right all those like copies. I'm wondering how many they've sold Post post post or audible has one I might be the wastes in that Improved I called the wastes the reservoir was a wild post Yeah, I don't know that'd be interesting to but yeah, man It's it's got a lot in it,

and it's really important, and I, and apparently only 3% of Americans have read the entire report. Honestly, that's higher than I would have guessed. Well, you guys are in the top 3%. That's right. That's nice. Yeah, that is nice. Yeah, I'm rarely in the top 3% of anything, so I'm excited. This is the first for me. All right, guys, please, self-care, remember, self-care. This is a lot of information. It's a lot of heart-hitting, I'm sorry, I brought up the possible punishments for- But it's a possible reality, so.

Non-responsive employees, it's a specialist, excuse me. I don't mean to play with their jobs. I'm also interested in what they get paid. Yeah, that might be a part of that redacted thing too, where they talk about the payments and stuff like that and how it's funded. I'm interested to see what they paid these guys. Really meta, if they outsourced and had Americans doing the job of Russian trolling. Can't afford Americans, man. Never, never. Good point. But no, I think they're definitely

Russian. I've spoken to several of them on social media. And they're definitely at least in that area. For sure. Of the world. But wow. All right. Anyway, as I was saying, please take care of each other. And we love you.

And we're glad you love us too. Thank you so much for listening. I've been AG. I've been Jolissa Johnson. I've been Jordan Coburn. I've been Chalice Johnson. I've been Jordan Coburn. And this is Mullershy Road. Mullershy Road is written and produced by Allison Gill in partnership with MSW Media.

Sound Design and Engineering, or by Molly Hockey, Jesse Egan is our copywriter and our art and web designer by Joe Elrider at Moxie Design Studios. Mullershy Road is a proud member of MSW Media, a group of creator-owned podcasts focused on news Jesse Egan is our copywriter and our art and web designer by Joa Reader at Moxie Design Studios. Muller she wrote as a proud member of MSW Media, a group of creator-owned podcasts focused on news, justice, and politics. For more information visit MSW Media.com. Hi, I'm Dan Dunn, host of What We're Drinking With Dan Dunn, the most wildly entertaining adult beverage-themed podcast in the history of the medium.

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