Sean Hannity Is Now a Favorite Weapon of Russian Trolls Attacking America

Kremlin propagandists are piling on the Fox News war against the Mueller investigation.

DENISE CLIFTONJAN. 24, 2018 6:00 AM

Soon after Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn agreed to a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller on Dec. 1, Kremlin-linked trolls began ramping up their social-media attacks on the Russia investigation. They tweeted out dozens of articles from Fox News and far-right outlets aimed at undermining the credibility of the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the so-called deep state. And Vladimir Putin’s trolls would soon have a new vein of material to exploit.

As Christmas approached, a drumbeat against the FBI grew louder in certain quarters of Congress: GOP Rep. Jim Jordan led the attack, claiming on Fox News that the FBI had conspired against Trump’s 2016 campaign. President Trump himself launched broadsides against FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and “leakin’ James Comey.” And on December 20, Fox News star Sean Hannity tweeted “CONSPIRACY: GOP Lawmakers Says FEDERAL CONSPIRACY to Prevent Trump Presidency.”

That day, Hannity’s website ranked among the top 10 shared by the network of Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence campaigns and tracked by the nonpartisan Alliance for Securing Democracy on its national security project, the Hamilton 68 dashboard. Hannity content had not registered much previously—but since December 20, links from Hannity’s site have appeared frequently on the dashboard, often ranking among the top 10. “It’s now up there with other top most-shared domains,” says Bret Schafer, an analyst who monitors the dashboard for the Alliance.

Another storm kicked up last week when House Republicans began calling for the release of a memo produced by Rep. Devin Nunes, purportedly alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department in the Trump-Russia investigation. On January 18, Hannity inveighed against Mueller specifically: “I have a message tonight for the special counsel, Robert Mueller,” he said at the outset of his Fox News prime time report on the memo. “Your witch hunt is now over. Time to close the doors.” By the end of the following day, the hashtag #releasethememo had been tweeted about 3,700 times in 48 hours by the 600 accounts monitored on Hamilton 68, boosted in part by a tweet from WikiLeaks offering a reward for the memo. Hannity also posted “#releasethememo” to the top of Hannity.com.