Collusion, or coincidence? The damage is done either way. - By Colbert I. King

By Colbert I. King Opinion writer February 23 at 6:42 PM

Whether somehow in cahoots or out of pure chance, the efforts of the Trump campaign and the Russians to suppress the votes of groups likely to support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election tracked remarkably similar lines.

As outlined in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three companies, an effort based in St.?Petersburg deceitfully created theme-oriented groups with names suggesting a connection to the Black Lives Matter movement and other U.S. interests on social media sites. The purpose was to churn out posts and interfere with the 2016 presidential election by, as the indictment states, “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”

“Blacktivist” was one such name used to disadvantage Clinton and boost Trump. For religion-oriented groups, Russians created “United Muslims of America” and “Army of Jesus.” Targeting certain geographic regions, they came up with “South United” and “Hearts of Texas.” By 2016, the indictment said, the many Russian-controlled groups had attracted hundreds of thousands of online followers.

But just as the Russians attempted, according to the indictment, “to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate,” a similar operation was underway in the United States, as skillfully reported by Bloomberg’s Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/collusion-or-coincidence-the-damage-is-done-either-way/2018/02/23/f25974d8-181e-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html