Eric Holder, Scott Walker and Tammy Baldwin call for action on Russian Twitter trolls' WI meddling

Eric Holder, Scott Walker and Tammy Baldwin call for action on Russian Twitter trolls' Wisconsin meddling


Bipartisan leaders from former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called Friday for a federal response to news that Russian Twitter trolls sought to stoke racial division in the wake of the August 2016 unrest in Milwaukee's Sherman Park.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday that Russia-linked accounts got thousands of retweets for their racially charged posts made only hours after the chaos in the Sherman Park neighborhood and less than three months before the 2016 presidential election won by President Donald Trump.

After a Madison campaign visit Friday on behalf of state Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet, Holder said Congress should hold hearings on the Russian interference in Milwaukee and said the FBI and U.S. attorney's office should investigate, as well.

"If you have the connection between that kind of effort and a foreign government, yeah, that’s the basis for a federal investigation," said Holder, who served under President Barack Obama. "I think it’s incumbent upon people both at the state level and the federal level to hold hearings, to find exactly who was behind that and what was the impact of that effort."

Read more: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/16/eric-holder-tammy-baldwin-call-action-russian-twitter-trolls-wisconsin-meddling/431566002/