IRA Trolls Pretended to Be U.S. Citizens to Get Help From Trump Campaign: Mueller Report
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Trolls from Russia’s Internet Research Agency disguised themselves online as U.S. citizens to get help from the Trump campaign while planning rallies on American soil, the Mueller report alleges. “In a few instances,” the report states, “IRA employees represented themselves as U.S. persons to communicate with members of the Trump Campaign in an effort to seek assistance and coordination on IRA-organized political rallies inside the United States.” The report also explains how the trolls, based in Russia, were able to coordinate rallies thousands of miles away: They’d announce the rallies, encourage Americans to attend, then recruit those attendees to lead the proceedings. Many members of team Trump—including Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale and Michael T. Flynn—retweeted the IRA, and Trump once responded directly to a tweet that read “We love you, Mr. President!” The report notes, however, that there’s no evidence “that any Trump Campaign official understood the requests were coming from foreign nationals.”