Federal prosecutors made it clear Friday that they have a pile of Russian troll farm receipts. Like Eliot Ness going after Al Capone’s accountant, prosecutors in a new complaint named the Internet Research Agency’s top accountant, Elena Khusyaynova for her role as the bookkeeper for Russia’s social media meddlers in a case that appears to tie in with Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation. While Khusyaynova is unlikely to ever see the inside of a U.S. courtroom, the complaint hints that the feds have a lot more granular information about how the Internet Research Agency works than they’ve previously far let on. So what does the money trail show?
Uncle Sam has receipts: In noting that Khusyaynova kept "detailed financial documents that tracked itemized Project Lakhta expenses" and "kept track of requests to Concord for funds to cover those expenses," prosecutors tipped their hand that they’re sitting on a mountain of evidence about how money, the lifeblood of any organization, moved around the IRA and the many activities it subsidized. Unless you’re willing to believe that IRA employees did work for free at times, the feds probably have a receipt for whatever work they’ve done under the umbrella of Project Lakhta. Lakhta, prosecutors wrote, was the IRA’s line item for activities to "spread distrust towards candidates for political office and political system in general."
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While Khusyaynova tracked receipts and disbursed cash, she wasn’t the IRA’s ultimate paymaster. That title goes to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a friend of the Russian president nicknamed “Putin’s Cook” and the owner of the U.S.-sanctioned company Concord Management. Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged Prigozhin, Concord, and the IRA in a separate indictment in February 2018, alleging that Prigozhin directed from Concord to fund the IRA’s trolling. While others based in Russia have simply ignored the special counsel’s charges, Concord has hired American lawyers to contest the charges and even Mueller’s statutory right to bring them.
In addition, Prigozhin is allegedly the owner of Wagner Group, a Russian intelligence-linked private military contractor which reportedly carries out covert operations in Ukraine and Syria.
Price of an election: Those receipts allowed investigators to reconstruct an approximate budget for Project Lakhta. All totalled, the Internet Research Agency’s proposed operating budgets totalled roughly $35 million for activities between January 2016 and June 2018. That included about $12 million a year for 2016 and 2017 and a dramatic ramp-up this year—with $10 million spent as of June.
The $12 million spent the same year as the 2016 election shows how relatively cheap Russia’s troll factory was compared to what legitimate American political groups spent on the campaign. All told, third party groups, the two major parties and the campaigns themselves spent a total of around $2.4 billion—$1.4 billion in pro-Clinton spending and $957.6 million in pro-Trump spending. The IRA’s budget comes off as a rounding error in comparison.
Glitch in the Matrix: Pay close attention to the troll posts in this new complaint, and you’ll start to realize that the IRA wasn’t exactly spending its meager budget on top-notch employees with firm grasps on the American idiom. In some posts, IRA employees wrote in the stilted, ungrammatical style of a stereotypical native Russian speaker attempting English. One pro-gun rights meme posted by the troll farm read "Now it is the time for us to demand our rights! With current, administration it is possible to deny our right to bear arms."
Not just America: One thing that complaint makes clear is that Project Lakhta and the IRA weren’t just focused on America. Prosecutors note that the troll farm also targeted a range of countries “including, but not limited to” European Union members, Ukraine, and the Russian public. We’ve already heard hints of some of that European activity. The Daily Beast’s Anna Nemtsova interviewed a former IRA employee, Lyudmilla Savchuk, who warned back in February that “thousands of people are involved in the propaganda machine attacking U.S. and European Union democracy.” Still, the complaint marks the first time the government has gone on record describing the scope of the IRA’s trolling—a fact which investigators in the U.K. probing potential IRA links to the Brexit vote may find interesting.
The pitch: In the intelligence world, the acronym M.I.C.E. sums up the methods that intelligence operatives use to recruit agents: money, ideology, compromise, and ego. When trying to get flesh-and-blood Americans to do their bidding, IRA trolls documented in previous complains have mostly appealed to the ideology part of that acronym. They’ve pretended to be political fellow travelers engaged in similar causes and manipulated targets into attending or co-sponsoring actual rallies. In the latest complaint, we learned that Russian trolls aren’t afraid to use a crasser, more candid appeal: money.
In one case, the Bertha Malone account tried to enlist an American, identified only as US Person 2, into helping her manage the “Stop All Invaders” page with a promise of cash. The Malone persona described the activity as “Just general scannin, answer subscribers now and then and mb post something. Just business. Makes rating for clients, that's what I know,” and added “U know how rednecks are.” When Malone’s target seemed amenable, she sweetened the deal by promising “I'll vouch fou 4 mb u get some money out that even.”
High on their own supply: Racism wasn’t just an instrumental tactic that the IRA used in order to achieve its political ends—the organization actively bought into racist views about American minorities. In revealing the IRA’s internal targeting guidance, the complaint appeared to offer a glimpse of what the organization’s founders genuinely think. "Colored LGBT are less sophisticated than white; therefore, complicated phrases and messages do not work,” one manager’s guidance read.
Same playbook: The complaint reinforces prior reports that that the IRA didn’t stop targeting the U.S. after the election or even after prosecutors first indicted troll farm employees in February. The political strategy the IRA has used since the election doesn’t appear to have changed much, though. Just like in 2016, Russian trolls played to the ends of each side of the political spectrum. Anti-immigrant and anti-ICE posts on Facebook sought to inflame American politics over divisive issues. Rather than creating new fissures in public discourse, IRA trolls opted to aggravate existing ones. Guidance issued by IRA managers shows employees combing American news to exploit those grievances with memes and social media posts rather than brainstorming sessions to invent them.
