‘Information warfare’: How Russians interfered in 2016 election

Identity theft, Hillary Clinton impersonators clad in prison uniforms and a small army churning out social media posts designed to divide.

Those are just a few of the strategies deployed by a Russian organization to interfere in the 2016 election, "disparage" Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump's campaign, according to a federal grand jury indictment announced by special counsel Robert Mueller Friday.

The Russian group, the Internet Research Agency, had a monthly budget of $1.2 million to fuel what the indictment called "information warfare." The operation was divided into departments including, a data analysis department, graphic designers, finance department and an information technology flank. The indictment — part of Mueller's ongoing probe into Moscow's election meddling — charged 13 Russian nationals and three entities in the scheme.
 A team of Russians traveled across the U.S. starting in 2014 with a mission — to understand the U.S. political landscape and how it played out on social media. Traveling under false pretenses, the team gathered intelligence that would later inform their misinformation campaign.

One Russian traveled to Nevada, California, New Mexico, Texas and New York. In another case, Russians posed as Americans and contacted a grassroots political organization in Texas. The Texans provided some valuable insight: focus on states that could swing either way in the upcoming election.

 As early as 2016, the Russians stole the Social Security numbers, home addresses and dates of birth of real Americans to open bank accounts. They also used the same information to open online PayPal accounts.

Those identities allowed the Russian nationals to maintain bank accounts, particularly several PayPal accounts, and to purchase ads on social media sites. These banks and PayPal accounts were also used to purchase buttons, flags and banners for rallies they would later stage.  The Internet Research Agency employed hundreds of people, which they called "specialists," to create fake social media accounts, particularly on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, that would appear to belong to ordinary American citizens, according to the indictment.

Throughout the 2016 campaign, the "specialists" created thematic groups on social media, touching on topics such as immigration, the Black Lives Matter movement and religion to sow discord in the election, the indictment said. The accounts were primarily used to disparage Clinton while supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's opponent in Democratic primary, and Trump. They were also used to push false allegations of voter fraud and boost certain hashtags: #Trump2016, #IWontProtectHillary, #TrumpTrain and #Hillary4Prison.

Source: Nbcnews News