Newly Exposed Russian Disinfo Sites Echoed GOP’s False Narratives About Non-Citizen Voting

On April 8, a shocking article appeared under the banner of the “Washington Post.” The headline declared that President Joe Biden, who was at the time running for a second term, “needs migrants” to win the election. It went on to allege that Biden and the Democratic Party had “smuggled over 320,000 illegals by plane through several airports last year” to secure victory and further a nefarious agenda. 

“The Democrats are determined to win elections at any cost so they can continue to fuel wars around the world. Therefore, they promote uncontrolled illegal migration in every possible way,” the article said.

The report would have been a blockbuster … if it were true. It was, however, completely fake. It included wholly made up quotes that appear in no other search results and faked Washington Post branding to advance the thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that non-citizens are voting en masse for Democrats in U.S. elections. While the page the story was posted on looked exactly like the Washington Post and featured the byline of one of the newspaper’s journalists, it was actually hosted on “washingtonpost.pm,” a web domain that the Justice Department has linked to a “Russian government-directed” influence campaign known as “Doppelganger.” 

An FBI affidavit filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania that was unsealed earlier this month flagged the spoof Washington Post site as one of 32 domains that were seized by law enforcement after the U.S. government identified them as part of the Kremlin propaganda push. 

“The propaganda did not identify, and in fact purposefully obfuscated, the Russian government or its agents as the source of the content,” the Justice Department explained in a press release announcing the domain seizure. “The perpetrators extensively utilized ‘cybersquatted’ domains, a method of registering a domain intended to mimic another person or company’s website … to publish Russian government messaging falsely presented as content from legitimate news media organizations.”

TPM subsequently unearthed some of the content published on these pages, much of which has since been deleted or seized by the FBI, and found multiple articles on the fake sites that advanced the debunked narrative about non-citizen voting. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in U.S. federal elections. It is extremely rare that a non-citizen manages to cast a vote, experts have determined, and the few instances have no impact on outcomes due to the systems already in place to detect and prevent it. 

Yet former President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly and persistently made false claims about migrants illegally voting for Democrats on a massive scale as they lay the groundwork to dispute a potential election loss. 

The Russian-linked content is particularly notable because it mirrors those Republican talking points. In fact, some of the articles on the Russian propaganda sites specifically amplified claims from Trump-aligned organizations. 

A website called “Across The Line,” which was one of the pages seized by the FBI and identified as part of the “Doppelganger” campaign, published an article dated June 25 that was headlined “Immigrants Are Voting.” That piece was based on a statement released the previous day from America First Legal, a group that was launched in April 2021 by Trump’s former senior advisor, Stephen Miller, and other ex-officials from his administration with the explicit goal of “upholding” the former president’s agenda. 

Unlike the fake “Washington Post” site, Across The Line did not masquerade as a major American news outlet. Instead, it was billed as a publication focused on “tackling the problem of refugees across the globe and at the US border.” And unlike the non-citizen voting article on the faux “Washington Post” page, which was almost entirely filled with wholly made up quotes, this article featured actual statements from a press release sent by Miller and his group. 

“In the current political landscape, there are significant challenges, including the risk of non-citizens entering the voting process. AFL emphasizes the importance of immediate action,” the article said. 

America First Legal, which is one of the advisory groups involved in the controversial Project 2025 initiative, did not respond to requests for comment on this story. 

While most of the website is no longer accessible, archived pages show Across The Line published articles about supposed non-citizen voting on at least two other occasions. Another site linked to the Russian campaign by the FBI, ElectionWatch.io, published a piece earlier this month noting over 300 “stateless migrants” were registered to vote in Oregon. While there was indeed an incident earlier this month where officials in Oregon announced non-citizens had mistakenly been added to the voter rolls after applying for drivers licenses, the result of a bureaucratic error, legitimate local news outlets were clear the situation would not affect election results.

According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, “officials were also emphatic that the errant registrations would not impact this year’s election, saying noncitizens found to have been registered would be notified that they would need to submit proof of citizenship before being mailed a ballot next month.” ElectionWatch.io, the site linked to the Russian campaign, essentially — and erroneously — reported the opposite. 

“No one can give full guarantees that this system will not affect the elections,” the Election Watch article said of the situation in Oregon, adding, “And now a lot is becoming clear, namely the reason why Kamala Harris is so actively importing migrants. If the government fails to limit the participation of non-citizens in the electoral process, we will face the most unfair elections in the history of the United States.”

The fact that non-citizen voting is already illegal and essentially a made-up issue has not stopped Trump and the GOP from honing in on it during this year’s presidential campaign. Republican efforts to promote fears about non-citizen voting have included legislation like the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. 

That bill, which has been backed by Trump, would require proof of citizenship to vote in U.S. elections, in spite of the fact that it is already illegal for non-citizens to cast ballots. The SAVE Act passed in the GOP-controlled House in July, but it was not taken up by the Democratic majority in the Senate. It was then included in a government funding measure that failed to pass a House vote on Wednesday. Afterwards, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he discussed the matter with Trump and indicated they were both “frustrated” with the failure to advance the redundant non-citizen voting legislation. Johnson also stressed they both would continue to push the issue, even as he sought another path for funding the government.

“President Trump understands our dilemma,” Johnson said. “He wants election security as I do. We’re going to use every opportunity, every measure, every platform we have to press that.”

In July, shortly after the SAVE Act passed in the House, the fake “Doppelganger” WashingtonPost.pm page featured an article touting the bill in strikingly racist and partisan terms. 

“The savages that the Democrats want to give the right to impose their president on us are already turning the US into a third world country,” the article said.  

All of the articles on the fake WashingtonPost.pm site were attributed to Loveday Morris, who is the real newspaper’s Berlin bureau chief, and featured her headshot. Morris, who covers Europe and, among other things, has written about Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether she was aware her name and image were falsely used for the propaganda campaign. 

Republicans have pursued legislation premised on the non-citizen voting myth in statehouses around the country, a story TPM’s Khaya Himmelman has chronicled. As part of her reporting, Himmelman talked to experts who noted how the measures aid Trump politically by fueling election conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant sentiment. 

“It’s all kind of driven by the same political motivation to reduce trust in elections, to cast doubt on the integrity of the process and to demonize immigrants as the kind of source of the flaws, perceived or real or not, in our electoral system,” Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, told TPM in June. 

Diaz also pointed out how the stepped-up identification requirements in these bills might lead to obstacles that will discourage qualified voters from registering and turning out to vote. 

“They have the potential to erect barriers that will make it harder, if not impossible, for certain people, eligible voters in those states, to register and vote,” Diaz said. 

The FBI detailed extensive evidence to allege that the domains were used by Russian companies — Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technology (Structura), and ANO Dialog — that were “operating under the direction and control of the Russian Presidential Administration, and in particular First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko.” According to the unsealed affidavit, meeting notes obtained by investigators indicate Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally briefed on aspects of the project. 

The fake news sites were allegedly just a part of a sprawling Kremlin campaign to disrupt this year’s U.S. election detailed by the Justice Department in recent weeks. On Sept. 4, the same day that the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced the domain seizures and efforts to disrupt the “Doppelganger” network, Manhattan federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment that alleged employees of the Russian media company RT secretly financed and directed the operations of an American right-wing media outlet that worked with notable influencers including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, and Dave Rubin.

Along with the network of faux news websites, the FBI affidavit filed in the Pennsylvania court revealed evidence investigators uncovered indicating the Russian “guerilla” influence campaign included efforts to establish a “social media influencers network” of fake Twitter accounts, YouTube videos, and social media pages. The FBI affidavit included attached “propaganda project proposals” from the Russian companies involved in the “Doppelganger” campaign. While the names of American candidates and political parties were redacted, various references in the documents make clear that the redacted versions referred to the GOP as “U.S. Political Party A” and Trump as “Candidate A.” And these documents make clear the Russian effort was specifically designed to promote Trump’s agenda. One plan, called the “Good Old U.S.A. Project,” which the FBI said was proposed by the Russian Social Design Agency, was particularly explicit on this front.

“It makes sense for Russia to put a maximum effort to ensure that the U.S. Political Party A point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of Candidate A supporters) wins over the U.S. public opinion,” the proposal said, a statement that, the document indicates, refers to the Republican Party and Trump. 

The fake, Russian “Washington Post” made its pro-Trump sympathies clear in several articles, including one dated Sept. 10 that suggested Biden had put the world in danger with his handling of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and flatly declared “the whole trick is that it is the Democrats who are exactly the ones who piss off the Russians the most.” That piece was headlined “Democrats Abandoned Americans.”

“The closer Nov. 5 gets, the more it becomes clear what base the parties are relying on to achieve victory in the presidential race,” the fake article said. “Obviously, the Republicans intend to act in the interests of ordinary people, while the Democrats have staked their support on the bosses of big corporations and their money.”

This story originally appeared on Talking Points Memo.

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