FBI Investigation into Russian Hacking Looks at Far-Right Websites

The FBI is investigating possible interference in the
2016 presidential election. Photo: Kristi Blokhin / Shutterstock.com

The FBI is now openly investigating the Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories—some fictional—that favored Donald Trump’s presidential bid. Russia is known to have created thousands of “bots,” programmed accounts on sites like Twitter or Facebook, which posted links to articles critical of Clinton and friendly to Trump, as well as employing “trolls” to post such articles on forums and other Internet spaces. They are also suspected of having hacked into several email accounts owned by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

Such actions were carefully planned to happen when Trump was suffering in the polls, with the intended effect of dragging Clinton down, often by fabricating outright lies about her.

“Russian bots and internet trolls sought to propagate stories underground,” Mike Carpenter, a former senior Pentagon official during the Obama administration whose job focused on Russia, told McClatchy News. “The very carefully timed release of information [was designed] to shift the news cycle away from stories that clearly hurt Mr. Trump, such as his inappropriate conduct over the years.”

The links spread by Russian bots and trolls often led to sites such as Breitbart and InfoWars, both of which are known for sharing ultra-conservative, racist, and conspiracy theory-tinged information. 

The frequency with which these specific sites were used may be a coincidence. They may simply have been providing the best ammunition for Russian operatives. Until August of 2016, Breitbart was run by Stephen Bannon, Trump’s campaign’s CEO and now his top advisor.

The FBI’s Counterintelligence Division is driving the investigation of the bot-engineered traffic. However, that division’s investigations don’t often result in criminal charges because its main task is to figure out how the cyber attack worked and come up with ways to prevent another.

FBI Director James Comey confirmed at a March 20 House Intelligence Committee hearing that the agency is investigating possible links between people in the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian campaign to influence the election, and whether there was any collusion between the two groups.

The Senate Intelligence Committee “intends to look actively at ‘fake’ news and the ways that Russian bots and trolls were used to influence the election,” said Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s ranking Democrat.

While such investigations are generally focused on preventing future cyber actions against the United States, if the FBI does find that members of these websites or the Trump campaign did collude with Russian operatives, those suspects could face treason charges.

Even if Russia acted alone, without the help of anyone in the U.S., its involvement in the 2016 election is still unprecedented in American history.