US Intelligence Says Russian Influence Actors Trying To Promote Trump Claims About Mail In Voting. 

US media is report­ing on a warn­ing by the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty that Russ­ian influ­ence actors are attempt­ing to pro­mote claims by President Trump that mail-in vot­ing will lead to wide­spread vot­er fraud. Accord­ing to the ABC News report:  

Sep­tem­ber 3, 2020 Rus­sia has sought to “ampli­fy” con­cerns over the integri­ty of U.S. elec­tions by pro­mot­ing alle­ga­tions that mail-in vot­ing will lead to wide­spread fraud, accord­ing to an intel­li­gence bul­letin obtained by ABC News, again echo­ing a fre­quent and unfound­ed com­plaint raised by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Ana­lysts with the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s intel­li­gence branch issued the warn­ing on Thurs­day to fed­er­al and state law enforce­ment part­ners after find­ing with “high con­fi­dence” that “Russ­ian malign influ­ence actors” have tar­get­ed the absen­tee vot­ing process “by spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion” since at least March. “Russ­ian state media and proxy web­sites in mid-August 2020 crit­i­cized the integri­ty of expand­ed and uni­ver­sal vote-by-mail, claim­ing inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers could receive bal­lots due to out-of-date vot­er rolls, leav­ing a vast amount of bal­lots unac­count­ed for and vul­ner­a­ble to tam­per­ing,” the bul­letin notes. “These web­sites also alleged that vote-by-mail process­es would over­bur­den the U.S. Postal Ser­vice and local boards of elec­tion,” it con­tin­ues, “delay­ing vote tab­u­la­tion and cre­at­ing more oppor­tu­ni­ties for fraud and error.”  

Read the rest here. 

 The GIOR report­ed ear­li­er this week that the IRA was attempt­ing to use social media accounts to boost the role of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries pro­mot­ed by QAnon.

The Inter­net Research Agency (IRA) is a Russ­ian com­pa­ny based in St. Peter­burg which is engaged in online influ­ence oper­a­tions on behalf of Russ­ian busi­ness and polit­i­cal inter­ests. It is some­times described as a “troll farm” and is linked to Russ­ian oli­garch Yevge­ny Prigozhin, a wealthy asso­ciate of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin. In Feb­ru­ary 2018, a Unit­ed States grand jury indict­ed 13 Russ­ian nation­als and 3 Russ­ian enti­ties, includ­ing the Inter­net Research Agency and Prigozhin,  on charges of vio­lat­ing crim­i­nal laws with the intent to inter­fere with U.S. elec­tions and polit­i­cal process­es in sup­port of the pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy of Don­ald Trump. The indict­ment said that the IRA sought to wage “infor­ma­tion war­fare” against the Unit­ed States and to “sow dis­cord” in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem by using fic­ti­tious Amer­i­can per­sonas and social media plat­forms and oth­er Inter­net-based media.