Journalist Who Helped Uncover Election Interference Confused by Mueller

He said it is strange that it is such a major issue in the U.S.

Robert Mueller
FBI Director Robert Mueller. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Getty Images

A 37-page indictment issued by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team on Friday is focusing attention on one of the strangest elements of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election: The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a state-sponsored “troll factory” in St. Petersburg, writes The Washington Post. But most of the information that Mueller published on Friday has already been published last October in an article by a Russian business magazine, RBC. In their article, “How the ‘troll factory’ worked the U.S. elections,” journalists Polina Rusyaeva and Andrey Zakharov write that the IRA used Facebook, Twitter and other tactics to cause tensions ahead of the 2016 vote, and also discussed other aspects of the organization. Zakharov told The Post that it is confusing seeing something he had so closely investigated become a major issue in the U.S. when it had not been a “bombshell” when he had published it in Russia.

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