FBI Investigating Whether Right Wing News Websites Contributed To Russia’s Interference Efforts: Report
The FBI is investigating whether right wing news websites helped contribute to Russia’s 2016 election interference, according to a new report.
The investigation is focused on discovering whether Russian operatives used conservative outlets to help spread stories favoring Donald Trump, McClatchy reported on Monday.
According to the McClatchy, Russian operatives times the use of bots to blitz social media with pro-Trump stories when Donald Trump “was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.”
The Russian bots created millions of posts on Twitter and Facebook with links to articles on right wing websites like Breitbart News and InfoWars.
“Investigators examining the bot attacks are exploring whether the far-right news operations took any actions to assist Russia’s operatives,” McClatchy reported.
The McClatchy report also noted that the articles that the Russian bots shared were a mix of real and fake news.
You can read the full McClatchy report here.
