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.
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.