A page by page read of the Mueller indictments detailing Russian military campaigns to deprive America of its first woman President.
Thread.
1/ IRA Indictment.
“We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity.”
2/ First, familiarize yourself with the name: Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a businessman charged with funding information warfare against the U.S. Prigozhin is a close ally of Putin—a skier who’s career was derailed by a prison stint for teenage prostitution.
#wapowashingtonpost.com/news/worldview…
3/ 13 people, 3 companies indicted: a foreign influence campaign targeting U.S., dox say Prigozhin funded.
Defendants illegally posing as Americans to disrupt presidential election.
Traveling here to gain intel.
Strategic goal: cause discord.
Support Trump, bash Hillary.
4/ “SPREAD DISTRUST”: The Internet Research Agency employed hundreds, had millions of dollars and included mngt, data analysis, gfx, SEO, IT depts.
5/ INFORMATION WARFARE: The Translator Project.
By 2014, defendants’ goal was to sway U.S. election.
By 2016, 80 employees were dedicated to the “translator project,” which used Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter to conduct information warfare against the United States.
6/ THE MANAGEMENT: The Defendants Hierarchy.
The indictment details “Project Lakhta” dept heads and a monthly budget of $1,250,000 million dollars, plus bonuses.
That included paying an American to stand in front of the White House wishing the boss, Prigozhin, a happy birthday.
7/ OBJECT OF THE CONSPIRACY: “Defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 presidential election.”
Defendants tracked and studied us.
8/ FRAUD AND DECEIT: Defendants traveled throughout America—a key takeaway from source in Texas: focus on purple states.
“Specialists” working day and night shifts, created 100s of social media accounts.
To mask fraud, Defendants used stolen identities to open Paypal accounts.
9/ DON JR. AND “TEN GOP”:
Take a moment to pay close attention to Page 15, which details a fake account retweeted by Don Jr. prior to election and on election day
The account had 100,000 followers. Don Jr. currently has 3.6 million.
Plz just take a moment to reflect on that.
10/ TARGETING U.S. 2016 ELECTION: “Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary.”
DECEPTION: The IT dept purchased server space inside U.S. to set up VPNs.
Meanwhile back on the troll farm, employees were rebuked if they didn’t criticize Hillary enough.
Just look at those hashtags
11/ 🤦🏼♀️It wasn’t long before the Russians were directly communicating with the Trump campaign.
😔Immeasurable damage was done by Russians posing as American ethnic groups, referring to Hillary as “Killary,” encouraging people of color to stay home, in ads bought with fake I.D.’s.
12/ Can you spot the difference between ads bought by Russians with fake I.D.’s and those of the Trump campaign. I can’t.
Can you spot the difference in themes promoted by Russians committing fraud and deceit and the Trump campaign. I can’t.
13/ FAKE TRUMP SUPPORT: So now the rallies start. Fake rallies, hosted by real Russians.
Real Americans, paid by real Russians, to trash Hillary or mislead her supporters.
They preyed on fear.
They preyed on the gullible.
They swayed an election.
14/ Let’s pause for a moment to hear from a man paid by Russians to build a cage for a fake Hillary paid by Russians at a fake rally hosted by Russians.
@CNN archivesmoney.cnn.com/2018/02/20/med…
15/ BUT THEIR EMAILS: As reporters/FBI close in, Defendants try to destroy evidence.
“We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted (us)..preoccupied with covering tracks..I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed it was written by their people.”
16/ “PAINT IT RED”: Just check out those “Overt Acts.”
Kinda poetic: Fake support for a fake president* who came to power with the aid of fake accounts, fake rallies, fake ads bought with fake I.D.’s.
Fake support by real Russians with real money to buy real people.
Oh America
17/ EMAIL TO TRUMP CAMPAIGN OFFICIAL: “We gained a huge lot of followers.”
Da.
Then Harry builds a cage.😔
18/ ‘MATT SKIBER’ GOES FISHING:
Fake personas used to gather intelligence on real Americans and list circulated to Defendants and co-conspirators with data on 100 people.
American actress playing Hillary in prison garb continues gig, as Russian ops commit wire fraud and deceit
19/ STOLEN IDENTITIES/STOLEN ELECTION: Title 18 violations.
😔
Cryptocurrencies pay for fraud and deceit.
Everything fake except the impact: that was real.
I don’t need to wait for a magical fairy to descend on the land and say Russia did not impact our election.
Plz see #9.
22/ So if you voted Trump based on fear, I get it. TrumPutin Inc. are good at selling it. But understand we are being attack by Russia’s military, govt contractors and mercenaries. I make no distinction between biz & military when referencing ops. It’s war
23/ So take a closer look at #22: A Russian disinformation op run by an ex-con under U.S. sanctions who denies all but like his oligarch pals, had everything to gain if Hillary lost. And she did: by 77,000 votes.
Do the math: 130 million Americans reached by IRA
PART TWO: GRU💣
24/ CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE UNITED STATES: GRU Indictment.
12 members of Russian military intelligence—including high-ranking officers—indicted for committing cyber crimes to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election.
Their primary target: Hillary Clinton and the democratic party.
25/ SEEKING TO INTERFERE: GRU intelligence officers are divided into units and much like the IRA indictment, accused of using fraud and deceit to cyber invade Clinton campaign.
To attempt to cover their tracks, they create makebelieve hacker personas to distribute stolen goods.
26/ OBJECT OF THE CONSPIRACY: Hack and distribute stolen goods to influence 2016 election for Trump.
Let’s pause for a moment: imagine if the GRU did all this work to get Hillary elected, not Trump. The GOP would squawk for internity instead of pretending there’s no there there.
27/ CYBER-HOME INVASION: The indictment details how the GRU used cheap tricks to target hundreds of Clinton campaign members, ultimately stealing her campaign manager’s info, planting malicious software, breaking into the DCCC and DNC servers and stealing banking info from donors
28/ When I read these pages I feel a profound sorrow.
The GRU tricks so utterly base, tech-knuckledraggers leaving trails as they tried to wipe them, caught by Clinton campaign, tricking Americans to send money to fake accounts and using the media to further its criminal goals.
29/ The right wing disinformation machine spent decades trying to destroy Hillary Clinton so when the Russians do it, the GOP just shrugs.
A strong President, one like Hillary Clinton, would investigate Russia’s attacks.
A weak puppet president* obstructs and calls Roger Stone
32/ ORGANIZATION 1: Wikileaks muling for GRU, dumping stolen goods just in time to wreck shop on the DNC.
*Allegedly and by its own admission.*
Felonies all around for GRU conspirators charged with committing offenses against the U.S., as granularly detailed in this indictment.
33/ CRYPTO-LAUNDERING: Fraud, deceit, stolen identities, stolen goods, global servers—just like the IRA indictment. And there’s this...
“To facilitate their hacking, Defendants conspired to launder $95,000 through the perceived anonymity of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.”
34/ LEST WE FORGET: Indictment details GRU pulling B & E’s on our election systems, secretaries of states, U.S. state board of elections and voting systems.
Chk out pg 26, where we learn GRU stole personal data on 500,000 voters and hacked an election software vendor.
Just wow.
35/ JULY 13, 2018: Signed by Robert Mueller III.
You might ponder why these critical indictments have been buried by the Squirrels of Outrage, distractions craftily created each day by the right wing ministers of propaganda.
Could it be that the 2016 election was illegitimate.
44/ And because I’m an equal opportunity journo-activist, I felt it only fair to pick the brain of brilliant white collar crime expert @tracygreen on how Cohen should do his time. Her advice is practical, savvy and actually quite kind.
48/ This disinformation war that we are fighting without any help from an administration* benefitting from its cover is ongoing. It doesn’t stop after elections. It will only get worse unless we fight.
According to a reporting update, earlier reports that Prigozhin was incarcerated for “minor” “prostitution” was based on a poor translation and that the actual charges were related to violent theft. meduza.io/en/feature/202…
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In Part 2 of our Speakeasy series with Ukrainian historian Tetiana Boriak, she offered the Bette Dangerous community a detailed history of the Holodomor, Stalin’s man-made famine. Here is that report
Author’s note: With the help of a Ukrainian scholar, I am rewriting the history of what we know about communism. Any romanticized notions go out the window when we view history through the eye of a refugee-historian, with access to key documents that tell a cold and hard story about lies and theft, murder and starvation. We are offering a service to reality that helps us in this grave moment when political starvation proves again convenient to dictators and war criminals who talk of peace, as fascist dictators did a century ago. The following transcript, edited lightly for brevity and clarity, is from our interview with Ukrainian historian Tetiana Boriak on November 23, 2025, about the history of the Holodomor, Stalin’s man-made famine, which took the lives of 3.9 million Ukrainians. While working on a book project on the topic in February of 2022, Boriak realized that ‘Russia was killing us again,’ and she sought refuge in Lithuania for her and her children. She is now an associate professor in the History Department at Vilnius University. This interview took place during the week of the Holodomor Remembrance and is part of our three-part Speakeasy series with her. As you will learn, the Soviets were expert at creating fake realities to fool the West, a tradition that continues today.—hsc
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FAMINE AS WEAPON: Exposing Soviet Evil
Words by Tetiana Boriak; edited by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, from Part 2 of our Speakeasy series with the Ukrainian historian on the history of the Holodomor, Stalin’s man-made famine
Begin transcript:
Tetiana Boriak: I will try to make it pretty clear, because it’s not complicated. When you know the consequence of the events, then you can better understand the contemporary situation.
So the starting point is to understand the man-made famine, the Holodomor, is recognized as a genocide by almost 30 countries — the European Union, the European Parliament, the Assembly of the Council of Europe.
To understand, you will have to go back to the First World War, because 1914 - 1918 was the period when the empires collapsed, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ottoman Empire.
The First World War became a certain social network, because people from various regions of one country met accidentally on the battlefield. And they suddenly discovered that they have similar problems. And when we talk about the Ukrainians on the front of the First World War, they discovered that they have the portrait of Shevchenko, that is the national Ukrainian poet, who wrote about oppression under the Russian Empire — that they basically have the same needs. They just want land. They just want to work on this land and that Petrograd, that is St Petersburg, it’s far away and Moscow is far away. And basically, this is not their war.
So this was the main outcome for Ukraine, together with the collapse of the Russian Empire. Then we had the March 1917 resignation of the last Russian emperor, Nikolai II.
Then we have an attempt of a democratic government, of the temporary government, to create some kind of… Russia of the future, they were trying to implement some democratic changes, but the authoritarian machine seemed to be pretty powerful.
And the second reason that is probably even more important is the Russian propaganda. The Soviet Union started with the Russian propaganda. It was an unprecedented level of propaganda in world history, I would say, because the Bolsheviks, namely Lenin, was pretty smart, he was a criminal, obviously, he put millions to the ground, but he was a pretty smart guy in terms of how to communicate their messages. So the whole army of Russian agitators was created.
They had the printing houses. They printed leaflets. So basically they were saying to the Russian soldiers that this is not their war, as well. And so if the front has collapsed, the Russian sign the agreement with Germany and their allies, they kind of leave the war. But on the other hand, this allowed them to focus on occupation of the territories.
And in Ukraine in 1917, simultaneously, with the resignation of the Russian emperor Nikolai II, the democratic government was created. And so they started to do all these changes that were necessary to set the stage to have negotiations, how to govern, how to communicate with the people, to create an army, to introduce Ukrainian languages, language of communication, etc.
So this Ukrainian revolution lasted from 1917 to 1921 — there were several democratic governments during this period. But the war with Russia began already in December of 1917, right after what is called the Great Bolshevik Socialist Revolution, on November 7, 1917. By December, the Russians launched war on Ukraine.
3/
Donald Trump’s recent threat to the International Criminal Court is a sign that he is in far more trouble than he is willing to admit, I report in @BylineTimes
Donald Trump’s administration this week threatened new US sanctions on the International Criminal Court, in an attempt to strong-arm it into not investigating him and his top officials.
2/
Such a move is an admission of guilt. An innocent man would have no reason to demand that the ICC amend its founding document. Reuters first reported the threat on Thursday.
3/
We Fight As We Breathe—A Q&A with @Mamulashvili_M
A thoughtful conversation with commander of the Georgian National Legion Ukraine on Putin’s attempts to reanimate the corpse of the Soviet Union and why supporting Ukraine is the West’s best play bettedangerous.com/p/we-fight-as-…
Author’s note: On September 23, reporter Adam Sybera and I interviewed Mamuka Mamulashvili, Commander of the Georgian National Legion — Ukraine, at Bette’s Happy Hour. Mamuka has been fighting in Ukraine against the Russia invaders for more than a decade, survived multiple assassination attempts, three poisonings, and 32 years of war. At the age of 14, Mamuka took part in the Georgian-Russian war in Abkhazia. Towards the end of the conflict, he and his father were taken prisoner. Mamuka spent three months in captivity and was later released through a prisoner exchange program.
What follows is a transcript of the interview, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.—hsc
2/
We Fight As We Breathe: A Q&A with Mamuka Mamulashvili
A conversation with the commander of the Georgian National Legion Ukraine on Putin’s attempts to rebuild the corpse of the Soviet Union and why supporting Ukraine is an insurance policy for the rest of the free world
3/
Bette’s Happy Hour on Tuesday with disinformation analysts Dietmar Pichler and Alex Alvarova was one of our finest — the exchange of information from our global community was phenomenal.
2/
I kicked off the event by talking about how I’m framing the world at the moment between those pushing illusion and those living in reality. The illusionists create phantoms — this week’s model is ‘antifa’ — a conjured phantom to defang the word ‘fascist’ so the illusionists can target political enemies.
3/
A historic look at how conspiracies poison democracy, as detailed in Richard J. Evans book, “The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination”
It’s okay to admit we got it wrong. We weren’t prepared for the Great Propaganda Wars.
2/
How could we be? We who were raised in democratic nations relied on a shared narrative of truth. We relied on academic and scientific expertise. We put our trust in higher learning, and those who deviated from a fact-based world — the snake oil salesmen, who exploited fear and ignorance — well, there were repercussions for these criminal exploiters. Our fact-based world had punitive laws for the exploiters.
3/
The moment I learned of Charlie Kirk’s death, I thought of Jeff Sharlet. Sharlet has documented extremist right-wing movements in America for two decades, and he was the one who taught me how Ashli Babbitt became a MAGA martyr.
2/
In an interview with RadPod on his book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, Sharlet told us:
So Ashli Babbitt, 35-year-old white woman from Southern California, Air Force veteran storms the Capitol with violent intentions - she wrote about them. That's her knife on the cover of the book. That's the evidence photo, you can see it dated 1.6.2021.
She climbs up into a window leading a mob through a broken window, they smash the window, she comes up into it.
And we see on the video that very day, the two hands of the Capitol Hill police officer who shoots her, and it is the hands of a black man, and she's a white woman, and as a student of American mythology and American history, I know right away what's going to happen with that story.
And it happened within hours. First, they started saying Ashli - she was 135 pounds, she was in her 20s. Or maybe she was 16, she was just a little white girl. And they start shrinking her - she's 125 pounds, that's not going to work. She's 115 pounds. No, she's 110. They are making her into this model of white innocence.
Now, those not familiar with the history of lynching don't realize that at the heart of lynching throughout American history has been this kind of sexualized panic. This idea that black men are coming for our - possessive, you see - white women - a kind of property.
And that's the story that they began telling.
That's when the book really started to take shape. I said I'm going to follow the formation of this martyr myth.—Jeff Sharlet, on RadPod