Indictments and Raids: FBI Moves Against Fringe “Influencers” in Russia Probe
Over the past several years, there’s been a lot of media and federal government focus on alleged or actual Russian attempts to influence American domestic politics. Former Air Force linguist and analyst Reality Winner was jailed for leaking a document that showed fairly clear evidence of such Russian interference. But what about more prosaic yet classic Soviet/Russian influence operations, the type where they try to get others to launder a Kremlin propaganda line?
That very old tactic seems to be at the center of a federal indictment unsealed late last week.
The target, a Russian national named Aleksandr Ionov, was head of the Russian state‐funded Anti‐Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), which the indictment alleges worked with “the Russian Federation (Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii, “FSB”)…to use members of U.S. political groups as foreign agents of Russia within the United States, without notification to the Attorney General.” Foreign nationals who intend to lobby or otherwise engage politically on American soil are required to register with the Attorney General under the nearly century‐old Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Ionov and his FSB handlers tried to evade FARA by developing relationships with three US‐based organizations, which I identified through online and related research late last week as likely being the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), the Uhuru House, and Yes California. FBI raids on the first two of the organizations were executed in St. Louis, Missouri and St. Petersburg, Florida, as the AFSP’s leadership confirmed via social media and a press conference.
The indictment alleges (p. 3) that “IONOV provided financial support to these groups on behalf of the FSB; directed these groups to publish pro‐Russian propaganda, as well as other information designed to cause dissension in the United States and to promote secessionist ideologies; coordinated and funded direct action by these groups within the United States that was designed to further Russian interests; and coordinated coverage of these groups’ activities in Russian media outlets.”
Of note on p. 11 of the indictment is this passage:
On or about August 13, 2015, defendant IONOV caused electronic messages to be sent to UIC‑2 directing UIC‑2 to write a petition to the United Nations ‘ASAP’ alleging that the United States had committed genocide against African people in the United States and also directing UIC‑2 to send the petition to the UN office in New York and to the websites of the White House and Change.org.
Change.org is a petition website generally associated with political causes typically of concern to left‐leaning political activists and voters, not just in the United States but globally.
Whether the FBI is targeting Change.org itself is unknown at this juncture, but if it is it would be a deeply alarming development from a First Amendment standpoint. And the fact that the FBI has taken an interest in a speech‐centric political advocacy platform like Change.org as a potential vehicle for foreign influence operations may itself have a chilling effect on those considering using Change.org or similar platforms to push for specific political reform proposals.
Assuming the allegations asserted in the indictment by DoJ with respect to Ionov are valid, the case against him seems fairly straightforward. But the APSP and the Uhuru House and its related political movement can only be described as fringe, bit players on the American political scene whose previous statements and stances already mirrored the Kremlin’s line decades before Aleksandr Ionov came along. It makes one wonder why the FBI targeted such marginal groups with little to no impact on the broader political process, and whether an unstated goal of the raids was to put the entire domestic political advocacy community on notice that a domestic group with foreign connections is considered fair game for FBI scrutiny even if legitimate First Amendment activity is involved.
Whether the raids on the APSP and Uhuru House will lead to indictments against individuals in those organizations is something only time will tell.