Russia reportedly paid a former Florida cop to pump out anti-Harris deepfakes and disinformation

A erstwhile Florida sheriff who moved to Russia amid an FBI investigation is simply a Kremlin-backed propagandist responsible for viral deepfake videos and misinformation targeting Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to European intelligence documents reviewed by the Washington Post.

The GRU, Russia’s subject intelligence service, gave backing to John Mark Dougan, the usability of respective clone news websites. According to documents reviewed by the Post, Dugan was responsible for respective websites that seemingly published clone section news, including DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle, and Atlanta Observer. The documents, which mostly attraction connected the clip betwixt March 2021 and August of this year, show that Dougan worked pinch Yury Khoroshevsky, an serviceman wrong the GRU’s Unit 29155. Two European information officials told the Post that Khoroshevsky’s portion handles sabotage, governmental interference operations, and cyberwarfare targeting the West.

Dougan besides reportedly worked pinch the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, a Moscow-based institute founded by far-right Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin. The center’s director, Valery Korovin, besides useful intimately pinch Khoroshevsky, according to documents reviewed by the Post. Khoroshevsky started depositing payments successful Dougan’s slope relationship successful April 2022 and often met pinch him and Dougan, the documents show. Dougan received immoderate of the payments aft the websites he created had trouble accessing Western AI generators.

Disinformation experts and the authorities person been sounding the siren astir Russian operatives attempting to power the 2024 statesmanlike election. The Biden management has alleged that Russian power campaigns person operated websites and societal media accounts to power the election, and that they’ve created clone societal media personas to dispersed disinformation. In July, the Department of Justice seized 2 domain names and much than 900 media accounts it claims were portion of an “AI-enhanced” Russian bot farm.

Dougan may besides beryllium responsible for disseminating a video involving mendacious intersexual misconduct allegations against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, disinformation experts told the Post. The personification successful the video claims to beryllium Matthew Metro, a erstwhile student of Walz’s — but the existent Matthew Metro has debunked some the video and the claims. 

NewsGuard, a institution that tracks disinformation online, told the Post that Dougan was the first root for the claims. Eleven days earlier the video was posted, Dougan appeared connected a podcast pinch an anonymous man who claimed to beryllium a erstwhile speech student from Kazakhstan who was abused by Walz.

Dougan told the Post he wasn’t down DC Weekly and different sites and said he didn’t cognize Korovin aliases Khoroshenky. He said he worked arsenic an IT advisor for an American company.

“I will show you hypothetically, if they were my sites,” he said, “then I americium simply fighting occurrence pinch occurrence because the West is fucking lying astir everything that’s happening,” Dougan said. “They are lying astir everything.”