Russian operatives celebrated Donald Trump’s 2016 win with champagne, saying ‘we made America great’
- Report from Republican-led intelligence panel outlines Kremlin’s sweeping social media efforts to help Trump secure presidency
- Lawmakers warn that similar efforts to interfere in US politics are still under way, with countries like China, North Korea and Iran following suit
Kremlin-directed operatives opened champagne when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, according to a communication disclosed in a new Senate Intelligence Committee report outlining Russia’s sweeping social media efforts to help him win.
“We uncorked a tiny bottle of champagne … took one gulp each and looked into each other’s eyes … We uttered almost in unison: ‘We made America great,’” one operative at the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency said in the message obtained by the Republican-led committee.
The long-pending report by the Intelligence panel concluded that Russia directed an aggressive social media campaign to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Trump in the 2016 presidential election and warns similar efforts to interfere in US politics are still under way.
It was a bipartisan endorsement of the finding made by US intelligence agencies and often questioned by Trump.
The report, two years in the making, found that the Internet Research Agency “was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump to the detriment of Secretary Clinton’s campaign”. As part of that effort, it targeted African-Americans through social media more than any other group.