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</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-aide-frantically-scrambles-to-scrub-russia-from-bio" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-aide-frantically-scrambles-to-scrub-russia-from-bio</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">former Donald Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo is determined to prove that he did not work for Vladimir Putin, and he’s using every tool at his disposal to do so—from a congressional ethics complaint, to a defamation lawsuit, to a surreptitious Wikipedia edit campaign.</div><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">Sean Dwyer, an employee of Caputo’s PR firm, Zeppelin Communications, was <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DwyerSP" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">blocked</a> from Wikipedia in August after he was caught using multiple pseudonymous accounts to purge Caputo’s page of alleged Putin ties, according to an investigation by the site’s editors. After the accounts were exposed as what Wikipedia calls “sock puppets”—multiple accounts run by the same person as part of a coordinated editing campaign—Dwyer <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Baldassn#Paid_Edits_for_Michael_R._Caputo_Wikipedia_Page" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">admitted</a> he had financial ties to the subjects of his edits.<div class="teads-adCall" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="font-size: small;"><div id="x33x15293340684162997" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" position="position" sticky="sticky"><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">It’s just the latest front in Caputo’s battles to save his reputation from, what he sees as, Russian smears. He also says he has filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) over comments at a congressional hearing in March, where the California Democrat accused Caputo of having been Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “image consultant.” In emails with The Daily Beast, Caputo said he will also be filing a defamation lawsuit against Zac Petkanas, a Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/10/27/trump-counsel-tells-democrat-lawyer-after-vladimir-putin-trump-dossier-allegations" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-color: transparent; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">accused</a> Caputo of being “a Russian stooge who used to work for Vladimir Putin” in a Fox News segment last month.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">In an email, Petkanas said he stands by his statements. “To my knowledge, Michael Caputo has not disputed this Washington Post <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-trumps-financial-ties-to-russia-and-his-unusual-flattery-of-vladimir-putin/2016/06/17/dbdcaac8-31a6-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?utm_term=.872fc2a39a7c" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-color: transparent; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">report</a> to which I referred stating that he worked for a Russian government run media company to improve the image of Vladimir Putin, who was the leader of the Russian government at the time,” he wrote. “To the contrary, according to that same report, he informed his hometown newspaper that he was ‘not proud of the work today. But at the time, Putin wasn’t such a bad guy.’”<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">A Republican operative from New York, Caputo ran communications for Trump’s campaign in the Empire State. Since then, he has <a class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/lobbyist-hopes-trumps-dead-uncle-wins-him-white-house-favor" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">registered as a federal lobbyist</a> and <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/01/politics/michael-grimm-campaign-announcement/index.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">signed on</a> with the comeback House campaign of former congressman and convicted felon Michael Grimm.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">Caputo lived in Russia more than 20 years ago. And he has a history of business dealings in the country that, though less scandalous than those of other former Trump aides, have trailed him since his work for Trump. Unlike one-time campaign chair Paul Manafort and others in Trump’s orbit, Caputo has faced no allegations of wrongdoing. But he is nonetheless determined to head off any suggestion that he is connected to the Russian government—and by extension the stench of the federal investigation into alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">Congressional investigators probing that alleged influence campaign <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/14/politics/michael-caputo-russia-house-testimony/index.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-color: transparent; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">interviewed</a> Caputo in July, and he emerged from the meeting with the same stance he had going in: insisting that there was no collusion and that he has no business dealings in Russia.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">Caputo says Dwyer’s editing campaign was simply an effort to root out misinformation to the contrary. “Months ago, I was informed that a Russia conspiracy buff had posted an inaccurate biography of me, noting that I worked for Putin. I have never worked for Putin,” Caputo told The Daily Beast in an email. “I asked my staff to edit the posting, but to register properly as a paid editor.”<div class="teads-adCall" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div id="x33x15293340684162997" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" position="position" sticky="sticky"><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">Dwyer did notify the Wikipedia community that he was being paid for his efforts, but he only did so after editing Caputo’s page on 10 separate occasions, primarily to tweak references to Caputo’s past work for the media arm of Gazprom, a state-owned Russian energy company with close ties to the Kremlin.Caputo never worked for Putin. But his former PR firm, Rainmaker Interactive, represented Gazprom Media chief executive Alfred Kokh in the early 2000s, and helped burnish the company’s reputation with U.S. media and policymakers. At the time, Gazprom had just acquired NTV, one of Russia’s few major opposition media outlets, sparking an internal revolt among staff. Gazprom dispatched security services to <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/04/15/russian-network-seized-in-raid/e9679fb0-31cb-4b9c-b07f-204b488f40ad/?utm_term=.0f723cfe8b16" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">seize NTV’s headquarters</a> in a move that was widely condemned as an assault on independent Russian media. According to Kokh, Putin <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1140163.stm" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">personally sanctioned</a> the crackdown.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">In an interview last year, The Buffalo News characterized Caputo’s subsequent PR work for Gazprom Media as “help[ing] President Vladimir Putin weather U.S. government criticism for taking over an independent TV station.” Caputo says that characterization is inaccurate, though he told the paper at the time, as Petkanas noted, that he is “not proud of the work today,” adding the caveat that at “at the time, Putin wasn’t such a bad guy.”<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);">Given what Caputo characterizes as widespread—and even malicious—misrepresentations of his work in Russia, “Wikipedia inaccuracies barely even make it on my radar,” he said.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div></div></div></div></div><div>=</div><div>an 1119</div><div><div>
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</div><div>Russian state media is outing the alleged whistleblower after Rand Paul’s reckless outbursts: report</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story November 6, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump’s allies are trying to retaliate against the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the Ukraine scandal. And no one is doing so more enthusiastically than Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who tweeted out a link to a right-wing article in Real Clear Investigations that purported to reveal the whistleblower’s name, occupation at the CIA, and photograph.</div><div>
</div><div>Thus far, although that article has been live for several days, the mainstream media has ignored it, resisting any effort to spread information about the whistleblower that would compromise their federal legal protections and open them up to reprisal or threats.</div><div>
</div><div>But according to The Daily Beast, there is one group of media outlets that is eagerly promoting Paul’s reckless attempt to out the whistleblower: Russian state media.</div><div>
</div><div>Not only did sites like Russia Today, TASS, and Rossiya-1 disseminate this same information shortly after Paul did, one of the sites falsely claimed that the original source was the Washington Post rather than Real Clear Investigations, apparently to give the information more legitimacy.</div><div>
</div><div>This, notes The Daily Beast, marks the latest in a long string of efforts by Russian propaganda networks to boost Trump and attack the impeachment investigation — which in addition to attempting to remove a president Russian officials broadly think is strategically useful to them, also centers on his apparent efforts to extort the government of Ukraine, a nation which Russia is violently occupying and from which they are annexing land.</div></div><div></div><a href="https://medium.com/dfrlab/russian-tv-ties-biden-to-its-saakashvili-organ-trade-conspiracy-theory-ef9c7ce26660">https://medium.com/dfrlab/russian-tv-ties-biden-to-its-saakashvili-organ-trade-conspiracy-theory-ef9c7ce26660</a>Russian TV Ties Biden to Its Saakashvili Organ Trade Conspiracy TheoryKremlin-controlled TV channel NTV accuses Joe Biden of covering up the Saakashvili family’s “role” in the global human organ trade@DFRLab@DFRLabFollowJun 14 · 6 min read(Source: EtoBuziashvili/DFRLab via YouTube)As the 2020 United States presidential election comes closer, the Kremlin media targeted candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden by incorporating his name into a preexisting disinformation campaign focused on a former president of Georgia.From May 21 to May 23, 2019, Russian state-controlled TV channel “???” (NTV) released a three part “documentary” about Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili, accusing him — among other things — of being controlled by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, blackmailing Ukrainian ex-President Poroshenko, and engaging in the human organ trade. At first glance, there was nothing new in the Kremlin media’s reports, with the exception of one detail: NTV claimed that Biden played a role in covering up the Saakashvili family’s alleged role in the organ trade.By introducing Biden, who entered the race for the 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential nomination at the end of April 2019, into an old disinformation narrative about “Saakashvili’s crimes,” NTV likely aimed to damage his reputation ahead of the U.S. elections. Before announcing his candidacy, Biden had warned of the efforts of foreign countries — particularly Russia — to meddle in upcoming U.S. elections, as well as of the threats influence and disinformation operations pose to the democratic process.Saakashvili and Putin: A History of TensionMikheil Saakashvili came to power after the 2003 “Rose Revolution,” a peaceful series of protests in Georgia that were followed by regime change and marked the beginning of Georgia’s pro-Western pivot. During Saakashvili’s presidency, Russia invaded Georgia and fought a brief war in 2008.Saakashvili and Russian President Vladimir Putin have a long track-record of insulting statements toward each other: Saakashvili once referred to Putin as “Liliputin,” a reference to the little people in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Putin once threatened to hang Saakashvili “by the balls.” The tense personal relationship between the two leaders, as well as the Kremlin’s aggression toward Georgia, has repeatedly made Saakashvili a target of Russian state-controlled media.Lies, Damned Lies, and the Kremlin MediaThe conspiracy that the Saakashvili family had engaged in the illicit organ trade are not new. According to the Media Development Foundation, a Georgian media literacy nonprofit, a media portal called Exclusive News published a fabricated video in 2016 allegedly released by the head of the State Security Service of Ukraine. The video purportedly told a story how Mikheil Saakashvili’s wife traded the organs of wounded Ukrainian soldiers.
Fabricated video footage accusing Saakashvili family of trading organs of wounded Ukrainian soldiers. (Source: Media Development Foundation)The video uploaded by the user ????????????? ?????? ????? (Ukrainian: Information Portal “Word”) has 351 subscribers and only seven videos on its channel — all of them related to Ukrainian politics. The video shows an unidentified person sitting with their back to the camera and telling a 10-minute story of how the organs were removed from Ukrainian soldiers and then traded, and how Saakashvili family led the business. The claims, however, were not supported by any actual evidence, as it was merely a story told by an anonymous person.
Anonymous individual tells a story of Saakashvili family trading organs of wounded Ukrainian soldiers. (Source: YouTube)NTV revived the story for its recent “documentary” series, the first part of which primarily focused on the family’s alleged role in the organ trading business.Despite this particular disinformation narrative featuring in Kremlin-controlled outlets’ reporting for the past three years, the documentary constituted the first time the narrative included former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, accusing him of covering up the Saakashvili family’s “organs business.”NTV is owned by Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of Russian energy company Gazprom, which itself evolved from the Soviet Ministry of Gas into a private corporation and is now a Russian state-owned company. As a result, the Russian government is able to exert de facto control of NTV via Gazprom’s media subsidiary. In 2018, Gazprom doubled its annual net profit by achieving record sales to Europe.The three-part documentary, titled Saakashvili. The Battle for Ukraine,” belongs to a series titled “Based On a True Story.” The series describes itself as “exclusive footage obtained by the NTV team, as well as scenes that have never been published before.”
The Kremlin-controlled NTV’s three part “documentary” about Georgia’s ex-President, titled “Saakashvili. The Battle for Ukraine.” (Source: 1. YouTube/archive; 2. YouTube/archive; 3. YouTube/archive)The program, however, is not based on evidence, but rather, on interviews with so-called “experts in the field” with unverified credentials, including some who remain completely anonymous with their backs to the camera. The tactic of employing fake experts is not a novel one for Kremlin-controlled TV channels. In addition, the EU’s East StratCom Task Force has previously identified the NTV channel in particular as a wellspring for disinformation narratives.NTV’s introduction to the first part of the Saakashvili “documentary” began with a sensationalist line of questioning: “How did [Saakashvili’s] wife supervise the trade in organs of wounded Ukrainians?” “Why did Joe Biden cover up these crimes?” “What did Saakashvili blackmail Poroshenko with?” “Why did Poroshenko not give away the runaway Saakashvili to Georgia?” The same questions appeared in the program description under the video on YouTube.
The Kremlin-controlled NTV’s description of the “documentary” about Georgia’s ex-president Saakashvili. The video includes the only moment Biden appears in the footage. The highlighted part reads: “Why did Joe Biden cover up these crimes?” in reference to claims that the Saakashvili family had engaged in the illegal organ trade. (Source: YouTube)Interestingly, despite making claims about Biden’s role, the documentary footage did not feature him; it merely flashed his image for two seconds and asked the audience to stay tuned for his role in the Saakashvili family’s criminal enterprise, implying a future exposé on the topic that has yet to materialize. The DFRLab did not find previous NTV programming to have made unsubstantiated allegations regarding Biden.Spread of the NarrativeNTV’s YouTube channel has 5.5 million subscribers, but engagement with the video was relatively low: it garnered 12,917 views and 91 comments, some of which were negative comments about Saakashvili; roughly half of the comments, however, emphasized the inauthenticity of the video and deemed it Kremlin propaganda.Using the online analytics tool Sysomos, the DFRLab scanned for mentions of the words “??? ??????” (“Joe Biden”) together with “????????” (which translates to “with organs,” in a Russian grammatical case) on online platforms in both English and Russian between May 23 and May 29, 2019 — from the day the narrative appeared to the day this analysis was written. Sysomos registered only 14 mentions of both terms together in Russian across all platforms.
Mentions of the keywords “??? ??????” (“Joe Biden”) and “????????” (“with organs”) in Russian during the period from May 23 to May 29, 2019. (Source: @EtoBuziashvili/DFRLab via Sysomos)Sysomos registered only 22 mentions of the words “Joe Biden” and “organs” in English across all platforms within the period of analysis.
Mentions of the keywords “Joe Biden” and “organs” in English during the period from May 23 to May 29, 2019. (Source: @EtoBuziashvili/DFRLab via Sysomos)The Sysomos results suggested that the spread of the narrative across Russian and English online platforms was very low. The scan, however, only registered observations from the surveyed week.Kremlin-controlled media have routinely discredited the Kremlin’s opponents by using sensational headlines and recycling false narratives. In particular, the narrative that Saakashvili’s family engaged in the illegal organ trade has circulated in Kremlin-controlled media for several years. Introducing Biden into the existing narrative now, early in the former vice president’s 2020 presidential run, may indicate that the Kremlin media — similar to the U.S. media — sees Biden as the current front-runner in the race and therefore is seeking to diminish his standing through a disinformation campaign.The DFRLab will continue to monitor the spread of this particular Kremlin disinformation narrative regarding Biden.Eto Buziashvili is a Research Assistant with the Digital Forensic Research Lab and is based in Georgia.Follow along for more in-depth analysis from our #DigitalSherlocks.DFRLab@AtlanticCouncil’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Catalyzing a global network of digital forensic researchers, following conflicts in real time.==