Trump shared photos on Facebook of an event organized by Russian trolls

Image: EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s official Facebook page shared photos of an event organized by Russian trolls, according to a redacted version of special counsel that was released on Thursday.

Mueller’s report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election shows that an Internet Research Agency-controlled Facebook account boasted that Donald Trump’s official Facebook page shared photos from an event it organized.

“Mr. Trump posted about our event in Miami!” wrote the IRA-run account in a private message to a U.S. Tea Party activist. “This is great!”

The IRA employee included a screenshot of Trump’s post in the message. The post, as seen above, is still active on the president’s Facebook page.

The account, which posted as an American activist by the name of “Matt Skiber,” was previously referred to in of more than a dozen Russians as well as three companies, including the IRA, who sought to sow discord in the U.S. using social media during the 2016 election. 

The pictures included in Trump’s post are from one of the IRA-organized “Florida Goes Trump” rallies, which occurred on Aug. 20, 2016 and were also referred to in the February 2018 indictment. 

The IRA paid to advertise the Florida-based events on Facebook and Instagram, organized local activists to volunteer, and to build a cage on the back of a flatbed truck and have a person dressed like Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform perform inside.

According to the Mueller report, the IRA initiated contact with Trump campaign officials going back to June 2016 in “an effort to coordinate pro-Trump IRA-organized rallies inside the United States.” The Russian state-backed troll farm would request signs and other materials to distribute at such events. The IRA also sought the Trump campaign’s assistance in coordinating and promoting the rallies.

Other pro-Trump rallies organized by the IRA included three events in New York as well as a series of rallies in Pennsylvania just one month before the election.

The report makes clear that it “has not identified evidence that any Trump Campaign official understood the requests were coming from foreign nationals.” The investigation found that in every case regarding these events, the IRA posed as U.S. activists and conservative organizations when contacting the Trump campaign.

Previous reports have established that Russian trolls, using accounts purporting to be of U.S. activists or grassroots organizations, had organized political rallies. Facebook events created by the IRA targeted everyone from Trump supporters to activists. 

A major point of contention between skeptics of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has been the effectiveness of its social media influence operation. One thing we know now, however, is that one person definitely fell for it: whoever was running Donald Trump’s official Facebook account during his presidential campaign.