From The Hill:
Russia-linked groups attempted to organize over a dozen pro-Trump rallies around Florida during the 2016 elections, The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday.
The rallies, which dozens attended, are the first known instance of Russian actors successfully organizing Americans to show up in person at events supporting President Trump.
On Aug. 20, 2016, as a part of an event called “Florida Goes Trump!,” a “patriotic state-wide flash mob” happened simultaneously in 17 cities across the swing state. It’s unclear if the events happened in all of the 17 cities — Facebook has deleted the account, Being Patriotic, which organized the events.
thehill.com/…
Oh for eff’s sake — this is getting ridiculous.
These are 17 rallies, organized by RUSSIA, in one state alone — Florida.
As Charles Pierce of Esquire said recently, it’s only a matter of time before we learn that Russia altered actual vote counts.
Update 1: From Texas Lefty in the comments:
They were also organizing pro-secessionist groups in Texas. More than 225,000 followers.
A Russia-linked Facebook group asked a Texas secessionist movement if it would participate in a series of anti-immigrant, anti-Hillary Clinton rallies it was planning to hold across the state last November, the group's president told Business Insider on Thursday.
"When they decided to start doing all these 'Texit' rallies, they reached out and wanted us to participate," said Daniel Miller, the president of the Texas Nationalist Movement. "And we said 'thanks, but no thanks.'"
The Facebook group, called Heart of Texas, had over 225,000 followers as of last summer. It was shut down last week as part of Facebook's takedown of accounts and pages "affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia," a Facebook spokesman told Business Insider on Wednesday.