Concord Management and Consulting, the indicted Russian “company” that provided funding for the Russian effort to weaponize social media, leaked information from non-public court documents to undercut the case being made by the special counsel’s office. To release the information, the Russian company created yet another fake company, Redstone Hacking, which claimed to have “hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case,” but in fact Concord was just releasing its own copy of court documents—but not without making a few changes.
In February 2018, the special counsel indicted 13 Russian individuals associated with Concord Management and the collection of Russian operatives masquerading as a company called the Internet Research Agency. The IRA was the core of Russia’s social media effort to support Donald Trump. It generated the fake sites for not just “groups” that supported Trump, but also the sites that weaponized American racism. Fake “Black Lives Matter” sites intended to frighten white voters in critical areas were being created by the same people making fake “Hillary hates blacks” sites that were intended to suppress African-American votes. Similarly, the Russian agency played nonexistent extremes on both sides of immigration, of gun safety, and of every issue that could be used to lever open a gap among American voters. The militant messages at “Blacktivist” came from the Russians. So did the xenophobic rants at “Secured Borders.”
The workers at the IRA created dozens of Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, webpages, and a network of connections among them. Then they created thousands of bots, each of which had its own set of accounts and provided apparent heft and popularity to the core accounts. They even sent actual Russian agents to actual American cities to stage actual protests. On Twitter alone, the IRA created 3,800 known accounts and sent 176,000 tweets that were seen by millions of Americans. Some of those tweets were retweeted by such conservative Trump supporters as Ann Coulter. Some of them were retweeted by members of Trump’s campaign, like Michael Flynn. The YouTube videos the IRA created also got broad notice on the right. So did their GIF memes. And when they had trouble getting an idea to break through organically, the Russians did it the old-fashioned way: They bought ads. All of it as part of the effort to help Donald Trump. At least 90 people worked full-time at this effort—and that doesn’t include the “over 100 Americans” that they either recruited or attempted to recruit.
On Wednesday, the special counsel’s office made a new court filing opposing the publication of some documents related to the Concord case. And, as CNN reports, the filing reveals that Concord Management has already been busy conducting its own document release—against court orders. And the Russians have been making changes to the documents they release. The new filing states that "Certain non-sensitive discovery materials in the defense's possession appear to have been altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign aimed (apparently) at discrediting ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the U.S. political system.”
CNN and BBC reporter Josh Russell was one of several people who received information from a new Twitter account under the name of Redstone Hacking.
Tweet from ‘Redstone Hacking’ claiming to have hacked into Mueller documents
Redstone claimed to have “special access” to court documents obtained by hacking into a Russian server with information on the case against Concord and the Internet Research Agency. But it now appears that Redstone was Concord “hacking” its own documents to leak out selections.
Exactly what Concord Management/Internet Research Agency/Redstone Hacking altered in the documents they released isn’t clear, because for the most part the documents they produced were still not available to the public.
