The U.S. Attorney General went back to an old play pulled off by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III to hijack a bad news cycle by announcing Wednesday the indictment of so-called meddling Russians to distract Americans from the FBI’s bungling another spree shooter attack at a high school.
“The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
In addition to seizing 32 websites, which Garland said mimicked legitimate media outlets but were meant to spread pro-Russian news stories, a program codenamed “DoppelGänger,” DOJ released a previously sealed affidavit describing the Russian schemes and announced the names of the two RT employees: Kostiantyn “Kostya” Kalashnikov and Elena “Lena” Afanasyeva.
The attorney general said the investigation was being handled by the Eastern Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero. Still, the undated indictments of Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva were secured in DOJ’s Southern District of New York.
Garland said the fake site program was part of the Russian effort to elect President Donald J. Trump.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
“The sites we are seizing today were filled with Russian government propaganda that had been created by the Kremlin to reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster pro-Russian policies and interests, and influence voters in the United States and other countries,” the attorney general said.
“The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing,” the Attorney General said.
Garland’s severe warning about another clandestine effort by Russians to influence American politics seemed like the perfect news item to draw MSNBC and CNN’s attention away from another sensational developing story.
Wednesday started with a tragic event at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Georgia. At approximately 10:20 a.m., 14-year-old Colt Gray allegedly opened fire with a military-style long gun given to him by his father, resulting in the deaths of four individuals and injuries to nine others.
Garland held his press conference at 1:30 p.m. when he happened to be hosting a meeting of his Election Threats Task Force, joined by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. The task force was created at the instigation of Monaco to coordinate the Justice Department’s response to the harassment of election workers.
Then, just one minute past sunset, the FBI announced that it had been in contact with the shooter for the past 15 months:
“In May 2023, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time. The online threats contained photographs of guns. Within 24 hours, the FBI determined the online post originated in Georgia, and the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office referred the information to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office for action.
“The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office located a possible subject, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father. The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.
“At that time, there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels.”
In other words, the tragedy in Apalachee marked yet another mass killing of Americans in which the FBI — America’s premiere law enforcement agency — had previously been alerted about the dangerous individual and the risks he posed to innocent civilians.
But there’s another eerie parallel with at least a few of the other mass killings the FBI failed to prevent.
Like Apalachee, other mass shootings have been followed by abrupt announcements by the Justice Department that have consumed the national media’s attention and drawn the focus away from the FBI’s failures.
FBI Ignored Two Warnings About Parkland Shooter
The events Wednesday have an odd similarity to how the FBI and the Justice Department diverted the news cycle after the FBI announced it had been in contact with the spree shooter who killed 17 and wounded 17 at the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting at the Parkland, Florida, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Two days later, the FBI made a partial admission:
“On January 5, 2018, a person close to Nikolas Cruz contacted the FBI’s Public Access Line (PAL) tipline to report concerns about him. The caller provided information about Cruz’s gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.
“Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami Field Office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken.“
Wray said in the statement he was disappointed.
“We are still investigating the facts,” he said.
“I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public,” the FBI director said.
Then, he deflected blame from the FBI to the American public: “It’s up to all Americans to be vigilant, and when members of the public contact us with concerns, we must act properly and quickly.”
A month later, the FBI disclosed that Jan. 5, 2018, the caller, who identified herself as a close friend of the shooter’s family, said Cruz made references to ISIS, threatened his mother with a rifle, and that he was mutilating small animals and wanted to kill people.
The caller specifically told the FBI that she was concerned the shooter would target a school.
In that March press release, the FBI also disclosed that another individual warned them about Cruz’s violent intentions as far back as Sept. 25, 2017.
Short of a confession videotaped prior to the act, the FBI abundant information about Cruz, his intentions, his capabilities, and his target — yet they failed to intervene.
Mueller Hijacks Bad FBI News Cycle with Russian Indictments
On the same day the FBI announced that it had been tipped off about the Parkland shooter, Mueller unsealed an indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian companies for interfering in American politics.
Mueller did not make remarks at the press conference, but Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein did say these Russians and their companies ran troll farms that sowed distrust in the American government and manipulated the 2016 election.
“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the Internet,” said Rosenstein.
“The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy,” he said.
“We must not allow them to succeed. The Department of Justice will continue to work cooperatively with other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and with the Congress, to defend our nation against similar current and future schemes,” he said.
None of the 13 Russians were ever brought to justice in the United States, but maybe that was not the point of the exercise.
The fruitless indictments could have been announced at any time, so why were they unsealed at the very moment the national media spotlight was shifting toward a major FBI failure?
The unsealed indictments rebooted the news cycle and created a permissive environment for the mainstream media to ignore the FBI’s horrendous handling of the tip that could have prevented the Parkland shooting.
It worked then, so why not try it again?
Wash, rinse and repeat.
The FBI (our version of the FSB) and the [In]justice Department need to be swept clean after November and we all know who will do that and also know who would enhance their corruption. Vote wisely.
Does it seem like deja vu? Different election cycle….same boring playbook. If the deep state democrats had an original thought they’d probably drop dead.
The democrat party is imploding. Munity is exploding among the ranks.
Think if politics like a pendulum. It swings in one direction only to be followed a swing to the other. The thing that changes is degrees of travel. The liberals have pretty much maxed the swing left so I would hope that when the swing cycles and it will that the incoming policy makers give it the same effort. I truly believe that the democratic party has violated the constitution by way of treason from the Clintons on that there is enough evidence to outlaw the party once and for all and should be the first priority.
Ryan M – you just stated (((the main problem))) that will eventually bring America down.