How I Got Dragged into a Putin Disinformation Op

Still images from a fake video that Russian disinformation operators have been circulating on social media purporting to be from CNN. Mother Jones.  

I just published a book that exposes Russian disinformation operations. Now I—that is, a fake version of me—have become part of a Russian disinformation operation.

How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America chronicles the shadow war of clandestine influence and disinformation operations—many implemented to aid Trump—that Putin has been mounting against the United States for a decade. It ends with the warning that Moscow would likely attack the ongoing midterm elections to help Trump and the GOP. Within days of the book’s publication two weeks ago, media outlets reported that Russia’s disinformation operatives, using phony accounts on social media platforms, had started hurling derogatory material at Democrats.

Last week, this covert disinformation operation widened to spread scurrilous allegations against Democratic candidates—phony accusations that were falsely attributed to me.

So after writing a book about Putin’s disinformation efforts and noting they posed a threat to the current elections, I am being used by a Russian disinformation network to influence the midterms in Trump’s favor. This is a bizarre snake-eating-its-tail situation.

In the book, I report on several secret Russian disinformation units that produced and disseminated false allegations about Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz during the 2024 campaign. One was dubbed Matryoshka by disinformation trackers. (That’s the name for those iconic Russian nesting dolls.) It zapped out on X and other social media platforms assorted lies about Harris: She had an abortion when she was 17. She was exhibiting early-onset Alzheimer’s. Her grandfather was a communist. Her family was connected to Pfizer and Big Pharma.

When news organizations recently revealed that Matryoshka was at it again, this time concocting videos that purported to be CNN news segments covering Hollywood celebrities trash-talking Democrats (Nazi whores!), I reported that these covert operatives were also generating and posting fake videos that appeared to be CNN spots with damaging information on Democratic senatorial candidates. James Talarico (Texas) “despises” Hasidic Jews because they don’t allow gender affirmation treatment. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) owns a business that has “caused the bee population in Ohio to decline by a factor of nine.” Jon Ossoff (Georgia) has “called for a complete halt to military aid to Israel and for all resources to be redirected to Ukraine.” And there were others.

While I was working on that story, @antibot4navalny, a group of anonymous activists who monitor Russian disinformation, informed me that Matryoshka had also posted on X a supposed Mother Jones video that reported that the Democratic Party had paid $289 million to Mark Thompson, the head of CNN, so the cable news network would run reports that “promote gender transition among minors.” I quickly published a piece exposing this absurd disinformation. After a lawyer for Mother Jones contacted X, the company took down this fraudulent video.

But Matryoshka was not done with Mother Jones—or me.

On Friday, @antibot4navalny informed me that Matryoshka—through an obvious bot account on X—had posted a purported CNN video of me promoting a new book. But the book isn’t How Russia Won. It’s supposedly called Enemies of Democracy for Dummies, and the video declared, “The book will feature over 300 stories related to crimes committed by members of the Democratic Party.”

This counterfeit video displayed the text of a made-up quote from me: “Apparently, there’s a fissure somewhere in the US that leads straight to hell; otherwise, I don’t understand where all these devils from the Democratic Party are coming from.” That’s quite the analysis. The video noted that “information from David Corn’s book will further damage the Democrats’ reputation and standing ahead of the elections.”

Here are screenshots from that video:

To be clear, none of this is true—though Enemies of Democracy for Dummies is not a bad idea for a book.

Again, a lawyer for Mother Jones reached out to X. But by then, it was the weekend, and this fake CNN video claiming I had published a book full of dirt on Democrats that would affect the election remained online. It looked as if it initially drew nearly 200,000 views, but I was reliably informed that Matryoshka was using bots to juice this number and that this post likely had only reached a few thousand X users.

As with the previous fake and nonsensical video reporting that Mother Jones had revealed a $289 million payment from the DNC to CNN’s chief for pro-trans coverage, this one seemed a bit too silly to have much impact. It was more of an irritation than a cause of great concern.

Then came other fake videos.

Matryoshka, using old bot accounts created up to 12 years ago, spewed out at least nine sham Mother Jones videos, with each one promoting an outrageous but spurious allegation about a Democratic candidate. One “revealed” that a Democratic senatorial candidate “is a closeted gay man who hides his sexual orientation in order to maintain a luxurious lifestyle.” It said he had previously been accused of “embezzling public funds to pay for the services of male sex workers.”

With ominous synth music playing, this video segues to footage of me and written text in which I purportedly state that in my Enemies of Democracy for Dummies book “I present evidence” this Democratic candidate “dated underaged boys and had sexual relations with them.” The quote continues: “As a gay man, I find it outrageous that a gay man would hide behind a woman to maintain his lavish lifestyle.” (Not that it matters, but I’m not gay.) The video ends with a card saying, “Read more at MotherJones.com.”

Throughout this one-and-a-half-minute video, the Mother Jones logo appears in the top right corner.

The other videos are all in the same style. (For obvious reasons, I am not linking to them or mentioning the candidates by name.) They claim that a Democratic candidate for governor who served in Vietnam “is suspected of killing 37 civilians” in a massacre during that war, that another Democratic gubernatorial candidate recruited minors into sex work and “while working for the Girl Scouts…organized sex parties for members of the Democratic Party,” that a third Democratic candidate for governor caused “a fatal car accident while under the influence of alcohol,” and that another Democratic gubernatorial nominee sold crack to college students, “resulting in 17 deaths,” and so on.

Each of these videos features me offering a colorful quote about the allegation and noting it’s straight out of Enemies of Democracy for Dummies. Similar to the bogus video about the DNC payment to the CNN chief, some of these X posts show nearly 200,000 views. But the real numbers are likely much lower. They have not, as of this writing, gone viral. (X did not respond immediately to a request to delete the posts with these videos.)

So the journalist who wrote a book to call attention to Putin’s disinformation crusade against American democracy is now being used by Moscow’s disinformation operatives to subvert the midterm elections for Trump’s benefit.

I’ve been asked by colleagues and friends if this is frightening. Not yet. Perhaps these phony videos are meant to be a brushback pitch. Mostly, it’s unnerving—a demonstration of how easy it is to be misrepresented and exploited by unidentified scoundrels. And, as we all know, it’s tough to beat back a lie on the internet. We’re all vulnerable to a cyber assault.

There are five weeks to go to Election Day. How extensive might Putin’s war on the midterms become? How far will he go to boost Trump and the Republicans? If Trump tries to spark chaos and a crisis with accusations of vote fraud or actions to interfere with the election and the vote tally, Putin’s disinformation army can be expected to do whatever it can to bolster any false claims and conspiracy theories flying about—or to cook up its own.

One reason I wrote How Russia Won was to counter the false “Russia, Russia, Russia” narrative peddled relentlessly for years by Trump, Republicans, MAGA influencers, and right-wing media personalities who have denied Russia has been covertly intervening in US elections. By echoing Putin’s own denials, these useful idiots have been complicit in a foreign adversary’s attack on American democracy. My point was to show the United States has been under continuous assault from Moscow, as Russia has schemed to assist Trump and the Republicans. With this disinformation operation incorporating truly fake news about me, Putin’s Matryoshka crew has proved the premise of my book.

If you happened to miss the promotional video for How Russia Won, narrated by Nick Offerman, here it is:

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

Several years ago, Jason Sosnoff, a friend and veteran film producer (The Alto Knights, The Survivor, Rock the Kasbah, The Wizard of Lies, and many others), told me he wanted to produce a documentary that would examine the increased political division within the United States and the possibilities to bridge the yawning gap. One of his inspirations was Seeds of Peace, an organization that runs a summer camp in Maine that brings together Palestinian and Israeli teens for difficult conversations and typical camp activities—during which the attendees tend to bond with one another. Could this be done, he wondered, with Americans from the left and the right and be filmed by a crew that didn’t take sides?

I was a tad skeptical about finding a way to examine our MAGA-fied world that could both be neutral and focus on the potential to surmount the bitter divide. Still, I participated in a few early brainstorming sessions and then watched from afar as Jason pursued the project. Eventually, he and his collaborators moved from the camp notion to the idea of zeroing in on a real-life conflict within American politics. And I am delighted to report they have scored big with Bucks County, USA, an engaging and fascinating five-part documentary now streaming on PBS and airing on local PBS stations.

The series, directed by Barry Levinson (The Natural, Rain Man, Bugsy, Diner, Wag the Dog, Good Morning, Vietnam, to name only a few) and Robert May (Kids for Cash), zooms in on Bucks County, an idyllic suburb northeast of Philadelphia and a purple region evenly divided between Ds and Rs, which has been roiled by political upheaval in the post-Covid years. The school shutdowns of the pandemic led to bitter elections for school board members that resulted in GOP candidates funded by a local conservative venture capitalist gaining a 6-3 majority. That battle provoked bitter splits in the community and morphed into sharp discord over culture-war issues: the display of the Pride flag in local schools, the banning of books in school libraries, the treatment of LGBTQ students, and the role of DEI.

As Bucks County, USA chronicles the intense conflict—which included vitriolic name-calling, death threats, and combative school board meetings—the series follows the friendship of two young teens, Evi and Vanessa, whose families are on opposing sides and who strive to keep their relationship intact through the turmoil. What makes that tougher is that Vanessa’s dad, Paul Martino, is the businessman bankrolling conservative school board candidates in Bucks County and elsewhere. Her mom, Aarati Martino, ends up running for a board seat.

The Battle of Bucks County is something of a microcosm of what’s going on in Trump’s America. But the filmmakers don’t dwell on that. They’re interested in seeing what’s fueling this feuding and ill will at the ground level—everyone says what they care most about is the kids—and they give center stage to the participants in the school board wars who try (or who say they are trying) to engage productively with their opponents in search of common ground.

Levinson and May do not take a side. Everyone gets their say. The libs proclaim they want to protect marginalized kids. The conservatives insist they are defending the rights of parents to raise their children as they see best and protect them from left-wing indoctrination. “Fascists!” yells one camp. “Groomers!” shouts the other.

The evenhandedness of Bucks County, USA might irk some viewers. When Martino—who yearns to be seen as a good guy—says, “The fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals in modern times: Conservatives think that liberals have bad policies; liberals think conservatives are bad people,” the filmmakers could have asked him, “Have you paid attention to Donald Trump or watched Fox News?” Trump and right-wing media have been demonizing liberals for years. (Radicals! Communists! Traitors! Perverts!) Yet the filmmakers refrain from challenging the assumptions—and, in some instances, the false premises—driving the rancor. Through all the tumult, they stay true to their vow of neutrality.

The contentious school board contests offer a compelling narrative. It seems the future of this once bucolic community—and perhaps that of the entire nation—is riding on what were once considered to be minor elections. Now they feel like life-and-death matters, and you want to know who’s going to win. (No spoilers here.) This yields a wonderful and thought-provoking study of what ails us—from big-money politics to the increased presence of bad-faith accusations in our national discourse. Though the filmmakers take no position on who and what is to blame, this marvelous series provides enough material for you to reach your own conclusion and to ponder how we might address the divisions we confront as a nation. If we can.

There’s been a lot of commentary about Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with observers on the left and right agreeing it was a bust. Trump, as he so relishes doing, embraced a repressive dictator, offering him the highest honors—which included meeting him at the airport—without, as far as we know, winning any concessions from Xi (other than a loan of two pandas to Zoo Atlanta that was arranged months before the summit). We can be certain that Trump did not press Xi on any human rights issues, as was once customary for an American president. Gone are those days.

Throughout the visit, I kept waiting for a commentator or reporter to note a bombshell that appeared in John Bolton’s 2020 tell-all memoir, The Room Where It Happened, which recounted his tumultuous tenure as national security adviser during the first Trump presidency. In the book, Bolton related what happened at a Trump-Xi summit in Japan in 2019, during a conversation between the two at which only interpreters were present. At issue was the Chinese government’s construction of detention camps to imprison hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, an ethnic group long repressed by Beijing.

Bolton wrote, “According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

As AP noted at the time of the book’s publication, “Trump’s alleged comment to Xi was at odds with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement last week condemning China’s treatment of the Uighurs.” And about that time, Trump signed legislation noting US opposition to China’s detention in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwest China, of more than a million people from assorted ethnic groups, including the Uighurs. Many of the detained were subjected to forced labor and torture.

Yet whatever Trump was doing legislation-wise at that point, he was giving Xi the green light to construct concentration camps. I caught no mention of this in the news coverage of last week's summit. I bet it didn’t come up during the state dinner, when Trump and Xi dined on sesame-crusted sea bass, braised baby bok choy, and roasted garden eggplant.

“How Lucky,” Kurt Vile and John Prine. There’s still a lot to be angry about regarding the Covid pandemic, particularly the tens of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of avoidable deaths that occurred as Trump mismanaged the crisis. One of the many tragedies of the pandemic that I think of often is the death of John Prine, who passed away on April 7, 2020, due to complications caused by Covid.

Prine was a master of American songwriting who inspired Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and many others. He left behind 18 studio albums brimming with astonishing compositions. He had the uncanny ability to write relatively simple and straightforward tunes overflowing with insightful observations of the full breadth of the human condition. He’s been called the “Mark Twain of songwriting,” which is a compliment to Twain.

Because his catalogue is so large and his career spanned decades, it’s still possible to come across Prine gems that you might have missed. That happened to me recently, when I heard a version of his 1979 song “How Lucky” performed by Prine and Kurt Vile, a singer-songwriter and former lead guitarist for the War on Drugs. It was released in 2020, a few months after Prine’s death. The pair had performed it at the Grand Ole Opry on New Year’s Eve, as that horrible year was about to start. Three months later, Prine would be gone.