The US government cracks down pro-Kremlin agents seeking to manipulate the election

The Cold War might be long over, but that doesn't mean that the tactics used to control and manipulate the populace are gone, particularly when it comes to propaganda.

The New York Times reports that the US Department of Justice has begun a broad investigation into Americans who have worked with Russia’s state media.

According to The New York Times, the move represents a clear and direct effort to fight the Kremlin’s influence over public opinion in the United States.

Particularly, there’s concern about the Russian government, headed by Vladimir Putin, influencing the upcoming US presidential elections.

US intelligence officers told Reuters that the Kremlin is regarded as “a predominant threat” to US elections, with many tools to back a preferred candidate and destabilize the United States.

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin has repeatedly rejected these accusations.

Reuters writes that the FBI has searched the homes of two US citizens due to their ties with Russian state media.

One of them is Dimitri K. Simes, who worked as an advisor for Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign back in 2016, moved back to Russia in 2022, and currently hosts as a weekly talk show for the state television network Russia-1.

Simes declared to Sputnik, another Kremlin-controlled media outlet, that the FBI search was “an attempt to frighten me, to discredit me, and to do damage to my ability to live in the United States or even visit the United States, and to do damage to my finances”.

The other American citizen searched by the FBI so far include  former UN weapons inspector and US military analyst Scott Ritter, who is described by The New York Times as highly critical of US foreign policy.

Ritter, who was convicted in 2011 for trying to have sex with a minor online, claims to have been an external contributor for Russia Today since 2001.

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The New York Times highlights that more searches are expected in the future, and the Department of Justice doesn’t dismiss the possibility of criminal charges.

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