The Congressional investigations into claims of Russian interference into the 2016 election has unearthed evidence that fake accounts – which may be able to be tied to Russia – paid for political advertising on Facebook in the run up to November 9th, 2016.
There are many ongoing investigations into Russian interference, with the House Intelligence Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Committee pursuing the same question as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Last Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. was interviewed for 5 hours by the Senate Judiciary Committee over news from the New York Times that indicated that he met with Russians before the 2016 election.
Now after an internal review of Facebook on Wednesday, it was found by the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators that unknowingly it sold about $100,000 of political advertisements to the fake accounts which were believed to be operating in Russia. These 3,000 ads were bought between June 2015 and May 2017.
Responding to this new development, Senator Mark Warner, top democrat on the committee requested similar investigations across all social media sites, including twitter, believing this to be the tip of the iceberg. He said, “I think the public needs to know what kind of misinformation and disinformation might be appearing on their Facebook news feed or their Twitter news feed.”
Facebook, which has since the disclosure, closed 470 fake accounts has also shared the findings of its internal investigation with Mueller.
