Russia reportedly paid a former Florida cop to pump out anti-Harris deepfakes and disinformation
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Image
A former Florida sheriff who moved to Russia amid an FBI investigation is a Kremlin-backed propagandist responsible for viral deepfake videos and misinformation targeting Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to European intelligence documents reviewed by the Washington Post.
The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, gave funding to John Mark Dougan, the operator of several fake news websites. According to documents reviewed by the Post, Dugan was responsible for several websites that seemingly published fake local news, including DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle, and Atlanta Observer. The documents, which mostly focus on the time between March 2021 and August of this year, show that Dougan worked with Yury Khoroshevsky, an officer…