U.S. Operations Involving Political Rallies

¶The IRA organized and promoted political rallies inside the United States while posing as U.S. grassroots activists. First, the IRA used one of its preexisting social media personas (Facebook groups and Twitter accounts, for example) to announce and promote the event. The IRA then sent a large number of direct messages to followers of its social media account asking them to attend the event. From those who responded with interest in attending, the IRA then sought a U.S. person to serve as the event's coordinator. In most cases, the IRA account operator would tell the U.S. person that they personally could not attend the event due to some preexisting conflict or because they were somewhere else in the United States.⁸²⁸² 8/20/16 Facebook Message, ID 100009922908461 (Matt Skiber) to ID . The IRA then further promoted the event by contacting U.S. media about the event and directing them to speak with the coordinator.⁸³⁸³ See, e.g., 7/21/16 Email, joshmilton024@gmail.com to [Redacted: (b) (6), (b) (7)(C)] ; 7/21/16 Email, joshmilton024@gmail.com to [Redacted: (b) (6), (b) (7)(C)] After the event, the IRA posted videos and photographs of the event to the IRA's social media accounts.⁸⁴⁸⁴ @march_for_trump 6/25/16 Tweet (posting photos from rally outside Trump Tower).

¶The Office identified dozens of U.S. rallies organized by the IRA. The earliest evidence of a rally was a "confederate rally" in November 2015.⁸⁵⁸⁵ Instagram ID 2228012168 (Stand For Freedom) 11/3/15 Post ("Good evening buds! Well I am planning to organize a confederate rally [. . .] in Houston on the 14 of November and I want more people to attend."). The IRA continued to organize rallies even after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The attendance at rallies varied. Some rallies appear to have drawn few (if any) participants, while others drew hundreds. The reach and success of these rallies was closely monitored through internal IRA documents that measured audience. For example, IRA documents from May 2016 (reproduced in part below) show a graphic of the United States, listing past and future rallies organized by the IRA, the size of the rally, and the names of any U.S. groups that had been recruited to assist or participate in the IRA-organized rally.

From June 201 6 until the end of the presidential campaign, ahnost all of the U.S. rallies organized by the IRA focused on the U.S . election, often promoting the Trump Campaign and opposing the Clinton Campaign. Pro-Tnunp rallies included three in New York; a series of pro-Trnmp rallies in Florida in August 2016; and a series of pro-Tnunp rallies in October 2016 in Pennsylvania. The Florida rallies drew the attention of the Tnunp Campaign, which posted about the Miami rally on candidate Trump's Facebook account (as discussed b elow).86

Many of the same IRA employees who oversaw the IRA's social media accounts also conducted the day-to-da recmitino for olitical rallies inside the United States.

IRA Poster/or Pennsylvan;a Rallies organized by the IRA