Giuliani latching onto fake story about Yovanovitch's "list" shows he is just a stooge of Russian operators

NBC News is reporting that Rudy Giuliani—fresh off his “fact-finding” tour of Europe—is claiming that former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was “denying visas to Ukrainians who wanted to come to US and explain Dem corruption in Ukraine. She was OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE and that's not the only thing she was doing. She at minimum enabled Ukrainian collusion." He told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that "I didn't need her out of the way. I forced her out because she's corrupt. I came back with a document that will show, unequivocally, that she committed perjury when she said she turned down the visa for Mr. (ousted former prosecutor Viktor) Shokin because of corruption." Giuliani also claimed that Yovanovitch, “bad-mouthed Trump” and supposedly drew-up a “do-not-prosecute list” who recently fired prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko allegedly claimed he was given in 2016 for persons that he was not allowed to “prosecute.” Who were the people on the alleged list? “Anti-corruption experts and activists.” Yovanovitch denies the claim the she made up such a list; however, if she had in fact done so, it is interesting to note that Lutsenko was not interested in investigating corruption—especially his own—but just those people who were giving him trouble.

This is kind of person who Giuliani is collecting his “damaging” information from. All of the diplomats who testified during the impeachment hearings stated that characters like Shokin and Lutsenko were not to be trusted, since they were providing false information to appease Trump. Apparently this was done with the belief that Trump would then use pressure tactics to either help them stay in power or damage their internal critics. And now we are learning from the social networking research and disinformation detection company Graphika that Russian players were intimately involved in a social media disinformation campaign against Yovanovitch, as well making efforts in the UK to undermine a trade agreement with the U.S. by releasing secret negotiating material and stirring up discontent among the British people.

Graphika traced this disinformation to a Russian operation called Secondary Infektion, which in an effort to conceal itself, used rapid-fire, single-use accounts. The operation’s frequent use of Reddit was due to its lack of moderators to interfere with them, and the mistaken belief that Reddit had a wide footprint in which to disseminate fraudulent information. Still, conspiracy theorists on the right like Giuliani were still able to get wind of this “information,” and naturally Trump’s Republican defenders in the House ran with it. Graphika noted that

The operators behind this campaign clearly paid attention to the news in the US and adjusted their operation to take advantage of developing divisive issues. On March 20, 2019, The Hill columnist John Solomon interviewed Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko and reported the claim that the then-US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, had handed Lutsenko a list of Ukrainians who were to be shielded from prosecution for corruption. The claim was false: Lutsenko later explained that he had accused Yovanovitch of wanting such a list, rather than her demanding one. The false claim featured prominently in Yovanovitch’s later testimony to the investigation into US President Donald Trump’s possible impeachment.

Eight days after Solomon’s article broke, on March 28, 2019, an asset from this campaign, u/McDownes, posted a comment and two URLs under a Politico article on corruption in Eastern Europe. Despite the Scottish surname, the user wrote in grammatically incorrect English characteristic of non-native English speakers, struggling with the possessive genitive (“the very Kiev’s authorities”) and the definite article (“acting only under the US instructions”). u/ Yovanovitch list had been circulating “on Facebook communities oppositional to the current President of Ukraine.” The post provided a screenshot, but without source links. It argued that the “leak” was part of a feud between then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and US President Donald Trump: Most likely Poroshenko himself ordered to set Yovanovitch up trying to gain support of both Donald Trump and the Republicans at the elections.

However, Trump did not appreciate such an attempt. He made it clear he never forgave Poroshenko’s support of Clinton at the elections in the United States. After receiving an aggressive reaction, Poroshenko instantly passed the buck to Lutsenko, and confirmed he completely backed Yovanovitch. Yet, the last move was still made by the White House. The list of the names that were not mentioned in the sensational interview by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine has magically appeared on the web.

Well, first-off it is interesting to note the suggestion of a  possible "real" reason for Trump's unfriendliness toward the Ukraine. At any rate, even Lutsenko’s denial of receiving the “list” has not stopped the disinformation campaign by Trump’s defenders. Graphika noted that the fake list provided by Russian operatives had initially passed unnoticed in the U.S., but was picked-up by Ukrainian media, and from there it was “passed on” to Western media. Although the Russians apparently “just” wanted to discredit U.S. diplomacy in the Ukraine, the disinformation made its way into American politics anyways.

Based on information provided by Graphika, Reddit banned 61 accounts that were “part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia.”  Graphika noted that “Many of the stories were demonstrably false, based on forged documents or nonexistent interviews; all were amplified by networks of fake accounts across a wide range of social platforms and forums where users could post content without moderation, including the BuzzFeed Community, Reddit, Medium, quora[.]com, and fringe German website homment[.]com…Most of the stories seemed designed to create divisions between Western countries, especially the United States and United Kingdom, but also Poland and Germany and Germany and the United States.

So Russian interference continues. Graphika suggests that the Russians have been trying out new ideas on how to escape detection, such as in the “single-use” account strategy, although by its very nature it’s reach is usually not consequential unless picked-up right away and disseminated by those gullible people or organizations “specializing” in conspiracy theories and trafficking in false information. The case of Yovanovitch and her phony list and the way it was latched onto by Giuliani and Trump’s Republican fanatics shows that it remains just as dangerous as before it was “exposed.”