According to a first-person report from David Corn published by Mother Jones, Russian disinformation operatives have once again inserted themselves into American electoral politics, this time targeting James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas. On Tuesday, an X account attributed to a Texas man named Zyron Lewis posted a video in which a person claiming to be Lewis alleged that Talarico sexually assaulted him in 2012, when Lewis said he was a middle-school student. Talarico was indeed a middle-school teacher in 2012, and there was a real Zyron Lewis who had been one of his students. But the video was false: the real Lewis told a fact-checking site that he had never been abused by Talarico, and X subsequently suspended the fraudulent account. The incident had an all-too-familiar ring, Corn wrote, because it closely resembled an operation mounted by a Russian disinformation network in 2024 that fabricated a similar allegation against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, then the Democratic vice-presidential candidate. That earlier operation involved a fake video claiming Walz had inappropriately touched a foreign exchange student during his time as a high-school teacher. Disinformation trackers who analyzed the Talarico smear attributed it to the same Russian outfit, known as Storm-1516, that had targeted Walz, making the episode the latest sign that Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s disinformation agents are meddling in yet another American election.
The Talarico video was quickly debunked, but its appearance underscored a broader and more dangerous pattern. Storm-1516 is a well-known Russian influence network that has generated a steady stream of inauthentic content designed to damage Democratic candidates and fuel political chaos. For roughly a month, Corn wrote, Russian operatives have been circulating fake videos on U.S. social media platforms that hurl scurrilous allegations at Democratic office-seekers. These videos, made to resemble reports from legitimate news outlets such as CNN and Mother Jones, have falsely claimed, among other things, that a Democratic gubernatorial candidate recruited minors into sex work and organized sex parties for members of the Democratic Party while working for the Girl Scouts. Another fabricated video alleged that a different Democratic gubernatorial nominee had sold crack cocaine to college students, resulting in seventeen deaths. Some of the disinformation, Corn noted, attributed these disclosures to a nonexistent book supposedly written by him and titled Enemies of Democracy for Dummies, which was said to detail 300 criminal and scandalous acts committed by Democratic candidates. No such book exists. Corn’s actual new book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America, is a serious work of reporting that covers the decade-long twilight war Moscow has waged against the United States, including disinformation and influence operations directed at every U.S. election since 2016 to help Donald Trump.
The recent Russian falsehoods hurled at Democratic candidates appear, so far, to have been limited in their impact, but the threat remains active. Corn argued that the disinformation operations show Putin wants Trump to hold on to Congress, a conclusion that is hardly surprising given Trump’s moves to tighten his bond with Putin and reduce or end U.S. support for Ukraine. Putin’s operatives, Corn warned, are most likely preparing to do what they can to exacerbate any chaos or crisis Trump attempts to generate before, during, and after Election Day. The Talarico smear may have been smothered before it could damage his campaign, but it is a warning sign. To illustrate how dangerous these Russian operations can become, Corn turned to the story of the 2024 Walz smear, which he details extensively in his book. On October 5, 2024, John Mark Dougan, a former Florida police officer indicted for extortion and wiretapping who had fled to Russia and built a vast network of fake news sites to spread pro-Russia propaganda, appeared on a podcast called Red Pill News, hosted by Zak Paine, a fringe figure who had promoted QAnon conspiracy theories and said he was at the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 riot. Dougan brought on an anonymous guest referred to as “Rick,” who claimed to be from Kazakhstan and alleged that in 2004 and 2005 he had been a foreign exchange student at the Minnesota high school where Walz taught and coached football, and that Walz had inappropriately touched him.
The Walz allegation, Corn recounted, should have been met with immediate suspicion. As Dougan sipped wine and nodded along, Rick told a long and involved story about his interactions with Walz, which Paine characterized as classic grooming by a pedophile. But there was a major problem with the story beyond its connection to Dougan: Rick said he attended the high school through a U.S. State Department-funded exchange program, yet NewsGuard, a disinformation tracking site, soon discovered that the program had no record of a student from Kazakhstan attending that school at the time. Despite that, the Red Pill News episode was carried on Rumble and other platforms. Two days later, an X account for The Miami Chronicle, one of the phony news sites in the Storm-1516 network, began sharing a video of Rick’s allegations and promoting it to conservative commentators with large audiences, asking whether Elon Musk “needs to hear about this.” On October 12, Juanita Broaddrick, a right-wing social media influencer who had decades earlier accused Bill Clinton of rape, posted the footage and drew nearly half a million views. The story truly went viral after an account using the handle Black Insurrectionist amplified the allegation; a clip of the episode was viewed over 800,000 times, and the account then shared supposed emails from “Rick” that other users quickly proved to be fakes. Black Insurrectionist flooded the zone with roughly two dozen X posts that promoted the smear, amassing more than 33 million views according to Wired, before the account disappeared. The Associated Press later reported that the account was linked to a 51-year-old white man named Jason Palmer in upstate New York, who had a history of drug addiction, alleged business fraud, and nearly $7 million in back taxes owed to New York State.
The smear spread further through other right-wing accounts, including a video claiming to feature another former student alleging abuse by Walz, which was viewed more than 4 million times before being deleted; it was later identified as a deepfake. The same account that posted that deepfake also disseminated a fake video of mail-in ballots being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which disinformation researchers attributed to Storm-1516. Well-known figures amplified the falsehood: Jack Posobiec, a MAGA activist and onetime Pizzagate proponent who now worked for the GOP, and Candace Owens, a right-wing influencer and conspiracist, each brought the Walz allegation to large audiences. Owens’ podcast discussion of the phony story drew 630,000 views. Foreign newspapers picked it up as well. Dougan, the former Florida cop who had effectively launched the operation, fanned the flames by publishing an article on over 100 of his bogus websites that combined the deepfake video, the Red Pill News episode, and Black Insurrectionist’s posts. The operation’s Russian roots became clearer when The Washington Post reported that Russian documents obtained from a European intelligence service showed Dougan had received funds from Russian military intelligence, as well as financing from the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, an organization set up by the pro-Putin far-right Russian nationalist Aleksandr Dugin. Dougan’s contact at the Center was its head, Valery Korovin, who had been honored by Putin in 2023 for “services to the Fatherland” and “carrying out special tasks.” Four years earlier, Korovin had proposed to Russia’s Ministry of Defense that the Center mount an “internet war against the U.S. on its territory,” arguing that cyber operations and gray-zone warfare were the best way for Moscow to confront the militarily superior United States and achieve strategic parity. Dougan denied all of this and claimed the documents were fake.
Disinformation researchers had little doubt that the attack on Walz was a Russian active measure orchestrated by Storm-1516. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence eventually issued a statement essentially confirming that assessment, saying that “Russian influence actors manufactured and amplified inauthentic content claiming illegal activity committed by the Democratic vice-presidential candidate during his earlier career.” At a briefing for reporters about the 2024 election, U.S. intelligence officials said they were bracing for Russian operations aimed at causing chaos on Election Day and afterward, including active measures to undermine the vote tally and even incite violence. But when Trump won the election, those operations were no longer necessary. In the current election cycle, Corn argued, the Talarico smear is an early warning that Putin’s operatives have not stopped trying to interfere in American democracy. Even if the recent false allegations against Democratic candidates have been nipped in the bud, there is still time for more attacks. The Russian effort to spread sleazy false charges against Democrats has not yet appeared to pay off, but the Walz case shows how quickly such lies can travel from a fringe podcast to millions of mainstream viewers. The real threat, Corn concluded, is not only the individual smears but the broader shadow campaign that Moscow has waged for years to help Donald Trump and his allies, a campaign that continues to pose a serious danger before, during, and after Election Day. The excerpt from How Russia Won serves as a documented account of exactly how those operations work and why they remain a grave threat to American politics.