I just found out Malcolm Nance's new book features a section on Konstantin Rykov's confession!
A little over a year ago, I stumbled upon an astonishing couple of posts on Facebook. It was from Konstantin Rykov, a former member of the Russian Duma who has been described as the Kremlin's chief online propagandist. Basically, it was a bragging confession, posted just days after the 2016 election, where Rykov claims he ran a four year online information campaign from Russia targeting US voters in support of Donald Trump. Here's my first post on it:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029322103
I forwarded it to numerous news sources but it never got any traction. Finally, after a few months, an independent journalist named Scott Stedman picked up on it for a Medium piece, and shortly thereafter noted Twitter pundit Seth Abramson started discussing it. So the story got some further traction, although sadly nothing really the mainstream media.
But I found out this weekend that former intelligence officer and media analyst Malcolm Nance actually devoted a section of his new book, "The Plot to Destroy Democracy", on Rykov's November 2016 confession!
Mind you, Nance runs in intelligence circles so it's quite possible he may have picked up on the Rykov story independently from what I found out and posted here on DU. I will say, however, that before I stumbled across the Rykov post last year, I couldn't find a single other source or person who reported on it.
Malcolm Nance has been aware of the Rykov confession from at least this April, as evidenced by this tweet:
Link to tweet
Josh Marshall
✔ @joshtpm
· 27 Apr
Have already gotten halfway through my review copy of this. Very good. pic.twitter.com/vxHpVMkFuw
Malcolm Nance
✔ @MalcolmNance
Does it have the Rykov conversation in 2012 w/Trump on Twitter?
6:26 PM - Apr 27, 2018
Either way, I'm just happy that the story is finally getting some traction from the mainstream press, after long last.
Next, I want to make sure the media becomes aware of the other shocking Rykov Facebook post, this from July 2016 (i.e., during the campaign) where he boasted (even in front of Michael McFaul) that Carter Page was in Moscow not just to give a speech, but also to meet with Russian intelligence officers.
https://www.facebook.com/konstantin.rykov/posts/10209422386386902
= new reply since forum marked as read
I clicked through Malcolm Nance and Kyle Griffin to get to this article in WaPo. Maybe you've seen this already? This could be related to your discovery of Rykov's massive project in the last day of Trump's campaign. It's about a huge number of Russians who overloaded the social media in the US in order to get "last minute" voters to decide on voting for Trump.
OMG! WTF?!
