American flag waves outside the US Department of Justice Building in Washington.
Credit: Reuters Photo
The Department of Justice has begun a broad criminal investigation into Americans who have worked with Russia's state television networks, signaling an aggressive effort to combat the Kremlin's influence operations leading up to the presidential election in November, according to US officials briefed on the inquiry.
This month, FBI agents searched the homes of two prominent figures with connections to Russian state media: Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and critic of US foreign policy, and Dimitri K. Simes, an adviser to former President Donald Trump's first presidential campaign in 2016. Prosecutors have not announced charges against either of the men.
More searches are expected soon, some of the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss investigations. Criminal charges are also possible, they said.
The investigation comes in the wake of the Biden administration's official intelligence findings that Russia's state news organizations, including the global news channel RT, are working with its intelligence agencies to sway elections around the world.
Those efforts include November's contest between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. For a third time, according to the officials and public statements, the Kremlin's propaganda apparatus has thrown itself behind Trump's candidacy, creating online news outlets and fake videos to denigrate President Joe Biden and, more recently, Harris.
The investigation so far has focused on potential violations of the economic sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and a law that requires the disclosure of lobbying efforts on behalf of foreign governments.
The government's investigation is politically fraught, reprising the furiously partisan debate over Russia's influence in the 2016 presidential campaign. By targeting Americans working with news organizations, even if they are state-run, the inquiry could also bump up against the First Amendment's protection of rights to free speech.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned July 29 that Russia was exploiting "witting and unwitting Americans" to create and spread narratives that were favorable to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"These personalities," the office said in a statement, "post content on social media, write for various websites with overt and covert ties to the Russian government, and conduct other media efforts."
Ritter, who has worked as a contributing writer for RT, said in a telephone interview that an hourslong search of his house in Delmar, New York, on August 7 seemed to be an effort to intimidate him for expressing his political views about the United States, Russia and the war in Ukraine.
FBI agents and state police seized mobile phones, computers and hard drives but did not arrest him. "It's an absolute frontal assault on the Constitution of the United States," he said.
The extent of the crackdown remains unclear, and the Justice Department and other officials across Washington declined to discuss it when asked.
In recent months, however, the Biden administration has grown increasingly alarmed by Russia's influence operations targeting the United States -- and seems willing to act more forcefully.
Last month, the Justice Department moved to shut down a furtive campaign aimed at sowing discord in the United States and other countries and spreading Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine.
Working with the governments of Canada and the Netherlands, as well as with officials at Elon Musk's social media platform, X, the department took down 968 inauthentic accounts. The Russians created and operated the accounts using commercially available artificial intelligence tools.
In affidavits released with the announcement, officials explicitly linked the effort to Russia's Federal Security Service and RT.
Russia's state television networks broadcast in English and other foreign languages, acting as a global megaphone for the views of Putin, who routinely depicts the United States and its allies as a hegemonic power bent on world domination.
Ritter, who traveled to Russia and to occupied parts of Ukraine in January, said the warrant to search his home-made reference to an investigation that involved the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the federal law that requires Americans to disclose lobbying and political activities on behalf of foreign governments.
Simes, a Soviet-born U.S. citizen, is being investigated for, among other crimes, violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the legal foundation for imposing economic sanctions, some of the officials said.
On August 13, agents descended on a wooded 132-acre estate near the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia that Simes and his wife had bought in July 2021, according to Rappahannock News, a local newspaper that first reported the search.
Simes, 76, has been a fixture of U.S. foreign policy debates in Washington since he emigrated from the Soviet Union as a young man in 1973.
He served as an informal adviser on Soviet affairs to President Richard Nixon, who, in 1994, appointed him to a think tank he founded, now known as the Center for the National Interest.
In 2016, Simes hosted Trump, then a presidential candidate, for a speech in which he called for improved relations with Putin's government. He also introduced Trump to the Russian ambassador at the time.
Simes also passed on to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner what he believed to be incriminating information that the Russians knew about former President Bill Clinton, the husband of Trump's Democratic opponent at the time, according to the final report of the investigation by Robert Mueller into Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign.
Although Simes was interviewed by Mueller's investigators and cited repeatedly in the report in 2019, he was not accused of wrongdoing. He stepped down from the Center for the National Interest in 2022, and, according to an interview Friday on Sputnik, another of Russia's television networks, he has been in Russia since October 2022.
Since 2018, he has hosted a weekly talk show, "The Big Game," on one of Russia's state television broadcasters, Channel One.
In the interview on Sputnik, Simes said that he did not know the reason for the search but speculated that it was an attempt to stifle anyone who would improve relations between Russia and the United States. He said his bank accounts had been frozen, except one where his Social Security checks were deposited, and expressed concern that agents had seized paintings in his home from Soviet and Russian avant-garde artists.
"It clearly is an attempt to intimidate, not only somebody from Russia, but just anyone who goes against official policies and particularly against the deep state," Simes, who could not immediately be reached for comment, said during the interview.
Since 2017, the Department of Justice has required RT to register as a foreign agent, not as a news organization, reflecting the government's control over its operations. There is no clear legal precedent that dictates whether journalists working for a news organization would fall under the requirements of the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
Ritter, in the interview, said he had been a contributing writer for RT, among other news organizations, since 2020. He said he was paid per article -- a sum he described as an industry norm of $150 to $300 -- but faced no more editorial control than what editors typically did in assigning and editing work.
When the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022, he became an outspoken defender of Russia's invasion, often reflecting Russia's effort to blame the United States and NATO for the conflict.
"The only reason why I can believe that they're doing this," he said, "is if there's some national security interest where they believe somehow, I am actively conspiring with Russia against the interests of the United States, that I have become more than just a propagandist, that I become something more like, you know, a weapon of disinformation."