In one of the first concrete examples of a foreign interference campaign targeting the midterm elections, the Department of Justice today announced a criminal complaint charging Russian national Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova with conspiracy to defraud the United States, overseeing financial operations for a multinational social media influence campaign tied to the Russian government.
According to the complaint, from 2014 to the present, Khusyaynova served as the paymaster for a campaign, dubbed Operation Lakhta, that was designed in part to enable interference “with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2018 elections.”