Russia paid a former Florida cop to pump out anti-Harris deepfakes and disinformation

A former Florida sheriff who moved to Russia amid an FBI investigation is a Kremlin-backed propagandist responsible for viral deepfake videos and misinformation targeting Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to European intelligence documents reviewed by the Washington Post.

The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, gave funding to John Mark Dougan, the operator of several fake news websites. According to documents reviewed by the Post, Dugan was responsible for several websites that seemingly published fake local news, including DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle, and Atlanta Observer. The documents, which mostly focus on the time between March 2021 and August of this year, show that Dougan worked with Yury Khoroshevsky, an officer within the GRU’s Unit 29155. Two European security officials told the Post that Khoroshevsky’s unit handles sabotage, political interference operations, and cyberwarfare targeting the West.

Dougan also reportedly worked with the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, a Moscow-based institute founded by far-right Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin. The center’s director, Valery Korovin, also works closely with Khoroshevsky, according to documents reviewed by the Post. Khoroshevsky started depositing payments in Dougan’s bank account in April 2022 and frequently met with him and Dougan, the documents show. Dougan received some of the payments after the websites he created had difficulty accessing Western AI generators.

Disinformation experts and the government have been sounding the alarm about Russian operatives attempting to influence the 2024 presidential election. The Biden administration has alleged that Russian influence campaigns have operated websites and social media accounts to influence the election, and that they’ve created fake social media personas to spread disinformation. In July, the Department of Justice seized two domain names and more than 900 media accounts it claims were part of an “AI-enhanced” Russian bot farm.

Dougan may also be responsible for disseminating a video involving false sexual misconduct allegations against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, disinformation experts told the Post. The person in the video claims to be Matthew Metro, a former student of Walz’s — but the real Matthew Metro has debunked both the video and the claims. 

NewsGuard, a company that tracks disinformation online, told the Post that Dougan was the initial source for the claims. Eleven days before the video was posted, Dougan appeared on a podcast with an anonymous man who claimed to be a former exchange student from Kazakhstan who was abused by Walz.

Dougan told the Post he wasn’t behind DC Weekly and other sites and said he didn’t know Korovin or Khoroshenky. He said he worked as an IT consultant for an American company.

“I will tell you hypothetically, if they were my sites,” he said, “then I am merely fighting fire with fire because the West is fucking lying about everything that’s happening,” Dougan said. “They are lying about everything.”