It now appears, however, that Sanders may have had a reason to suspect Russia was again injecting itself into the U.S. electoral process, repeating some of what occurred in 2016.
In a February 2018 indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three companies that were alleged to have orchestrated the social media scheme, prosecutors alleged that the group “engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.”
Prosecutors alleged that in February 2016, while Clinton and Sanders were locked in a bitter battle for the Democratic nomination, an internal memo was circulated at the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which prosecutors said led the online effort, instructing their paid online trolls to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump—we support them).”
The Internet Research Agency was bankrolled by a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin, according to U.S. officials.