The banner on the bridge
The online troll games entered the real world two days after the election
On Nov. 10, a banner was removed from the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, U.S. Park Police confirmed to NBC News.
"Goodbye Murderer" read the captioned portrait of President Barack Obama, according to photos recovered from online archives tweeted by an identified Russian troll whose activity appeared in the NBC News database.
The troll said he and fellow "political activists" had hung the banner. "Goodbye to murderer @BarackObama #ThanksObama" tweeted the account, @LeroyLovesUsa, using the hashtag for a popular meme.
The account, which portrayed itself as that of a military veteran turned activist, also tweeted the images to @realDonaldTrump.
Leroy's tweets got hundreds of likes, and retweets and were amplified by other identified Russian trolls.
As they spread across social media sites, the Russian state-owned media organization RT reported on the banner.
A spokesman for the U.S. Park Police, Sgt. James Dingeldein, confirmed that a park police officer had removed the banner and that it was destroyed this fall. A Freedom of Information request filed with the park police by NBC News wasn't fulfilled before publication.
In January 2016, a pro-Kremlin art group called Glavplakat claimed responsibility for hanging a Shepard Fairey-style poster of Obama opposite the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with the word "Killer." The group has hung other banners criticizing opponents of the state around the Russian capital tightly controlled by the Putin regime.
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Who hung the banner in D.C. or took the photo, or what their connection to the Russian troll who tweeted it remains a mystery.
NBC News did not find any records of the images being posted anywhere online else before the account posted them.