FACT CHECK: Russian Interference Went Far Beyond 'Facebook Ads' Kushner Described

In describing Russia's efforts leading up to the 2016 election, Kushner emphasized what he called the relatively small amount of money Russian agents spent advertising on social media.

"They said they spent $160,000. I spent $160,000 on Facebook in three hours during the campaign," Kushner said. "If you look at the magnitude of what they did and what they accomplished, I think the ensuing investigations have been way more harmful to our country."




Fact check: Were Facebook ads the extent of Russian election interference?

The short answer: No.

The long answer: The redacted version of Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's report revealed a years-long plot by the Russian government to interfere in the U.S. that investigators called "sweeping and systemic."

As to the amount of money expended on Facebook ads, the company said Russian operatives did spend less than $200,000 on advertising on the platform — but that doesn't account for the organic content the operatives created and shared.

Not only were influence specialists within Russia's Internet Research Agency purchasing normal advertisements, they were authoring their own posts, memes and other content as they posed as American users.

They also reached out to politically active Americans, posing as like-minded supporters, and helped organize rallies and other events in the real world.

Facebook says the Internet Research Agency may have reached as many as 126 million people. Separately, Twitter announced that about 1.4 million people may have been in contact with IRA-controlled accounts.

The social media aspect of the interference was just one dimension. Cyberattackers also went after political victims in the United States — whose emails and other data were released publicly to embarrass them — and state elections officials and other targets. And there may have been other avenues of interference as well.

The origins of the scheme

Russian operatives lied to get into the U.S. as early as 2014 on "intelligence-gathering missions." They traveled across the country to get the lay of the land before ramping up efforts to try to interfere with American politics.

By September 2016, two months before the U.S. presidential election, the Internet Research Agency was working with an overall monthly budget that reached over $1.25 million. It employed hundreds of employees, a graphics department, a data analysis department, a search-engine optimization department, an IT department and a finance department, according to an indictment filed last year by Mueller's team.

And it hasn't stopped.