I spent years investigating how Russian intelligence and its online proxies have waged a secret war against American democracy, and I wrote a book to expose it. The book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America, is about the shadowy campaigns of disinformation and covert influence that Moscow has run for a decade, many of them designed to help Donald Trump and the Republican Party. I ended the book with a warning: Russia would almost certainly attack the midterm elections to boost Trump and the GOP. Within days of publication, media outlets were already reporting that Russian operatives were using fake social media accounts to hurl smears at Democrats. Then, last week, that covert operation turned its attention to me. A fake version of me—a fabricated video featuring my name, my face, and my supposed words—became part of a Russian disinformation operation. After writing a book about Putin’s dirty tricks, I found myself being used by a Russian network to influence the elections in Trump’s favor. It is a bizarre, snake-eating-its-tail situation, and it is exactly the kind of thing I had been trying to warn people about.
The operation behind this is called Matryoshka, named after those iconic Russian nesting dolls. Disinformation trackers have been watching it for years. During the 2024 campaign, Matryoshka spread all sorts of lies about Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz: that Harris had an abortion as a teenager, that she was showing early signs of Alzheimer’s, that her grandfather was a communist, that her family was tied to Pfizer and Big Pharma. The group was not done with Mother Jones, the magazine where I work. When news organizations recently revealed that Matryoshka was at it again, this time producing fake videos that pretended to be CNN news segments, I reported on it. Those videos showed Hollywood celebrities trashing Democrats in outrageous terms. But Matryoshka was also generating fake CNN videos about Democratic Senate candidates. One claimed a Texas Democrat “despises” Hasidic Jews because they don’t allow gender affirmation treatment. Another said an Ohio Democrat owned a business that caused the bee population to decline by a factor of nine. A Georgia Democrat supposedly called for a complete halt to military aid to Israel and wanted all resources redirected to Ukraine. The allegations were absurd, but they were designed to look like real news and to spread quickly.
While I was working on that story, a group of anonymous activists who monitor Russian disinformation, @antibot4navalny, alerted me to something even stranger. Matryoshka had posted on X a supposed Mother Jones video claiming that the Democratic Party had paid $289 million to Mark Thompson, the head of CNN, so that the network would run reports promoting gender transition among minors. That was nonsense, but it was presented as if Mother Jones had uncovered a secret deal. I quickly published a piece exposing the lie. After a lawyer for Mother Jones contacted X, the company took down that fraudulent video. But Matryoshka was not done with Mother Jones, and it was not done with me. On Friday, the same group of monitors told me that Matryoshka had posted another fake video, this time a supposed CNN segment featuring me promoting a new book. The book was not How Russia Won. It was supposedly called Enemies of Democracy for Dummies, and the video announced that the book would feature over three hundred stories related to crimes committed by members of the Democratic Party. The video displayed a made-up quote attributed to me: “Apparently, there’s a fissure somewhere in the US that leads straight to hell; otherwise, I don’t understand where all these devils from the Democratic Party are coming from.” That is quite an analysis, and quite a thing to put in my mouth.
The fake video went on to say that information from my book would further damage the Democrats’ reputation and standing ahead of the elections. None of this was true, though I have to admit that Enemies of Democracy for Dummies is not a bad idea for a book. Again, a lawyer for Mother Jones reached out to X. But by then it was the weekend, and the fake CNN video claiming I had published a book full of dirt on Democrats remained online. It looked as if it had initially drawn nearly 200,000 views, but I was reliably informed that Matryoshka was using bots to juice that number, and that the post had likely only reached a few thousand real users. That did not make it any less unsettling. The video was professionally enough made to look like a real news segment, with my name and face attached to words I never said. It was a reminder that in this digital age, anyone can be turned into a puppet for a foreign power’s propaganda. And it was not just one video. Matryoshka, using old bot accounts created up to twelve years ago, spewed out at least nine sham Mother Jones videos, each one promoting an outrageous but completely false allegation about a Democratic candidate.
One fake video “revealed” that a Democratic Senate candidate was a closeted gay man who hid his sexual orientation to maintain a luxurious lifestyle, and that he had been accused of embezzling public funds to pay for male sex workers. With ominous synth music playing, the video cut to footage of me and written text in which I supposedly stated that in my book I presented evidence that this candidate dated underaged boys and had sexual relations with them. The fake quote continued: “As a gay man, I find it outrageous that a gay man would hide behind a woman to maintain his lavish lifestyle.” Not that it matters, but I am not gay. The video ended with a card saying, “Read more at MotherJones.com.” Throughout the one-and-a-half-minute video, the Mother Jones logo appeared in the top right corner, making it look like a legitimate product of my workplace. The other videos were all in the same style. They claimed that a Democratic candidate for governor who served in Vietnam was suspected of killing thirty-seven civilians in a massacre during the war. Another Democratic gubernatorial candidate supposedly recruited minors into sex work and, while working for the Girl Scouts, organized sex parties for members of the Democratic Party. A third candidate for governor allegedly caused a fatal car accident while under the influence of alcohol. Another Democratic gubernatorial nominee supposedly sold crack to college students, resulting in seventeen deaths. The allegations were so lurid and so obviously ridiculous that they almost seemed like a joke, but they were not a joke. They were part of a coordinated effort to poison the information environment and to make voters distrust Democrats in the final weeks before the election.
I have been asked by colleagues and friends whether this is frightening. Not yet, I tell them. Perhaps these phony videos are meant to be a brushback pitch, a warning shot to journalists and activists who have been documenting Russian interference. Mostly it is unnerving, a demonstration of how easy it is to be misrepresented and exploited by unidentified scoundrels. As we all know, it is tough to beat back a lie on the internet. Once a fake video is out there, it can be screenshotted, shared, and whispered about even after it is taken down. We are all vulnerable to a cyber assault. There are five weeks to go until Election Day. How extensive might Putin’s war on the midterms become? How far will he go to boost Trump and the Republicans? If Trump tries to spark chaos and a crisis with accusations of vote fraud or actions to interfere with the election and the vote tally, Putin’s disinformation army can be expected to do whatever it can to bolster any false claims and conspiracy theories flying about, or to cook up its own. This is not speculation. It is what they have been doing for years, and it is what they are doing right now, using my name and my face to do it.
One of the reasons I wrote How Russia Won was to counter the false “Russia, Russia, Russia” narrative peddled relentlessly for years by Trump, Republicans, MAGA influencers, and right-wing media personalities who have denied that Russia has been covertly intervening in US elections. By echoing Putin’s own denials, these useful idiots have been complicit in a foreign adversary’s attack on American democracy. My point was to show that the United States has been under continuous assault from Moscow, as Russia has schemed to assist Trump and the Republicans. With this disinformation operation incorporating truly fake news about me, Putin’s Matryoshka crew has proved the premise of my book. They have shown that no one is off limits, that the lies can be aimed at anyone, and that the goal is not just to elect a particular candidate but to undermine the very idea of truth. It is a strange and unsettling place to find myself, but it is also a clarifying one. The threat is real, it is personal, and it is happening right now. The only response is to keep doing what I have been doing: expose the lies, name the operatives, and remind people that this is not about one journalist or one magazine. It is about whether American voters can make up their own minds in an information environment that is being deliberately polluted by a foreign enemy. That is the fight, and it is far from over.