Democratic Sen. Christopher Coons of Delaware shared two Russian-bought Facebook ads Tuesday during a congressional hearing on the foreign adversary’s attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
One post, published by a page called “Being Patriotic,” promoted an apparently phony event in Pennsylvania for “Miners for Trump” and advocated for coal-mining jobs. Another alleged that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a 69 percent disapproval rate among all veterans and detailed accusations related to the 2012 Benghazi attack and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
“This ad is nothing short of the Russian government directly interfering in our elections, lying to American citizens, duping folks who believe they are joining and supporting a group that is about veterans and based in Texas, when in fact it [was] paid for in rubles by Russians,” Coons said while addressing Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch. “Should Facebook be allowed to be a platform that foreign adversaries can use to run political ads, sir?”
“Senator, that advertisement has no place on Facebook and we are committed to preventing that sort of behavior from occurring again on our platform,” Stretch responded.
NEW: These are the first two Russian-bought Facebook ads to be released by Congress. pic.twitter.com/1ThgzYNdTf
— Donie O'Sullivan (@donie) October 31, 2017
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