A former employee of a Russian government-backed "troll factory" claims his fellow employees made a fake video featuring a Hillary Clinton-lookalike having sex with a black man that they thought would swing the election.
According to The Daily Beast, Alan Baskaev admitted he worked for the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency for about six months, doing work on the American election.
Speaking with independent Russian television channel TV Rain, Baskaev explained that employees on the night shift at IRA worked at publishing pro-Trump stories, tried to incite racial animus during the 2016 campaign and encouraged American voters to hold and attend rallies.
According to Baskaev, he landed the job while still a college student due to his ability to impersonate “Kentucky rednecks” and black Americans. He said that his fellow employees took the job as a lark, writing propaganda for spending money.
“You know, there’s this meme about the troll factory, people sitting in black caps, masks, behind them there’s a photo of Putin and a Russian flag. They’re so intense,” Baskaev explained. “I don’t know what happened on the day shift, but the night shift was a bacchanal. We did the most ridiculous things we could think of.”
As an aside, Baskaev recalled that the Russian trolls believed they had a “sensation” when they created the fake video of then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton engaged in sex with the black actor.
