Mueller Report: Confederate Rally in Houston ‘earliest Evidence' of Russian Attempts at U.S. Discord

A Texas event planned in November 2015 was the "earliest evidence" of Russian attempts to tinker with the 2016 presidential election, according to the Mueller report, which was released Thursday.The two-year investigation's 400-plus-page summary revealed that a "Confederate rally" in Houston was the first known of many events linked to the Russian-funded Internet Research Agency (IRA), which used social media to target Americans "with the goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system."Posted under the Instagram account Stand for Freedom, ultimately linked to the IRA, the event was advertised with a caption that read, "Good evening buds! Well I am attempting to organize a confederate rally... in Houston on the 14 of November and I want more people to attend."Whether the rally ever actually took place was unknown. But the attempt was part of a larger pattern in which Russian trolls posed as U.S. activists toward IRA ends, with the report estimating that as many as 126 million Americans may have gotten content from a page linked to the agency, either directly or through social-media sharing.  Continue reading...