The Biden administration on Wednesday accused Russia of a wide-ranging and sophisticated effort to disrupt U.S. politics with misinformation crafted in Moscow and injected into the American discourse through unwitting American social media “influencers.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the operation reached all the way to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “inner circle” of advisers and was intended to sway American voters to undermine support for Ukraine and deliver pro-Russian outcomes in the 2024 elections.

Russian operatives set up bogus websites mimicking real American outlets to spread pro-Russian views and targeted advertising on social media, then used “bot networks” to monitor Americans’ reactions to see which messages worked best.

The operation was designed to take advantage of the current fraught moment in American politics by appealing to social media users, lending credence to propaganda posts with phrases such as “the official media will never tell you about it.”

The FBI seized nearly three dozen internet domains, federal prosecutors brought charges against two media executives and the Treasury Department froze assets of 10 people and two Russian outfits that federal officials say were involved in the covert operation.

The State Department said it is offering a $10 million bounty for information on a Russian operation, known as RaHDit or Russian Angry Hackers Did It. And the State Department said it will slap travel visa sanctions on some of those involved in the Russian effort, though it said it cannot disclose the targets publicly because of privacy rules.

“The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political activities or seeks to influence public discourse,” Mr. Garland said Wednesday.

The two media officials charged are both with RT, formerly Russia Today, a media outlet that the U.S. says is run by Moscow. It was chased out of the U.S. market after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, but the Biden administration said it found its way back in using an intermediary company that duped American entities into spreading Russian messages.

A federal grand jury in New York charged two RT employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, with money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Prosecutors said they spent nearly $10 million to have a Tennessee-based company distribute Russian views through TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube.

Prosecutors said the company made nearly 2,000 videos garnering more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, covering “immigration, inflation and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy.” But RT’s role in producing them wasn’t disclosed.

Prosecutors said RT also duped two “online commentators,” whom the indictment didn’t name, into spreading Russian information to their respective 2.4 million and 1.3 million YouTube subscribers. When the U.S. entities asked for information about who was funding them, the RT operatives fabricated a persona, Eduard Grigoriann, as the supposed funder.

When asked about news of the federal government’s actions Wednesday, RT told NBC News: “1. Ha! 2. Hahahaha! 3. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

“Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s interference in the US elections,” RT said.

The RT operation was one part of the larger effort, prosecutors said.

They said Russian operatives also set up websites that mimicked popular American news sites, such as Fox News or Forward, but which spread Moscow’s propaganda.

In one example cited in court documents, the operation created a website at washingtonpost.pm, using actual logos and styles of The Washington Post. The website even included real journalists’ names and photos, and external links to stories on legitimate news sites.

But the articles presented under the real reporters’ names were fake propaganda, the FBI said. One piece, for example, said: “It is time for our leaders to recognize that continued support for Ukraine is a mistake. It was a waste of lives and money, and to claim otherwise only means further destruction. For the sake of everyone involved in the conflict, the Biden administration should just make a peace agreement and move on.”

Russian attempts to meddle in U.S. elections have made headlines since 2016, when Democrats wrongly accused then-candidate Donald Trump of “colluding” with Russia.

That focus obscured what intelligence officials said was a very real effort to sow dissension within the U.S. by picking at scabs on the American political psyche — from across the ideological spectrum.

“The playbook for authoritarian regimes in today’s world is to try to sow divisiveness and discord, to turn us against each other, to capitalize on existing social tensions,” FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress earlier this summer.

He said Iran and China are active alongside Russia in those efforts.

Chinese operatives, for example, were spreading narratives trying to downplay the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab. They also fueled anti-law enforcement narratives, Mr. Wray testified.

Mr. Garland on Wednesday said all three nations remain under suspicion.

“We will be relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran as well as China or any other foreign malign actor to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy,” he said.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.

• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.