Russian Trolls Ran Popular Far-Right Tennessee GOP Twitter Account

A popular Twitter account purporting to represent the Republican Party of Tennessee that was shut down earlier this year was created and operated by Russian agents, according to a report from BuzzFeed News.

The account, @TEN_GOP, was created in November 2015 and allowed to operate uninterrupted for more than two years despite reports filed against the account. Twitter finally shut down the Russia-backed account in August.

Prior to its permanent suspension from the platform, the account managed to rack up more than 136,000 followers. It gained a considerable following among other far- and alt-right users on Twitter.

The account produced numerous tweets that were widely spread through retweets despite often being completely inaccurate. In one tweet that garnered thousands of retweets, the account claimed to show a massive rally in Phoenix, Arizona for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The photo—which were captioned by the account with the text “Massive crowd waiting outside for the Trump rally in Phoenix! But... but... media says everyone hates Trump. I'm confused”— shared by the account actually depicted the 2016 NBA Championship parade in Cleveland held for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Despite the false information regularly spread by the account, inflammatory tweets that made claims like unarmed black men killed by police officers deserved to die and numerous reports filed against it by the actual Tennessee Republican Party, @TEN_GOP was allowed to continue to operate.

The Tennessee Republican Party—which has been on Twitter since 2007 under the handle @tngop—filed reports on three separate occasions against @TEN_GOP: once on September 17, 2016, again on March 1, 2107 and finally on August 14, shortly before Twitter suspended the account.

The account appeared to avoid suspension by identifying that it was not the official account of the Tennessee Republican Party and at one point changed its profile biography from “I love God, I Love my Country” to “Unofficial Twitter of Tennessee Republicans. Covering breaking news, national politics, foreign policy and more. #MAGA #2A.”

The removal of the account by Twitter in August created a stir among alt-right circles of the internet. The pro-Donald Trump subreddit r/the_Donald accused Twitter of performing “purges” against accounts with favorable opinions of President Trump and other Twitter users who followed the account expressed similar outrage.

The true operators of @TEN_GOP during its nearly two-year stretch as a constant, trolling presence on Twitter appear to have been Russian operatives. The account was reportedly created by Russia's Internet Research Agency, a so-called “troll farm” that was used to purchase advertisements and promote controversial and divisive content targeted toward Americans in an attempt to stir conflict and influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The account was first identified as one of the many created and operated by the Kremlin-backed operation earlier this week by Russian news outlet RBC, which was investigating the Internet Research Agency’s influence on American politics.

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