4 ‘African Socialists’ Charged with Election Meddling for Russia After FBI Raided Their Homes; Members of the Uhuru Movement are Charged in a Russian Plot to Interfere in U.S. Elections

4 ‘African Socialists’ charged with election meddling for Russia after FBI raided their homes:

Four radical American socialists have been charged with election meddling and spreading Vladimir Putin’s propaganda after they were arrested in dramatic FBI raids.

The four, two of them white, are members of the African People’s Socialist Party, a 50-year-old black empowerment organization.

Omali Yeshitela, the group’s founder and chairman was one of the four Americans and three Russian nationals indicted Tuesday for “sowing discord, spreading pro-Russia propaganda and interfering in elections within the United States.”

Yeshitela said he was zip-tied outside his St. Louis home in a raid last July by FBI agents who used flashbangs as they stormed in.

He claims the FBI has been targeting his group for decades.

The DOJ says that the 81-year-old veteran leader of the far-left group conspired along with three others — one of whom is alleged to run a cult-like group called Black Hammer — to help Russian efforts to meddle in elections.

Yeshitela has called the charges an “asinine” attack on his organization.

Moscow-based Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, the head of the Kremlin-funded Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, allegedly worked with the Russian Federal Security Service to carry out a “malign influence campaign” on US elections, the DOJ wrote in a statement. —>READ MORE HERE

Members of the Uhuru Movement are charged in a Russian plot to interfere in U.S. elections:

Among those four charged is Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the St. Petersburg-based Uhuru Movement.

Four Americans affiliated with a Black empowerment and political organization have been charged along with three Russians with conspiring to covertly sow discord in U.S. society, spread Russian propaganda and interfere illegally in U.S. elections, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday.

The U.S. citizens and two Russians were added to an existing case in Tampa, Florida, federal court involving Aleksandr Ionov, described by prosecutors as the founder of a Moscow-based organization funded by the Russian government to carry out a clandestine influence campaign in the U.S.

The four Americans are all part of the African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement, which has locations in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis. Among those charged is Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the U.S.-based organization — which was raided by the FBI last summer when Ionov was originally charged.

“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights — freedoms Russia denies to its own citizens — to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

“The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad,” Olsen said in a news release. —>READ MORE HERE

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