Essentially, a firm that Reid contributed to set up thousands of fake Twitter accounts that made it appear Russia was backing Moore.

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a major Democratic party donor, apologized yesterday for helping to fund a "false flag" operation against former GOP Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

American Engagement Technologies (AET), run by former Obama appointee Mikey Dickerson, received $750,000 from Hoffman and was part of the effort to falsely portray the Republican’s senate bid as being supported by the Kremlin.

Fox News:

Democratic operatives then created thousands of fake Russian accounts on Twitter and began following Moore, prompting attention from local and national media that falsely suggested Russia is backing Moore’s candidacy. The project also involved creating a Facebook page and imitated conservative Alabamians who weren’t satisfied with the Republican candidate while encouraging others to write in another candidate. The disinformation campaign was first revealed by the New York Times that obtained an internal report detailing the efforts. “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the internal report said.

Hoffman was contrite:

“I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing. For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET – the organization I did support – more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject,” he said in a statement provided to the Washington Post. “I want to be unequivocal: there is absolutely no place in our democracy for manipulating facts or using falsehoods to gain political advantage,” he added.

That's a sanctimonious bunch of bull. Both sides manipulate facts and tell lies about the other. It may have "no place in our democracy" but it's always been so. There's no law against lying about your opponent, or even setting up fake Twitter accounts to make it appear a candidate is backed by a foreign power.

One strange note:

One participant in the project was Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a firm that wrote a report – released by the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month – about Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and its efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

The Russian "effort" to influence the election made little difference. Democrats continue to blame the Russians for Clinton's defeat because they simply can't face the fact that their candidate was the worst major party presidential candidate in history. Hillary lost to Trump because she was incoherent, untrustworthy, and un-believed. She had nothing to say except she was going to make history by being elected the first woman president.

Similarly, Roy Jones did not lose because he had fake Russians following him on Twitter. Jones was a fatally damaged candidate because he couldn't keep his hands off of little girls. That much should have been clear on election night.

As the Russian collusion narrative fades away, the idea of Russians influencing our politics will also disappear. Blaming the Russians for your electoral defeats - something politicians in Europe are starting to do - is a ruse, a political gambit. If you want to see how to influence an election, read about the CIA machinations in Guatamala and Panama back in the day. I can guarantee you they did a helluva lot more than print false ads in newspapers.