SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA — In February 2018, as organizers of the so-called “CalExit” campaign to have California secede from the union and form its own country, a Russian national named Aleksandr Ionov sent electronic messages to a secession supporter, court documents say. Ionov offered funding for a protest that would have supporters make their way into then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s office.
Ionov and the organizer traded proposed designs for posters for the event, and eventually wrote that he sent $500 to the organizer, who on Valentine’s Day led a demonstration at the state Capitol “in support of California’s secession from the United States,” court papers say.
Afterward, Ionov corresponded in Russian with a member of the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, boasting that the FSB officer had asked for “turmoil” in the United States. “There you go,” Ionov wrote, court papers say.
The effort was part of a “years-long foreign malign influence campaign that used various U.S. political groups to sow discord, […]
I know I’ve said it before but it remains relavent: together we stand, but divided we fail and fall into the dishonorable hands of the Republicans.