Tuesday, March 26, 2019

The Costs of Elections, and Investigatiions

The figures haven't been finalized but it's estimated that the cost to taxpayers of the Mueller investigation into Trump-Russian collusion prior to the 2016 presidential election will be in the range of $32 million to $35 million. After all, the process took almost 2 years, making the expense roughly $1.5 million a month. 

An article in the San Diego Union-Tribune states that the Russian state media agency, Russia Today, spent as much as $247,000 on Twitter during the run-up to the election. Facebook admits that it sold about $100,000 in ads to a Russian "troll farm", starting as early as the summer of 2015.

According to an article in TechCrunch.com:

 Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns’ behalf.

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