President Trump on Friday labeled reports about political ads on Facebook bought by Kremlin-linked groups as part of a “Russia hoax” – after the social media giant announced it would cooperate with the feds.
“The Russia hoax continues, now it’s ads on Facebook,” Trump tweeted early Friday.
“What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary,” he added, using his nickname for his Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Friday that Russia bought any ads for Facebook.
“We do not know … how to place an advert on Facebook. We have never done this, and the Russian side has never been involved in it,” Peskov told a conference call with reporters, according to Reuters.
Facebook reps have told investigators they had unwittingly sold $100,000 in ads during the election to a Russian company that was targeting voters.
Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, said 470 fake accounts, which have since been suspended, bought about 3,000 ads.
The disclosure was made as congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller are probing Russian meddling in the US election and whether there was collusion with the Trump campaign.
The president has repeatedly denied the allegations of potential collusion — dismissing them as “fake news” and suggesting the Democrats were using the probe as an excuse for losing the election.
On Thursday, Facebook cut a deal with lawmakers to hand over the ads, and the site’s co-founder vowed to beef up security, cooperate with the feds and enhance transparency on the site.
“I care deeply about the Democratic process. I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,” Mark Zuckerberg said on Facebook Live on Thursday.
“There will always be bad actors in the world,” he added, but “we can make it harder, we can make it much harder” for them to use the website to make political mischief.