Trump campaign's Rick Gates sought proposals in 2016 from Israeli firm Psy-Group to make fake online accounts and use social media to influence and win election
WASHINGTON — A top Trump campaign official requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities … Tweets: @natashabertrand , @adamgoldmannyt , @amyfiscus , @repadamschiff , @mikeisaac , @amyfiscus , @katherinemiller , @yashar , and @sethabramson Tweets: Natasha Bertrand / @natashabertrand : Rick Gates requested proposals in 2016 from the Israeli company Psy Group to create fake online identities, use social media manipulation and gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents, particularly Ted Cruz, and Clinton. https://nyti.ms/... Adam Goldman / @adamgoldmannyt : The documents show that a senior Trump aide saw the promise of a disruption effort to swing voters in Mr. Trump's favor. https://nyti.ms/2E6xgmD @MarkMazzettiNYT @ronenbergman @ddknyt @maggieNYT Amy Fiscus / @amyfiscus : The Israeli firm gave code names to the players involved https://nyti.ms/2E6xgmD Trump was Lion Cruz was Bear Clinton was Forest Adam Schiff / @repadamschiff : Senior Trump campaign staff met with a foreign company about creating fake social media accounts and gathering intel on his opponents. Isn't it interesting that those are the same services the Russians provided for free? https://twitter.com/... Rat King / @mikeisaac : this piece on israeli Psy-group is fascinatinghttps://t.co/HKl8oA0xJ7the IDF is the OG social media mastermind agency imohttps://t.co/cXVO849syb Amy Fiscus / @amyfiscus : NEW: Rick Gates, the Trump campaign deputy, sought proposals in 2016 from an Israeli intel firm, which suggested creating fake online profiles to convince RNC delegates not to vote for Cruz, and gathering intel on Clinton https://nyti.ms/2E6xgmD Katherine Miller / @katherinemiller : “The campaign official, Rick Gates, sought one proposal to use bogus personas to target and sway 5,000 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention by attacking Senator Ted Cruz of Texas” https://www.nytimes.com/... Yashar Ali / @yashar : NEW: Rick Gates requested proposals from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intel to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton. @MarkMazzettiNYT @maggieNYT report. https://www.nytimes.com/... Seth Abramson / @sethabramson : (2 of 2) *this* is the lede: there *is* evidence Trump's campaign took further steps on these proposals, *per the NYT*: “Psy-Group's owner, Joel Zamel, did meet in August 2016 with Donald Trump Jr....” Yes, AND Erik Prince. AND George Nader. AND Don said he was “interested.”
Context & Ripple Effects
The NYT report places the Trump campaign inside a market that was already operating: Israeli private-intelligence shops selling influence campaigns built on fake avatars and social-media manipulation. The New Yorker's later account of Psy-Group shows what clients were buying — avatar-driven influence operations — before the company shut down in February 2018.
The proposal also sits alongside two other documented influence channels from the same cycle: the Cruz campaign's $5.8M relationship with Cambridge Analytica, which insiders compared to a Ponzi scheme (Mother Jones' sourcing on Cambridge Analytica), and the campaign's use of Facebook's Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences tools to amplify provocative content (Wired on the ad operation) — plus the Russian hack-and-release track the FBI and Senate Intelligence Committee investigated separately.
First-order effects
- Rick Gates and the Trump campaign are directly implicated: the proposal covered fake online identities, social-media manipulation, and intelligence gathering aimed at Ted Cruz in the primary and Hillary Clinton in the general, and Psy-Group owner Joel Zamel had already met Donald Trump Jr., Erik Prince, and George Nader in August 2016.
- Psy-Group itself faces exposure as a named vendor of covert political influence work — scrutiny that preceded its February 2018 shutdown.
Second-order effects
- Rival vendors in the same gray market — Cambridge Analytica among them — get pulled into a widening accountability perimeter, since each revelation about one contractor invites questions about who else sold similar services to which campaigns.
- Platforms like Facebook, whose ad-targeting tools the campaign already exploited, face pressure to police coordinated inauthentic behavior rather than just ad content, shifting enforcement toward identity and network patterns.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, political influence work consolidates around commercial contractors selling deniable, cross-border manipulation-as-a-service — pushing regulators and platforms toward verifying authentic identity and assigning liability at the distribution layer rather than case-by-case after elections.
- Foreign-based private intelligence becomes a recurring feature of US campaigns, forcing election law written for domestic actors to grapple with offshore vendors whose conduct sits between lobbying, espionage, and marketing.
The trend: Election influence is migrating from overt advertising to outsourced covert operations — fake identities, avatar networks, and foreign private-intelligence contractors — that platforms and regulators are still structurally unequipped to attribute.