Russian Disinformation Targets Macron as French Prosecutors Move Against Elon Musk’s X
From the Storm-1516 propaganda operation to raids on Musk’s Paris offices, France confronts disinformation, platform abuse, and democratic destabilisation
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This week
🔥Back from a technical break
🇷🇺Operation Storm-1516 targets Emmanuel Macron
🚓Musk’s Paris offices raided before Paris Prosecutor summons
🔥Back from a technical break
So, firstly, you may have noticed that your favourite publication went AWOL for a few weeks. Unfortunately, I had several technical failures on my computer, meaning I had to send several parts back to the manufacturers, which took a little while.
But, fortunately, nothing has started smoking in the past few days, so I think we may have gotten past that, and we can get back to work
🇷🇺Operation Storm-1516 targets Emmanuel Macron
So, as many of you know, 2026 has had an explosive start, with the release of more of the (heavily redacted) Epstein Files, which has led to a wave of political recriminations across the world.
By contrast, in America, the Trump government chooses to protect its friends and members aggressively while blaming everybody else for the child sex trafficking and child sexual abuse.
However, the higher standards in Europe have also had the unfortunate effect of leaving them more open to aggressive disinformation campaigns that attempt to weaponise public expectations, and the Russians have attempted to abuse this tragedy against French President Emmanuel Macron.
To provide some background: there is a Russian propaganda and disinformation unit called ‘Storm-1516’, first discovered in 2024, which has been involved in efforts to manipulate public opinion against Democratic politicians such as Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, American aid for Ukraine, and has supported Donald Trump’s political ambitions for a while now.
Now, with this group of Kremlinbots actively engaging in activities to undermine the West and support the Russian geopolitical ambitions, it would make sense that they continue to attack the European Union, and particularly its leadership.
And as journalist Victor Cousin from Le Parisien learned, this can involve straight-up identity theft.
Having received alerts during the night, Cousin woke up to find that his signature and photo had been used on a spoofed website of an already problematic website, francesoir.fr, to spread disinformation that Emmanuel Macron had been involved in the trafficking of young boys with disgraced former model scout, and alleged accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, Jean-Luc Brunel.
Now, you’d think that it’s great news that this was picked up so quickly, and that the fact that it can clearly be disproven, but unfortunately, on websites like Elon Musk’s X, that’s not quite how this works.
This piece of fake news has now been shared by thousands of conspiracy theorists and political activists, if not more, and used to attack not only the French President, but also to undermine democracy and further damage trust in democracy in France and abroad.
Unfortunately, the fact remains that it is possible for someone to have their identity stolen and abused, and that lies can be openly spread to defame others and undermine democracy and freedom, which is exactly why many of these actors are so aggressively against the regulation of these platforms.
And with the official American National Security Strategy being to engage in outright political interference and manipulation in Europe, we have a big fight ahead of us.
🚓Musk’s Paris offices raided before Paris Prosecutor summons
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So, as one of the most prolific and problematic owners of a social media platform that is constantly abused to spread disinformation, Elon Musk has been involved in actively spreading far-right politics and propaganda.
He has used his substantial wealth to get Donald Trump elected, to support far-right candidates in the US and Europe, and to encourage “free speech” which, as many have experienced, usually involves the complete non-punishment of spreading antisemitic and racist comments, generating AI porn of people against their consent, sexual harassment, casual and aggressive misogyny, and other deplorable behaviour.
He is also known to have gotten very mad at the European Union because they implemented the Digital Services Act, which Elon Musk agreed with Thierry Breton on.
Seriously, there are pictures and everything.
However, due to the fact that Elon Musk found the thing he agreed with extremely problematic, and has chosen to use Twitter/X as a propaganda tool, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s Twitter/X €120 million through the DSA last year because of deceptive practices regarding verification, a lack of transparency of the ad system, and the complete lack of access to the very likely manipulated algorithms on Twitter/X.
And it keeps getting worse for far-right activist Elon Musk, who, aside from constantly losing arguments online to French politicians and government accounts on his own platform, is now under the scrutiny of the French legal system.
This Tuesday 3 February, the Paris prosecutor’s office raided the Parisian offices of Elon Musk’s Twitter/X, releasing the following press release:
“A search is being conducted today at the French premises of Platform X as part of the investigation opened in January 2025 by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office’s cybercrime unit, with the assistance of the gendarmerie’s UNCyber unit and in the presence of Europol.
At the same time, summonses for voluntary interviews on 20 April 2026 in Paris have been sent to Mr Elon Musk and Ms Linda Yaccarino, in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of Platform X at the time of the events. Employees of platform X are also summoned during the week of 20 to 24 April 2026 to be heard as witnesses. The voluntary interviews with the managers should enable them to explain their position on the facts and, where applicable, the compliance measures envisaged.
At this stage, the investigation is being conducted in a constructive manner, with the ultimate aim of ensuring that platform X complies with French law, insofar as it operates on French territory.
As a reminder, this investigation was opened following two reports received on 12 January 2025. On 9 July 2025, the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office entrusted the investigations to the Directorate-General of the National Gendarmerie (DGGN). The investigation was expanded following further reports denouncing the operation of Grok on platform X, which led to the dissemination of Holocaust denial content and sexual deepfakes.
The investigations concern the following criminal offences:
complicity in the possession of images of minors of a child pornographic nature
complicity in the distribution, offering or making available, as part of an organised gang, of images of minors of a child pornographic nature
infringement of a person’s image (sexual deepfakes)
denial of crimes against humanity (negationism)
fraudulent extraction of data from an automated data processing system as part of an organised gang
falsification of the operation of an automated data processing system as part of an organised gang
administration of an illegal online platform as part of an organised gang.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, the follow-up to the raid by the cybercrime section of the Paris prosecutor’s office, with the national cyber unit of the gendarmerie and Europol, the Paris prosecutor’s office has announced that it is summoning Elon Musk, as well as the former CEO Linda Yaccarino, to “voluntary interviews” that “should enable them to explain their position on the facts and, where applicable, the compliance measures envisaged.”
But, naturally, both of the leaders of Twitter/X will most likely refuse to participate in what they will undoubtedly claim is a witch hunt, and Musk will just encourage Republicans in the US to attack France.
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It is crazy how much money Russia is spending on propaganda