Schiff: Impact of Russian social media manipulation on election ‘hard to say’

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday said it’s difficult to determine the effects of Russian manipulation of social media on the 2016 presidential election.

During an interview on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Schiff, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, was asked about the impact of Russian Facebook ads.

“Is anybody saying that they had any influence on the election that changed the outcome in any possible way?” host John Dickerson asked.

“This is just one platform the Russians were using. This is nothing to do with the Russian use of bots on Twitter,” Schiff said.

“So if you look at the full extent of Russian use of social media, was it any way decisive, determinative, hard to say because we really have so little information thus far about the extent of Russian use of social media.”

Facebook has told investigators it discovered thousands of political ads published on its platform over the past two years were linked to fake accounts based in Russia.

President Trump early Friday called reports of Kremlin-linked groups buying Facebook ads to sway the 2016 presidential election part of a “Russian hoax.”