NewsGuard’s 2024 Disinformer of the Year: John Mark Dougan
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Today’s newsletter was edited by Eric Effron and Sofia Rubinson.
But First: In Case You Missed It … NewsGuard Featured in The Washington Post
On Dec. 24, 2024, The Washington Post ran a Page One article headlined: “This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.”
The subheadline: “NewsGuard, which prizes its nonpartisan criteria, has become a prime target of the GOP’s battle against disinformation watchdogs.”
Through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the article was consistently featured on the Post website as one of the “most read.”
To read the Washington Post article, click here.
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NewsGuard’s 2024 Disinformer of the Year, John Mark Dougan
From a baseless claim about Haitians eating pets that reached the presidential debate podium, to AI-generated fabrications depicting Disney World in Orlando, Florida, inundated by Hurricane Milton, NewsGuard’s team of global analysts saw no shortage of falsehoods in 2024, a year in which voters in more than 60 countries headed to the polls.
Yet no disinformation effort had the scale, audacity, or reach than that of John Mark Dougan, a former deputy Florida sheriff and U.S. fugitive who fled to Moscow. His elaborate fabrications, disguised as credible local news reports and fake whistleblower testimonies, generated 67 million views, and even found their way into congressional debates.
As a result, NewsGuard is naming John Mark Dougan our 2024 Disinformer of the Year.
Dougan is not solely responsible for the Kremlin’s malign influence campaigns. Rather, he is part of a Russian influence operation dubbed by Microsoft as Storm-1516 that is reported to be a small but prolific offshoot of the Internet Research Agency, a disbanded Russian troll farm. Yet NewsGuard has linked Dougan to no fewer than 32 disinformation narratives and 171 websites masquerading as local news outlets.
His targets have noticed. On Dec. 31, 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the U.S.-based properties and interests of Dougan’s apparent boss, Valery Korovin, and the organization that Korovin heads, the Moscow-based institute Center for Geopolitical Expertise, accusing them of “attempt[ing] to interfere in the U.S. 2024 elections.” Dougan was not directly named in the sanctions order. However, the Treasury Department’s statement described tactics that NewsGuard found to be his hallmarks: “a massive network of websites designed to imitate legitimate news outlet,” which NewsGuard covered extensively in May 2024; and “baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice presidential candidate,” an apparent reference to Dougan’s multiple fakes depicting purported former students of Democrat Tim Walz accusing him of being a pedophile who sexually abused his students. (Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint for this claim here.)
Denials, State TV Boasts, and GRU Ties
In interviews throughout 2024 with NewsGuard, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the BBC, Dougan repeatedly denied being behind a network of fake local news websites that publish overt Russian disinformation. He has long claimed to be an independent actor with no ties to Russia. “I absolutely deny that I’m part of any Kremlin plot. I have no contact with anyone in government here, aside from a few cops and FSB [Federal Security Service] friends that I have an occasional beer with,” Dougan told NewsGuard in early 2024.
However, in late October 2024, Dougan appeared on Russian state TV ahead of the U.S. elections to boast about his efforts. “They blamed my information for getting Congress to defund Ukraine … clearly I’m a danger to them,” Dougan said on the segment.
The Washington Post advanced the story in October 2024, finding that Dougan is paid and directed by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. The Post found that the GRU financed a dedicated AI server coordinated by Korovin and managed by Dougan, an arrangement that was later confirmed in the Treasury’s sanction announcement.
Despite claiming to have no knowledge of Korovin, his reported Russian handler, the two men have made multiple joint public appearances, NewsGuard found. Notably, in February 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Dougan appeared at a Duma (Russia’s parliament) hearing alongside Korovin as an expert witness, relaying explosive claims that the U.S. has supplied bioweapons labs to Ukraine. This bioweapons narrative had been seeded months earlier through a November 2021 documentary Dougan uploaded to his since-removed YouTube channel. It was later cited by the Kremlin to justify its invasion of Ukraine.
While it should not be surprising that Dougan’s claims have made their way to the highest echelons of the Russian government (where they likely were engineered), what is surprising is that Dougan’s disinformation narratives were also parroted by high-profile U.S. officials.
Indeed, one of Dougan’s earliest claims — that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used U.S. military aid to buy luxury yachts — was echoed by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance (before he was picked as Donald Trump’s running mate).
In a Nov. 27, 2023, X post, Greene linked to an article advancing the false claim that Zelensky purchased two seven-figure luxury yachts and stated, “Anyone who votes to fund Ukraine is funding the most corrupt money scheme of any foreign war in our country’s history.” Appearing as a guest on a Dec. 11, 2023, episode of former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast, Sen. Vance said, “There are people who would cut Social Security, throw our grandparents into poverty, why? So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?”
A “Citizen Journalist” With a Hidden Agenda: Next Up, Germany
Dougan’s work embodies Russia’s modern-day disinformation tactics: leveraging non-Russian nationals to mask Russia’s involvement and elevating propaganda into carefully crafted AI-generated narratives. Armed with a camera, and portraying himself as a frontline truth-teller in the Russia-Ukraine war through YouTube documentaries, Dougan pioneered the “citizen journalism” playbook that has since been adopted by other disinformers.
Positioning himself as an Edward Snowden-like figure, he helped normalize the use of dubious whistleblowers in disinformation campaigns. Even prior to fleeing to Russia in 2016 before his home was raided by the FBI for allegedly leaking sensitive information about local officials, Dougan was fabricating fake Florida news sites targeting Florida sheriffs, paving the way for pink slime journalism — political propaganda disguised as local news. While Dougan may not have invented these tactics, he helped refine and popularize them.
American Credibility
Dougan’s background as an American, former deputy sheriff, and a self-proclaimed “whistleblower” with an understanding of U.S. political discourse has lent Kremlin disinformation campaigns a credibility that state-run media was not able to achieve alone. Indeed, his efforts have helped transform Russia’s propaganda machine into a more calculated and effective operation that, as noted above, has penetrated the highest levels of American politics and public discourse, with his narratives spreading in 16 languages and his fake local news sites being cited on social media at least 8,000 times.
The 2024 U.S. elections have concluded and Dougan’s fake local U.S. news network has been dismantled, but Dougan’s work is not done. He and his associates have already shifted to Germany’s February 2025 snap elections. Dougan appears to be behind an AI-enhanced video featuring a woman falsely alleging sexual abuse by Robert Habeck, the German Green Party’s chancellor candidate. The false narrative appears to have originated with a Dec. 5, 2024, article on a site masquerading as a German news outlet called “Echo der Zeit” that included a video of a woman that is actually an AI-generated creation apparently using face-swap technology, NewsGuard and other news organizations found.
Dougan also appears to be behind a fake local news article on Presseneu.de, a site purporting to be a German news outlet, falsely claiming that Germany plans to import 1.9 million Kenyan workers. (The Kenya-Germany bilateral labor agreement, signed by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Kenyan President William Ruto in September 2024, makes no mention of importing 1.9 million Kenyan workers.)
These claims mirror the tactics he deployed to influence the U.S. election: fabricated local news sites designed to appear legitimate, staged “whistleblower” testimonies, and AI-generated articles and videos.
He’s recycling what is now a proven playbook. All democracies should take notice.
Correction: An earlier version of this newsletter incorrectly spelled German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s name. NewsGuard apologizes for the error.
Reality Check is produced by Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
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