"As Russia’s online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics..."

"... in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results," report Scott Shane and Alan Blinder in the NYT. This was the election where the Democrat, Doug Jones, narrowly defeated the Republican Roy S. Moore.

Though the margin of victory was only about 20,000 votes (with a decisive turnout of black voters), we're told the project was "likely too small to have a significant effect on the race...".

One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says....

There is no evidence that Mr. Jones sanctioned or was even aware of the social media project. Joe Trippi, a seasoned Democratic operative who served as a top adviser to the Jones campaign, said he had noticed the Russian bot swarm suddenly following Mr. Moore on Twitter. But he said it was impossible that a $100,000 operation had an impact on the race.

I hope he'll also say that it's impossible that what the Russians did in the 2016 presidential election could have had an impact on the race — but somehow the nation has been roiled by that impossibility for 2 years.

The funding [for the Alabama false flag project] came from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who has sought to help Democrats catch up with Republicans in their use of online technology.

The money passed through American Engagement Technologies, run by Mikey Dickerson, the founding director of the United States Digital Service, which was created during the Obama administration to try to upgrade the federal government’s use of technology....

So, our tax money got these people up and running?

Mr. Morgan reached out at the time to Renée DiResta, who would later join New Knowledge and was lead author of the report on Russian social media operations released this week.

“I know there were people who believed the Democrats needed to fight fire with fire,” Ms. DiResta said, adding that she disagreed. “It was absolutely chatter going around the party.”...

The report does not say whether the project purchased the Russian bot Twitter accounts that suddenly began to follow Mr. Moore. But it takes credit for “radicalizing Democrats with a Russian bot scandal” and points to stories on the phenomenon in the mainstream media. “Roy Moore flooded with fake Russian Twitter followers,” reported The New York Post.

On the Sunday morning shows, a lot of people who don't like Trump were offering Trump advice.

I can't believe any of it was good advice — unless it was good advice offered on the theory that Trump wouldn't trust them to give him good advice, so he might do the opposite. Everyone, it seemed, was telling Trump that he needs to stop defending himself against all the mud slung his way. He should stick to the real issues, you see, and not get distracted. So: Let everyone hit him and not fight back?

I'll just give one example. I watch all the shows, and it was getting to the point where we were laughing at the repetition of the don't-get-distracted advice from people who were obviously not Trump proponents. This one was on "Fox News Sunday," with Bret Baier questioning the Democratic strategist Joe Trippi.

BAIER:  You know, Joe, you saw Mike Pence.  He's been answering these questions about the allegations. 

Earlier on the show, Baier had interviewed Pence and referred to "the accusations" and "nine women with these allegations." He never said the word "sex" or "sexual assault" or "groping." We were supposed to know what he was talking about and (I guess) appreciate that he wasn't so crass as to mention sex.

I didn't go down the road too far, but, I mean, you have to think he's wincing on some of these answers or some of this campaigning about the accusers. 

JOE TRIPPI, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR:  Well, he has to be because part of the whole problem, the difference in the polling numbers, is women. And they've moved away from Trump, even groups that tend to be Republican with women. Moderate Republican women are moving away. And so, this isn't how you get them back. They're gettable because they've been voting Republican all these years. So, and they’ve got arguments. But the argument isn't to go after the accusers.  So, I think this is a -- that's what I think is going to be interesting about this debate.  Is that the Donald Trump that shows up that goes after the accusers and keeps giving Clinton this advantage or does he try to reach out to them?  That's what I think is going to be the key.

Trippi is just one example of that. It's like a memo went out: If Trump wants to win he needs to leave those accusers alone. Don't respond. But Trippi doesn't want Trump to win. 

ADDED: Trippi seems to assume that the only way for Trump to defend himself is to "go after" the women. Even though Trump's opponent has a record of attacking women who made sexual allegations against her husband, Trump could stress the unfairness of dropping these stories so late in the process. And there might be a way to connect this to the Rolling Stone trial that's starting tomorrow. Allegations can be false and the process can be unfair. That could inspire some empathy for the pugnacious billionaire. Who knows?