The Good Old U.S.A. Project was a disinformation campaign undertaken by Russian government agencies and propagandist groups aimed at securing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election, which would likely be followed by the cessation of American military aid to Ukraine amid the Russo-Ukrainian War.
The project was first revealed by US intelligence in September 2023; a declassified intelligence report identified a top Putin aide hiring three contractors to conduct a disinformation campaign to reduce Western support for Ukraine. The project sought to use hundreds of fake online accounts and 18 sleeper groups across 6 swing states to distribute bogus news stories that would spread an isolationist view of the Russo-Ukrainian War, views championed by Trump's vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance and other prominent Republicans like Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy.
In August 2024, the FBI raided the homes of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and political advisor Dmitri Simes for their connections to Russian state media; Simes and his wife were charged with laundering funds and violating sanctions in order to benefit Channel One Russia and a Russian oligarch. In September 2024, the Department of Justice said that Russia had paid right-wing influencers to spread Russian propaganda. Influencers received about $400,000 a month for their sharing of pro-Kremlin disinformation. Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, and several other influencers with Tenet Media were among those paid to spread disinformation; Tenet had more than 7 million survivors on both YouTube and Twitter. That same month, Russian operatives created videos highlighting outlandish conspiracy theories and using AI to create a fake video of a Harris supporter attacking an attendee at a Trump rally and Harris paralyzing a young girl in a fake 2011 hit-and-run accident. In October, Russia spread disinformation about hurricanes that struck the Southeast, including AI-generated images of a flooded Walt Disney World. On 21 October, it was reported that Storm-1516 had spread fabricated claims about Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz. Former Palm Beach County deputy sheriff John Mark Dugan was paid by the GRU to produce misinformation attacking the Harris campaign, and, on 25 October, Russia made a fake, viral video of mail-in ballots for Trump being ripped up and burned in Pennsylvania. On 1 November, Russia created a fake video of supposed Haitian illegal immigrants saying they were voting multiple times for Harris in Georgia, and Russia also created a fake post on Twitter claiming Harris and her husband had tipped off Sean Combs about an FBI raid in exchange for $500,000.
On 5 November 2024, Election Day, Russia created a fake video claiming fraud in Arizona, while Russians also created several non-credible bomb threats that briefly disrupted voting at two majority-Black polling places in Georgia.