Associated Incidents
A former cop with a checkered past in Maine and Florida is pumping out disinformation targeting Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign from Russia.
That’s according to more than 150 documents leaked to The Washington Post, which the newspaper reports show John Mark Dougan’s propaganda work and close ties to Russian military intelligence.
Dougan is believed to be behind such fabrications as a video widely circulated on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that purports Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz abused a student at the high school where he used to work, and a deepfake audio of former President Barack Obama in which he allegedly implies Democrats ordered the July assassination attempt on Donald Trump, The Post reported.
His fabrications are posted to websites with names like DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle and Atlanta Observer.
Before he allegedly became a propagandist for Russia, Dougan served as a deputy in the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, where he resigned in January 2009. During his three years with the sheriff’s office, Dougan was the subject of 11 internal affairs investigations, according to the Palm Beach Post.
A jury found him guilty in 2010 of violating the rights of another deputy, whom Dougan pepper-sprayed and arrested in 2006 while investigating a noise complaint at a party the deputy attended. The deputy was awarded a $494,000 judgment, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Dougan left Palm Beach County for the Windham Police Department in Cumberland County, where he was fired after six months for sexually harassing a female officer. That officer won a harassment claim against the town. She further accused town and police leaders of perpetuating the harassment and retaliating against her. Dougan was accused of harassing multiple other women, and his harassment led a dispatcher to quit, according to the Portland Press Herald.
Dougan has maintained that he is the actual victim in the cases in Florida and Maine.
He then returned to Florida, where he ran a website supposedly dedicated to airing complaints against the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, but soon became home to smears against officers, The Washington Post reported.
In 2016, Dougan leaked confidential data about thousands of police officers, federal agents and judges. By the time he was indicted on 21 charges a year later, he had fled to Russia, where he gained citizenship in 2023, according to the newspaper.
Dougan also is considered the source behind fabricated articles accusing Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife, Olena Zelenska, of spending more than $1 million at a Cartier store during a visit to New York and claiming the Ukrainian president used U.S. aid to buy luxury yachts. Republicans used the latter claim to justify cutting off military aid to Ukraine in its effort to repel Russia’s invasion, according to The Post.
Dougan denied working with Russian intelligence and maintained he works independently.
“I will tell you hypothetically, if they were my sites,” Dougan told The Post, “then I am merely fighting fire with fire because the West is f——— lying about everything that’s happening. They are lying about everything.”