SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In February 2018, as organizers of the so-called “CalExit” campaign to have California secede from the union and form its own country, a Russian national named Aleksandr Ionov sent electronic messages to a secession supporter, court documents say. Ionov offered funding for a protest that would have supporters make their way into then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s office.
Ionov and the organizer traded proposed designs for posters for the event, and eventually wrote that he sent $500 to the organizer, who on Valentine’s Day led a demonstration at the state Capitol “in support of California’s secession from the United States,” court papers say.
Afterward, Ionov corresponded in Russian with a member of the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, boasting that the FSB officer had asked for “turmoil” in the United States. “There you go,” Ionov wrote, court papers say.
The effort was part of a “years-long foreign malign influence campaign that used various U.S. political groups to sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States,” the Justice Department said in an announcement Friday during which authorities in Tampa, Fla., revealed Ionov had been indicted there on charges of targeting political groups in Florida, Georgia and California “to further Russian interests.”
Court documents identify the organizer in California only as “unidentified co-conspirator 6,” an American who had lived in Russia and California and was the founder and president of an unnamed group seeking to have California secede from the union.
That individual appears to be Louis J. Marinelli, the one-time founder of CalExit and the Yes California political action committee who subsequently gave up on his quest and now lives in Arkansas.
In a lengthy statement posted online over the weekend, Marinelli acknowledges that he first met Ionov in 2016 but says he never helped the Russian government.
Marinelli wrote that he is “not and never was an illegal agent of the Russian government tasked with sowing discord in the United States.”
“The discord in America is thriving well without Russia’s help,” he wrote. “Furthermore, I never received funding from the Russian government or Mr. Ionov to engage in political activities, spread pro-Russian propaganda, or interfere in elections within the United States.”
Instead, he wrote that he knew Ionov in Russia and used his office space in Moscow.
“In December of 2016, Mr. Ionov allowed me to use his office in Moscow to put on an exhibit of California history and civil rights and to invite the media to a presentation in this office,” Marinelli wrote. “This exhibit included topics that are taboo and even illegal in Russia.
“For example, an exhibit on Harvey Milk and the struggle for LGBT rights is not something one would expect to come across in the middle of Moscow, a city where gay pride parades are illegal and one could be arrested for disseminating ‘gay propaganda’ under a 2013 law signed by Vladimir Putin.”
He added that he later spoke to Ionov about his plans to stage an effort to have California break free from the United States.
“In January 2018, I informed Mr. Ionov in the course of our normal ongoing dialogue between friends that I was returning to California from Russia to file a new ballot initiative for a California independence referendum and to hold a rally at the State Capitol in Sacramento on Valentine’s Day that year,” Marinelli wrote. “The leadership team at Yes California specifically chose this date because divorces skyrocket around this time in the United States and we were just preparing to launch our ‘National Divorce’ theme with a broken heart graphic detailing California on one side and the other 49 states on the other.
“Mr. Ionov offered financial assistance which amounted to a few hundred dollars. However, this was a free event taking place on public property with a permit from the California State Police. Meanwhile, the organization’s president, Marcus Ruiz Evans, put together the money for the ballot initiative filing fee. In fact, the only expenses we had were getting to Sacramento and printing posters with our broken heart graphic. Mr. Evans paid for our trip to Sacramento and the posters were paid for by donations solicited through our extensive mailing list.
“Regardless of what Mr. Ionov may have believed and reported to his superiors, the money he offered was not used for political purposes but simply to supplement my modest salary as an English teacher that month in a provincial Russian city.”
Marinelli added that Ionov never had control over political efforts in California.
“This is particularly evident by the fact that, to his disappointment, we never stormed the governor’s office as he suggested we do that day in Sacramento,” Marinelli wrote. “The following year, in August of 2019, when Mr. Ionov insistently tried to give me large sums of money to hire street artists to paint 3-5 murals containing various political messages on buildings across California, I stalled until his September 3 deadline, never took the money, and the murals were never painted.
“Likewise in September that year, Mr. Ionov wanted us to organize flash mobs in California, which we also did not do.”
Marinelli wrote that he had reached out to the FBI’s tip line in the case “to provide my information should they be looking to contact me,” and that he had abandoned the independence movement for California “because it had been taken over by a cabal of leftist lunatics infected with the woke mind virus ...”
The secession effort was hindered, in part, by Marinelli’s residence in Russia, which organizers said in 2017 had led some supporters to back out because of ears of being accused of being involved in something Russia was pushing.
Yes California also posted a video on Twitter denying any ties to Russia, noting that court papers do not identify the group by name and playing video from the Valentine’s Day 2018 rally to show it was a small, peaceful event that did not gain entry to the governor’s office.
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