mr. wainstein. now professor goodman. >> i want to start by thinking chairman grassley and ranking member feinstein and distinguished members of the committee for holding such an important hearing on such an important issue. it's an honor for to be here to testify before you. the russian organization that used social media tools to interfere in our most recent election called its mission, quote, information warfare against the united states of america, and court. like the terrorists on 9/11, our enemies used are systems against us. al qaeda use commercial air transportation systems, the kremlin used our social media and communications systems. moscow hijacked platforms such as facebook, twitter, and youtube, and the attack on the united states. the operations wreaked havoc on the election that began long before donald trump or hiary clinton announced their runs for the presidency, code-named, or referred to as the translation project. this specific russian operation to influence the 2016 election be

mr. wainstein. is there anything in 18 u.s. 371 conspiracy charge thaw think needs to be changed or fixed to address this issue? >> red light on. >> there we go. thank you. so 18 usc 381 is the federal conspiracy statute and has a prong to it that provides that the government can prosecute somebody if they defraud the united states. and that prong has been used as a basis for prosecutions against poem and entities that mislead the government for their own advantage. maybe you know, mislead the government in about taxes and the like. one of the things that, that's one of the statutes that's used by the special counsel. in his indictment. that alleging that the russian entities had defrauded the government by misleading them about the disclosure requirements for the state department, the justice department, et cetera. that is an effective tool to go after foreign parties who are pretending to be foreign partie who are pretending to be americans to get involved in u.s. elections. i cannot think of a sp

mr. wainstein for focusing on the botnet civil injunction legislation. senator graham and i have been working on that for a long time, hoping to get it into the nda bill also. it seems pretty obvious to try to shut these damn things down in the way that's been proven to work. but what i want to talk about in my time is the problem of shell corporations. because for all of the emphasis that the witnesses have put on policing and prosecuting foreign influence in our elections, you can neither police or prosecute which you cannot find. and at the moment, we have both a shell corporation problem, which was emphasized by mark zuckerberg in his testimony when he said their political advertisement authentication program would only go to the first shell corporation, and not seek any information about who was actually behind it. i don't think putin is stupid enough to call it boris and natasha llc. it's going to sound more like americans for puppies and peace and prosperity. but it's a front group. and it's got putin or whomever else behind it. and until we can k