Romania update: The constitutional court decided to invalidate the first round of the election because of the manipulation which got the dark horse candidate Georgescu into the second round.
So the election is effectively cancelled until an unknown later date.
The manipulation was dark money that funded a TikTok influencer campaign promoting him - basically the way they fund influencers to pump a memecoin. He reported zero campaign expenditure yet the influencers were estimated to have costed $15mn.
The constitutional court has a somewhat tarnished reputation because they also banned another person from running, on the basis of her speeches being "not aligned with the values of the constitution"...
However, in this case it looks like they have more concrete evidence of election interference than when they did this in 2016 against Trump.
But the optics are bad. 50% of the Romanian population is going to take this as the court's refusal to accept the will of the people.
So the election is effectively cancelled until an unknown later date.
The manipulation was dark money that funded a TikTok influencer campaign promoting him - basically the way they fund influencers to pump a memecoin. He reported zero campaign expenditure yet the influencers were estimated to have costed $15mn.
The constitutional court has a somewhat tarnished reputation because they also banned another person from running, on the basis of her speeches being "not aligned with the values of the constitution"...
However, in this case it looks like they have more concrete evidence of election interference than when they did this in 2016 against Trump.
But the optics are bad. 50% of the Romanian population is going to take this as the court's refusal to accept the will of the people.
I think the constitutional court does have "damning evidence" that this was the work of Russia and the whole thing is crooked and the guy is guilty of treason and so on... Not like with Trump in 2016 when in fact they had nothing.
But as I said, I think they're playing with fire here and they put the entire country at risk by trying so hard to save it.