During that time, he posted parody political advertisements on YouTube, including one that poked fun at Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.
[11][12] During the 2016 US presidential election, while working for Breitbart News, Stranahan communicated with Russian hackers via Guccifer 2.0 to leak illicitly obtained material about the Democratic Party.
Mueller's indictment referred to an unnamed reporter who had conferred with the Russians about the timing of a leak; Stranahan has confirmed that he was the journalist concerned.
[1][17] Stranahan had been attending the briefings for several weeks while identifying himself as a Breitbart reporter and trying to ask White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer a question about CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity technology company that handled the Democratic National Committee's servers during the 2016 election.
[citation needed] A few months later, Stranahan was highly critical of the Breitbart editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow, in part for perceived treachery in accepting the Russian hack happened during the 2016 presidential election.
[1] Stranahan, the station's only contributor to identify himself as a supporter of President Donald Trump, told The Washington Post that he wanted to work for Sputnik because so many Americans inaccurately believe Russia is their country's enemy.
[1] Caroline Lester in The New Republic in 2018 speculated that "Russian authorities may not need to exercise direct editorial control to achieve their ends" referring to the contributors it hires, such as Stranahan and John Kiriakou.