Interestingly, foreign interference in democracy is almost as old as the United States itself. A democratic republic by its very nature is subject to disruption—both foreign and domestic—by efforts to disrupt confidence and sway public opinion. The first person to realize this was an early French ambassador to the United States named Edmond Charles Genêt. He arrived in America in early April 1793, just a few weeks before President George Washington officially declared the United States’ neutrality in the expanding war between France and the United Kingdom. Genêt was on a mission to tip the
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