The Biden administration has charged four U.S. citizens from a pan-Africanist group with conspiring with the Russian government to sow discord in U.S. elections. Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, faces charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, along with Penny Hess, Jesse Nevel and Augustus Romain Jr. Three Russians were also named in an indictment unsealed by the Justice Department on Tuesday. This follows a violent FBI raid on the activists’ properties in Missouri and Florida last summer. Speaking to Democracy Now! in August of last year, Omali Yeshitela called the FBI’s case against his organization “ridiculous” and “asinine.”

Omali Yeshitela: “The work we’ve been doing for 50 years as a party and that I’ve been doing for nearly 60 years is about the liberation of Black people. I want to be clear on that. And the government is clear on that. They use Russia, they use this nonsense, even at a time when we’ve seen white people scaling the walls of the Capitol, threatening to kill the vice president, the feet on the desk of Nancy Pelosi. And you talk about we have some role under the Russians of contaminating the pristine elections that happen in this country?”