Twitter: Russian bots retweeted Trump nearly 500,000 times in last months of election

Russian bots on Twitter retweeted President Trump hundreds of thousands of times during the last months of his presidential campaign, Twitter told Congress.

The company revealed to lawmakers on Thursday that the Russian-linked accounts had retweeted Trump nearly 470,000 times from Sept. 1 to Nov. 15, 2016. The accounts retweeted Hillary Clinton less than 50,000 times during the same timeframe.

Trump has been prolific on Twitter throughout his campaign and into his time in office, using the platform to announce new policies and respond to reports about his administration.

The documents featuring the figures were posted by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday.

Twitter shared the numbers as lawmakers press tech companies for information on how Russia used social media platforms to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Twitter announced last year that it had identified 201 accounts linked to Russia's election interference.

Facebook and Google also submitted responses to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

Facebook said that it had found 129 events created by pages linked to Russian “troll farms” that spread information intended to influence the election.