Russia-linked Facebook ads reportedly targeted tight battleground states

As the drip, drip, drip of the Facebook-Russia scandal that rocked the 2016 presidential election continues, another damning revelation has emerged: some of the ads were targeted at residents in key battleground states.

Two states in particular, Michigan and Wisconsin, where the race was won by 10,704 votes and 22,748 votes, respectively, were mentioned in a CNN report breaking the news Tuesday night. Both played a big role in President Donald Trump cinching the Electoral College vote, despite losing the popular vote by 3 million.

Some of the battleground-targeted ads, which are now being reviewed by Congress after Facebook handed them over, promoted anti-Muslim messages, according to CNN's unnamed sources. The outlet pins its overall report on "four sources with direct knowledge of the situation."

Around 10 million Facebook users saw the political ads bought by Russian actors during the campaign, the social media platform announced Monday. A fraction of the 3,000 ads were meant to be seen by users in particular geographic locations, Facebook has said, without denoting where. Russia-linked actors spent $100,000 on the ads.

Only recently has Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lowered his defenses around the company's role in the election. After the election, he had said it was "crazy" to think that Facebook could play such a large role in the campaign, but last Wednesday he did some careful backtracking.

"After the election, I made a comment that I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a crazy idea," he wrote in a Facebook post. "Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive."

It's unclear whether the public will get to see the content of the ads, although some members of Congress are calling for that level of transparency. Lawmakers and their staffs are just beginning to comb through the ads.

The ads tended to focus on "divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum," Facebook's VP of Policy and Communication Elliott Schrage said previously. They didn't just promote Trump -- some rallied for Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders -- but none of the ads supported Hillary Clinton.

While promoting her book about the election, What Happened, Clinton called on Facebook to own up to its role in the election. She writes extensively in her book about the FBI's investigation into Russia's election meddling (she mentions Russia 99 times).

The White House has yet to comment on the Russia-linked battleground-targeting ads. After Facebook agreed to hand over the thousands of ads to Congress last week, Trump huffed and puffed on Twitter, saying "Facebook was always anti-Trump."

It seems he's got that wrong, too.