The indictment
Rosenstein announced the indictment about 2o minutes ago.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is announcing Friday the indictment of Russian nationals and entities accused of breaking U.S. laws to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, CBS News’ Paula Reid reports.
On Friday, a D.C. federal grand jury returned an indictment against the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization which has connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin — it names 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities that accuses them of violating U.S. criminal laws to meddle in U.S. elections and political processes. According to a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, the indictment charges all of the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the U.S., as well as “three defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft.”
According to the indictment, “Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”
Working with the Internet Research Agency, the defendants “posted derogatory information” about several candidates, the indictment says, and by mid-2016, their efforts included “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” the indictment says.
In other words they did things that genuine US citizens were doing, but they gave those doings an artificial outside-actor boost…and given how tight the election was and how carefully targeted the boosting was, they are why we are stuck with this immoral empty hateful monster of a “president.”
Starting around 2014, the defendants began to track and study groups on U.S. social media dedicated to American politics and social issues. They used metrics to track the performance of various social media groups. They then travelled to the U.S. (or in some cases, tried to travel to the U.S.) to collect intelligence for their interference operations. They posted [probably “posed”] as Americans and contacted U.S. political and social activists and learned they should target “purple” states, those that were undecided in the campaign.
And by god it worked, damn them to hell.
They created hundreds of social media accounts and used them to develop fictitious U.S. personas into “leaders of opinion in the U.S.” The defendants worked day and night shifts to pump out messages, controlling pages targeting a range of issues, including immigration, Black Lives Matter, and they amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. They set up and used servers inside the U.S. to mask the Russian origin of the accounts. The Internet Research Agency employed hundreds of people for these purposes — administrators, creators of personas, technical support — and spent the equivalent of millions of dollars for these efforts.
In addition to disparaging Clinton, they denigrated other candidates, “such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio,” and they supported Bernie Sanders and then Donald Trump. In the latter half of 2016, they used groups to discourage minorities from voting in the 2016 presidential election.
They what?
They used groups to discourage minorities from voting in the 2016 presidential election.
We’re living in Putin’s world.
The eye-opener for me was that the Russians didn’t confine their activities to stuff that could be done over the internet from “Cozy Bear’s” server farms. They were actually sending agents over (who entered the U.S. under false pretenses) to organize rallies, etc.
Yes that surprises me too. I think it’s been mentioned before but the indictment is…Official.
Will Trump try to downplay/ignore this or will he recognize its seriousness and hostile intent? My guess is Door #1, as admitting Russian election interference diminishes the size and scope of his tremendous victory against “Crooked Hillary.” He wants to pretend he deserves a chair at the grown up table and can’t stand that he still has to use a booster seat and a sippy cup.
YNNB,
Yeah, the funny thing about this indictment is that on its face, it’s not bad for Trump. As he likes to say, “no collusion! No collusion!” The only references to contact with the official Trump campaign say that the officials were “unwitting.” And the indictment also alleges that the Russians (1) tried to promote Sanders, too; and (2) promoted anti-Trump protests after the election.
So the smart PR response would be “hey, this just confirms what we said all along — that there was no collusion by the Trump campaign. And sure, the Russians tried to interfere, but that’s old news, and this indictment also confirms that they interfered in all sorts of ways including against Trump.”
But you’re right — Trump is emotionally committed to denying that there was any help from the Russians, because that might delegitimize his Great and Glorious Victory. So who knows what the official response will be.
Oh, I meant to add — overall this indictment probably IS really bad news for Trump, because it shows Mueller making progress, and I don’t think Trump will like where things lead from here.
Hmmm no it is still bad for Trump. His election was the product of manipulation by his best buddies the Russians. It wasn’t solely the product of HIS AWESOME GLORIOUSNESS. Since the most important thing to him by far is his own ego, that will enrage him.
Granted, Rosenstein said the indictment does not say the manipulation changed the outcome. But we can all do the math.
I’m guessing there’s more and worse to come.
So Trump had a friend in Petrograd, who had a friend in Omsk, who had a friend in Tomsk, who had a friend in Pittsburg…
Here’s the thing though: none of this would have been a problem if people weren’t stupid and/or shitty.
Apparently there’s lots more to come. This is just one little piece.
What puzzles me about all this is the actual effect of these indictments.
Presumably all the Russians under indictment are well out of the United States by now, and thus out of American jurisdiction. How will Mueller get hold of them, and obtain their testimony?
When can we expect apologies from Assange, Greenwald/Snowden, Hedges, Lee Smith over at Tablet etc. etc.?
Why the indictments…if I understand it correctly via an array of commentators – it’s partly to spell out exactly what happened, partly to make clear to Putin & Co that the FBI is on to them, partly as a piece of the case against US nationals…and more.
The spelling out exactly what happened is important. (Well, it all is, but anyway.) It’s one thing reading it in the Times or the Post, as we have, and another reading it in legalese. One assumes FBI agents and other intel agents have resources that journalists don’t (and immunity from libel suits that journalists don’t?) so an indictment kind of puts it in bold type.