Mueller
charges
Russians
with
meddling
in 2016
race
By
ERIC
TUCKER
APNews.com
WASHINGTON
- In an
extraordinary
indictment,
the U.S.
special
counsel
has
accused
13
Russians
of an
elaborate
plot to
disrupt
the 2016
presidential
election,
charging
them
with
running
a huge
but
hidden
social
media
trolling
campaign
aimed in
part at
helping
Republican
Donald
Trump
defeat
Democrat
Hillary
Clinton.
The
federal
indictment,
brought
Friday
by
special
counsel
Robert
Mueller,
represents
the most
detailed
allegations
to date
of
illegal
Russian
meddling
during
the
campaign
that
sent
Trump to
the
White
House.
It also
marks
the
first
criminal
charges
against
Russians
believed
to have
secretly
worked
to
influence
the
outcome.
The
Russian
organization
was
funded
by
Yevgeny
Prigozhin,
the
indictment
says. He
is a
wealthy
St.
Petersburg
businessman
with
ties to
the
Russian
government
and
President
Vladimir
Putin.
Trump
quickly
claimed
vindication
Friday,
noting
in a
tweet
that the
alleged
interference
efforts
began in
2014 —
“long
before I
announced
that I
would
run for
President.”
“The
results
of the
election
were not
impacted.
The
Trump
campaign
did
nothing
wrong —
no
collusion!”
he
tweeted.
But
the
indictment
does not
resolve
the
collusion
question
at the
heart of
the
continuing
Mueller
probe,
which
before
Friday
had
produced
charges
against
four
Trump
associates.
U.S.
intelligence
agencies
have
previously
said the
Russian
government
interfered
to
benefit
Trump,
including
by
orchestrating
the
hacking
of
Democratic
emails,
and
Mueller
has been
assessing
whether
the
campaign
coordinated
with the
Kremlin.
The
latest
indictment
does not
focus on
the
hacking
but
instead
centers
on a
social
media
propaganda
effort
that
began in
2014 and
continued
past the
election,
with the
goal of
producing
distrust
in the
American
political
process.
Trump
himself
has been
reluctant
to
acknowledge
the
interference
and any
role
that it
might
have
played
in
propelling
him to
the
White
House.
The
indictment
does not
allege
that any
American
knowingly
participated
in
Russian
meddling,
or
suggest
that
Trump
campaign
associates
had more
than
“unwitting”
contact
with
some of
the
defendants
who
posed as
Americans
during
election
season.
But
it does
lay out
a vast
and
wide-ranging
Russian
effort
to sway
political
opinion
in the
United
States
through
a
strategy
that
involved
creating
Internet
postings
in the
names of
Americans
whose
identities
had been
stolen;
staging
political
rallies
while
posing
as
American
political
activists
and
paying
people
in the
U.S. to
promote
or
disparage
candidates.
While
foreign
meddling
in U.S.
campaigns
is not
new, the
indictment
for an
effort
of this
scope
and
digital
sophistication
is
unprecedented.
“This
indictment
serves
as a
reminder
that
people
are not
always
who they
appear
to be on
the
internet,”
Deputy
Attorney
General
Rod
Rosenstein
said
Friday.
“The
indictment
alleges
that the
Russian
conspirators
want to
promote
discord
in the
United
States
and
undermine
public
confidence
in
democracy.
We must
not
allow
them to
succeed.”
The
13
Russians
are not
in
custody
and not
likely
to ever
face
trial.
The
Justice
Department
has for
years
supported
indicting
foreign
defendants
in
absentia
as a way
of
publicly
shaming
them and
effectively
barring
them
from
foreign
travel.
The
surreptitious
campaign
was
organized
by the
Internet
Research
Agency,
a
notorious
Russian
troll
farm
that the
indictment
says
sought
to
conduct
“information
warfare
against
the
United
States
of
America.”
The
company,
among
three
Russian
entities
named in
the
indictment,
had a
multimillion-dollar
budget
and
hundreds
of
workers
divided
by
specialties
and
assigned
to day
and
night
shifts.
According
to
prosecutors,
the
company
was
funded
by
companies
controlled
by
Prigozhin,
the
wealthy
Russian
who has
been
dubbed
“Putin’s
chef”
because
his
restaurants
and
catering
businesses
have
hosted
the
Kremlin
leader’s
dinners
with
foreign
dignitaries.
Prigozhin
said
Friday
he was
not
upset by
the
indictment.
“Americans
are very
impressionable
people,”
he was
quoted
as
saying
by
Russia’s
state
news
agency.
They
“see
what
they
want to
see.”
Also
Friday,
Mueller
announced
a guilty
plea
from a
California
man who
unwittingly
sold
bank
accounts
to
Russians
involved
in the
interference
effort.
The
election-meddling
organization,
looking
to
conceal
its
Russian
roots,
purchased
space on
computer
servers
within
the
U.S.,
used
email
accounts
from
U.S.
internet
service
providers
and
created
and
controlled
social
media
pages
with
huge
numbers
of
followers
on
divisive
issues
such as
immigration,
religion
and the
Black
Lives
Matter
movement.
Starting
in April
2016,
the
indictment
says,
the
Russian
agency
bought
political
ads on
social
media
supporting
Trump
and
opposing
Clinton
without
reporting
expenditures
to the
Federal
Election
Commission
or
registering
as
foreign
agents.
Among
the ads:
“JOIN
our
#HillaryClintonForPrison2016”
and
“Donald
wants to
defeat
terrorism
...
Hillary
wants to
sponsor
it.”
“They
engaged
in
operations
primarily
intended
to
communicate
derogatory
information
about
Hillary
Clinton,
to
denigrate
other
candidates
such as
Ted Cruz
and
Marco
Rubio,
and to
support
Bernie
Sanders
and
then-candidate
Donald
Trump,”
the
indictment
states.
The
indictment
details
contacts
targeting
three
unnamed
officials
in the
Trump
campaign’s
Florida
operation.
In each
instance,
the
Russians
used
false
U.S.
personas
to
contact
the
officials.
The
indictment
doesn’t
say if
any of
them
responded,
and
there’s
no
allegation
that any
of the
campaign
officials
knew
they
were
communicating
with
Russians.
Two
of the
defendants
traveled
to the
U.S. in
June
2014 to
gather
intelligence
on
social
media
sites
and
identify
targets
for
their
operations,
the
indictment
alleges.
Following
the
trip,
the
group
collected
further
intelligence
by
contacting
U.S.
political
and
social
media
activists
while
posing
as U.S.
citizens.
They
were
guided
by one
contact
to
target
“purple
states
like
Colorado,
Virginia
and
Florida,”
prosecutors
say.
Cruz
and
Rubio
ran
against
Trump in
the
Republican
primary;
Sanders
opposed
Clinton
in the
Democratic
primary.
According
to one
internal
communication
described
by
prosecutors,
the
specialists
were
instructed
to “use
any
opportunity
to
criticize
Hillary
and the
rest
(except
Sanders
and
Trump_we
support
them).”
And
according
to one
internal
review,
a
specialist
was
criticized
for
having a
low
number
of posts
criticizing
Clinton.
The
person
was told
“it is
imperative
to
intensify
criticizing
Hillary
Clinton”
in
future
posts.
The
indictment
also
asserts
that the
posts
encouraged
minority
groups
not to
vote or
to vote
for
third
parties
and
alleged
Democratic
voter
fraud.
Ahead of
a
Florida
rally,
the
Russians
paid one
person
to build
a cage
on a
flatbed
truck
and
another
to wear
a
costume
portraying
Clinton
in a
prison
uniform.
But they
also
organized
some
rallies
opposing
Trump,
including
one in
New York
after
the
election
called
“Trump
is NOT
my
president.”
The
Russians
destroyed
evidence
of their
activities
as
Mueller’s
investigation
picked
up, with
one of
those
indicted
sending
an email
in
September
2017 to
a family
member
that
said the
FBI had
“busted”
them so
they
were
covering
their
tracks.
That
person,
Irina
Viktorovna
Kaverzina,
wrote
the
family
member,
“I
created
all of
these
pictures
and
posts,
and the
Americans
believed
that it
was
written
by their
people.”