Dear Commons Community,
Special Counsel Robert Mueller III charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations today with illegally trying to disrupt the American political process, including efforts designed to boost the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and hurt that of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. The indictment represents the first charges by the special counsel for meddling in the 2016 presidential election — the fundamental crime that he was assigned to investigate. As reported by the New York Times:
“In a 37-page indictment filed in United States District Court, Mr. Mueller said that the 13 individuals have conspired since 2014 to violate laws that prohibit foreigners from spending money to influence federal elections in the United States.
The indictment charges that the foreigners falsely posed as American citizens, stole identities and otherwise engaged in fraud and deceit in an effort to influence the U.S. political process, including the 2016 presidential race.
“The nature of the scheme was the defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists,” Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general overseeing Mr. Mueller’s inquiry, said in a brief news conference on Friday afternoon at the Justice Department.
I don’t know whether Russian activities alone caused an election upset in 2016, but I do know that between Comey’s late-breaking news right…
Though the Russians are unlikely to be immediately arrested, they are now wanted by the United States government, which will make it hard for them to travel or do business internationally. All were charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, three with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud and five with aggravated identity theft.
President Trump emphasized in a tweet and a statement that the indictments accused neither him nor his campaign of wrongdoing and said that the partisan rancor that dominates politics made room for “bad actors, like Russia,” to sow discord.
“We must unite as Americans to protect the integrity of our democracy and our elections,” he said in the statement.
In the midafternoon tweet, he wrote that Russia began its operation before he even announced his candidacy and that its efforts did not affect the election results. “The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” he wrote.
The indictment lays out a highly sophisticated, well-funded, three-year-long scheme designed in part to put President Trump in The White House.
The Internet Research Agency, operating out of St. Petersburg, was described in the indictment as a hub for a sophisticated operation designed to reach millions of Americans to disrupt the political process in the United States. Its annual budget was millions of dollars; its stated goal was to “spread distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general.”
This is an incredible development that gives credibility to the work of the special counsel. I have a sense that this is only the beginning. There will be more indictments against various individuals associated with Donald Trump’s campaign.
Tony
