Special counsel Robert Mueller has brought charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections.
The explosive new charges allege that the Russians created false U.S. personas and stole the identities of real U.S. people in order to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, an assessment previously reached by U.S. intelligence agencies.
“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the Internet,” Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said at a press briefing announcing the indictments.
“The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy.”
President Trump, who has repeatedly cast doubt on whether Russia interfered with the election, has been briefed on the indictments, the White House said.
The efforts, which began in 2014, were connected to the so-called Internet Research Agency, a shadowy Russian operation based in St. Petersburg that leveraged Facebook and other social media platforms to spread divisive messages leading up to the 2016 election.
The indictment says that the goal of the entities and people indicted was to support now-President Trump’s campaign and to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton’s, and that some defendants while posing as U.S. people communicated with “unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”
“Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (“Trump campaign”) and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” the indictment reads. “Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities.”
The indictment describes a conspiracy to alter the U.S. election that involved fraudulently won visas to enter the United States, and a sophisticated operation to reach voters in key states for the purpose of affecting the election through political advertisements, events and social media operations.
