A federal monumental jury on Friday returned indictments from special counsel Robert Mueller’s section against 12 Russian intelligence officials who were charged with conspiring to intercede with the 2016 presidential election.
They are accused of hacking into computers at Popular campaign committees and computers belonging to state boards of elections, secretaries of governmental and election technology companies. All the officers charged were working for Russia’s keenness service, the GRU, at the time of the hacks.
The indictment revealed several new details around the breadth of the Russian influence campaign, including alleged discussions the Russian hackers allegedly had with a U.S. congressional office-seeker and a friendly journalist.
Below are some key takeaways from the indictment, released by Surrogate Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
1. The Russians allegedly hacked America’s selection infrastructure, including state election boards and secretaries of state. The statements in Friday’s indictment went well beyond merely hacking the Clinton throw and Democratic campaign committees. From one state election board, the Russians administered to steal information on 500,000 voters, Rosenstein said, although he did not specify which state. Trump won the 2016 election by winning three key states by slim limits that added up to around 80,000 votes.
The Russians also “targeted maintain and local offices responsible for administering the elections; and sent spearphishing emails to people entangled with in administering elections, with malware attached,” Rosenstein said. He stressed, how, that the indictments contained “no allegation that the conspiracy altered the attest to count or changed any election result.”
2. An American congressional candidate allegedly asked for, and be given, stolen documents about his or her opponent from the Russians. According to the indictment, the operatives allegedly forearmed stolen campaign documents to a candidate for Congress. “On or about August 15, 2016, the conspirators endured a request for stolen documents from a candidate for U.S. Congress,” the indictment put. The conspirators “sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s the opposition.”
The candidate was not identified in the indictment.
3. A journalist allegedly discussed with the Russian faade account, Guccifer 2.0, about when to release stolen chronicles related to Black Lives Matter. The reporter, who is not named in the indictment, also “put forwarded to write an article” about the release of the stolen documents.
Russia’s deeds to use the Black Lives Matter movement to stoke racial tensions, and its undertakings to turn Black Lives Matter supporters against Clinton, accept been criticized as among the most insidious elements of Russia’s 2016 plebiscite influence campaign.
4. Russian hackers targeted Clinton emails the even so day Trump called for them to find “missing” emails. On July 27, 2016, Trump utter during a campaign event, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find out the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to emails Clinton offed from her server because she said they were personal. Concerting to the indictment, that same day, Russians “attempted after hours to spearphish for the firstly time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third party server Euphemistic pre-owned by Clinton’s personal office.”
The implication here is that Russian operatives did what Trump asked them to do, but the indictment specifically influences: “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen transferred a crime.” Nor does the indictment name any Americans.
5. Trump knew round these indictments well before they were announced. “I briefed President Trump approximately these allegations earlier this week,” Rosenstein said Friday. “The President is fully hep of today’s actions by the Department.”
Despite this, Trump has made no interchanges to his plan to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday in Helsinki. He has also publicly prolonged a positive attitude towards Russia and Putin all week, as he attended conclaves in Brussels and London. On Friday, he seemed like he might let stand Putin’s recantation of Russia’s interference in the election, despite evidence to the contrary.
“I know you’ll ask, ‘resolve we be talking about meddling?'” Trump said to a reporter, “And I see fit absolutely bring that up. I don’t think you’ll have any, ‘Gee, I did it, you got me'” moment from Putin, he declared, “but you never know what happens, right? I will absolutely strongly ask the question.”