Day 394: Witch Hunt, Huh? 13 Russians Indicted For Election Interference
Special Counsel Robert Mueller had another Friday surprise up his sleeve, indicting 13 Russians and three Russian entities for conspiring to defraud the United States. Some individuals were also charged with counts of wire fraud and bank fraud.
Generally, the indicted sought to sow political discord and promote an anti-Hillary Clinton message by pushing for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. They organized rallies, engaged in social media trolling, paid for advertisements and even reached out to members of the Trump team for assistance.
The indictment mentions a February 2016 memo to Internet Research Agency staff telling them to post political content on US social media sites and “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).” The reference to Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who challenged Clinton for the Democratic nomination, shows that the Russian government decided early on to oppose Clinton.
Earlier this week, CNN reported that Trump still didn’t believe — despite the overwhelming evidence — that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
Even as his intelligence chiefs unanimously told a Senate panel Tuesday that Russia meddled in 2016 and is planning to do so again in 2018, three sources familiar with the President’s thinking say he remains unconvinced that Russia interfered in the presidential election.
While this issue is separate from the question of whether Trump campaign officials colluded with Russian officials, to Trump the issues are interwoven, the sources say. He views the notion that Russia meddled in the election as an argument that he had help to win, and that he didn’t win the election on his own.
Trump’s view contradicts his intelligence chiefs, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and FBI Director Chris Wray, who all testified — again — on Tuesday that they supported the intelligence community’s January 2017 assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
These beliefs follow months of Trump claiming that the Mueller investigation was a waste of time and money and was a total witch hunt. He has also repeatedly and falsely claimed the Russians wanted to help Clinton and hurt him.
Notably, the indictment does not indicate any level of collusion with Trump or his campaign. The indictment notes that while Trump’s team was contacted by the Russians, it appears as though the team was unaware as to who was contacting them. However, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who announced the indictments, used a particular phrase when discussing that detail.
“There is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity,” he said. “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charge conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.”
In this indictment.
As in, whether or not there was collusion is something that is still being investigated and not to read the indictments as the be-all and end-all of the investigation. Not only is the investigation on-going, it is clearly heating up. Whether Mueller finds collusion between Russia and the Trump team is something that will be definitively laid out later in other reports, documents, memoranda or indictments.
In totally unrelated news, last July, Congress overwhelmingly passed sanctions against Russia, by a 517–5 vote, to punish them for interfering with the 2016 election.
Trump still hasn’t signed it.
394 days in, 1068 to go
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