Five things to know about the Russian indictments

Special counsel Robert Mueller shook Washington again on Friday with the release of an indictment alleging that 13 Russians and three Russian organizations meddled heavily in the 2016 presidential election.

While the indictment does not suggest that any Americans were involved in the effort or that it affected the election’s outcome, it included a host of details that suggested the depth of Mueller’s work.

Here are five things to know about the indictment.

It describes a broad, sophisticated effort

The defendants are accused of running the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, a propaganda operation based in St. Petersburg that leveraged social media platforms as part of an alleged attempt to spread divisive content to American audiences leading up to the election.

Executives at Facebook have already revealed that the company unwittingly sold $100,000 in political advertisements to the Internet Research Agency before the election, many of the ads designed to exploit political and social divides in the United States. Twitter has also identified over 3,800 accounts and 50,000 bots linked to the Russian troll farm.

The indictment contains new details that show the sophistication of the alleged operation, which is said to have employed hundreds of people and was supported by an annual budget of millions of dollars.

According to the indictment, the influence operation against the presidential election dates back to 2014. The defendants allegedly created false U.S. personas to reach Americans online through social media pages and groups, and also in some cases used stolen U.S. identities to post content.

There efforts went beyond posting divisive content online from a remote location in Russia.

Some of the Russians are also accused of fraudulently obtaining visas in an effort to travel to the United States to gain intelligence for their operations.

Two of the defendants are said to have successfully obtained visas and traveled to a number of states, including Nevada, Illinois, Michigan, and New York, in summer 2014. The travel was used to produce an “intelligence report,” the indictment states.

Beginning in 2016, they also allegedly staged rallies from their location in Russia by masquerading as U.S. grassroots activists who could not attend the events in person. This included two rallies in New York, one dubbed “March for Trump” and another “Down With Hillary,” that were held in June and July.

Defendants allegedly communicated with ‘unwitting’ Trump campaign associates

The indictment contains the bombshell allegation that some of the defendants through false American identities communicated with “unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign” and other political activists in order to coordinate their political efforts.

This included members, volunteers, and supporters of the president’s campaign who were involved in local outreach, as well as grassroots groups backing Trump, the indictment says. In some cases, the targeted individuals shared the Internet Research Agency’s content through their own social media channels.

The Americans allegedly targeted by the Russians are not named. The indictment also makes no allegation that Americans had any knowledge of the influence effort, a point Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stressed on Friday when unveiling the charges.

Source: Thehill News