Friday, February 16, 2018

BREAKING: 13 Russian nationals indicted for meddling in U.S. election

By Alex Thompson Feb 16, 2018

The Russia investigation just produced its next round of indictments.

On Friday, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. The eight counts of the indictment include charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and six counts of “aggravated identity theft.”

The indictment alleges that the Russian nationals spread “derogatory information about a number of candidates” but that by mid-2016, they were “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ('Trump Campaign') and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”

Mueller’s team also alleges that some of the defendants posed as Americans and “without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”

The defendants stand accused of creating social media accounts posing as Americans, in some instances using stolen identities, to reach “significant numbers of Americans” in order to disrupt the 2016 election. Some defendants even “traveled to the United States under false pretenses” and purchased “computer infrastructure” to obfuscate their Russian origin.

Full indictment embedded below.

Read more
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/vbp3kx/breaking-13-russian-nationals-indicted-for-meddling-in-us-election?utm_source=vicenewsfb

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