US indicts 12 Russians for hacking DNC emails during the 2016 electionDeputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein announces that 12 individuals have been charged as part of the investigation into Russian interference
Jon Swaine in New York and Andrew Roth in Moscow
Guardian
Sat 14 Jul 2018 02.29 BST
A dozen Russians were criminally charged on Friday with hacking and leaking the emails of senior Democrats during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
Grand jury indictments against the 12 alleged Russian intelligence officials were announced by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy US attorney general, at a press conference in Washington.
“The internet allows foreign adversaries to attack America in new and unexpected ways,” said Rosenstein. Lamenting what he called “partisan warfare” in the US around the ongoing Russia inquiry, Rosenstein said: “The blame for election interference belongs to the criminals who committed election interference.”
The charges were filed in Washington by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, who is investigating Russian interference in the election and possible collusion with members of Donald Trump’s campaign team.
They were announced just as Trump arrived at Windsor Castle to meet the Queen, and as he prepared to meet Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, on Monday. Rosenstein said he had briefed Trump on the developments.
Rosenstein said those charged were operatives of the GRU, a Russian military intelligence agency. He said they had “corresponded with several Americans through the internet”, including an associate of the Trump campaign.
Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to Trump, previously acknowledged that he had exchanged messages with one of the online personas accused on Friday of being a front for Russian intelligence, but he denied knowing that true identity.
Stone told the Guardian on Friday that his correspondence about the hacked documents was “benign based on its content, context and timing” and “provides evidence no of collaboration or collusion”. He confirmed to ABC News that he believed he was referenced in the indictment.
Thousands of emails taken from the accounts of staff at the the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, were published by outlets including WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.
The indictment says Clinton’s personal office was targeted for the first time on 27 July 2016 – hours after Trump called on Russian hackers to find her emails.
The leaks threw the Democratic party into turmoil. The disclosure of embarrassing internal memos prompted the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chairwoman, on the eve of the party’s convention in July 2016.
US intelligence agencies concluded that the accounts were hacked as part of a wide-ranging operation ordered by Putin to damage Clinton’s bid for the presidency and assist Trump’s campaign.
Trump has consistently tried to cast doubt over the conclusions of the intelligence agencies that he now controls, and highlighted denials from Putin about the election interference. He continued on Friday to dismiss Mueller’s inquiry as a “witch-hunt”.
The indicted Russians were on Friday also accused of hacking into the computer systems of American state election authorities and of companies that produced software used by states for running elections. Rosenstein said there was no evidence of any vote tallies being affected.
The Russians used techniques including “spearphishing” and spying software, before publishing the emails through well-known online accounts including Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, which purported to be independent American and Romanian hackers. Rosenstein said both personas were in fact operated by the GRU.
In February this year, Mueller’s team filed criminal charges against 13 Russians and three Russian companies for interfering in the presidential campaign, using social media and coordinating with low-level Trump campaign activists.
Rosenstein said at the time that the Russians had waged “information warfare” against the US during the 2016 campaign, with the aim of “spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general”.
Mueller’s team has also charged Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, with financial crimes. Three other Trump campaign aides have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to questions about the US indictment, which was released just as an aide to the Russian president was briefing reporters on Monday’s summit between Putin and Trump.
The two leaders will hold a closed tête-à-tête on Monday morning, followed by a larger meeting between the two delegations. Yuri Ushakov, the aide to Putin, did not bring up the hacking accusations while discussing a list of likely topics for Monday’s talks.
The indictment targeted 12 Russian military officers in two cyberwarfare units in the Military Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, up to the rank of colonel. The Russians are charged with conspiracies against the US, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.
Both GRU units are based in Moscow and traditionally charged with deciphering foreign military communications. Publicly available documents and contracts confirm that one of those indicted, Viktor Netyshko, heads the 85th Main Center for special service.
The GRU has been accused of standing behind Fancy Bear, one of two hacking groups accused of infiltrating US political parties during the 2016 elections.
The United States has already sanctioned six officers from the GRU leadership, including Igor Korobov, the directorate’s head. None of those officers were included in Friday’s criminal indictment.
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Here are 6 stunning revelations from Mueller’s new indictments of 12 Russian officersDavid Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
13 Jul 2018 at 14:37 ET
Friday afternoon Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein unveiled that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe has just led to a grand jury indicting 12 Russian government officials for criminal hacking related to the 2016 presidential election.
They successfully hacked the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, various state government offices and the election systems of several states.
500,000 voters’ data was accessed, according to Rosenstein.
The indictment itself, which can be read via the Dept. of Justice website, makes even more stunning revelations, like these:
On July 27, 2016, then-candidate Trump made his now-infamous and very public request to hack Hillary Clinton’s email accounts: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
Via the indictment, the Russian officials that same evening tried “for the first time” to hack Clinton’s emails:
Guccifer 2.0 (Russian intel) was communicating with a person in regular contact with the Trump campaign
https://t.co/x9TUcEm966 pic.twitter.com/YuQ2Lr4k96
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) July 13, 2018
WikiLeaks “was coordinating the release of the DNC emails” with the Russian government:
And here, Mueller spells out that Organization 1 — presumably WikiLeaks — was coordinating the release of the DNC emails with Guccifer 2.0
https://t.co/x9TUcEm966 pic.twitter.com/HZi8ZOXSIP
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) July 13, 2018
A congressional candidate requested from and received from the Russian government hackers information on their opponent:
3. Russian hackers directly sent, upon request, hacked info to a candidate for U.S. Congress pic.twitter.com/88ihq1eFhl
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 13, 2018
Allegedly, according to ThinkProgress founder Judd Legum, Roger Stone apparently corresponded with the Russian government hackers:
6. The indictment describes, without naming him, the Russian hackers direct correspondence with Trump's oldest political adviser, Roger Stone pic.twitter.com/jFGLa8v7Zp
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 13, 2018
Some (rightly) are calling this attack on American democracy “an act of war”:
4/ The indictment provides details about the GRU conspirators. Of note is that these are high level Russian military operatives. This was a direct act of war. pic.twitter.com/mU9HoGUj8M
— Smith (@WriteSmitty) July 13, 2018
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New indictment reveals top Trump surrogate was in regular contact with Russian hackers in 2016 — including Guccifer 2.0Tana Ganeva
Raw Story
14 Jul 2018 at 13:22 ET
On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictment of Russian nationals who hacked Hillary Clinton campaign email addresses in an effort to sway the 2016 US election.
The indictment noted that Guccifer 2.0—a persona invented by the Russian officers—was in regular contact with a person close to the Donald Trump campaign.
“On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump “thank u for writing back … do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted?”
The passage in the indictment unleashed speculation that the Trump campaign surrogate was none other than Roger Stone, a political operative known for injecting himself into controversies.
In a blog post on his website, Stone admitted that he had communicated with Guccifer 2.0. A screenshot of the conversation appears to reflect the conversion cited in the indictment.
“As I testified before the House intelligence committee under oath, my 24-word exchange with someone on Twitter claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 is benign based on its content, context, and timing,” Stone told The Daily Beast. “This exchange is entirely public and provides no evidence of collaboration or collusion with Guccifer 2.0 or anyone else in the alleged hacking of the DNC emails, as well as taking place many weeks after the events described in today’s indictment.”
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Russia tried to steal Hillary Clinton’s emails ‘for the first time’ hours after Trump asked if they were listeningTravis Gettys
Raw Story
13 Jul 2018 at 13:26 ET
President Donald Trump infamously asked Russia — if they were listening — to help find Hillary Clinton’s emails, and a new indictment shows their intelligence agents tried.
Special counsel Robert Mueller obtained an indictment Friday against 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2016 campaign and posting them online through Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks, which investigators confirmed were fronts for Russian agents.
The indictment shows that Russia first tried to hack into Clinton’s email system the same evening that Trump publicly asked them to during a July 27, 2016, news conference.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said at the time. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Trump has steadfastly denied that Russia had anything to do with the hacks, despite the findings of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and now alleged in the grand jury indictment.
That indictment shows Russian agents tried to break into an email system used by Clinton and her associates that same day.
“The Conspirators spearphised individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign throughout the summer of 2016,” the indictment says.
“For example, on or about July 27, 2016,” prosecutors said, “the Conspirators after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign.”
July 27, 2016, Trump: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."
Indictment: That evening, Russian operatives targeted Clinton campaign emails "for the first time." pic.twitter.com/fanyaAxwfJ
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) July 13, 2018
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Ex-CIA director predicts next Mueller indictments will include AmericansMartin Cizmar
Raw Story
14 Jul 2018 at 18:10 ET
Ex-CIA director Michael Hayden made a bold prediction on CNN Friday afternoon, telling host Jake Tapper that he suspects the next round of indictments by Robert Mueller will include Americans.
The retired four-star general who led the NSA and the CIA said that he does not expect Trump to back out of his summit with Vladimir Putin, but that Trump should confront him.
“This is your chance, Mr. President,” he said. “We have solid, forensic, detailed evidence that the president can make use of.”
Hayden said that he had long suspected that Mueller’s investigation would end in an inconclusive cloud but “the more this goes on, the more I believe we are going to see a widening circle here.”
Tapper pushed him to make a prediction.
“In other words, there will be another indictment and Americans involved?” Tapper asked.
“I would not be surprised if this not in the the last indictment we see that doesn’t mention an American,” Hayden said.
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MSNBC breaks down ‘direct nexus’ between Trump and Russia revealed in new Mueller indictments14 Jul 2018 at 15:15 ET
Raw Story
Katy Tur’s panel on MSNBC detailed the “direct nexus” between President Donald Trump and Russian hackers revealed in today’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers.
Tur played the infamous clips of Donald Trump saying, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.”
Russia attempted stealing Hillary Clinton’s emails “for the first time” only hours after Trump made his request for campaign assistance from Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin.
MSNBC played the clip of Tur following up on the Trump’s request, during a contentious back and forth.
“Do you have any qualms about asking a foreign government — Russia, China, anybody — to interfere, to hack into a system of anybody’s in this country?” Tur asked Trump on July 27, 2016. “Does it give you pause?”
“No, it gives me no pause,” Trump replied. “If Russia or China or any other country has those emails, to be honest with you, I would love to see them.”
NBC News intelligence and national security reporter Ken Dilanian explained the significance of Tur’s back-and-forth with Trump.
“The exchange you played is remarkable, it shows there is a direct nexus between Donald Trump’s statements and the actions of these Russian hackers,” Dilanian noted.
“It was a very bizarre statement at the time,” agreed MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber
“If taken literally, it was seeking foreign help, which can be a crime itself,” Melber observed. “They immediately tried to get away from it being literal.”
“You, as a journalist, pressed him at the time,” he continued. “Those questions obviously proved prescient and perhaps you were triggering him.”
Tur then read a quote from the indictments that Melber had cited.
“The object of the conspiracy was the hack into protected computers of persons and entities charged with the administration of the 2016 U.S. elections in order to access those computers and steal voter data and other information stored on those computers and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S.”
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CNN’s Gloria Borger slams ‘narcissistic’ White House response to Mueller indictmentsDominique Jackson
Raw Story
14 Jul 2018 at 16:08 ET
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein dropped 12 news indictments against Russian military officials for meddling in the U.S. 2016 presidential election on Friday.
In response, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, released a “narcissistic” statement, according to CNN’s Gloria Borger.
Giuliani said on Twitter: “The indictments Rod Rosenstein announced are good news for all Americans. The Russians are nailed. No Americans are involved. Time for Mueller to end this pursuit of the President and say President Trump is completely innocent.”
During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Borger was disgusted at Giuliani’s response.
“Where is the outrage?” Tapper asked.
“First of all, there isn’t any outrage. If there’s such a thing as a narcissistic official White House statement, this is it,” she said. “This is about Donald Trump, saying, see, we didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
She continued: “Where, is the president of the United States says, you know, we have to find a way to make sure that this does not occur again? This is a cyber war, and we have to defend ourselves. Instead, we got this self-serving statement from the president of the United States.”
Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0NnYpv8ch4*****************
Watch CNN’s Anderson Cooper hilariously rake Trump over the coals for living in a ‘witch hunt’ fantasy worldMartin Cizmar
Raw Story
14 Jul 2018 at 20:53 ET
CNN host Anderson Cooper opened his Friday night show with a sharp-edged takedown of President Trump’s claim that he is the victim of a witch hunt.
Earlier today, special prosecutor Robert Mueller handed down indictments that directly connect Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign to the Kremlin.
“All the White House did say was, essentially: ‘Nothing to do with us, nothing to see here,'” Cooper said. “What they haven’t been saying as well, that this was, you know, a direct attack aimed at the heart of the country’s democracy.”
Cooper then debriefed the day’s events and the allegations in the indictments.
“Again, just to be clear, that ‘witch hunt,’ as the president called it, has now yielded 191 charges against 32 individuals and three companies,” Cooper said. “And the president knew about it. Certainly hasn’t stopped him from talking or tweeting about the search for women wearing pointy hats, riding broom sticks. By our count, the president has tweeted 84 times using the term ‘witch-hunt’ to describe the Russia probe.”
Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAbRlPbD20g*************
How Do You Say ‘Witch Hunt’ in Russian?It sure is strange that Donald Trump is so angry at American justice for the indictment of 12 Russian military officers.
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.
July 13, 2018
NY Times
You might expect that an American president, presented with the indictment of a dozen Russian military officers for engaging in a concerted, yearslong cyberattack on American democracy, would be outraged and demand justice.
Donald Trump is outraged, all right. But his anger is directed at his fellow Americans. He shows no sign of canceling his meeting scheduled for Monday with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, or insisting on, say, the extradition of the defendants to stand trial. He is instead reserving his fire and fury for the investigation itself — which he prefers to call a “hoax” — and for the American law-enforcement community that has been working to protect the nation ever since it first became aware of the Russian interference more than two years ago.
That’s been Mr. Trump’s reaction almost every time he’s been confronted with evidence showing that the Russian government undertook a coordinated campaign to help swing the election in his favor. In July 2016, then-candidate Trump wrote on Twitter, “The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me.”
The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016
Mr. Trump, who was notified of the coming indictment earlier this week, kept up his mockery before it was announced, calling the special counsel’s investigation a “witch hunt” on Friday morning.
So who are the witches this time? Twelve Russian military intelligence officials who, according to the indictment, hacked into the computer systems of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee, and state voter rolls and voting software, stealing emails and other documents and then posting them online under false identities, including Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, to hide their Russian origins.
The hackers used familiar techniques, like spearphishing (which tricks unwitting users into sharing personal information) and installing malware to monitor specific computers and steal their data. The hackers transferred those stolen documents to another organization that the indictment does not name. But it appears to be WikiLeaks, which was the source of many of the leaks of Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, and was in regular contact with Mr. Trump’s advisers.
The hackers also infiltrated state-level election systems, including the computer networks of state election boards and of a company that supplies software used to run elections. In one state, they stole half a million voters’ personal information, including their names, addresses, birth dates and partial Social Security numbers.
Friday’s indictment does not allege that any Americans knowingly broke the law or that the conspiracy changed the outcome of the election. Nor does it allege that the unnamed Americans it referred to were aware that they were corresponding with Russian officials — a straw that Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, grasped as though his life depended on it. “The Russians are nailed. No Americans are involved,” Mr. Giuliani tweeted in a message as predictable as it was premature. A former federal prosecutor himself, Mr. Giuliani is well aware that the details of any specific indictment — especially one that is part of a complex, long-running investigation — have little bearing on what future indictments might bring.
In fact, there are already piles of evidence that Mr. Trump and top officials in his campaign were not only aware of the Russian hacking at the time, but were encouraging it. Remember the July 2016 news conference where Mr. Trump asked Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s emails? “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said. Another “joke,” his defenders claimed at the time. On or about the same day, according to the indictment, the Russians tried to hack into multiple email accounts used by Mrs. Clinton’s personal office, as well as dozens more associated with her campaign.
And then there was Donald Trump Jr.’s response to a June 2016 email offering “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton from a Russian government official. “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” the message said. Donald Jr., who was one of his father’s top campaign aides, immediately replied, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”
Friday’s indictment included more than a few hints about the next targets of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. For example, in August 2016, a candidate for Congress requested stolen documents from Guccifer 2.0, who sent documents related to that candidate’s opponent.
On the same day, Guccifer wrote to a person “in regular contact with senior members” of the Trump campaign, apparently Roger Stone, “thank u for writing back … do u find anything interesting in the docs I posted?” A couple of days later, Guccifer wrote, “please tell me if i can help u anyhow … it would be a great pleasure to me.”
Don’t forget that Mr. Mueller has already secured guilty pleas showing ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, including from one foreign-policy adviser to the campaign who lied to authorities about his communications with a professor who offered damaging information on Mrs. Clinton — a professor he knew was linked to Russian officials.
Responding to this shouldn’t be difficult. Russian officials attacked American democracy in 2016, and the intelligence community has warned us that they’re coming back for more. But Mr. Trump seems incapable of perceiving the threat, while Republicans in Congress spend their time fulminating not about the assault on American sovereignty, but about the private text messages of an F.B.I. agent investigating that attack.
As Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein rightly said after announcing the indictment, in the face of such an assault, “it’s important for us to avoid thinking politically, as Republicans or Democrats, and instead to think patriotically as Americans.”
Good advice. If only Mr. Trump and his servile defenders in Congress would heed it.