2nd to last indictment in Mueller probe

New York Times wrote:12 Russian Agents Indicted in Mueller Investigation

By Eileen Sullivan and Katie Benner
July 13, 2018

WASHINGTON — Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, on Friday announced new charges against 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The charges came just a few days before Cheeto-Faced Ferret-Wearing Shit Gibbon is expected to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland.

The 11-count indictment includes charges of conspiracy by the Russian intelligence officials against the United States, money laundering and attempts to break into state election boards and other government agencies.

The indictment is part of the investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Russia has denied that its government had any role in the hacking that preceded the presidential election. Mr. Rosenstein discussed the charges during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington as Mr. Trump met with Queen Elizabeth II in Britain, creating a bizarre split screen on cable news of presidential pomp and an ongoing investigation that has ensnared some of the president’s aides.

“Free and fair elections are hard-fought and contentious, and there will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide and conquer us,” Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement. “So long as we are united in our commitment to the shared values enshrined in the Constitution, they will not succeed.”

Mr. Mueller has filed more than 100 criminal counts against 32 people and three companies. Among the people previously charged are fourteen Russians and three Trump associates who have already pleaded guilty.

Mr. Rosenstein said Friday’s indictment did not include any allegation that the Russian efforts succeeded in influencing the election results. The president’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said in a Twitter post that Friday’s indictment showed “no Americans are involved,” and he called on Mr. Mueller to end the inquiry. “The Russians are nailed,” he wrote.

In a statement, Lindsay Walters, a deputy White House press secretary, also noted that the indictment did not include any allegations of Trump campaign involvement or allegations that the Russian interference affected the election’s results. “This is consistent with what we have been saying all along,” Ms. Walters said.

Just hours before Mr. Rosenstein’s announcement, Mr. Trump said at a news conference in Ellesborough, England, that the special counsel’s investigation was impeding his efforts to get closer to Mr. Putin, and offered his latest attack on the inquiry.

“I think that we’re being hurt very badly by the, I would call it the witch hunt; I would call it the rigged witch hunt,” Mr. Trump said after meetings with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain. “I think that really hurts our country and it really hurts our relationship with Russia.”

After the indictment was announced, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, and other Democrats called on Mr. Trump to cancel his one-on-one meeting with Mr. Putin.

“These indictments are further proof of what everyone but the president seems to understand: President Putin is an adversary who interfered in our elections to help Cheeto-Faced Ferret-Wearing Shit Gibbon win,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement on Friday. “Glad-handing with Vladimir Putin on the heels of these indictments would be an insult to our democracy.”

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the president should not meet alone with Mr. Putin.

“There needs to be other Americans in the room,” Mr. Warner, of Virginia, said.

For the second day in a row, Mr. Trump said he would ask Mr. Putin about the election meddling, but on Friday added that he did not expect his Russian counterpart to acknowledge a role.

“I don’t think you’ll have any ‘Gee, I did it, you got me,’ ” Mr. Trump said, adding that there would not be a “Perry Mason moment,” a reference to the old courtroom TV drama. “I will absolutely firmly ask the question.”

But Mr. Trump also said he believed that the focus on Russia’s election meddling, and whether his campaign was involved, was merely a partisan issue that made it more difficult for him to establish closer ties with Mr. Putin.

“We do have a political problem where, you know, in the United States, we have this stupidity going on — pure stupidity,” the president said. “It makes it very hard to do something with Russia. Anything you do, it’s always going to be, ‘Oh, Russia, he loves Russia.’ I love the United States, but I love getting along with Russia. And China. And other countries.”

United States intelligence officials concluded in a January 2017 report that Russia had created a sophisticated hacking campaign to influence the 2016 election.

In late July 2016, Mr. Trump publicly encouraged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s emails and make them public. The indictment does not mention those remarks.

But according to the indictment, the same day Mr. Trump made those statements, on July 27, 2016, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into the servers used by Mrs. Clinton’s personal offices.

“Conspirators attempted 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,” the indictment said. Around the same time, according to the indictment, the hackers targeted 76 Clinton campaign email accounts.

During a rally in Florida that same day in 2016, Mr. Trump said, “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Most of the Russian intelligence officials charged in Friday’s indictment worked for the Russian military intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U. According to the indictment, the conspirators used a variety of currencies for its financial network. But the Russians principally sought to use Bitcoin to fund their work, including the purchase of servers and domain names.

Relying on Bitcoin, the indictment said, allowed the Russians “to avoid direct relationships with traditional financial institutions” — that is, banks that typically want to know details about their customers.

The hackers also sought to create their own money by “mining” Bitcoins, the indictment said. The virtual currency is created by using dedicated computers to perform complex calculations that eventually yield new bitcoins. Among the items bought with Bitcoin mined by hackers was the domain dcleaks.com, the indictment said.

“The pool of Bitcoin generated from the GRU’s mining activity was used, for example, to pay a Romanian company to register the domain dcleaks.com through a payment processing company located in the United States,” the indictment said.

Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/mueller-indictment-russian-intelligence-hacking.html