Special counsel
Robert Mueller has brought charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
The charges allege that the Russians posed as U.S. people, created false U.S. personas and stole the identities of real U.S. people.
It says that the goal or the entities and people indicted was to support now-
President Trump's campaign and to hurt Democrat
Hillary Clinton's, and that some defendants while posing as U.S. people communicated with "unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities."
"Defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ("Trump campaign") and disparaging Hillary Clinton," the indictment reads.
"Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities."
It also states that the named individuals staged political rallies in the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities "compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates."
“From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016,” the
indictment reads.
Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein will announce charges at a press conference later Friday.
The individuals and entities are associated with the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm in St. Petersburg that was found last year to have purchased $100,000 in political advertisements on Facebook running up to the election. The social media platform told Congress that the ads, designed to exploit political and social divisions in the United States, potentially reached 126 million American users.
Twitter has also uncovered some 3,800 fake accounts and 50,000 bots tied to the shadowy Russian operation.
The defendants are being charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; three defendants also face additional charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five with charges of aggravated identity theft.
