The new indictments filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday may seem disappointing in that they don’t directly change any member of the Donald Trump campaign. However, these charges don’t exonerate Trump, his staffers, or any other American from participation in a conspiracy with the Russian government. In fact, they lay the groundwork to make exactly those charges. These indictments are a necessary step that, far from providing relief to anyone on team Trump, should send a strong signal that there is much more to come. Because while they don’t directly name any Americans as part of the conspiracy, they certainly suggest some unnamed co-conspirators—which should ring some bells in Washington.
The charges brought from the Grand Jury to federal court on Friday for the first time directly implicate the Russian government, not just Russian companies and individuals, in a conspiracy to interfere in a United States election. This may not seem like news, considering that this has been the expressed analysis of the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies since before Trump took office. However, the indictments show that this evidence has been collected with the detail and confidence required to move forward in a court of law. That’s a big thing. It not only provides a kick to the teeth for those who, like Trump, were still mouthing Russian denials, it lays a foundation for adding additional names and organizations to that conspiracy.
Russian forces working for one unit of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye (GRU), the main foreign intelligence agency of the Russian government, were directly dedicated to stealing information from the Democratic Party and the Hilary Clinton campaign. And, as the indictments make clear, that effort was not a single incident or dependent on some momentary lapse in security by the DNC. It was a dedicated effort, by professional intelligence operatives, using a variety of techniques from spearfishing to malware to more direct network intrusion in order to gain access to systems, steal information, capture screenshots, and plant spyware that monitored Democratic actions on a keystroke by keystroke level over an extended period. This was an intense, prolonged effort to obtain information about an American presidential candidate and about the actions of an American political party. Despite efforts to protect and cleanse systems, Russia was still tapping into DNC computers up to within a month of the election. Russians even managed to access information and services hosted on supposedly highly-secure, cloud-based servers from a third party provider.
A second unit of the GRU was positioned to disseminate this information. That including creating false organizations, like DC leaks, and false identities, like Guccifer 2.0, in order to communicate under the pretense of being “whistleblowers” or “individual hackers.” These false fronts allowed Americans, either unknowingly or knowingly, to communicate directly with Russian intelligence, and to conspire in the effort to alter the outcome of American election. That includes people like Republican strategist Aaron Nevins, who worked with Russian forces to better exploit the results of their cyberwar intrusion. And it includes Trump advisor Roger Stone, who has repeatedly lied about his meetings with Wikileaks and his conversations with the Russian operatives. And it definitely includes this other guy, whose timing when it came to Russian operations seemed to be unusually good.
Aaron Nevins is a name that hasn’t appeared regularly in the news, but it was Nevins who not only helped the Russians go through their documents and sort them for those most damaging to the DNC. That included finding voter-turnout models and strategy on a district by district basis.
Nevins: Basically if this was a war, this is the map to where all the troops are deployed.
Nevins, the former chief of staff for a Republican senator in Florida and head of a pair of GOP consulting firms, made sure the Russians found that map and recognized its value—while also saying that he didn’t care if it was the Russians, because “their interests aligned.” That information allowed both Republicans (and Russians working for another division of the GRU) to target advertising and other actions directly to the points which Democrats had already identified as the most important. If it seemed that Republican campaigns were able to get into spots where Democrats were vulnerable and where resources on the ground were weak, it’s because they had a map.
That cooperation earned Nevins a spot as one of several Republicans collaborators with Russia who got a mention in today’s indictment. Though, like most others, he was an unnamed.
43. b. On or about August 22, 2016, the conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC to a then-registered state lobbyist and on-line source of political news. The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying documents for 2,000 Democratic donors.
That “state lobbyist and on-line source of political news” was Aaron Nevins. And what did Nevins do after he and the Russians had worked together to create a plan to undermine the Democratic vote? That is, what did he do other than talking about it with other Florida Republicans? He sent it all to Roger Stone.
Not coincidentally, Aaron Nevins was one of the witnesses who Adam Schiff had asked to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. Republicans blocked his appearance.
Roger Stone has been previously identified as one of the top suspects in the Mueller investigation. Throughout the campaign, Stone showed an uncanny ability to predict the information coming from Russian documents before they appeared on Wikileaks. It’s been clear for some time that Stone lied about his connections with Wikileaks and about his access to documents. One critical point of his lies is timing. Stone’s “inside information” on the contents of the documents distributed by Wikileaks doesn’t just suggest that he was chatting with Wikileaks leader Julian Assage about what documents to post next. They suggest that Stone knew what was in the documents before Wikileaks began to release them. And he did. Because the Russians talked with Roger Stone directly.
That earned Stone a spot in today’s indictment.
44. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also communicated with US persons about the release of stolen documents. 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 … did you find anyting interesting in the docs i posted?”
Later communication with Stone directly referenced the turnout model which had been pointed out to the Russians by Nevins. Stone referred to the model as “pretty standard” in a reply to the Russian operatives, but there is little doubt he passed it along. And he wasn’t the only one who benefited from this information.
Among those requesting documents from Guccifer 2.0 was a congressional candidate. Who asked the Russians for stolen goods. And got them.
43. a. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the US congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona, and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.
Widespread speculation suggests that this candidate was Florida Republican Matt Gaetz.
Which would definitely explain why Donald Trump turned out this apropos of nothing tweet on Thursday.
One helluva coincidence.
In announcing the indictments, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was very careful to say that the charges don’t include any allegation that an American knowingly participated in the conspiracy. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t show Americans were involved. In fact, the indictments show that multiple Republicans were involved in requesting documents, communicating with Russian operatives, identifying documents of value, and coordinating the release of stolen information.
And that’s all apart from how the Russians passed along their documents to “organization 1,” also known as Wikileaks, and how both Republican operatives, including members of the Trump campaign staff — including Donald Trump Jr — coordinated with Wikileaks to obtain these documents. And how Donald Trump used and promoted both the stolen documents and Wikileaks. And how Republicans worked with other Russian false-fronts, fake organizations, and even fake “grassroots” protests.
As with many of the indictments produced by Mueller’s team, the Friday release indicting Russian government operatives is detailed, both confirming information already in the public domain and adding new information previously unreleased. One notable absence from these pages— George Papadopoulos, or Paul Manafort, or any of several other ways in which it was known that the Russian government directly approached and communicated with the Trump campaign.
While Rod Rosenstein may have been at pains to point out that this indictment does not include any charges against Americans, and does not contain any statement that Americans knowingly conspired with Russian operatives, it’s clear that the effect of this indictment is to make it much more likely that such charges will be filed. While it had appeared earlier in the week that going ahead with the charging of Papadopoulos, and a failure to bring any election-related charges against Paul Manafort might be an indicator that Mueller’s team had moved on from investigating the core conspiracy, it’s now obvious that just the opposite is true. These indictments make it appear that Mueller is carefully working around Trump’s staff, building up the layers that will support charges against those on his campaign.
Mueller’s investigation has laid a solid groundwork by showing, in detail, the extent of the Russian effort to steal information from Democratic operations and provide it to Republican opponents. That’s a foundation on which it is almost impossible to believe more charges won’t be built.