The indictment includes 11 criminal counts and one forfeiture allegation. The criminal counts include conspiracy against the United states, identity theft and money laundering.
The hackers, the DOJ said in its press release, released the hacked information “on the internet under the names DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 and through another entity.”
The GRU officials, according to the DOJ, coordinated to “plan the release of the stolen documents for the purpose of interfering with the 2016 presidential election.”
A group of the GRU agents, according to the DOJ, “also conspired to hack into the computers of state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and US companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of elections to steal voter data stored on those computers.”
Full indictment Documents:
Rosenstein stated that there was not any evidence that vote tallies were changed by the hacks however information for at least 500,000 voters was compromised. Exactly how that information may have been used — for example to create fake user profiles on Facebook and/or Twitter in and attempt to impersonate Americans online and create the impression of “false viral support” for certain positions and campaigns specially to help suppress the Hillary and Democratic vote in order to aid Republicans and Donald Trump -— is not in this indictment.
We already know from the previous indictments issued against the Internet Research Agency that some of this data was used to stage an influence campaign to destabilize our election, to inflame White voters with promotions of Black Lives Matter and to suppress and split the Democratic Vote between Hillary, Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein voters by hyping allegations that the DNC had been biased against any non-Hillary campaign.
Technically none of this is news, it was included in the original Intelligence Assessment of the Russian attack on our elections from well over a year and a half ago.
Also these aren’t the first Russians to be indicted, arrested and to plead guilty to hacking charges recently including members of the Russian Security Services (FSB).
In addition to hacker Yevgenly Nikulin who has now been extradited from Prague to the U.S., Mueller has issued indictments against 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian companies who are are all linked to the St. Petersburg Troll Farm. One of those companies, Concord Management and Consulting which is owned by Yevgeniy Prigozhin — who is reportedly Putin’s personal chef — has pleaded not guilty and is now facing trial in Virginia.
…
several other Russian hackers have already been convicted in related cases.
Karim Baratov, aka Kay, aka Karim Taloverov, aka Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov, 22, a Canadian national and resident, pleaded guilty today, to charges returned by a grand jury in the Northern District of California in February 2017. Baratov and three other defendants, including two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s domestic law enforcement and intelligence service, were charged with computer hacking and other criminal offenses in connection with a conspiracy to access Yahoo’s network and the contents of webmail accounts that began in January 2014. Baratov’s co-defendants, all of whom remain at large in Russia, are Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, a Russian national and resident; Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, a Russian national and resident; and Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, aka Magg, 29, a Russian national and resident.
And he's not the only one; one of the hackers who infiltrated the DNC has been arrested and convicted In Russia.
As reported by The Bell:
As it became known to The Bell, Konstantin Kozlovsky, a hacker from Yekaterinburg, one of the main defendants in the Lurk case , stated about his involvement in the crackdown of the committee of the Democratic Party of the United States .
Now Kozlovsky is in custody in SIZO "Matrosskaya Tishina". On August 15, the court considered the extension of the measure of restraint. At this meeting, Kozlovsky said that he "performed various tasks under the supervision of FSB officers, in particular," hacking "of the National Committee of the Democratic Party of the USA and electronic correspondence of Hillary Clinton, and also" hacking "very serious military enterprises of the United States and other organizations."
And there have been other raids against Russian hackers in Europe, including Nikulin.
Five Russians accused of being hackers have been arrested in a series of American-led raids over the last nine months – all of them grabbed while on vacation across Europe.
...
According to Axios, the arrests also come as Russian security services struck a deal with the country’s cybercriminals that allow them to work as long as they also conduct state-ordered missions.
The five men have been identified as: Pyotr Levashov, 36; Evgeny Nikulin, 29; Alexander Vinnik, 38; Stanislav Lisov, 31; and Yury Martyshev, 35. They were all grabbed outside of their homeland, which has no extradition agreement with the United States.
Rosenstein argued today that this indictment doesn’t include any Americans or allege that any Americans who may have interacted with this targets may have known that they were Russian Intelligence Agents at the time — which clearly teases out the point that Americans including members of the Trump Campaign DID INTERACT with these Russians, knew that they were Russians, but may not have known they were Russian SPIES.
But that’s a pretty thin reed for Rudy Giuliani to hang on to.
The indictment documents exactly how the DCCC and DNC were hacked, how they attempted to use a WordPress page to claim these crimes were the act of an anonymous “Lone Hacker” and how on June 22, 2016 “Organization 1” [likely Cambridge Analytica] attempted to gain access to Hillary’s emails from Guccifer 2.0 using DM messages via twitter.
“Send any new materials [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact that what you are doing.”. “If you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days preferable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.”
The Conspirators responded “Ok, I see.”
Cambridge may not have known Guccifer was a Russian asset — alhough this had already been reported — they still tried to aid in the dissemination of stolen anti-Hillary materials.
Additionally Roger Stone had communications with Guccifer 2.0, who was a known Russian GRU operative at the time, where he also had attempted to get access to the hacked materials on Hillary Clinton and DCCC. He may not have known definitively that Guccifer 2.0 was GRU, but he did know he had illegally obtained emails and documents concerning Clinton and Democrats. The fact that he was a GRU operative is actually secondary to the fact that he was trying to use this person(s) to gain access to stolen materials.
George Papadopoulos had communicated with various Russian operatives such as Prof. Mifsud and Sergei Milian who had told them that the “Russians have thousand of Hillary’s Emails” [Technically it was hacked DNC, DCCC and Clinton Foundation Emails, not the deleted emails from her person server but whatever] this information was also shared with Carter Page while he was in Moscow supposedly on a trip that wasn’t supposed to be linked to the campaign.
Both Papdopoulos and Page were told about the DNC hacked emails before the FBI and Intelligence Agencies had confirmed that Russia was behind the attack, and neither of them — or anyone else in the Trump campaign who they may have alerted (including Jeff Sessions who told Papadopoulos to “find out everything he could” about the hacked emails) -— bothered to go to the FBI and let them know that they were aware of a felony. This failure to inform authorities is itself also a felony.
It was Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer and then former British Spy Christopher Steele who went to the FBI about this — not anyone in the Trump campaign.
in the wake of all this and the NYTimes report that said the Russia Military was responsible for the DNC attack that Trump the very next day specifically asked Russia to find and release Hillary’s deleted Emails.
“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” the Republican nominee said at a news conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
If he didn’t think the Russians were involved which is what he’s always claimed, why exactly was he asking them to GET INVOLVED? [Unless he already knew through Papadopoulos and Page — not to mention Don Jr after meeting with Veselnitskaya — exactly what the Russians had done and what they probably had?]
Also it seems that these same Russians went after Hillary’s emails just hours after Trump made the above statement — so, yes, they were listening.
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.
...
“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.”
Papadopoulos has already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russians. So has Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and Alex Van Der Zwaan.
Paul Manafort is currently facing trial and some of the indictments against him involve his connection to yet another Russian GRU operative, Konstantin Kilimnick.
Manafort’s partner Rick Gates who has already pleaded guilty to many similar crimes and is now a cooperating witness is mentioned several times, also charged in the indictment is Manafort’s long time employee Konstantin Kilimnick who besides running Manafort’s offices in Kiev where he acted as a go between for Manafort with Russian Oligarch’s such as Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska — whom he had offered to provide a private briefing on the Trump Campaign — also happens to have current ties to Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) as was explained in the indictment against London based lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan for his lying to the FBI about Gates being in contact with Kiliimnick for which he just finished serving 30 days in Federal prison.
The bulk of the indictment involves Manafort’s money laundering which occurred before he was part of the Trump campaign and his more recent attempts to use encrypted apps to contact and influence witnesses to support him on his previous three indictments but the fact is that during the entire time, including during the election, he was in near constant contact with Kilimnick, who again was a Russian Intelligence asset.
The idea that the Trump campaign was not connected to Russians is ridiculous. The idea that they didn’t know about the Russian attack on our election — particularly since Trump himself asked them to DO MORE HACKING in order to get and release Hillary’s missing emails — is also ridiculous.
Several of those indicted have already accepted a lesser plea of lying to the FBI in order to avoid being charged with their knowledge and complicity in the Russian attack. If they weren’t complicit, why were they all lying about their interactions with Russians?
It’s only a matter of time before more of them are indicted for their direct involvement and knowledge of the attack. Specifically Jeff Sessions and Trump himself potentially as an unindicted co-conspirator.
And I would expect that to happen some time before the Midterms.