Indictment accuses Moscow of U.S. election meddling

WASHINGTON Twelve Russian military intelligence officers hacked into the Clinton presidential campaign and Democratic Party and released tens of thousands of private communications in a sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election, according to an indictment announced days before President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The indictment represents special counsel Robert Mueller’s first charges against Russian government officials for interfering in American politics, an effort U.S. intelligence agencies say was aimed at helping the Trump campaign and harming the election bid of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The 29-page indictment lays out how, months before Americans went to the polls, Russian officers schemed to break into key Democratic email accounts, including those belonging to the Clinton campaign, Democratic National Committee chairman John Podesta and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Politically damaging emails for Clinton appeared on WikiLeaks in the election’s critical final stretch.

The charges allege the Russian defendants, using a persona known as Guccifer 2.0, in August 2016 contacted a person close to the Trump campaign saying it would be a “great pleasure” to help. And they allege that the hackers, hours after Trump encouraged Russia to find missing Clinton emails, tried for the first time to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office, along with 76 Clinton campaign email addresses.

The indictment does not allege that Trump campaign associates were involved in the hacking effort or that Americans were knowingly in touch with Russian officers. It also does not allege that any vote tallies were altered by hacking. The White House seized on those points in a statement that offered no condemnation of the alleged Russian conspiracy.

Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about Russian involvement in the hacking and has been accused by Democrats of cozying up to the Russian president. He complained anew about the Russia investigation before the indictment, saying the “stupidity” was making it “very hard to do something with Russia.”

The Kremlin, meanwhile, denied anew that it tried to sway the election. “The Russian state has never interfered and has no intention of interfering in the U.S. elections,” Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Friday.