12 Russians indicted for meddling in 2016 US poll on eve of Trump-Putin meet

>> WASHINGTON: Twelve Russian military intelligence officers hacked into the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party and released tens of thousands of private communications in a sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 US 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 US intelligence agencies say was aimed at helping the Trump campaign and harming his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The case follows a separate indictment that accused Russians of using social media to sow discord among American voters.

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

The charges say the Russian defendants, using a persona known as Guccifer 2.0, in August 2016 contacted a person in touch with the Trump campaign to offer help. And they say that on the same day Mr Trump, in a speech, urged Russia to find Clinton’s missing emails, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into email accounts used by her personal office.

Mr Mueller did not allege that Trump campaign associates were involved in the hacking effort, that Americans were knowingly in touch with Russian intelligence officers or that any vote tallies were altered by hacking. The White House seized on those points in a statement that offered no condemnation of Russian election interference.

It was unclear whether the indictment might factor into Mr Trump’s meeting with Mr Putin on Monday.

Mr Trump has repeatedly expressed scepticism about Russian involvement in the hacking while being accused by Democrats of cozying up to the Russian president. Mr Trump complained about the Russia investigation hours 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 US elections,’’ Mr Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said on Friday.

The indictment identifies the defendants as officers with Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, also known as GRU. If that link is established, it would shatter the Kremlin denials of the Russian state’s involvement in the US elections, given that the GRU is part of the state machine.

The Russian defendants are not in custody, and it is not clear they will ever appear in American court, though the Justice Department has recently seen value in indicting foreign hackers in absentia as public deterrence. The indictment accuses the Russian hackers, starting in March 2016, of covertly monitoring the computers of dozens of Democratic officials and volunteers, implanting malicious computer code known as malware to explore the networks and steal data, and sending phishing emails to gain access to accounts.

The charges come as Mr Mueller probes potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.