MUELLER INDICTS 13 RUSSIANS
Russians seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election used social media to inundate Americans with propaganda designed to help then-candidate Donald Trump and cripple Hillary Clinton, according to a bombshell indictment brought by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller.
The federal indictment, which dropped yesterday, charged 13 Russian nationals with illegally meddling with the American political process through a scheme that started two years before the election. The indictment, however, didn’t reference any direct collusion between the Russians and Trump’s campaign — a point the president seized upon in a tweet.
“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President,” Trump tweeted yesterday afternoon. “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!”
The Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based troll phalanx, bought propaganda-laden online ads, created social media accounts “that appeared to be operated by U.S. persons” and researched topics that Americans were interested in, the indictment states.
After discovering issues that were near and dear to Americans, they created content that would stir up controversy in order to “sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 presidential election,” the indictment says. The goal, according to court documents, was to boost Trump and Democratic dark horse Bernie Sanders — the two anti-establishment candidates in the field.
“They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about