If you want to see the indictments issued last week by Special Prosecutor Mueller, here’s the link. Here’s my non-lawyer summary of what I’m reading, by paragraph. Commentary will be in italics.
- The first section notes the United States prohibits foreign nationals from indulging in financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing Federal elections, requires foreign nationals to obtain visas, and that accurate information is required of these foreign nationals.
- Identifies the Internet Research Agency LLC (“ORGANIZATION”) as a Russian organization “… engaged in operations to interfere with elections and political processes.” To me, this sounds like an assertion that will have to be proven in court. A number of people are then identified as working for or contributing funds to this organization.
Does an American court have jurisdiction over foreign people who may have committed transgressions against the United States? I suppose a lawyer with international credentials would have an answer, and that answer might reference the International Court of Justice. But more directly, if activities are specifically aimed at disrupting the United States, it cannot be denied that the United States has a right to defending its governmental system. Indeed, one might suggest the Russians should be relieved they attacked a relatively civilized country that is unlikely to send assassins – or armed drones – to effect punishment.
- The Organization operations time period and funding are described.
- Assertion that defendants used fraudulent and stolen identities and posed as U.S. citizens, commented on social media accounts on socially divisive issues, and by reaching large numbers of American citizens, influenced their votes and interfered in the election.
- Some defendants entered the United States under false pretenses to gather intelligence and computing resources. Their Russian identities were concealed.
- Assertion that the goal of the Organization was “… to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. ” Operations included disparagement of the campaign of Hillary Clinton on social media, staging political rallies, solicitation and compensation of real Americans to promote or disparage candidates, and communicated with certain Trump Campaign workers, at all times using fraudulent American identities.
Note that this is not collusion, because the Russians represented themselves as Americans. - Assertions of illegal activities, as noted earlier, in a conspiracy composed of the Russian persons and Organization noted earlier.
- Then follows the actual indictments by reference to the earlier paragraphs.
- Starting in 2014, the defendants conspired to impair the election by obstructing the FEC, DoJ, and Department of State. The Organization is described down to the Department level. Its goals and strategies are described. This is interesting:
By in or around May 2014, the ORGANIZATION’s strategy included interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with the stated goal of “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”
I wonder where that statement was obtained!
- Describes beginnings of the Organization and how it obscured itself, as well as interior organization. Details are given to an impressive degree – I wonder where they get all these interior details on the alleged Organizations and their interference in the election, including project names.
- Asserts related Russian Organizations Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering were also involved, serving as a funding conduit from the Russian government to the Organization.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described. I will omit describing these.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
- The FEC and its enabling legislation, FECA, are identified and described.
- Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) is described.
- The Department of State’s role as a victim is described.
- The object of the conspiracy is given.
- Describing the manner and means of achieving their objective: study of various groups.
- Details of travel to the United States under false pretenses.
- Details of Russians posing as Americans in order to gather strategic information from Americans knowledgeable concerning the political scene.
- Allegations that social media accounts were developed to appear to be American, when they were not.
- Details on how this was convincingly done.
- Etc, concerning BLM, religious groups.
- Purchase of advertising to promote their social media groups.
- Fraudulent Twitter accounts., for examle “Tennessee GOP” was a Organization-controlled account.
- Notation of metric collection and analysis.
- Self-evaluation. Just like a good engineering firm.
- Use of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks, which I suspect can be difficult to monitor) to conceal the Russian origins of these social media accounts.
- Use of web-based email accounts, built to appear to be used by Americans.
- Illegal use of American Social Security numbers and date of birth of real Americans without permission for use with Paypal, all for use to “prove” the social media accounts really were possessed by Americans.
- Organization plans to interfere in election.
- Alleges the Organization were using their fraudulent accounts to interfere in the election, in particular to denigrate Clinton, Rubio, and Cruz (!), while supporting Sanders and Trump. A couple of interesting examples are given.
- The use of hash tags, Twitter and Facebook accounts is noted.
- Use of fraudulent personas to communicate with Trump supporters, volunteers, and Trump Campaign workers, supplying material for use and re-use by those Americans. This is not an allegation of collusion, as these Americans are described as unwitting.
- Encouragement of minority groups to decline to vote in the 2016 election through their fraudulent social media accounts. Examples are given.
- Used their social media accounts to promote the voter fraud meme.
- Allegations of the defendants using their fraudulent accounts to promote Trump and denigrate Clinton.
- Payment details using fraudulent information.
- A nearly full page list of the advertisements bought. Sample: “Donald wants to defeat terrorism . . . Hillary wants to sponsor it”
- Allegations of political rallies arranged by the defendants in defiance of US law.
- Promotion of events using fraudulent accounts.
- Promoted a rally named “Support Hillary. Save American Muslims”.
- More rallies, more fraud.
- Rallies in Florida.
- Rallies in New York and Pennsylvania.
- POST-ELECTION: Fraudulently organized rallies supporting Trump as well as other rallies to protest the results of the election. This is a fascinating paragraph to run across.
- Destruction of identifying data. Apparently they didn’t do this very well.
- Skipping.
- Details of purchase of Facebook advertising.
- Press releases for New York rallies.
- Details on recruitment of Americans.
- Details
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Up to paragraph 98, it’s all detail, while 98 & 99 suggests punishment will be forfeiture of assets connected with the scheme.
It’s an interesting, even fascinating document. As President Trump claims, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of collusion in this set of indictments – which doesn’t mean there’s no evidence anywhere. More indictments may be on their way.
But that is an issue of the moment, and not as important as those issues which stretch into the future.
First, this has clearly been a battle that is part of the First Digital War, and the Russians have won. Their chosen candidate now occupies the Oval Office, and yet that’s not the most important part of their scheme. I think the big clue is in paragraph 57, where the allegation is that the Russians staged rallies both for and against Trump, post-election. Why? This is an effort to sow division and discord in American society, with an ultimate goal of weakening the faith of Americans in their chosen form of government, and I think it’s been largely successful, based on the reports of families ripping apart (my own mother-in-law forbade any political discussion at the 2017 Thanksgiving dinner table, although admittedly she was – and is – ill with breast cancer), disdain on the extreme left and right for even moderate members of their own sides, etc.
A United States where we do not trust each other to even have the country’s best interests at heart is not a nation that is operating anywhere near optimality, and as we stagger about, Russia can try to take care of its own interests at the expense of ours.
Readers may wonder about Russian motivations, and I can only offer my own badly-informed speculations. It began with the Russian annexation of the Crimea, which the United States under Obama’s leadership protested and then, I think, punished by forcing an oversupply of oil on the oil market (via coordination with Saudi Arabia, I suspect). Remember the glut? It forced the price of oil so low that it pushed the Russian economy, its biggest export being oil, into a recession. That was Obama’s punishment of Putin.
This is Putin’s return volley, an attach on our government system, an attempt to influence the American voter into selecting an inferior candidate (from a glut of inferior GOP candidates, he was one of the most inferior – but lest I be accused of political bigotry, the Democratic bench has not yet produced a candidate for 2020 to inspire confidence, although if Biden were younger I might pay attention) and succeeding, and then the seeding of the government bureaucracy with administrators who have little use for their responsibilities, and judges often rated incompetent, sometimes laughably so.
And that leads to the most important question: Can we recover, as citizens? Can we repair our polarized divides and once again talk to each other respectably and equably? Or is our form of government, and thus our country, doomed? There will be an awful of people who will not accept that they were duped, that Trump is not a wonderful President but is, objectively speaking, failing spectacularly. Part of that can be put down to the ignorance to which we’re all doomed to suffer, in greater or smaller parts, and to deal with that requires a certain humility. Heck, I think I could be wrong about Trump – but based on the informal but objective measures I try to use and talk about, I don’t think so.
But that may be the hardest cliff to climb here, and I don’t know that many people will be willing to do so.
