US DoJ Charges 12 Russian Officials With Cryptocurrency-Funded Elections ‘Interference’

As Mueller faces the task of resolving that piece of his inquiry – as well as his examination of whether President Trump has sought to obstruct the probe – people familiar with the investigation said the special counsel is pushing to wrap up a significant portion of his investigative work by the end of summer.

As for Stone, he said Friday’s indictment of 12 Russian military officers accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election shows “no evidence of collaboration or collusion” on his part.

“Look, [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein said in his comments that they knew of no crime by USA citizens”.

United States indictments against a dozen Russian intelligence officers on Friday provided detailed technical evidence to back up allegations of Russian hacking and leaking of information to influence the 2016 USA presidential election.

The Kremlin denied anew that it tried to sway the election.

Around the same time, the indictment says, they targeted 76 email addresses at the Clinton campaign’s domain.

“In a news conference Friday, Rosenstein said the indictment does not name an American citizen as a knowing participant”. “The special counsel’s investigation is ongoing”, he said.

Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, urged Trump to cancel the Putin talks.

Asked if Mr Putin and Mr Trump might strike a deal that would lead to the withdrawal of Iranian forces and their proxies from southwestern Syria, Mr Ushakov said Syria and the Iranian presence there would feature prominently on the summit agenda.

Americans were not charged on Friday, nor were they named in the indictment.

Lee said he expects the indictment to be a topic of discussion at a conference of state elections officials from around the country in Philadelphia this weekend that will include Homeland Security officials.

In a statement, Russia’s foreign ministry said there was no basis for the charges and said the goal of the announcement is to “spoil the atmosphere” before Monday’s summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. One notable but often forgotten example is that Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., called the claims of Russian Federation hacking the DNC “phony” and “lies” on July 11, 2016.

Hours before the Justice Department announcement, Trump complained anew that the special counsel’s investigation is complicating his efforts to forge a better working relationship with Russian Federation. The indictment does not allege that Trump campaign associates were involved in the hacking efforts or that any American was knowingly in contact with Russian intelligence officers. The candidate and the person’s party affiliation were not identified.

At one point the hackers even wrote to an organization that appears to be Wikileaks to coordinate release of the stolen documents.

The charges allege the Russian defendants, using a persona known as Guccifer 2.0, in August 2016 contacted a person who was in touch with the Trump campaign to offer help.

“I think I probably am the person referred to”, he said. They used the Malaysian server to log into the Twitter account of the online hacker persona Guccifer 2.0, and the same server was used to register websites used for hacking the Democratic committees, according to the indictment. “The person responded, “(p) retty standard”.

Stone, an occasionally close Trump adviser and heir to the Roy Cohn/Richard Nixon school of political ‘dirty tricks, ‘ has previously confirmed the interaction with Guccifer 2.0.