Analyzing the latest Mueller indictments

The government has now alleged that the social media manipulations by Russian actors constituted a criminal conspiracy. It has alleged as well that the hacking of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails were crimes conducted by officers of the Russian state. The question remains: Who, if anyone, helped?

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[If]f the hacking indictment was generally expected, nobody seemed to see it coming this week before today’s announcement of an 11:45 am press conference. Special Counsel Robert Mueller moved with his usual combination of patience and strict operational security, and even though Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein briefed President Trump on the coming action before the Leaker in Chief left town, the matter held until Rosenstein disclosed it at a Justice Department press conference.

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If Mueller had been trying to remind the public of what the investigation is really about and what the stakes are in it, if he had been trying to make a public statement in response to the Strzok hearing, he could not have timed this action better.

But, to be clear, Mueller was not trying to make a press statement. We know that not merely because that’s not the way Mueller operates but also because Rosenstein said specifically at his press conference that he had briefed the president on the matter before Trump left town.

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Let’s presume that Mueller did not time this indictment to precede the [Helsinki] summit by way of embarrassing Trump on the international stage. It is enough to note that he also did not hold off on the indictment for a few days by way of sparing Trump embarrassment—and that Rosenstein did not force him to. Indeed, Rosenstein said at his press conference that it is “important for the president to know what information was uncovered because he has to make very important decisions for the country” and therefore “he needs to know what evidence there is of foreign election interference.”

  Lawfare Blog

Except Trump's only concern is his personal relationship with the Russian mobsters and businessmen who are intimately connected to Vladimir Putin.

Put less delicately: Rosenstein has informed the president, and the world, before Trump talks to Putin one-on-one that his own Justice Department is prepared to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in public, using admissible evidence, that the president of the Russian Federation has been lying to Trump about Russian non-involvement in the 2016 election hacking.

Which is why the Republicans in the House are frantically trying to set up an impeachment of Rosenstein in the hopes of stopping Mueller. Even if they do get rid of Rosenstein, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Mueller already has indictments laid out and waiting for the principals in the Trump campaign and administration, up to and including Trump himself that would immediately be presented to the Grand Jury. If they haven't already been done - if that's possible.

Based on these factual allegations, the indictment includes 11 counts. The first count, citing all of the facts summarized above, charges nine defendants with conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(2)(C), 1030(a)(5)(A), 1030(c)(2)(B), 1030(c)(4)(B), 371 and 3559(g)(1)).

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The second count charges 11 defendants with aggravated identity theft in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1028A(a)(1) and(2). The indictment describes the offense as “knowingly transfer[ing], possess[ing], and us[ing], without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person during and in relation to” the commission of computer fraud.

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The [indictment also] charges the defendants with conspiracy to launder more than $95,000 in cryptocurrency with the intention of promoting unlawful activity in the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h).

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The last count charges two of the GRU officers, Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk and Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, with conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. The object of the conspiracy was to hack into and steal voter information stored on computers used by people and entities administering the 2016 election.

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In October, Kovalev and others targeted state and local election offices in Georgia, Iowa and Florida, seeking to identify their websites’ vulnerabilities. And in November 2016, the conspirators sent more than 100 spearphishing emails to state and local election officials in Florida.

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The indictment alleges a detailed and wide-ranging conspiracy to hack into the computers of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and others and to reveal information in order to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The special counsel charges 12 officials of the Russian military intelligence agency (“GRU”) with targeting more than 300 individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party or the campaign and leaking tens of thousands of stolen documents.

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[Starting in March 2016, the GRU] conspirators engaged in “spearphishing,” or sending fraudulent emails with embedded links to GRU-created websites disguised to look like trusted entities, such as Google security notifications, ostensibly asking recipients to change their password but, in reality, tricking the targeted users into revealing their login credentials.

Using these stolen credentials, the hackers logged into the targeted users’ personal and campaign email accounts. Later that month, the hackers began researching the computer networks of the DCCC and DNC to identify technical vulnerabilities and connected devices. In April 2016, the conspirators hacked into the DCCC computer network and installed malware to spy on users and steal information.

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On June 8, 2016—one day before the Trump Tower meeting at which Russian actors met with senior Trump campaign officials promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton—the indictment alleges that the conspirators launched the website DCLeaks.com, which they labeled as being started by “American hacktivists.” That month, according to the indictment, the group began releasing materials it had stolen from individuals tied to the Clinton campaign as well as documents stolen from other operations dating to 2015, including emails from individuals affiliated with the Republican Party.

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In mid-June 2016, when the Democrats publicly acknowledged that they had been hacked, the indictment alleges that the conspirators created the online persona Guccifer 2.0, which they described as a “lone Romanian hacker” to undermine claims of Russian responsibility for the hacks.

And it's about this time that the public started to be inundated with complaints about Russian hacking, without the necessary verification and details to wash away legitimate skepticism. In August, Harry Reid wrote a letter to James Comey insisting he let the public in on the investigation enough to clear up any doubt. Instead, Comey only made public the investigation into Hillary Clinton's & her team's emails and her server. Whether we would have still ended up with Trump as president is just speculation at this point. But it was really a spectacular fucking Comey gave this country, whether that was his intention or not.

And it seems to me that there could just as easily be a charge of conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act leveled against Trump himself for very publicly calling on Russia to steal and release Hillary's emails.

Additionally, the indictment shows a massive, and successful, counterintelligence operation by the U.S. government against the Russian government. U.S. authorities do not rely merely on technical forensics for the conclusion that the hack and release of emails was a Russian operation; the indictment also lays out the departments within the Russian government that were behind it, specific individuals who were involved, which officers did what and when, the slang terms used internally, and the breakdown of responsibilities within the teams—down to identifying the specific officers with hands on keyboards.

And this is how they got John Podesta's email account (let it be a lesson to all of us):

If you get anything from any company you deal with that asks you to change your password, be safe.  Don't do it from the link in the email/text.  If you think you need to change your password, go directly to the website where you have your account, log in with your current information just as you normally would to access your account, and change your password on your profile information there.

hile the indictment does not charge any American with specific criminal conduct, it does describe conduct by Americans that, depending on further factual development, raises potentially serious questions. The most striking example of this occurs in paragraph 43(a): “On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.”

We don't know who this "candidate for the U.S. Congress" is, or whether he/she was subsequently elected. But don't be surprised if there aren't other Congress critters who get nailed in this investigation.

Continue reading the Lawfare Blog article on the Mueller indictments.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.