What????

The Justice Department moved on Monday to drop charges against two Russian shell companies accused of financing schemes to interfere in the 2016 election, saying that they were exploiting the case to gain access to delicate information that Russia could weaponize.

  NYT

So you drop the case???  That'll be welcome news for other defendants.

The companies, Concord Management and Concord Consulting, were charged in 2018 in an indictment secured by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, along with 13 Russians and another company, the Internet Research Agency. Prosecutors said they operated a sophisticated scheme to use social media to spread disinformation, exploit American social divisions and try to subvert the 2016 election.

[...]

With the case set to go to trial next month, prosecutors recommended that the Justice Department drop the charges to preserve national security interests and prevent Russia from weaponizing delicate American law enforcement information, according to the official.

That is pure bullshit.

The prosecutors also weighed the benefits of securing a guilty verdict against the companies, which cannot be meaningfully punished in the United States, against the risk of exposing national security secrets in order to win in court.

“Concord has been eager and aggressive in using the judicial system to gather information about how the United States detects and prevents foreign election interference,” prosecutors said in a motion filed in court on Monday. At the same time, the firm has tried to stymie the judicial process, including by concealing facts and documents and submitting a false affidavit.

[...]

The companies also failed to produce documents subpoenaed by prosecutors and ignored orders to send a representative to court to answer questions.

Oh the case is too hard. I get it. Sure, drop it.

WTF?

A message on a newly created Twitter account read: “We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!”

Mixed in with a hefty portion of irrelevant material, the prosecutors said, were more than a thousand files matching those the government had turned over to the defense team in an information-sharing process known as discovery. Government computers storing the files had not been hacked, prosecutors said, suggesting that the source of the information was the defendant.

[...]

Testifying before Congress last summer, Mr. Mueller warned that the Russian effort to interfere with American presidential politics was still underway. “They’re doing it as we sit here,” he told the House Intelligence Committee. “And they expect to do it in the next campaign.”

As the 2020 campaign ramps up, American officials have said that Russia is again working to inflame racial tensions, including by inciting violence by white supremacist groups.

So they'll be happy to know that the DOJ will be getting out of their way by dropping cases if the defendants are too clever.

Democrats in Congress have accused Attorney General William P. Barr of trying to undo the work of the special counsel. They cite Mr. Barr’s appointment of a prosecutor to investigate whether the F.B.I. abused its power in investigating the Trump campaign, his intervention in the sentencing of the Trump associate Roger J. Stone Jr. and his installation of an outside prosecutor to review the case against Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.

The charges against Concord were part of the special counsel’s first major look at Russia’s election interference campaign in 2016.

And the Democrats are right. Impeach Barr.

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