Gob Wire

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals for interfering in the 2016 Presidential elections.

The defendants had the strategic goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system, and by early to mid-2016, began supporting then-candidate Donald Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton, the indictment said.

Their work involved direct contacts with the Trump campaign, according to the special counsel.

The Russians began as early as 2014 to interfere in the U.S. presidential elections, the indictment said. Operating under the auspices of a Russian company called Internet Research Agency LLC, the 13 indicted Russians and other un-indicted individuals posed as U.S. persons, created false U.S. personas, social media accounts, and staged rallies posing as activists and grassroots organizations.

According to the indictment, Internet Research Agency LLC was funded by defendant Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and his companies Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering LLC.

Prigozhin is an oligarch and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Times has a photo of Prigozhin serving Putin dinner, here. The Times also previously covered Internet Research Agency, which is an Internet troll factory, back in June 2015.

The indictment described the operation to elect Trump as part of a wider influence effort deemed “Project Lakhta,” which by September 2016 had a budget of $1.25 million.

The defendants were fairly surgical about their influence operations, as described in the indictment, focusing campaigns aimed at disparaging Clinton and supporting Trump on “purple states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida.”

They spent thousands of dollars on social media ads every week on Twitter and Facebook, the indictment said. The defendants created thematic groups based on hot-button issues of race, religion and immigration, complete with content including videos and news clips on accounts that masked their Russian nationalities in part by using stolen identities from U.S. citizens. The defendants also used at least 100 real U.S. persons who they assigned tasks, including organizing rallies aimed at uniting Trump supporters and sowing divisions among Democrats.

According to the indictment, the defendants reached out directly to unwitting members, volunteers and supporters of the Trump campaign, who at times distributed or redistributed the defendants’ materials, which focused on electing Trump by posting and creating hashtags like “#MAGA,” “#TrumpTrain,” and “#Hillary4Prison” and “#IWontProtectHillary” among numerous others.

Defendants also sought to exploit racial, ethnic and religious divisions that would favor Trump and harm Clinton. According to the indictment, the Russian defendants created Instagram profiles like “Woke Blacks” and “Blacktivist.” The Russians, posing as politically involved black accountholders, sought to stifle the black vote, which is generally favorable to the Democratic nominee, by telling black voters in posts to not to vote at all, or by encouraging them to vote for Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders in an effort to split voters on the left.

Here’s the full text of the indictment.