Robert Mueller Russia Indictment: Russian Bot Farm Interfered In Presidential Election

Special Counsel Robert Mueller handed down a set of indictments Friday that charge 13 Russian citizens and three Russian organizations with interfering in the 2016 United States presidential election.y

Included in the indictment was the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a notorious bot and troll farm known for spreading misinformation through fake accounts created on social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The defendants allegedly claimed to be partaking in an“information warfare against the United States,” with the stated goal of “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”

According to the allegations laid out in the indictment, 12 of the 13 individual defendants named worked at for the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency at some point. The lone defendant not associated with the IRA, Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin used a number of companies to help move money to find the conspiracy to interfere with the election.

The interference campaign was part of a larger operation known as “Project Lakhta.” The operation is alleged to have involved several components, including targeting foreign audiences in several companies—an accusation that appears to be in line with intelligence reports that accuse Russia of meddling at the time of the Brexit vote as well as trying to influence elections in France and Germany .

The indictment also revealed some new details about the operation of the Internet Research Agency. According to the Department of Justice, the IRA operated through Russian shell companies and operated with an annual budget in the millions of dollars.

With that funding, IRA ran operations that involved hundreds of people who were tasked with creating online personas to create and drive misinformation campaigns on social media. IRA operates as a multifaceted organization, with a management group overseeing operations, departments dedicated to producing graphics and performing search engine optimization, as well as groups who oversaw information technology and organization finances.

The IRA’s focus on the United States reportedly began in 2014 when the agency launched a “translator project” to focus on the U.S. population. More than 80 employees were assigned to that project in July 2016.

Two of the defendants named in the indictment allegedly traveled to the United States in 2014 as part of an effort to collect intelligence for their political influence campaigns targeted at the country during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The 13 Russians named in the indictment face multiple charges, including one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud and a total of six counts of aggravated identity theft.

In its statement, the Department of Justice noted the indictment does not allege that any American was a knowing participant in the interference attempts. “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election,” according to the Department of Justice.