Special counsel Robert Mueller shook Washington again on Friday with the release of an indictment alleging that 13 Russians and three Russian organizations meddled heavily in the 2016 presidential election.
While the indictment does not suggest that any Americans were involved in the effort or that it affected the election’s outcome, it included a host of details that suggested the depth of Mueller’s work.
Here are five things to know about the indictment.
It describes a broad, sophisticated effort
The defendants are accused of running the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, a propaganda operation based in St. Petersburg that leveraged social media platforms as part of an alleged attempt to spread divisive content to American audiences leading up to the election.
Executives at Facebook have already revealed that the company unwittingly sold $100,000 in political advertisements to the Internet Research Agency before the election, many of the ads designed to exploit political and social divides in the United States. Twitter has also identified over 3,800 accounts and 50,000 bots linked to the Russian troll farm.
Source : thehill
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