News analysis
WASHINGTON — For more than a year, President Donald Trump has insisted that Russians did not interfere in the 2016 election, going so far as to call such allegations a "hoax" and a "made-up story."
On Friday, special counsel Robert Mueller, the man charged with investigating the Trump team, filed indictments filled with cold, hard fact, charging 13 Russian nationals with executing an incredibly sophisticated cyber-based operation to aid Trump's bid for the presidency.
In other words, Mueller called Trump's bluff.
Analysis on election indictments: Russians took advantage of U.S. social media 1:43
The defendants "engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as [Sen.] Ted Cruz [R-Texas] and [Sen.] Marco Rubio [R-Fla.], and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump," Mueller wrote.
The indictment does not say that Trump's campaign worked with the Russians, and at one point says that the Russians communicated with "unwitting" officials in the campaign. Nonetheless, on a political level, Mueller's story is devastating to Trump's narrative of a false-flag conspiracy to discredit him. And it could serve as a warning to Republicans to tread carefully in defending the president in the coming months.
"If anything, the indictment reinforces Trump’s lack of credibility on Russian interference in the election by giving a jaw-dropping account of the time, money and effort exerted by the Russian government on American soil to influence the election," said Elise Jordan, an MSNBC political analyst and former National Security Council aide.
"There’s no question now that it was a Russian state operation," she added.
In the hours after the announcement, the radio silence from the White House — and from Trump's Twitter account — was deafening. And then, shortly after 3 p.m. ET, Trump abandoned the "hoax" narrative in favor of a different defense.
Source : nbcnews
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