On Friday, just days before President Trump is set to meet one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Justice Department announced that a dozen Russian military officials have been indicted for their role in an effort to sabotage the 2016 presidential election.
And by sabotage, I mean infiltrating emails and computers used by Democrats to help swing the election in Trump’s favor, thusly ruining America as we know it.
The New York Daily News reports Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced charges against the Russian dirty dozen as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential election.
Vox reports that the 12 Russians who reportedly share a friends and family plan with members of the Trump administration have been charged with “hacking the computer networks of members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They allegedly coordinated to release damaging information to sway the election under the names “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0.” However, Rosenstein told reporters that it’s “unclear if their efforts changed the outcome of the election.”
Rosenstein noted that no charges were brought against anyone in Trump’s camp and there is no evidence that Americans were aware that they were dealing with Russian intelligence officers.
Trump was reportedly made aware that the indictments were coming, but this reportedly had little impact on Trump’s scheduled meeting on Monday with Russian crime boss President Putin.
“The conspirators staged and released tens of thousands of the stolen emails and documents,” the indictment charged. “They did so using fictitious online personas,” according to Daily News.
While the indictments charge the Russian 12 with various crimes including infiltrating “computers or organizations responsible for administering elections—including state boards of election, secretaries of state and election software companies,” the Daily News reports, the indictment doesn’t claim that the Russians’ dirty work tipped the actual poll numbers.
“The internet allows foreign adversaries to attack Americans in new and unexpected ways,” Rosenstein said. “Free and fair elections are hard-fought and contentious and there will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide and conquer us.”
Trump, who is currently showing his ass in Europe, has continued to bash Mueller’s investigation, claiming that investigating Russia’s efforts to influence an America’s election is ruining his efforts to create a loving relationship with Putin.
“Pure stupidity,” the president said of the probe, the Daily News reports. “Anything you do, it’s always going to be, ‘Oh Russia—he loves Russia.’”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called for Trump to cancel his upcoming meeting with the Russian chief.
“These indictments are further proof of what everybody but the president seems to understand: President Putin is an adversary who interfered in our elections to help President Trump win,” said Schumer, according to the Daily News.
“Glad-handing with Vladimir Putin on the heels of these indictments would be an insult to our democracy.”
At this point, Trump could find Putin in the Oval Office reading documents that are above Jared Kushner’s security clearance level and he’d still make an excuse as to why Putin needed to view the documents. Anything to the contrary would just be “fake news.”