Robert S. Mueller III’s first major strike against the Russians accused of election interference came in February 2018, when he filed this thirty-seven-page indictment detailing how the Internet Research Agency—a small company based in St. Petersburg, Russia—had engineered a massive online propaganda effort to push voters toward Donald Trump and away from his rival, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The social media plot was hatched in 2014, before most Americans had begun to think about the presidential election. According to the indictment, by the spring of 2016, these Russians had decided they would support Trump and work to damage Clinton.
The indictment was remarkable in its specificity, revealing that investigators had access to the group’s internal communications, including an email from September 2017 in which one charged employee of the company wrote to a family member, “The FBI busted our work (not a joke).” The special counsel also alleged that these Russians worked off-line as well, asserting that three of those charged visited ten states to gather intelligence about US politics.
The group had online conversations with Americans, who became unwitting pawns, the special counsel alleged. The Russians persuaded Americans to hold rallies in support of Trump and paid for costumes and other materials so rallies could feature Americans dressed as Clinton in a prison jumpsuit.
At this stage, the special counsel notably did not accuse the Russian government of wrongdoing, nor did the indictment detail any Russian hacking. That would come later in a similarly detailed indictment, in which Mueller took aim at the Russian military intelligence unit believed to have hacked the emails of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and the Democratic National Committee.
One of the named defendants in the case, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who prosecutors alleged help fund the effort, told a Russian state news agency that he was not upset to be charged. A company connected to Prigozhin that was also named in the indictment has denied the charges and hired US lawyers to fight the case in court.