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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSome sleeper information in today's indictment
It wasn't just 13 people - According to the indictment, the Internet Research Agency employed HUNDREDS of people and had a budget of MILLIONS of dollars.
Mueller found the money - Concord Management had direct ties to the Russian government, funded this and other operations against the US, and identified 14 bank accounts that the money passed through. Meaning he has detailed financial information from banks doing business in Russia.
Mueller has detailed information on internal organization operations - he must have informants in Russia who are giving him good information.
Mueller has personal emails from these people - We have probably hacked a lot of relevant email accounts.
dalton99a
(81,486 posts)Last edited Sat Feb 17, 2018, 10:26 AM - Edit history (2)
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.htmlThe Agency
From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia,
an army of well-paid trolls has tried to wreak havoc all
around the Internet and in real-life American communities.
By ADRIAN CHEN | JUNE 2, 2015
St. Mary Parish is home to many processing plants for chemicals and natural gas, and keeping track of dangerous accidents at those plants is Arthurs job. But he hadnt heard of any chemical release that morning. In fact, he hadnt even heard of Columbia Chemical. St. Mary Parish had a Columbian Chemicals plant, which made carbon black, a petroleum product used in rubber and plastics. But hed heard nothing from them that morning, either. Soon, two other residents called and reported the same text message. Arthur was worried: Had one of his employees sent out an alert without telling him?
If Arthur had checked Twitter, he might have become much more worried. Hundreds of Twitter accounts were documenting a disaster right down the road. A powerful explosion heard from miles away happened at a chemical plant in Centerville, Louisiana #ColumbianChemicals, a man named Jon Merritt tweeted. The #ColumbianChemicals hashtag was full of eyewitness accounts of the horror in Centerville. @AnnRussela shared an image of flames engulfing the plant. @Ksarah12 posted a video of surveillance footage from a local gas station, capturing the flash of the explosion. Others shared a video in which thick black smoke rose in the distance.
Dozens of journalists, media outlets and politicians, from Louisiana to New York City, found their Twitter accounts inundated with messages about the disaster. Heather, Im sure that the explosion at the #ColumbianChemicals is really dangerous. Louisiana is really screwed now, a user named @EricTraPPP tweeted at the New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Heather Nolan. Another posted a screenshot of CNNs home page, showing that the story had already made national news. ISIS had claimed credit for the attack, according to one YouTube video; in it, a man showed his TV screen, tuned to an Arabic news channel, on which masked ISIS fighters delivered a speech next to looping footage of an explosion. A woman named Anna McClaren (@zpokodon9) tweeted at Karl Rove: Karl, Is this really ISIS who is responsible for #ColumbianChemicals? Tell @Obama that we should bomb Iraq! But anyone who took the trouble to check CNN.com would have found no news of a spectacular Sept. 11 attack by ISIS. It was all fake: the screenshot, the videos, the photographs.
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And in 2014 - a year before the NYT expose:
https://toinformistoinfluence.com/2014/06/02/russian-internet-research-agency-hosts-paid-commentors/
Russian Internet Research Agency hosts Paid Commentors
June 2, 2014 | Joel Harding
I could not prove, however, that there were actually paid commentors, paid by Russia. We have seen evidence of their talking points, I even blogged about it, here.
In countless discussion groups, I have been accused, by Russians (or pro-Russians) of being a paid commenter. On Facebook, especially, pro-Russian commenters accused me of being a paid commenter for the US. The first time I was accused of that I had to sit back and contemplate what they were saying.
I know for certain that the US does not have such paid commenters, I am not a paid commenter and I do not work for the US Government. I know that some Combatant Commanders have advertised for that capability, to create 50 or more false identities per person, but that would still limit the number of people commenting on behalf of the US because of the limited number of people actually working in these US programs even with defense contractors. I often wonder how large the Russians believe our Combatant Commanders headquarters and staff really are. Ive been at multiple Combatant Commanders (then called CINCs), and theyre big, but when it comes to working in Information Operations, the staff is very small. In this era of cutbacks, Im sure the staffs are even smaller.
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Full searchable text of the indictment:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/rosenstein-mueller-indictment-russia/553601/
Ilsa
(61,695 posts)Shared it with lots of people so they could see how serious the threat was.
OhNo-Really
(3,985 posts)remember that report last week? The Scandanavian country that gave us their intel....
Stallion
(6,474 posts)just read Indictment before coming on here
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)Also says the Concord company was spending $1.25 million per month by September 2016.
Auggie
(31,169 posts)uponit7771
(90,339 posts)... Russia's operations.
Sophia4
(3,515 posts)U.S. prosecutors said Peter Levashov, 37, ran the Kelihos botnet, a network of more than 100,000 infected devices used by cyber criminals to distribute viruses, ransomware, phishing emails and other spam attacks.
Levashov denies the charges in an eight-count indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in Connecticut in April.
Levashov, who fought the extradition, told Spains High Court in September that he had worked for Russian President Vladimir Putins United Russia party for the last 10 years, Russias RIA news agency reported.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-levashov/russian-accused-of-hacking-extradited-to-u-s-from-spain-idUSKBN1FM2RG
liberalla
(9,247 posts)I just hope they're being kept safe somewhere so they can keep breathing.
infullview
(981 posts)Is it possible other countries who are under attack by these same people will feel inclined to seek justice?
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)But I think this indictment shows that he knows everything that happened in Russia - who, what, when, where and why. If I were involved in this conspiracy, I'd cut a deal now. If I were a Russian involved in it, I'd never leave Russia again.
GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)fierywoman
(7,683 posts)WhiteTara
(29,715 posts)I'm of course glad to validated for knowing that Trump is a Traitor, but I weep for my country.
fierywoman
(7,683 posts)stuff is going to start to stick to him going forward.
WhiteTara
(29,715 posts)Response to marylandblue (Original post)
Post removed
kentuck
(111,095 posts)...was what a former Russian Ambassador, McFall, said on Nicolle's show.
OhNo-Really
(3,985 posts)....Danish spies hacked into the networks of Russian hackers and shared the information with the United States, and eventually providing proof that Russia is responsible for hacking into the Democratic Party in 2016.....
https://www.metro.us/news/the-big-stories/danish-spies-shared-intel-russian-cozy-bear
orangecrush
(19,555 posts)The cons are trying to spin the indictments as vindicating Trump.
Bullshit.
The investigation is ongoing.
flibbitygiblets
(7,220 posts)Suddenly now it's "Vindication!"? Sure, feel free to keep denying. What could ever go wrong?
orangecrush
(19,555 posts)Trump is playing with himself.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)I keep thinking about a future movie on all this. Can't help it. I hope it ends well for the country. Which is to say, the anti-democracy traitors get locked up.
George II
(67,782 posts)"this was an inside job, the FBI had had undercover people working from the inside."