UPDATE: When a reporter asked Trump for his reaction to news of Khysuaynova's indictment for attempted interference in the upcoming midterms, the president got defensive.
CNN:
"Had nothing to do with my campaign. You know, all of the hackers, and all of the -- everybody that you see, nothing to do with my campaign," Trump said at an event in Arizona. "If the hackers -- a lot of them probably like Hillary Clinton better than me. Now they do, now they do. You know, they go after some hacker in Russia they say oh, that had nothing to do with my campaign."
(...)
In his comments, Trump cast blame on his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who he said, "didn't lift a finger" to stop Russian meddling in 2016, and said that his administration has "done a lot to protect the elections coming up very shortly."
He emphasized that there was "no collusion whatsoever," and pivoted to attacking Clinton as a "bad candidate" who could have "gone out more" and "worked a little bit harder."
Meanwhile, The Daily Beast points out some of "the most shocking moments" of the criminal complaint against Khysuaynova.
Amongst the chief themes of the Russian influence campaign has been to exploit American white supremacy. The indictment adds a new level of detail. In addition to well-known Russian trolling on the NFL protests against racist policing, immigration and the Confederate flag, the indictment says that the Russians’ social-media themes included “the Charlottesville ‘Unite The Right’ rally” that killed anti-racist protester Heather Heyer in August 2017.
An unnamed conspirator in Project Lakhta described their goal as to “effectively aggravate the conflict between the minorities and the rest of the population.”
(...)
The late Senator John McCain should be branded “as an old geezer” who belongs in a nursing home, according to Project Lakhta conspirators quoted in the indictment. McCain’s “pathological hatred” of Trump was a potent area of emphasis, the conspirator continued, with such “dishonorable scoundrels, such as McCain, immediately aim[ing] to destroy all the conservative voters’ hopes as soon as Trump tries to fulfill his election promises.”
(...)
The messaging also instructed Project Lakhta operatives to emphasize voter fraud, a marginal phenomenon, embraced by Trump, that provides a pretext for voter suppression.
(...)
Pivoting off a piece from right-wing blowhard Michael Savage, Project Lakhta sought to “forcefully support” Savage’s message that “any attempt to remove Trump is a direct path to civil war in the United States. … in case Republicans will not stop acting as traitors, they will bring upon themselves forces of civil retribution during the 2018 elections.”
Read More: The Most Shocking Moments of the New Russia Indictment, from ‘Civil War’ to ‘Fake’ Rubio to ‘Colored LGBT’ (The Daily Beast)
Trump: Charged Russian national 'had nothing to do with my campaign' (CNN)
The U.S. Department of Justice filed charges in the Eastern District of Virginia Friday accusing Elena A. Khusyaynova of St. Petersburg, Russia of managing the money behind a foreign influence operation designed to sow discord and undermine confidence in U.S. democracy, including the 2018 upcoming midterm elections.
From the DOJ press release:
According to allegations in the criminal complaint, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, Russia, served as the chief accountant of “Project Lakhta,” a Russian umbrella effort funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering. Project Lakhta includes multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in the United States, members of the European Union, and Ukraine, among others.
Khusyaynova allegedly managed the financing of Project Lakhta operations, including foreign influence activities directed at the United States. The financial documents she controlled include detailed expenses for activities in the United States, such as expenditures for activists, advertisements on social media platforms, registration of domain names, the purchase of proxy servers, and “promoting news postings on social networks.” ...
(...)
The alleged conspiracy, in which Khusyaynova is alleged to have played a central financial management role, sought to conduct what it called internally “information warfare against the United States.” This effort was not only designed to spread distrust towards candidates for U.S. political office and the U.S. political system in general, but also to defraud the United States by impeding the lawful functions of government agencies in administering relevant federal requirements.
The conspirators allegedly took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists ...
(...)
The conspiracy allegedly used social media and other internet platforms to address a wide variety of topics, including immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem debate ...
(...)
The conspirators’ alleged activities did not exclusively adopt one ideological view; they wrote on topics from varied and sometimes opposing perspectives ...
Also Friday, the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security released a joint statement warning the public of the dangers of ongoing foreign election interference.
Elements of these campaigns can take many forms, including using social media to amplify divisive issues, sponsoring specific content in English-language media like RT and Sputnik, seeding disinformation through sympathetic spokespersons regarding political candidates and disseminating foreign propaganda.
Currently, we do not have any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections. ... Some state and local governments have reported attempts to access their networks, which often include online voter registration databases, using tactics that are available to state and non-state cyber actors. Thus far, state and local officials have been able to prevent access or quickly mitigate these attempts.
(...)
While the U.S. government is tirelessly working to identify and counter threats to the electoral process, the American public, government officials and political candidates and their campaigns can mitigate adversarial efforts by following sound cyber security guidelines and being responsible consumers of information, in particular from social media platforms.
Read the criminal complaint
Russian National Charged with Interfering in U.S. Political System (DOJ press release)
JOINT STATEMENT FROM THE ODNI, DOJ, FBI AND DHS: COMBATING FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN U.S. ELECTIONS (DNI.gov)
News writes:
Russian woman charged with attempted meddling in upcoming U.S. midterms (NBC News)
Justice Dept. Accuses Russians of Interfering in Midterm Elections (NYT)