Concord Consulting and Management, the one Russian company challenging Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment in U.S. court, argued last week a judge should drop the charges against it because election interference is not a crime.
Mueller's team now has responded, emphasizing the crime is "conspiracy to defraud the United States," and prosecutors have enough evidence to support an indictment on that count.
The special counsel’s office wrote in a filing that prosecutors only need to show that the company, Concord Management and Consulting, and its alleged co-conspirators agreed to engage in conduct that violated their duties to register as foreign agents and report campaign expenditures. “The government is not required to prove that the conspirators actually violated” federal election and campaign finance laws, prosecutors wrote.
(...)
“The indictment alleges that a purpose of the these manifold acts of deception was to frustrate the lawful government functions of the United States,” prosecutors wrote. “Those allegations are sufficient to support the charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States regardless of whether the defendants agreed to engage in conduct that violated” the election and campaign finance laws.
Concord and 13 Russian nationals, including [Putin's chef Yevgeniy] Prigozhin, were charged in February with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by mounting social media campaigns in 2016 meant to help the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and hurt his competitor, Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. The indictment also included charges of wire fraud and identity theft, as the Russians allegedly adopted American identities as part of their effort to influence the election.
Neither Prigozhin nor the other Russian nationals have responded to the charges, but Concord Management has fought back.
Mueller Defends Prosecution of ‘Putin’s Chef’ and Russian Trolls (Bloomberg Politics)