Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has just offered the closest look into the nitty gritty details of how operatives from Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) broke into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016. The glimpse, courtesy of an indictment that names the Russian spies responsible for the hack, doesn’t pin any blame for the attack on Americans but it does provide some tantalizing clues as to who helped out in the campaign to sow chaos in the 2016 election.
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American footprint: When announcing the indictment, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stated flatly that “There is no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful activity” and that “[t]here is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.” But that doesn’t mean Americans weren’t involved in Russian intelligence activities—just that no Americans in the indictment were witting participants in them. According to the indictment, Russian spies using the Guccifer 2.0 persona “wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump” on a handful of occasions.