In some ways, special counsel Robert Mueller’s[1] indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for their hacking and attack on the 2016 presidential election is Mueller’s least surprising move yet—but it might also be his single most significant.
News that paid employees of the Russian government—military intelligence officers, no less—interfered and sought to influence the 2016 presidential election[2], coming just days before the victor of that election will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, amounts to nothing less than an international geopolitical bombshell.
Blow by Blow
The new charges, which come in an 11-count, 29-page indictment[3], lays out Russia's alleged efforts in the excruciating detail and specificity that has become the Mueller investigative team's hallmark. They also undermine President Trump’s long-running efforts to obfuscate[4] whether the US could determine who was behind the attacks. He’s previously speculated that it could be “some guy in his home in New Jersey,” and said, “I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?”
While some of the details had previously been laid out in a DNC lawsuit[5], Friday’s blockbuster indictment is the first official blow-by-blow from the US government. It makes clear the attack was coordinated and run by the Russian military[6], the hacking team commonly known by the moniker Fancy Bear, which Mueller’s indictment names publicly for the first time as two specific units of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff—known by the acronym GRU—that are called Unit 26165 and Unit 74455. (The hackers got their public Fancy Bear moniker from the security firm Crowdstrike, which