L'Affaire Russe

Breaking:

Justice Dept. charges Russian woman with interference in midterm elections

The Justice Department on Friday charged a Russian woman for her alleged role in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case prosecutors have brought against a foreign national for interfering in the upcoming midterms.

Elena Khusyaynova, 44, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Prosecutors said she managed the finances of “Project Lakhta,” a foreign influence operation they said was designed “to sow discord in the U.S. political system” by pushing arguments and misinformation online about a host of divisive political issues, including immigration, the Confederate flag, gun control and the National Football League national-anthem protests.

The charges against Khusyaynova came just as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that it was concerned about “ongoing campaigns” by Russia, China and Iran to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections and the 2020 race — an ominous warning just weeks before voters head to the polls.

In a statement, the ODNI said officials “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.” But the statement noted: “We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies. These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections.”

The announcement, which was joined by the Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, came on the eve of a trip national security adviser John Bolton is making to Moscow, where he is expected to raise the issue with his counterparts.

Court papers said Khusyaynova’s operation was funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin and two companies he controls: Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering. A criminal complaint filed against the woman charges that she managed the finances of Project Lakhta, including detailed expenses for activities in the United States, such as paying for activists, advertisements on social media, the registration of domain names, the purchase of proxy servers and the promotion of news postings on social media.

Between 2016 and 2018, Project Lakhta’s proposed operating budget exceeded $35 million, although only a portion of that money targeted the United States, prosecutors said.

Investigating Russian interference in U.S. elections has largely been the purview of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, though his probe is focused on the 2016 election and the Trump campaign.

Mueller, whose work is ongoing, charged a dozen Russian military officers with hacking Democrats’ computers, as well as 13 people and three companies that his prosecutors allege ran an online propaganda operation to push voters away from Hillary Clinton and toward Donald Trump in 2016. What remains to be seen is how and whether Mueller can connect President Trump or his campaign to those efforts.

The Justice Department has separately been assessing how it should respond to foreign influence operations targeting U.S. elections, and this summer it issued a lengthy report on the topic. U.S. officials have warned repeatedly about foreign attempts to influence the 2018 midterms.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have set up foreign-influence task forces to detect such operations and share threat information within the government, with technology firms and with state and local election officials. Senior officials have said that while foreign actors continue to engage in activities targeting social media and election systems, they have not seen the level of activity that they witnessed in 2016.

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein in July announced a new policy to alert the public to foreign operations targeting U.S. democracy, such as the one Russia undertook in 2016. Trump also signed an executive order last month authorizing additional sanctions against countries or people that interfere in U.S. elections, though some lawmakers say the measure does not go far enough.

The issue is a particularly fraught one for federal prosecutors. Justice Department policies call for investigations of election-related crimes to be conducted in such a way that minimizes the impact the probe could have on the election, and prosecutors are generally instructed to avoid taking overt steps in cases near in time to an election. The Justice Department’s recent report, though, noted that “public exposure and attribution of foreign influence operations can be an important means of countering the threat and rendering those operations less effective.”

Former FBI Director James B. Comey faced criticism for talking publicly on the eve of the election about the bureau resuming its investigation of Hillary Clinton, while keeping secret the separate probe into possible ties between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

Mueller Probes WikiLeaks’ Contacts With Conservative Activists (WSJ)
Ties between the website and Roger Stone, Peter W. Smith get a closer look

By Byron Tau, Shelby Holliday and Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON—Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is scrutinizing how a collection of activists and pundits intersected with WikiLeaks, the website that U.S. officials say was the primary conduit for publishing materials stolen by Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Mueller’s team has recently questioned witnesses about the activities of longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone, including his contacts with WikiLeaks, and has obtained telephone records, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Investigators also have evidence that the late GOP activist Peter W. Smith may have had advance knowledge of details about the release of emails from a top Hillary Clinton campaign official by WikiLeaks, one person familiar with the matter said. They have questioned Mr. Smith’s associates, the person said.

Right-wing pundit Jerome Corsi was also questioned by investigators about his interactions with Mr. Stone and WikiLeaks before a grand jury in September, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Corsi declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Stone said he hasn’t been contacted by the special counsel. Mr. Smith died last year.

Mr. Mueller’s office declined to comment.

Throughout 2016, Messrs. Stone, Smith and Corsi, who long worked on the margins of Republican politics, tried to dig up incriminating information about Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, according to emails and some public comments. A lawyer for President Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign staffer who interacted with Mr. Stone, said he also was questioned by Mr. Mueller’s team about communications he had with Mr. Stone regarding WikiLeaks. New York radio host Randy Credico also said the special counsel asked about his communications with Mr. Stone and WikiLeaks. Mr. Credico interviewed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016 and has known Mr. Stone for years.

The role WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange played during the 2016 election as the chief publisher of stolen Democratic emails has been of enduring interest to investigators probing Russian election interference in 2016 and whether there was collusion with Trump associates. President Trump has denied collusion, and Moscow has denied meddling in the election. The Mueller probe has resulted in more than two dozen indictments as well as guilty pleas by five Trump associates.

Mr. Mueller’s office has begun shedding staff and has indicated that key witnesses are ready to be sentenced, a sign that their cooperation is no longer needed.

It couldn’t be determined whether WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange are targets of the probe or if investigators are primarily interested in those who interacted with the organization. As Mr. Mueller focuses on hacking and Russian interference, individuals or groups who may have been involved could be exposed to charges such as conspiracy to aid in a hacking operation.

A July indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers that derived from the special counsel’s investigation alleged that WikiLeaks obtained stolen material from Russian military intelligence through an online persona known as Guccifer 2.0. Much of that material was hacked in the spring of 2016, according to the special counsel.

WikiLeaks didn’t respond to a request for comment. Mr. Assange has said that Russia wasn’t the source of the emails.

The scrutiny of activities related to WikiLeaks suggests investigators believe the organization’s importance to the Russia probe may extend beyond its dealings with Guccifer 2.0. A list of questions Mr. Mueller wanted Mr. Trump to answer and gave to the president’s legal team earlier this year included one about the president’s knowledge of communication between Mr. Stone, his associates and WikiLeaks, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

According to the July indictment, WikiLeaks received an encrypted attachment from Guccifer 2.0 on July 14, 2016, that held “instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents.” More than a month earlier, on June 12, Mr. Assange said during an interview with a British television station that he had obtained Clinton-related emails that were pending publication.

That claim came three days before the Guccifer 2.0 persona appeared online, raising the possibility that there may have been another channel that served as a conduit for Clinton-related emails. In the weeks before the election, WikiLeaks released emails belonging to John Podesta, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

The person familiar with Mr. Smith recalled him repeatedly implying that he knew ahead of time about leaks of Mr. Podesta’s emails. The Journal previously reported that in the fall of 2016, Mr. Smith told friends and wrote in an email that he directed hackers to give emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private server to WikiLeaks. It is unclear whether hackers ever obtained the emails belonging to Mrs. Clinton, which she had said were deleted because they were deemed personal. Those emails have never been made public.

In August 2016, Mr. Stone told Alex Jones, a right-wing provocateur who runs the website InfoWars, that he had a “foreshadowing” of the material that would be released by WikiLeaks. Days later, Mr. Stone tweeted that it would soon be “the Podesta’s [sic] time in the barrel.” Several days before WikiLeaks began to post the hacked material from Mr. Podesta’s email account, Mr. Stone tweeted that he had “total confidence” that WikiLeaks would “educate the American people soon.”

Mr. Stone has since said the messages were “benign” and that he had no advance notice of the website’s plans. He also has said his tweet referencing “the Podesta’s” was about the lobbying activities of Mr. Podesta and his brother, Tony.

It isn’t clear to what degree, if any, Mr. Stone’s and Mr. Smith’s efforts were connected. Messrs. Smith and Stone had mutual associates in Mr. Corsi as well as former Wall Street financier Charles Ortel, who was researching the Clinton Family Foundation, emails and public comments show. Mr. Stone said he wasn’t aware of Mr. Smith’s work. Mr. Ortel said he wasn’t aware of a relationship between Mr. Stone and Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith referred to his project as the “Clinton Email Reconnaissance Initiative.” He compiled a long list of businessmen, activists, lawyers, researchers and Trump campaign officials who he wanted to work with to obtain Mrs. Clinton’s 33,000 emails. While many people on that list say they never gave Mr. Smith permission to use their names, some were copied or named in emails circulated by Mr. Smith in 2016. Others got unsolicited approaches from Mr. Smith they say they never responded to.

—Drew FitzGerald and Rebecca Ballhaus contributed to this article.