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.
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Who is “Organization 1”? The indictment alleges that a group, mentioned anonymously as “Organization 1” that “previously posted documents stolen from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S. government” worked with Russian military intelligence through the Guccifer 2.0 persona to publish emails hacked from the DNC. That description appears to fit squarely around WikiLeaks, which published the DNC emails, has previously posted stolen documents from the U.S. government, and which the Guccifer 2.0 persona itself claimed was a recipient of the hacked DNC data.
Timelines: The timing of the communications between Russian spies and “Organization 1” also aligns neatly with when WikiLeaks first published the hacked DNC emails. In late June and early July, the indictment says “Organization 1” reached out to the Guccifer persona asking to receive the hacked data documents and requesting "anything hillary related" because the Democratic Convention was drawing near and window was closing to disrupt it. The indictment says “Organization 1” confirmed receipt of hacked data from Guccifer on July 18 and promised to publish it within the week. WikiLeaks released the hacked DNC emails on July 22—the same exact day the indictment says “Organization 1” released 20,000 emails and documents hacked from the DNC.
Bottom line: Unless you can find some other group that released tens of thousands of hacked DNC documents that day unbeknownst to the world, it’s hard to conclude anything but that “Organization 1” is WikiLeaks
Denial and disinformation: That would be pretty awkward for WikiLeaks, which has spent the years since that incident denying that it worked with Guccifer or Russian intelligence and instead pushed the bizarre conspiracy theory that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was the source of the documents. If the indictment is true and WikiLeaks is “Organization 1,” that would mean the group has been consciously lying about its source in order to deflect attention from Russian intelligence—tormenting the mourning family of a hapless, low-level DNC staffer in the process.
Troll so hard: The Russians spies who created the DCLeaks Twitter account allegedly used the same computer for the DCLeaks account as they did for another fake account, @BaltimoreIsWhr. @BaltimoreIsWhr has since been suspended by Twitter but a small snippet of the account—its avatar, a picture of Malcolm X—has lived on in Google’s cache and appears to suggest that the GRU operators were pretending to be an African-American. The indictment claims the account was pushing the hashtag #BlacksAgainstHillary and calling for people to “[i]oin our flash mob.”
Deja vu: Fake accounts, exploiting African-American political causes, Baltimore, astro-turf political rallies—sound familiar? They should. These are all themes and tactics used not just by the GRU but by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Russian troll farm that ran political ads for fake activist groups, tried to organize political rallies in the US, and set up legions of sock puppet social media accounts to sow chaos during the 2016 election.
When they weren’t pushing racist content to stir up the far-right, the IRA ran fake social media accounts and bought to gin up African-American opposition to Hillary Clinton and exploit African-American opposition to police shootings. In one case, they enlisted the help of two Nigerian YouTubers to run ads calling Clinton “a witch” and a “fucking racist.” In another, they set up a fake Black Lives Matter group to try and organize a rally in Baltimore after an unarmed black man died in police custody.
IRA=GRU? Though the IRA worked in tandem with what the US intelligence community has said was a Russian government-directed influence operation, the government has yet to come out and say whether there was a relationship between the IRA and Russian intelligence. Mueller indicted a handful of IRA employees in February with identity fraud, wire fraud, and a conspiracy to defraud the US but the indictment never mentions the GRU or Russian intelligence. The intelligence community’s 2017 assessment about Russian meddling in the election mentions trolls and the IRA but doesn’t say the GRU coordinated with or directed its efforts.
But with similar talking points and tactics, it wouldn’t be far-fetched for the GRU to have worked with the IRA. Mueller’s IRA indictment alleges that the IRA is funded by Yevgeniy
Prigozhin, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s former chef who also happens to run a side business allegedly running Wagner, a Russian private military contractor led by a former GRU officer which works closely with the GRU in Ukraine and the Russian military in Syria.
Awkward timing: Friday dumps from the Russia investigation are the norm by now but this Friday isn’t like any other. We’re just a few days away from a meeting between President Trump and Putin. The meeting, already an irritation for some Republicans, is now only that much more controversial. No one believes the indictment will tank the summit, change Trump’s mind about Russia, or Putin’s rhetoric about Moscow’s complicity. But it will make those in the Trump administration with a capacity for embarrassment pretty uncomfortable.
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