Summations Only

Would you be surprised if they did?

You say, "As I read it." Are you referring to the BBC article PaulK linked to (Russians charged over US 2016 election tampering)? If so then what you say seems at odds with it:

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What does the indictment say?
It says a group of Russians:

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• Posed as Americans, and opened financial accounts in their name
• Spent thousands of dollars a month buying political advertising
• Purchased US server space in an effort to hide their Russian affiliation
• Organised and promoted political rallies within the United States
• Posted political messages on social media accounts that impersonated real US citizens
• Promoted information that disparaged Hillary Clinton
• Received money from clients to post on US social media sites
• Created themed groups on social media on hot-button issues, particularly on Facebook and Instagram
• Operated with a monthly budget of as much as $1.25m (890,000)
• Sent money to a US member of the organisation with the aim of building a cage large enough to hold an actress portraying [Hillary] Clinton in a prison uniform

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Some of these sound pretty serious, constituting "conspiracy to commit wire fraud and...aggravated identity theft." "Only"???!!! Isn't "hiding their identities as Russians" what spies would do? Sounds pretty serious.Or by "As I read it" do you mean you've read the indictment, which no one has posted a link to yet, so here it is: The IndictmentThe indictment reads much more damning than what you say. Here are what I thought were the most significant parts:

• 1. ...U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures of financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. (Only applies to non-citizens)
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• U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General. (Only applies to non-citizens)
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• And U.S. law requires certain foreign nationals seeking entry to the United States to obtain a visa by providing truthful and accurate information to the government. (Only applies to non-citizens)
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• 2. ...From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful function of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.
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• 4. Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences. These groups and pages, which addressed divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by U.S. activists when, in fact, they were controlled by Defendants.
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• Defendants also used the stolen identities of real U.S. persons to post on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts. Over time, these social media accounts became Defendants' means to reach significant numbers of Americans for purposes of interfering with the U.S. political system, including the presidential election of 2016.
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• 5. Certain Defendants traveled to the United States under false pretenses for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform Defendants' operations. Defendants also procured and used computer infrastructure, based partly in the United States, to hide the Russian origin of their activities and to avoid detection by U.S. regulators and law enforcement.
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• 6. Defendant ORGANIZATION had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ("Trump Campaign") and disparaging Hillary Clinton. Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities. (This is identify theft, illegal for both citizens and non-citizens.)
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• Defendants also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates.
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• Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities. (I bet there was a lot of discussion about whether to include the word "unwitting".)
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• 7. In order to carry out their activities to interfere in U.S. political and electoral processes without detection of their Russian affiliation, Defendants conspired to obstruct the lawful functions of the United States government through fraud and deceit, including by making expenditures in connection with the 2016 U.S. presidential election without proper regulatory disclosure; failing to register as foreign agents carrying out political activities within the United States; and obtaining visas through false and fraudulent statements.
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• 9. From in or around 2014 to the present, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, Defendants, together with others known and unknown to the Grand Jury, knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of State in administering federal requirements for disclosure of foreign involvement in certain domestic activities.

And I only got as the top of page 5. Looks pretty bad. Wouldn't a meeting about Hillary Clinton emails with Russians with connections to the effort to subvert the 2016 election process, however indirect, constitute conspiracy?--Percy

I did not mean that they were not important. What I said was that items in the indictment were incidental to the goals and were primarily the result of folks disguising their identities. Yes, those folks did that stuff on the way to spreading discord and lies and deceiving voters. But apparently, spreading discord, lies, and deceit is perfectly legal.My point is, and still remains, that the stuff they pulled off was totally legal[1] and totally evil. It would be assuming that subverting the election process is criminal. Now, let's talk about what constitutes subversion to the degree that it constitutes a crime. Certainly, something more than swiftboating in my opinion.[1] Totally legal if Americans did it. But foreign influence is illegal.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I've read further down The Indictment. They're being charged with conspiracy (comments I make about items appear in italicized parentheses like this):

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Object of the Conspiracy

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28. The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

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Here's a section on identity theft:

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Object of the Conspiracy

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41. In or around 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators also used, possessed, and transferred, without lawful authority, the social security numbers and dates of birth of real U.S. persons without those persons' knowledge or consent. Using these means of identification, Defendants and their co-conspirators opened accounts at PayPal, a digital payment service provider; created false means of identification, including fake driver's licenses; and posted on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts using the identities of these U.S. victims. Defendants and their co-conspirators also obtained, and attempted to obtain, false identification documents to use as proof of identity in connection with maintaining accounts and purchasing advertisements on social media sites.
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43. By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.
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    1. On or about February 10, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators internally circulated an outline of themes for future content to be posted to ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts. Specialists were instructed to post content that focused on "politics in the USA" and to "use any opportunity to critcize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump - we support them)."
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    2. On or about September 14, 2016, in an internal review of an ORGANIZATION-created and controlled Facebook group called "Secured Borders," the account specialist was criticized for having a "low number of posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton" and was told "it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton" in future posts.
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46. In or around the latter half of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through their ORGANIZATION-controlled personas, began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate. (That's pretty insidious. The 3rd party candidate voting was a topic of lengthy discussion earlier in this thread - evidently the Russians thought it could be helpful in achieving their goals.)
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47. Starting in or around the summer of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators also began to promote allegations of voter fraud by the Democratic Party through their fictitious U.S. personas and groups on social media. Defendants and their co-conspirators purchased advertisements on Facebook to further promote the allegations.
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48. From at least April 2016 through November 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, while concealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation through false personas, began to produce, purchase, and post advertisements on U.S. social media and other online sites expressly advocating for the election of then-candidate Trump or expressly opposing Clinton. Defendants and their co-conspirators did not report their expenditures to the Federal Election Commission, or register as foreign agents with the U.S. Department of Justice.
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49. To pay for the political advertisements, Defendants and their co-conspirators established various Russian bank accounts and credit cards, often registered in the names of fictitious U.S. personas created and used by the ORGANIZATION on social media. Defendants and their co-conspirators also paid for other political advertisements using PayPal accounts. (Sounds like money laundering)
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50. Starting in approximately June 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators organized and coordinated political rallies in the United States. To conceal the fact that they were based in Russia, Defendants and their co-conspirators promoted these rallies while pretending to be U.S. grassroots activists who were located in the United States but unable to meet or participate in person. Defendants and their co-conspirators did not register as foreign agents with the U.S. Department of Justice. (Russians running campaign rallies for U.S. elections sounds like it should be a much more serious offense then just failing to register as a foreign agent. It seems like it should be equivalent to spying. If it's not then there's a hole in U.S. law.)
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51. In order to build attendance for the rallies, Defendants and their co-conspirators promtoed the events through public posts on their false U.S. persona social media accounts. In addition, Defendants and their co-conspirators contacted administrators of large social media groups focused on U.S. politics and requested that they advertise the rallies.

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I've posted enough of the indictment, it goes on like that, although here's a couple particularly insidious items:

57. After the election of Donald Trump in or around November 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies in support of then president-elect Trump, while simultaneously using other false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies protesting the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. For example, in or around November 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators organized a rally in New York through one ORGANIZATION-controlled group designed to "show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump" held on or about November 12, 2016. At the same time, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through another ORGANIZATION-controlled group, organized a rally in New York called "Trump is NOT my President" held on or about November 12, 2016. Similarly, Defendants and their co-conspirators organized a rally entitled "Charlotte Against Trump" in Charlotte, North Carolina, held on or about November 19, 2016.
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58. In order to avoid detection and impede investigation by U.S. authorities of Defendants' operations, Defendants and their co-conspirators deleted and destroyed data, including emails, social media accounts, and other evidence of their activities.

Count 2, wire fraud and bank fraud, begins on page 30. I won't quote anything from that section as I've quoted too much already, except for this summary on page 31:

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Object of the Conspiracy

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88. The conspiracy had as its object the opening of accounts under false names at U.S. financial institutions and a digital payments company in order to receive and send moeny into and out of the United States to support the ORGANIZATION's operations in the United STates and for self-enrichment.

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Count 3 about aggravated identify theft begins on page 34.--Percy

Here's a better version of the indictment from the Washington Post that has a text version that can be cut-n-pasted: Special counsel's indictment of Russian Internet Research Agency, 13 suspects--Percy

Does "false US personas" mean something more than logging onto Quora or Facebook with a fake name and details?

It is beyond belief that a Nation would interfere in the internal politics and elections of a foreign nation, particularly as State sponsored and funded secret efforts and disinformation campaigns.What if the US did anything like that in say, Iran or Syria or Iraq or Lebanon or Egypt or Guatemala or Panama or Chile or Vietnam or Hawaii or Japan or China or the Dominican Republic or Haiti or Nicaragua or Greece or ...

I have some difficulty with the reasoning here. I hope my remarks are not taking as trivializing the illegal activity described here. But let's assume that some unnamed person in Trump's campaign was working with the Russians. Would they be involved in this particular conspiracy, or even need to know that the Russians were going to commit any of those acts? Weren't those unnamed other folks probably conspiring to swing the election rather making money off the internet? Would they even know or care about those details.Yes, I do have a tendency to look at things through a strict legal lens, but that's because I would like the charges to stick. Along those lines, I point to the vacating of the bribery charges against the former governor of Virginia, by Supreme Court justices who all acknowledged that former governor McDonnell was crooked as hell.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

My understanding of the indictment is that indicted Russians were on American soil only in 2014, so "false US personas" means they logged in to social media, bank accounts and PayPal using fake and stolen IDs.--Percy

Without going too deeply into this, in my opinion, the details are important and are unlikely to be covered in the indictment. Stolen IDs and fake IDs are distinguishable. And for me, it would matter whether which of those activities in the list (banking vs logging in to social media) were done with fake IDs. Such distinctions don't get the perpetrators off the hook, but convicting folks on that basis is not something that easily translates to indicting others who wanted help with steering public opinion.Anonymity is not a crime, nor is spreading false rumors about presidential candidates a crime. Maybe it is possible to wrap up all of that stuff into a criminal enterprise with the stuff that is illegal and to charge folks associated with any part of that as participants in the enterprise, but I'm very skeptical that a prosecution on that basis is constitutional even if it is facially viable under the law.Here is something from an editorial I found on the Huffington Post. I don't swear to its accuracy, but until I get some time to read the statutes, or hear another argument this at least seems to be correct.Foreigners Can Tweet About U.S. Politics. They Just Can't Buy Ads To Promote A Candidate. | HuffPost Latest News

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WASHINGTON ― The 13 Russian nationals indicted by a federal grand jury Friday were not charged simply because they are foreigners suspected of interfering in a U.S. presidential campaign. They were charged because they, and the companies employing them, paid for propaganda to interfere in the election.

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It is not illegal for a foreign national to voice an opinion on U.S. politics or candidates. If you aren’t a U.S. citizen and you want to tell your Twitter fam ― whether that’s 342 followers or 10,000 ― that people shouldn’t vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, that’s cool. You can even volunteer in real life if you want. It is, however, not cool if you spend money to promote that message through advertising on a digital platform.

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I had thought that our laws were more strict than that, but according to this, it is the paid advertisements, and not the posts, that are the problem.

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In the indictment, special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election, presented only paid digital advertisements that could be read as explicitly for or against a candidate. Many other advertisements, tweets and posts by the fake social media accounts, even those that may positively or negatively portray a candidate, would not implicate campaign finance laws.

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In short, this is all about the money and who was involved with the use of Russian money to influence the election. This part of the indictment is not about the dirt on Hilary or its source.If this were all that Mueller had, then Trump would have something to celebrate, if it were not for his ego. Trump is not going to admit any possibility that his win last November was potential a favor for Russia. That might mean that he is unlikely to be onboard with tightening up the administration of elections until he is absolutely forced to do so.But there is the possibility that there is more to things than this. If there is more, then releasing this part of things would be a masterful way of handling the investigation. Let's see what happens.

We can only go by what is publicly known of Trump campaign contacts with the Russians. The indictment makes clear how little idea we had of how much Mueller knows, and it seems unlikely, at least to me, that the indictment represents the extent of his knowledge, especially given that Papadopoulos, Flynn and Gates have already reached pleas deals with Mueller (and also Californian Richard Pinedo concerning helping the Russians commit identity theft), which means they're cooperating by providing information.But at this time there is no publicly known information connecting the Trump campaign to this Russian conspiracy, so we can only speculate about whether it exists or will exist at some point. For those who like to speculate about sinister brilliance, what a coup it would be for the Russians to drag us through the chaos of a couple years of a Trump presidency, and then dragging us through a couple more years of a Trump impeachment and trial.But returning to what we know now, the most problematic publicly known connection between the Trump campaign and Russian representatives involved Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting purportedly about Clinton emails. If Mueller has evidence that the Russians attempted to hack Clinton emails, or that Russia was responsible for the hacking of DNC emails, then Donald Jr. may be in a great deal of trouble. If Donald Sr. knew the true subject of the meeting when he composed Donald Jr.'s description for the press, then he may be in an equal amount of trouble. It means they're part of the Russian conspiracy, and their actions represent not mere crimes but treason.And regardless of any conspiring with Russia, obstruction of justice charges are looking increasingly likely.--Percy

When we do it to them, its to make the world safe for democracy. When they do it to us, it is a war against our way of life. As An American Tragedy Unfolds, Russian Agents Sow Discord Online

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Data collected by the site over the past few months suggests that Russian social media accounts are now regularly seizing on divisive or tragic news to rile up segments of American society.(...) "By taking an extreme hyper-partisan position, it just serves to further rip us apart," Schafer says.

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Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it becomes an issue.Nobody cared when the US tried to influence other governments because it was assumed we were simply paving the way for a better way of life in those oppressed countries. In contrast, there is no way Russia is going to improve our way of life...except perhaps to expose the hypocrisy of our wealthy elite...

However popular this view might be, even if it is correct, it is completely Americ-centric. We should not expect this view to be what other countries, including the ones friendly to the US, hold as true. It certainly is not the view that our adversaries and competitors would logically hold.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I've read the indictment, and I think a significant portion of the Huffington Post editorial by Paul Blementhal is misleading (Foreigners Can Tweet About U.S. Politics. They Just Can’t Buy Ads To Promote A Candidate.). Both the headline and the first couple paragraphs make it seem like the only thing the Russians did wrong was pay for ads:

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The 13 Russian nationals indicted by a federal grand jury Friday were not charged simply because they are foreigners suspected of interfering in a U.S. presidential campaign. They were charged because they, and the companies employing them, paid for propaganda to interfere in the election.
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It is not illegal for a foreign national to voice an opinion on U.S. politics or candidates...It is, however, not cool if you spend money to promote that message through advertising on a digital platform.

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While true, that's only part of the story. From a top level view, the reasons the Russians were charged were:

• Failing to register as foreign agents, and then with the Attorney General, but engaged in political activity anyway, i.e., seeking to defraud the US by interfering in the 2016 election.
• Filing visa applications using false information so as to enter the US to collect intelligence for their election interference efforts.
• Engaging in aggravated identity theft.
• Engaging in wire fraud.
• Engaging in fraud and deceit to hide their illegal activities.

The editorial continues on to mention some of these things, but then at the end it returns to the point about paying for ads, lending a false impression that that's the key illegal activity, which is untrue. For example, here the indictment describes use of a false persona to send a message to a Facebook group supporting Trump:

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69. On or about August 2, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the false U.S. persona "Matt Skiber" Facebook account to send a private message to a real Facebook account, "Florida for Trump," set up to assist then-candidate Trump in the state of Florida. In the first message, Defendants and their co-conspirators wrote:

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Hi there! I'm a member of Being Patriotic online community. Listen, we've got an idea. Florida is still a purple state and we need to paint it red. If we lose Florida, we lose America. We can't let it happen, right? What about organizing a YUGE pro-Trump flash mob in every Florida town? We are currently reaching out to local activists and we've got the folks who are okay to be in charge of organizing their events almost everywhere in FL. However, we still need your support. What do you think about that. Are you in?

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Since they didn't register as foreign agents, and since they're misrepresenting themselves as an American, this is a crime and obviously not a paid ad.--Percy

Admittedly this is a detractor's post, and I imagine it can be attacked on that basis. I am sure that Trump's fans would let something like this go, but the optics are terrible.Trump visits Florida after the latest school shooting. That was the right thing to do, but will Trump once again be photographed throwing paper towels to flood victims across the room. Of course!!How does Trump show solidarity with shooting survivors? With a big "Thumbs UP mission accomplished" photo. Because that's how the most presidential man since Abraham Lincoln rolls. Edited by Admin, : Fix image.