Lawyers for a Russian company indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller are calling the charges baseless, and allege in a new court filing that Mueller is out to “indict a Russian — any Russian.”
Concord Management and Consulting LLC was indicted in February by Mueller for its role in “sowing discord” and interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Concord was one of two Russian companies charged by Mueller then.
The company’s lawyers, Eric Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly, wrote in a Monday court filing that Mueller has brought a “case that has absolutely nothing to do with any links or coordination between any candidate and the Russian Government.”
“The reason is obvious, and political to justify his own existence the Special Counsel has to indict a Russian — any Russian,” the lawyers wrote.
In a footnote, Dubelier and Seikaly cited the line from the 1942 movie “Casablanca,” when Capt. Louis Renault requests that they “round up the usual suspects.”
Dubelier and Seikaly argued the charges were based on allegations that Concord Management “engaged in the make-believe crime of conspiring to ‘interfere’ in a United States election.”
The two lawyers used the filing to ask U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich to review the legal instructions that Mueller’s prosecutors gave the grand jury that turned over the indictment.
“With that information, the court can determine whether those instructions could support a motion to dismiss the facially invalid count one of the indictment,” they wrote.
Dubelier and Seikaly said the charges “have a strong odor of hypocrisy” because the U.S. has interfered in foreign elections before, and insisted Concord Management never intended to break federal law.
“The instant indictment fails to allege that the defendant knew it was acting unlawfully and that it intended to violate the underlying regulatory offenses,” the filing said. “The risk here is acute, that is, a foreign corporation with no presence in the United States is indicted in an unprecedented case of a type never before brought by the DOJ for conspiring to defraud the United States purportedly by not complying with certain regulatory requirements that are unknown even to most Americans.”
The Internet Research Agency and Concord Catering, a subsidiary of the Concords Management, were all charged in February alongside with 13 Russians.
When indicted, none of the Russians were in U.S. custody and it is unlikely they ever will be. Mueller’s prosecutors said in a court filing earlier this month that Russia’s prosecutor general has declined to serve the defendants with a summons, and Russia does not allow extradition of its citizens to Russia.
Dubelier pleaded not guilty on behalf of Concord Management in federal court in Washington last week.
Concord Management’s founder is Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, a Russian businessman nicknamed “Putin’s chef” because of his close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mueller alleges that both Concord companies financed the operations of the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based online “troll farm.”
