Attorney General William Barr repeatedly said special counsel Robert Mueller “found no collusion” by President Trump, his 2016 campaign, or any Americans in these Russian efforts during his press conference Thursday.
Ahead of the release of the redacted report on Mueller’s expansive investigation, Barr also emphasized that the special counsel established “the Russian government sought to interfere in our election process.”
Barr said Mueller outlined two main ways the Russian government sought to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, and no one associated with Trump — nor any American for that matter — colluded with Russia in either effort.
The first major Russian effort was conducted by a Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, to “sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and social media operations,” Barr said. Mueller already indicted 13 Russian nationals associated with these online disinformation efforts. Barr said, “Those charges remain pending, and the individual defendants remain at large.”
Barr said, “the Special Counsel found no ‘collusion’ by any Americans in the IRA’s illegal activity.”
The second major effort was carried out by the GRU, which is Russia’s military intelligence agency, “to hack into computers and steal documents and emails from individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party and the presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton for the purpose of eventually publicizing those emails.” Mueller previously indicted 12 Russian agents in connection with the GRU’s efforts. Barr said, “Those charges are still pending and the defendants remain at large.”
The special counsel concluded that “there was no evidence of Trump campaign ‘collusion’ with the Russian government’s hacking,” Barr added.
Barr explained that Mueller looked into how the GRU shared the emails it had purloined from Clinton and the DNC, finding that the GRU “disseminated some of the stolen materials through its own controlled entities,” specifically naming both DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. Barr also said that Mueller established that “the GRU transferred some of the stolen materials to WikiLeaks for publication.”
WikiLeaks released thousands of Democratic National Committee emails in batches in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.
Once more, Barr said that Mueller “did not find that any person associated with the Trump campaign illegally participated in the dissemination of the materials.”
In between Mueller’s investigation ending in late March and the redacted report from Mueller being released later in the morning Thursday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British authorities and is now facing extradition to the United States. Following his arrest by the Metropolitan Police Service after losing his political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, a single conspiracy charge from 2018 was unsealed against him in the Eastern District Court of Virginia.
The unsealed indictment revealed Assange had not been charged in connection with Russian interference in the election and had not been charged for publishing government secrets contained in the documents leaked by Manning nearly a decade ago. Prosecutors instead charged him with a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion by assisting Manning’s efforts to crack a password that would have given Manning access to a classified military network. It is not known whether that password ended up being deciphered.
An affidavit detailing the alleged crimes of Assange was unsealed earlier this week, revealing more about what investigators knew regarding the WikiLeaks founder’s communications with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
The indictment against Assange acknowledged an alleged agreement between Manning and Assange for the latter to help break a system to which Manning did not have access, though it did not indicate whether investigators knew if the system was breached.
FBI Special Agent Megan Brown wrote in the 26-page affidavit filed in December 2017 Assange and Manning allegedly tried to gain access to the Pentagon network, but “it remains unknown whether Manning and Assange were successful in cracking the password.”
Many legal experts and former national security officials believed that is just the opening salvo by the U.S. as prosecutors prepare to level more serious charges for if and when he arrives in the U.S. following the impending extradition proceedings in the British court system.
Assange plans to fight his extradition to the U.S., and the battle in British courts could last for many months.
