Washington: The special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election issued an indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaign.
The indictment came only three days before President Donald Trump was planning to meet with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Helsinki.
The 29-page indictment is the most detailed accusation by the US government to date of the Russian government's interference in the 2016 election, and it includes a litany of brazen Russian subterfuge operations meant to foment chaos in the months before Election Day.
From phishing attacks to gain access to Democratic operatives, to money laundering, to attempts to break into state elections boards, the indictment details a vigorous and complex effort by Russia's top military intelligence service to sabotage the campaign of Trump's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
The timing of the indictment, by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, added a jolt of tension to the already freighted atmosphere surrounding Trump's meeting with Putin. It is all but certain to feed into the conspiratorial views held by the president and some of his allies that Mueller's prosecutors are determined to undermine Trump's designs for a rapprochement with Russia.
The president has long expressed doubt that Russia was behind the 2016 attacks, and the 11-count indictment illustrates even more the distance between his skepticism and the nearly unanimous views of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies he leads.
"Free and fair elections are hard fought and contentious, and there will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide and conquer us," Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said Friday during a news conference announcing the indictment.
"So long as we are united in our commitment to the shared values enshrined in the Constitution, they will not succeed," he said.
It was a striking statement a day after Republican members of Congress, engaging in a shouting match during a hearing, attacked the FBI agent who oversaw the early days of the Russia investigation and questioned the integrity of the Justice Department for what they charged was bias against the president.
After the indictment was announced, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and others in his party called on Trump to cancel his one-on-one meeting with Putin.