The indictment then is based at least partially on evidence produced by an interested private company, rather than the FBI.
Evidence Likely Never to be Seen
Other apparent sources for information in the indictment are intelligence agencies, which normally create hurdles in a criminal prosecution.
"In this indictment there is detail after detail whose only source could be intelligence, yet you don't use intelligence in documents like this because if these defendants decide to challenge this in court, it opens the U.S. to having to expose sources and methods," Johnson said.
If the U.S. invoked the states secret privilege so that classified evidence could not be revealed in court a conviction before a civilian jury would be jeopardized.
Such a trial is extremely unlikely however. That makes the indictment essentially a political and not a legal document because it is almost inconceivable that the U.S. government will have to present any evidence in court to back up its charges. This is simply because of the extreme unlikelihood that arrests of Russians living in Russia will ever be made.
In this way it is similar to the indictment earlier this year of the Internet Research Agency of St. Petersburg, Russia, a private click bait company that was alleged to have interfered in the 2016 election by buying social media ads and staging political rallies for both Clinton and Trump. It seemed that no evidence would ever have to back up the indictment because there would never be arrests in the case.
But Special Counsel Robert Mueller was stunned when lawyers for the internet company showed up in Washington demanding discovery in the case. That caused Mueller to scramble and demand a delay in the first hearing, which was rejected by a federal judge. Mueller is now battling to keep so-called sensitive material out of court.
In both the IRA case and Friday's indictments, the extremely remote possibility of convictions were not what Mueller was apparently after, but rather the public perception of Russia's guilt resulting from fevered media coverage of what are after all only accusations, presented as though it is established fact. Once that impression is settled into the public consciousness, Mueller's mission would appear to be accomplished.
For instance, the Times routinely dispenses with the adjective "alleged" and reports the matter as though it is already established fact. It called Friday's indictments, which are only unproven charges, as "the most detailed accusation by the American government to date of the [not alleged] Russian government's interference in the 2016 election, and it includes a litany of [not alleged] brazen Russian subterfuge operations meant to foment chaos in the months before Election Day."
GRU Named as WikiLeak's Source
The indictment claims that GRU agents, posing as Guccifer 2.0, (who says he is a Romanian hacker) stole the Democratic documents and later emailed them to WikiLeaks, named as "Organization 1." No charges were brought against WikiLeaks on Friday.
"After failed attempts to transfer the stolen documents starting in late June 2016, on or about July 14, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent Organization 1 an email with an attachment titled 'wk dnc inkl.txt.gpg,'" the indictment says. "The Conspirators explained to Organization 1 that the encrypted file contained instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents. On or about July 18, 2016, Organization 1 confirmed it had 'the 1Gb or so archive and would make a release of the stolen documents this week.'"
WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange, who is in exile in the Ecuador embassy in London, has long denied that he got the emails from any government. Instead Assange has suggested that his source was a disgruntled Democratic Party worker, Seth Rich, whose murder on the streets of Washington in July 2016 has never been solved.
On Friday, WikiLeaks did not repeat the denial that a government was its source. Instead it tweeted: "Interesting timing choice by DoJ today (right before Trump-Putin meet), announcing indictments against 12 alleged Russian intelligence officers for allegedly releasing info through DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0."
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