On Monday, Daily Beast reporter Casey Michel laid out the depressing reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin and his army of trolls had the upper hand in former special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecution — even before the federal lawyers working for Attorney General William Barr moved to drop the charges.
"On a warm fall evening in late 2018, I received a message on Twitter from a group of self-described “anonymous hackers” who claimed they’d swiped Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s database," wrote Michel. "'We are like hundreds of others, but we are the one and only who got the Special Counsel Mueller database,' the message read, busted English and all. The self-described hackers claimed they’d tapped into a local Russian server, accessing all and sundry from what Mueller and his team had already compiled. The hackers passed along a series of files, a supposed good-faith offer of their findings, so that I could amplify Mueller’s findings, Mueller’s work, Mueller’s accusations far and wide."
"It didn’t take long to learn what the trolls’ ultimate aim was," wrote Michel. "A few months later, Mueller’s office filed court documents revealing that the self-described 'hackers' had specifically attempted 'to discredit the investigation' by trying to 'make it appear as though the irrelevant files … were the sum total evidence' Mueller and his team had already uncovered ... And without saying as much, there was a clear implication in the prosecution’s filings: that the Russian defendants in Mueller’s case had funneled Mueller’s database to the self-proclaimed hackers."
The Justice Department has met with outrage following its decision to drop the charges against the Russian hackers, wrote Michel, but in fact, there was a chilling reason they felt they had been forced to do so: "Prosecutors were no longer confident that sensitive information shared with the defendants — information about sources, about investigative methods, about findings as a whole — would remain confidential, or for defendants’ eyes only. And this was thanks in large part to questions about the relationship between the shell companies and the self-described 'hackers' who slipped their messages to me in late 2018."
Ultimately, the DOJ was in a no-win situation. Either they could drop the charges and embolden Russia to continue attacking U.S. elections — or they could move forward, let the Kremlin discover how the intelligence community was tracking their troll farms, and give them the tools they need to continue attacking U.S. elections.
"Self-described 'hackers' are going to accelerate their efforts to try and con support from those of us who can 'tell people the truth!' — and who will continue to be the target of hacking, trolling, and interference operations that are pushing on and amping up, with little reason to stop now," concluded Michel.
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