THE US GRAND JURY has officially charged 13 Russians and three Russian organisations, one of which included a Russian internet agency, with interfering in the US election. They have been accused of launching a multi pronged effort to disrupt the election between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, in favour of Donald Trump by disparaging his opponent in anyway possible. Some of the charges include identity theft and bank fraud.
The problem is that the hard-line base vote for Donald Trump, the evangelicals, Nazis, other white supremacists, racists and other far-right, will see this as an attempt by left to remove him from power.
Russian interference in US election
Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, filed a 37-page indictment with accusations including use of faked social media posts and advertisements fraudulently bought in the name of Americans during the last Presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. One Russian is charged with paying an American to build a cage and a second US citizen to dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform. Furthermore, the report said that they intended to sow discord within the US political system, including the 2016 General Election.
Trump was briefed on the indictment and eventually tweeted that he hasn’t done anything wrong but admits that Russia could have interfered, a claim he has previously denied despite assessments from US intelligence agencies.
Russian premier, Vladimir Putin, has denied that Russia have meddled in US politics and Russia responded by saying the allegations were “absurd”. Some accusations within the indictment state “Received money from clients to post on US social media sites. Created themed groups on social media on hot-button issues, particularly on Facebook and Instagram.
Operated with a monthly budget of as much as $1.25m (£890,000)”
This indictment shows how deep the Russian plot is to destabilise US politics but its hardly surprising as this is what superpowers over the world have been doing for decades. The US alone have overthrown at least 50 foreign governments since 1945, usually over them not following orders or doing something that directly opposes the US and the west’s global economic system.
But the ruling also comes a few weeks after Donald Trump released a letter from the Republicans claiming that the FBI were suppressing Democratic ties to an opposition research dossier on Trump and Russia used in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
This also comes a week after he refused to release the Democrats rebuttal of said memo, however, the House Intelligence Committee did vote to release the 10-page document, giving the president 5 days to decide whether he will allow the release of the document, alternatively, if he decides he doesn’t want it published. He can choose the block the release of the memo. The previous move was largely seen as suppression of information by Donald Trump, blocking this release could do further damage.
Subsequently, there were attacks on the FBI, senior Republicans plus more, who called for them to be ‘cleaned’. This would mean that the Republicans would like to purge the FBI of those who oppose the White House in anyway, they would essentially like to purge as much opposition so that they can consolidate power. The Justice department had also expressed concerns over national security with the release of the Republican memo, but Donald Trump didn’t get that memo, equally one of the reasons he blocked this release, was because of security purposes. He has been accused of double standards by the democrats.
