TPM’s Tierney Sneed is at the DOJ for the press conference which is starting momentarily. There were hints that it was a new Mueller indictment to be announced. And it is. More soon.
We’ll have running updates in this post.
12:04 PM: Unconfirmed reports that the charges are of Russian intelligence officers over the hacking/theft of emails. If you’re wondering about announcing these indictments right before President Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin, yep, me too. It’s also notable that the formal announcement was scheduled to be at 11:45 PM. It seems highly likely to me that they’ve delayed the announcement to allow President Trump’s photo op to happen unimpaired.
12:13 PM: Pretty basic information from Rosenstein so far. One GRU team for stealing information, another for disseminating information. It appears that Wikileaks is discussed in the indictment but not actually named. The indictments also cover hacking into election administration computers (which we largely know about), separate from the theft of emails.
12:19 PM: There is “no allegation”. Rosenstein is making similar statements to the ones he made in regards to the ‘fake news’ indictments. He makes clear that there are “no allegations” in these indictments about Americans colluding in or participating in this conspiracy. That doesn’t mean it did not happen. It’s a clear but narrow statement.
12:23 PM: Rosenstein finishes his prepared statement with a general discussion of, argument about the Russian indictment transcending partisan divisions in the US. We’re all Americans, etc.
Rosenstein finishes announcement with note that he informed Trump a few days ago and arguing Russian interference transcended US partisan divisions. https://t.co/yjrJqiBAbn pic.twitter.com/d9qN9EDKFa
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 13, 2018
