When I first heard the alert that Mueller had indicted a group of Russian nationals for crimes tied to interference in the 2016 US election, it to me seemed relatively unremarkable. We know, or think we know, this happened. We know there are potential crimes connected to the interference. So my first thought was that Mueller was simply checking this box as part of the process of building out his case. Of course, the indictments contained a great deal of information than I suspected, much of which you can see discussed in our team’s coverage over the course of the afternoon.
I annotate these documents when I read them, to try to make sense of them. So I wanted to share with you passages that struck me as particularly notable or ones that suggested more was afoot than was included in the indictment itself.