Mueller charges add spice to Trump-Putin meeting but only proves Russia’s goal
The indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers is terrible timing for Donald Trump but will not cause him long-term pain.
The explosive indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering in the US election is terrible timing for Donald Trump but it will not cause him long-term pain.
The indictment puts beyond any reasonable doubt the high level and official Russian government involvement in the hacking of emails of Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein insists it was a pure coincidence that the indictment was released so close to today’s Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki. Either way it is lousy timing for Trump, who will be under more pressure to confront Vladimir Putin on the interference issue just when he was hoping for a meeting that would forge a personal bond between the two leaders.
But in the longer term, there is nothing in this 29-page indictment that poses a threat to Trump from the team of special counsel Robert Mueller.
What the documents do confirm is what US intelligence agencies concluded in late 2016 — that the Kremlin was behind the orchestrated and well planned hacking and leaking of emails of senior Democrats and from the Clinton campaign in the middle of that year. The indictment does not allege that any Americans wittingly knew they were dealing with Russian hackers who used fake personas such as Guccifer 2.0.
As the White House was quick to point out, the indictment contains no evidence or suggestion of wilful collusion between any of the Trump campaign team and the Russian hackers.
The only real impact it will have on the President — apart from making today’s summit more awkward — is that it makes it harder for him to deny or play down Russia’s bad behaviour.
For many months Trump flatly denied Russia’s involvement in election meddling and more recently he has been no more than equivocal about it.
But although Trump has emerged unscathed by the latest indictment this is no guarantee that there will not be more indictments in the future — ones that are more uncomfortable for the White House.
The fact of Russian interference in the election is only one of the three focuses of the sprawling Mueller probe. It is also looking into whether there was collusion between Trump associates and Russia and whether the President obstructed justice in his dealings with former FBI chief James Comey.
Trump rightly points out that there is no public evidence so far of any collusion between the Trump team and Russia, but until Mueller presents his findings, no one can be certain of this. Likewise, no one yet knows how Mueller will interpret the questions of whether Trump obstructed justice or not in his handling of Comey and his sacking of Comey.
All that this new indictment proves is that Russia was very keen to do whatever it could to help Trump defeat Clinton, a woman whom Putin detests.
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