The feds dropped a bombshell on the White House Friday, revealing the indictments of 13 Russians — one a close pal of Vladimir Putin — for sabotaging the presidential election to boost Donald Trump and slime Hillary Clinton.
The Justice Department’s stunning announcement alleged that the sophisticated skulduggery began in 2014 and involved the creation of social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter by more than 80 Russians working day and night.
The accounts were made to look like they were created by ordinary, grassroots American activists but sought to sow political and racial discord and disrupt the nation’s democracy.
“The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told reporters.
“We must not allow them to succeed,” a stone-faced Rosenstein warned, adding that the case “serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the internet.”
Signed by special counsel Robert Mueller, the 37-page, eight-count indictment also charged three businesses.
“By early to mid-2016, defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump . . . and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” the indictment charged.
The feds said the individuals were given $1.25 million a month by a Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef,” Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin through a company known as Concord Catering.
Prigozhin, 56, and Concord Catering are charged in the indictment, as is another Prigozhin company, Concord Management and Consulting.
The feds said the Russians even taunted the US by hiring an unsuspecting American to stand in front of the White House on May 29, 2016 — Prigozhin’s birthday — holding a sign that said, “Happy Birthday Dear Boss.”
Prigozhin scoffed at the charges.
“The Americans are really impressionable people. They see what they want to see. I greatly respect them. If they want to see the devil — let them see him,” he told Russian media.
The Russians also hired another clueless American to attend rallies dressed as Clinton in a striped prison suit while sitting on a flatbed truck in a cage.
On social media, they created pages with such names as Blactivist, United Muslims of America and Army of Jesus that spread inflammatory disinformation about Clinton. The United Muslims page, for example, accused her of favoring Sharia law.
Another page, called Woke Blacks, urged African-Americans not to vote — an effort to hurt the Democrats at the polls.
“A particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote for Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off if we did not vote at all,” one post read.
One typical ad they placed on social media in September 2016 read, “Hillary is a Satan, and her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is.”
A Twitter account linked to the Russians claimed to be from Tennessee Republicans. A number of American politicians, celebrities and journalists shared the bogus group’s tweets.
Among those who retweeted posts from @Ten_GOP were ex-National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, Trump crony Roger Stone, rapper Nicki Minaj, actor James Woods and conservative loudmouth Ann Coulter.
Facebook and Twitter took heat from the feds for failing to quickly spot the phony Russian accounts. The social media giants acknowledged only last fall that they had been duped.
“The nature of the scheme was the defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists,” Rosenstein said.
The third indicted company, Internet Research Agency — a “troll farm” based in St. Petersburg — “had a strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system, including the 2016 US presidential election,” the indictment said.
Rosenstein said there was no information in the indictment alleging that any Americans contacted by the Russians were aware of the operation, or that the Russians’ efforts determined the election’s outcome.
But he stressed that Mueller’s probe was ongoing.
In a related action, it was disclosed that a California man, Richard Pinedo, 28, pleaded guilty this month to using stolen identities to set up bank accounts that were used by the Russians.
Friday’s indictment charges all of the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the US and three others with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft.
None of the Russians was arrested, and Russia was not expected to hand them over. Still, they cannot visit the US without risking arrest and could face arrest if caught on an ally’s soil.
Trump cast the indictment as a vindication of himself.
“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” he tweeted en route to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
Trump added in a statement that “far-fetched theories” about collusion in the 2016 election “only serve to further the agendas of bad actors, like Russia.”
“It’s time we stop the outlandish partisan attacks. We must unite as Americans to protect the integrity of our democracy and our elections,” he added.
Moments after the indictments were released, Trump’s campaign sent out an e-mail seeking donations to fight “fake news.”
“America is waking up to the fake news. We’re waking up to the lies liberals have been feeding our country for decades. We are still fighting to take our country, and we will not rest,” the mass e-mail read.
The indictments are the most significant development in Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian meddling.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed charges that Russia interfered in the election, calling it a “hoax” and “fake news” — despite agreement among the US intelligence community that Russia interfered to help him in his race against Clinton.