As President Donald Trump was meeting the British royal family on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that 12 members of the Russian GRU military intelligence agency had been indicted for allegedly hacking the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election.
They have officially been charged with conspiring to interfere with the election.
Among other things, the 29-page indictment document contains a reference to an unnamed “candidate for the U.S. Congress” who allegedly requested access to DNC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee documents which had been stolen by the hackers
The indictment also claims that an unnamed person “in regular contact” with high-level officials in the Trump campaign had discussed the documents with the fictional “Guccifer 2.0" persona created by the hackers.
There was also this fun part:
The indictment announcement came just hours after Trump insisted he would bring up Russian interference in the 2016 election when he meets with Russian president Vladimir Putin, but cautioned he wasn’t expecting a “Perry Mason” moment. Rosenstein said the president had been made “fully aware” of the indictments before they were announced.
Update, 12:50 p.m.: This post was updated with further material from the indictment.