Alex Wong/Getty Images Foreign Policy U.S. indicts 7 Russians for Olympic hacking scheme

The Justice Department unveiled charges Thursday against seven Russian military intelligence officials for their role in a sweeping cyberattack aimed at U.S. and international organizations that exposed a Kremlin-sponsored doping conspiracy tied to Russian athletes banned from the Olympics.

Trump administration officials rolled out the 41-page indictment, filed in federal district court in Pittsburgh, naming members of Russia’s secretive spy service known as the GRU for launching a four-year hacking campaign against the Colorado-based U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency and several other global sporting groups.


The latest charges against Russian hackers once again underscore the sharp contrast between President Donald Trump and many in his administration — as well as U.S. allies — when it comes to speaking out against Moscow's operations against the U.S. and other international targets.

The Russian hackers — charged in the U.S. with conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering — targeted organizations that had uncovered a sweeping Moscow-driven doping scheme that led to the country’s athletes being banned from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil and the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

With stolen personal information of 250 rival athletes from 30 countries, the hackers engaged in a much publicized “influence and disinformation campaign designed to undermine the legitimate interests of the victims, further Russian interests, retaliate against Russia’s detractors and sway public opinion in Russian’s favor,” the indictment said.

The hackers were also caught “red handed” while attempting to breach the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based global chemical weapons agency, according to the DOJ. Other potential victims included an additional laboratory in Switzerland and a U.S. nuclear power company.

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Thursday’s indictments are not tied to special counsel Robert Mueller's work, but Assistant Attorney General John Demers, head of Justice’s National Security Division, said during a press conference in Washington that the charges do cover an overlapping group of conspirators.

Trump’s Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller in July also charged 12 Russian military officials with hacking into Democratic Party computer systems to sabotage the 2016 presidential election.

“They evince some of the same methods of computer intrusion and the same overarching Russian strategic goal: to pursue its interests through illegal influence and disinformation operations aimed at muddying or altering perceptions of the truth,” he said.

Partnering with British, Dutch and Canadian intelligence for the rollout, the U.S. criminal charges mark the latest international rebuke of Russian President Vladimir Putin despite what Trump continues to say and do about both Russia and his criticism of the concept of coordinated international action.

While Trump drew global ridicule for his controversial summit this summer with Putin, the U.S. just days later hit Russia with sanctions over the attempted assassination in Britain of a former Kremlin spy, Sergei Skripal.

Trump also continues to dismiss the U.S. intelligence community assessment that Russia tried to harm Hillary Clinton's campaign in a bid to help him win the presidency, repeatedly calling the Mueller investigation a "witch hunt." And last week at the United Nations, he called out China for apparently meddling in U.S. elections, a move that many experts have said is an attempt to draw attention away from charges that Russia is actively working to undermine the upcoming elections.

Trump did not comment on the latest Russia charges as of Thursday morning.

However, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Russia should face serious consequences for the alleged attack on OPCW.

“Basically, the Russians got caught with their equipment, with people who were doing it and they have to pay the piper, they are going to have to be held to account. How we respond is a political decision by the nations involved,” Mattis said after a meeting with his NATO counterparts, according to Reuters.

European leaders also came out strongly against Russia.

"The GRU’s actions are reckless and indiscriminate: they try to undermine and interfere in elections in other countries; they are even prepared to damage Russian companies and Russian citizens. This pattern of behaviour demonstrates their desire to operate without regard to international law or established norms and to do so with a feeling of impunity and without consequences," said U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in a statement.

Dutch officials on Thursday said they expelled four of the Russian intelligence officers from the Netherlands after catching them spying on the OPCW in April.

Russian’s foreign ministry swung back at that claim in their own statement. “The West’s spy mania is gaining momentum,” it said, adding that an “official commentary will follow soon.”

Moscow’s denial echoes its response to other alleged criminal activities outlined extensively by U.S. and other international intelligence agencies. Putin, for example, denied on Wednesday during a speech in Moscow of having any involvement in the attack on Skripal, though the Russian president also called the former spy a “scumbag” and “traitor.”

While Putin has acknowledged he wanted Trump to win the 2016 presidential election, he has rejected charges of orchestrating the hacking into the Democratic campaign that remains central to the Mueller probe.

Government officials on both sides of the Atlantic condemned Putin and Moscow as the latest suite of charges were rolled out Thursday. Canada’s foreign ministry said Russian’s actions “lie well outside the bounds of appropriate behavior, demonstrate a disregard for international law and undermine the rules-based international order.”

“This is not the actions of a great power, this is the actions of a pariah state and we’ll continue working with allies to isolate, make them understand they cannot continue to conduct themselves in such a way,” added Gavin Williamson, Britain’s secretary of state for defense.

While DOJ’s Demers said that all seven defendants are believed to be in Russia, U.S. attorney Scott Brady added that he wants to bring the Russian officials to trial in Pittsburgh.

Those prospects are unlikely.

The dozen Russian officials charged in July have so far alluded the U.S. criminal justice system, and only one of the companies tied to Putin that was indicted in February in a separate Mueller case has entered a not-guilty plea through U.S. lawyers. That company, Concord Management, has so far tried without success to have the charges tossed on the grounds that the special counsel’s appointment wasn’t constitutional.

During his press conference in July with Trump, Putin floated the idea of allowing Mueller’s team to travel to Russia to question the men he’s charged in exchange for letting Russian investigators to question U.S.-born investor Bill Browder, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and others.

Trump said at the time that the idea was “an incredible offer” but it hasn’t gone anywhere since — with a State Department spokeswoman calling the concept “absolutely absurd.”

