Trump-Russia? Ron Rosenstein will make a law enforcement announcement at 1:15 pm ET

The Department of Justice sent out a note a short time ago to say Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein will hold a press conference at 1:15 pm ET for a law enforcement announcement.

It's likely an announcement that the US has just indicted 13 Russian nationals for internet crimes related to interfering in the election.

The charges include:

  • Conspiracy to defraud the United States
  • Conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud
  • Identity theft

More information will come in the press conference.

So they lied about who they were on the internet?

It goes beyond that to say they specifically had operations to disparage Clinton and support Trump.

Update: It says they staged political rallies in the US while posing as US entities and US persons and that some communicated with the Trump campaign.

They say that hundreds of people were employed in the operation with a monthly budget of $1.25m.

One specific mention was a Twitter account @TEN_GOP, which purported to be run by the GOP in Tennessee and had 136K followers. Here's some of the stuff they tweeted.

That's pretty serious stuff. The stated goal was "spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general" and generally support Trump but also Bernie Sanders.

Russia doesn't extradite anyone to the US so getting these guys could be a challenge, but they might want to avoid travelling outside of Russia.

The full indictment.

In other law enforcement news, the FBI is looking awfully bad on the file of this Florida shooter. They got specific tips in January that he was planning a school shooting and for some reason that info wasn't forwarded to the Miami office and investigated. They've just admitted that 'protocols weren't followed'.

"The caller provided information about Cruz's gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting," the FBI said.

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