Russia hunted for Clinton's emails 5 hours after Trump asked it to, and 3 other Mueller findings about Russia
It wasn't all about obstruction.
In the redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report released Thursday, there were also plenty of findings about what sparked this whole extravaganza: Russian election interference. Here are four of them, from the terrifying to the downright comical.
1. A previous Mueller indictment showed that when then-candidate Donald Trump called on Russia to find his opponent Hillary Clinton's "missing" emails in July 2016, they were listening. This full report shows that the GRU, Russia's foreign intelligence agency, took less than five hours to start targeting email accounts within Clinton's personal office after Trump asked Russia to "find those 30,000 emails."
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2. Mueller took the time to spell out this whole dilemma, in which former White House staffer Hope Hicks was unsure of how to verify if an email actually came from Russian President Vladimir Putin, and in which Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner forgot the Russian ambassador's name and also how to use Google.
3. The GRU has a "bitcoin mining operation to secure bitcoins used to purchase computer infrastructure used in hacking operations," the report found — an idea the U.S. could perhaps borrow to cut the deficit.
4. A Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency deployed thousands of posts across social media in the U.S. It also did this pretty weird thing, per Mueller's report.
Find the whole report here, and another Russian tidbit about the infamous pee tapes here.
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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
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