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2018
Court Document Modern Era

Indictment: United States v. Internet Research Agency LLC et al.

Grand jury, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Special Counsel's Office)

The indictment alleges that the defendants, posing as American political activists, ran social media pages and organized rallies with the stated goal of "spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general."

About this source

Returned February 16, 2018, charging 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies - including the St. Petersburg troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency - with a social-media operation to interfere in the 2016 election.

Why it matters for the project

Proves that a great deal of what people argued about in 2019 was already in a charging document a year earlier. Also a clean teaching example of the difference between an indictment (an accusation) and a conviction (a finding).

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