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U.S charges Russia with hacking, election interference

By Obaro Esiekpe
05 November 2017   |   4:16 am
On Tuesday, it emerged that the U.S Justice Department has gathered enough evidence to charge six members of the Russian government in the hacking of Democratic National...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions /AFP CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

On Tuesday, it emerged that the U.S Justice Department has gathered enough evidence to charge six members of the Russian government in the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers before last year’s presidential election. The case being investigated could be brought to court by next year.

This had been uncovered alongside the indictment of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, who has been ordered to remain under house arrest and wear an electronic monitoring device until a trial date is set.

Meanwhile, attorney general, Jeff Sessions, faces calls to appear before Congress a second time to confirm his previous testimony regarding the Russia contacts connected to the campaign.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, U.S authorities, by identifying individual Russian military and intelligence hackers with charges, can make it difficult for them to travel, but arrests and jailing do not seem certain.

George Papadopoulos, one of the foreign policy advisers for the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty, last month, to lying to the FBI. Court documents, which were made public on Monday revealed. It was cited that, in a meeting in March, last year, which was attended by Sessions and Trump, Papadopoulos offered to arrange a meeting between President Putin and Trump.

Russia has denied interfering in the election and Trump has also denied that there was any conspiracy with Russia to aid his campaign. U.S intelligence agencies, as well as the intelligence community, are claiming that the Russian government were responsible for the cyber-attacks on the U.S last year that caused numerous confidential documents to be made public by WikiLeaks.

This is the second time the United States is charging Russia with cyber-crimes; the justice department, in March, charged two hackers with masterminding the 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts

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