(CNN) A Russian who allegedly worked on funding online propaganda efforts to manipulate voters in the 2016 and 2018 elections was charged with a federal crime Friday as part of a wider conspiracy to hurt American democracy.

Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, Russia, is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States for managing the financing of the social media troll operation that included the Internet Research Agency, which special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators charged with crimes earlier this year.

Prosecutors who unsealed the complaint Friday say she aided the Russian effort to "inflame passions" online related to immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women's March and the NFL National Anthem debate from December 2016 until May 2018.

The social media efforts specifically focused on the shootings of church members in Charleston, South Carolina, and concert attendees in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, which left one counterprotester dead, and police shootings of African-American men, the complaint says.

The criminal charge says the Russians' online manipulation effort focused on multiple political viewpoints and candidates, but frequently zeroed in on the Republican Party's most well-known leaders.

Read More</s>On Friday, the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed a criminal complaint accusing a Russian national named Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of conspiring to interfere in the US political system. The document maintains that as a financial officer, she was part of the effort mounted by the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in St. Petersburg funded by a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, to use Facebook and Twitter accounts to influence politics in the United States. The IRA’s role in Putin’s attack on the 2016 election—a scheme that was part of what’s known as “Project Lakhta”— has already been revealed. But the complaint highlights a less-known fact: The Russian attack “continues to this day” and is partially aimed at the 2018 midterm campaign. That is, the United States, as it heads toward a crucial election, remains under assault by the Kremlin.

President Donald Trump, whose election, according to a 2017 US intelligence community assessment, was one goal of the Russian plot, has refused to address seriously Russia’s covert exploitation of US social media to undermine American politics. For instance, on September 27, 2017, after Facebook revealed that Russian government operatives had secretly placed political ads on the site during the 2016 campaign, Trump dismissed the matter and tweeted that the “hoax continues, now it’s ads on Facebook.” Yet his own Justice Department now says Russia “to this day” is conducting what Project Lakhta has internally called “information warfare against the United States of America.”

The Justice Department contends the “strategic goal” of the Russian operation is to “sow division and discord in the US political system, including by creating social and political polarization, undermining faith in democratic institutions, and influencing US elections, including the upcoming 2018 midterm elections.” According to the criminal complaint, the monthly budget of Project Lakhta, which does not focus exclusively on the United States, is generally between $1 million and $2 million. In a press release, the Justice Department states, “The conspirators’ alleged activities did not exclusively adopt one ideological view.” But most of the examples cited in the criminal complaint—which is full of details indicating that the FBI obtained copies of internal records of several Russian companies involved with the IRA—are actions that bolster Trump and conservatives.

As the complaint puts it, the Russian operation aimed to “inflame passions on a wide variety of topics, including immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem debate” and that it sought to exploit specific events in the United States, including the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville organized by white supremacists and the Las Vegas mass shooting.

Though the Russian plotters did zero in on both Democratic and Republican targets and pushed tweets and Facebook posts with conservative and progressive bents, the majority of the activity described in the complaint was geared to messaging that would benefit Trump. Citing internal communications of the Russian “Conspiracy,” the complaint reveals that the “Tasking Specifics” included branding Sen. John McCain as “an old geezer” and a Trump hater who irrationally opposed sensible border security; casting House Speaker Paul Ryan as an “absolute nobody” for not embracing Trump’s immigration policies; pushing the phony notion that there are millions of illegal voters and that Democrats will use them in upcoming elections “to falsify the results”; assailing anti-Trump Republicans as traitors; denouncing special counsel Robert Mueller as an establishment puppet who cannot run an honest investigation and whose probe was damaging the United States; boosting the idea that CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other major media outlets were disseminating fake news and lies about Trump; deriding Sen. Marco Rubio as a fake conservative and traitor to Republican values for not supporting an immigration bill backed by Trump; and slamming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a vile liberal for not pursuing all of Trump’s election promises.

One 2017 Facebook post that was part of the clandestine influence campaign included a photograph of Barack Obama surrounded by Arab-looking men and stated, “Instead [of] this stupid witch hunt on Trump, media should investigate this traitor and his plane [sic] to Islamize our country. If you are true enemy of America, take a good look at Barack Hussein Obama and Muslim government officials appointed by him.”

The complaint alleges that Project Lakhta used fake personas on Facebook after the 2016 election to create a Facebook page for a group called “Stop A.I.”—shorthand for “Stop All Invaders”—which published anti-immigration and anti-Islam posts that reached 1.4 million individuals during one week in July 2017. The page overall received nearly 200,000 likes. (The Russian conspirators allegedly even persuaded an American to manage this page, without the person realizing this was a Kremlin operation.)

Some activity described within the complaint did fall on the other side of the political spectrum. A Twitter account identified as @KaniJJackson posted on “controversial social and political topics from a perspective that…would resonate with a liberal audience in the United States,” the document states. And a false Facebook account allegedly set up by the Russians tried to collaborate with three anti-Trump organizations in the United States that were organizing a flash mob at the White House for July 4, 2017. One phony Twitter account created by the Russians called for supporting Democrat Doug Jones in the special Senate election in Alabama against Republican Roy Moore. Yet another urged voting for Moore, and a third called for small donations to defeat Democrats in the 2018 midterms.

The examples in the complaint show the Russian attack in 2017 and 2018 has focused on Democrats and Republicans alike but that overall much of the secret Russian activity has favored Trump and his right-wing followers. That means Trump has continued to be aided by Putin’s information warfare operation long after Election Day. Moreover, the complaint is unambiguous: The Kremlin plot, which influenced and shaped the 2016 presidential campaign, is active and targeting the 2018 midterms. This warning is not emanating from any partisan shop. It comes from the Justice Department that Trump (supposedly) oversees. Yet Trump continues to decry Mueller’s investigation of the Russian attack as a “witch hunt”—and he says nothing about Russia’s ongoing intervention in American democracy and the current elections.

The Khusyaynova case is one small piece of the picture. But the message presented by the Justice Department is alarming and huge: The midterms are not safe from Russian interference.</s>Elena Khusyaynova is a Russian woman who has been charged with a conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, per a report by The Washington Post.

The 44-year-old woman was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States by the Justice Department.

Khusyaynova reportedly managed the finances of a foreign influence operation called “Project Lakhta,” which aimed to push arguments and misinformation online regarding a wide range of topics, from the Confederate flag to gun control to the national anthem protests in the NFL.

Here’s what you need to know.

According to The Washington Post, Project Lakhta was funded by Yeveniy Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch. The costs of Project Lakhta (which were managed by Khusyaynova) included paying for advertisements on social media, paying activists, registering domain names, promoting news stories on social media, and more.

This was no small source of funding. Project Lakhta reportedly had a spending budget that exceeded $35 million from 2016 to 2018, though it’s unclear what portion of that was directed towards the U.S., specifically.

Khusyaynova Is the First to Be Charged With a Criminal Case of Russian Interference Regarding the 2018 Midterms

Khusyaynova, who is based in St. Petersburg and is not currently in U.S. custody, is the first individual to be charged with Russian interference in the 2018 elections, per Politico.

Additionally, the Russian accountant works in a Russia-based firm called the “Internet Research Agency” that special counsel Robert Mueller indicted last February for alleged interference in the 2016 election.</s>Oct. 19 (UPI) -- The Justice Department on Friday charged a Russian national for allegedly interfering in the 2018 midterm election through a conspiracy to "sow discord" within the U.S. political system.

Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, Russia, served as the chief accountant of "Project Lakhta," an operation that attempted to "interfere in our democracy by creating social and political division, spreading distrust in our political system, and advocating for the support or defeat of particular political candidates," FBI Director Christopher Wray said.

The operation was funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls -- Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering -- court documents indicated. It also had links to the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in which Russian nationals posed as Americans and operated social media pages and groups designed to attract American audiences.

The Justice Department said Khusyaynova handled expenses for activists, advertisements on social media, registration of domain names, purchasing proxy servers and promoting posts on social media. Project Lakhta's proposed operating budget between January 2016 and June 2018 was more than $35 million, some of which allegedly went toward efforts to interfere in the U.S. political system.

"The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions," said U.S. Attorney Zachary Terwilliger.

Those involved in "Project Lakhta" allegedly used social media to post sometimes opposing ideologies on a variety of topics like immigration, gun control, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBTQ issues, the Women's March and the NFL national anthem debate.

"The actors also developed playbooks and strategic messaging documents that offered guidance on how to target particular social groups, including the timing of messages, the types of news outlets to use, and how to frame divisive messages," the Department of Justice said.

The complaint came on the same day the office of the Director of National Intelligence warned of "ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors" to undermine the United States' democratic institutions, including voting. A statement said the agency didn't have "any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections."</s>A Russian national was charged by the U.S. for allegedly being one of the masterminds behind a conspiracy to interfere in both the 2016 and 2018 elections, marking the first charges related to next month’s congressional midterm vote.

The woman, identified as Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of St. Petersburg, Russia, allegedly served as the chief accountant for an operation known as “Project Lakhta,” the Justice Department said Friday in a statement. The department identified the operation as “a Russian umbrella effort funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering.”

The charges come as top U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies warn Americans about ongoing efforts by Russia, China and other foreign actors to interfere in the 2018 midterm and 2020 presidential elections.

The charges announced on Friday centered on a conspiracy that included the creation of thousands of social media and email accounts that appeared to be run by U.S. persons as part of what the conspirators referred to as “information warfare against the United States.”

Referring to Khusyaynova, the Justice Department said, “The financial documents she controlled include detailed expenses for activities in the United States, such as expenditures for activists, advertisements on social media platforms, registration of domain names, the purchase of proxy servers, and promoting news postings on social network.”

The case appears to be an outgrowth of a larger case filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in February, accusing Prigozhin and others of interfering in the 2016 election by pushing divisive social media campaigns that attacked Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

In that case, Mueller’s office cited examples of Russians who adopted online personas and used Twitter and Facebook posts to sow doubts about Clinton, urge voters to support Green Party candidate Jill Stein and galvanize support for then-candidate Donald Trump.

Concord Management and Consulting is fighting Mueller’s earlier charges in court. The company’s U.S. lawyer, Eric Dubelier of Reed Smith, won a significant legal point this week when the presiding judge ordered Mueller’s prosecutors to justify the charges they’d brought against Concord.

Of all the legal challenges that have been filed against Mueller so far by other defendants in his Russia probe, Concord’s attack on the special counsel’s charges is the first that appears to have a realistic chance of succeeding.

The new charges on Friday say that Khusyaynova, 44, played a central financial management role, in a conspiracy to conduct “information warfare against the United States,” the Justice Department said. The conspiracy, which had a proposed operating budget of more than $35 million, “continues to this day,” according to the statement.

“This effort was not only designed to spread distrust towards candidates for U.S. political office and the U.S. political system in general, but also to defraud the United States by impeding the lawful functions of government agencies in administering relevant federal requirements,” according to the department.

A criminal complaint against Khusyaynova does not include any allegation that the conspiracy had an effect on the outcome of a U.S. election. The complaint also does not allege that any American knowingly participated in the Project Lakhta operation.</s>WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Friday it had charged a Russian woman who prosecutors say conspired to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case that accuses a foreign national of interfering in the upcoming midterms.

Elena Khusyaynova, 44, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Prosecutors said she managed the finances of “Project Lakhta,” a foreign influence operation they said was designed “to sow discord in the U.S. political system” by pushing arguments and misinformation online about a host of divisive political issues, including immigration, the Confederate flag, gun control and the National Football League protests during the national anthem.

The charges against Khusyaynova came just as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that it was concerned about “ongoing campaigns” by Russia, China and Iran to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections and the 2020 race – an ominous message just weeks before voters head to the polls.

Prosecutors said the sophisticated campaign of which Khusyaynova was a part “did not exclusively adopt one ideological viewpoint,” but instead tried to push incendiary positions on various political controversies on social media platforms. The Russians involved, prosecutors said, created fake personas and spread their divisive messages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The group attempted to sow conflict along racial lines and sometimes advocated directly opposing positions, apparently agnostic to whom they supported so long as it turned Americans against one another, prosecutors said.

For example, in relaying how to discuss an August 2017 story about Special Counsel Robert Mueller, one member of the conspiracy said Mueller should be termed “a puppet of the establishment” whose work was “damaging to the country.” But later that year, another member of the conspiracy tweeted, “If [Donald] Trump fires Robert Mueller, we have to take to the streets in protest. Our democracy is at stake.”

The group took similarly cynical positions on U.S. politicians. While one account said Trump “deserves a Nobel Peace Prize” for agreeing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, another predicted Trump “might not even be president by then.” One tweet encouraged voters to donate to a political action committee aiming to unseat Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin, Wis., Claire McCaskill, Mo., and Elizabeth Warren, Mass., as well as Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Calif.

Those involved in the conspiracy, prosecutors said, would analyze U.S. news articles and advise how to draft messages about those stories. For example, members of the conspiracy advised that Sen. John McCain, who is now deceased, should be branded “an old geezer who has lost it,” and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., should be portrayed as “a complete and absolute nobody.”

“The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions,” said Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement, “Combatting election interference is a task that requires cooperation from government and private industry. Twitter declined to comment. The messages spread widely on the platforms; prosecutors say one Facebook page reached over 1.3 million people, while several of the Twitter accounts had tens of thousands of followers.

The conspiracy did not seem to include any outright hacking efforts. In a statement, the ODNI said officials “do not have any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections.” But the statement noted: “We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies. These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections.”

The statement, which was joined by the Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, came on the eve of a trip national security adviser John Bolton is making to Moscow, where he is expected to raise the issue with his counterparts.

Court papers say Khusyaynova’s operation was funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin who is known as “Putin’s Chef,” and two companies he controls: Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering. A federal judge in the District of Columbia this week expressed reservations about the special counsel office’s prosecution of one of Prigozhin’s companies, and directed Mueller’s prosecutors to provide a more detailed response to the company’s bid to dismiss the central charge.

A criminal complaint filed against Khusyaynova charges that she managed the finances of Project Lakhta, including detailed expenses for activities in the United States.

Between 2016 and 2018, Project Lakhta’s proposed operating budget exceeded $35 million, although only a portion of that money targeted the United States, prosecutors said.

Lakhta is the name of a neighborhood in St. Petersburg near the location of the longtime office of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm which has been the focus of special counsel prosecutors. The company moved to an office building in the neighborhood called Lakhta-2 last winter, according to Russian news reports.

Investigating Russian interference in U.S. elections has largely been the purview of Mueller, though his probe is focused on the 2016 election and the Trump campaign. So far, his office has charged a dozen Russian military officers with hacking Democrats’ computers, as well as 13 people and three companies that his prosecutors allege ran an online propaganda operation to push voters away from Hillary Clinton and toward Donald Trump in 2016.

The members of Project Lakhta seemed keenly aware of Mueller’s work. After the special counsel’s indictment of the 13 Russian nationals in February for similar behavior in the 2016 election, one alleged member of the conspiracy tweeted that he hoped the accused were sent to Guantanamo Bay prison. But, he added, apparently hoping to convince U.S. voters of his position: “We didn’t vote for Trump because of a couple hashtags shilled by the Russians. We voted for Trump because he convinced us to vote for Trump.”

The group communicated with real Americans to advance their work. For example, in July 2017, one of the conspirators used a fake “Helen Christopherson” Facebook account to contact three real U.S. organizations to collaborate with the groups in opposing Trump. One of those organizations agreed to make the “Helen Christopherson” account a co-organizer of an anti-Trump event on Facebook.

The case is being prosecuted by attorneys in the cyber division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia and the Justice Department National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

The complaint against Khusyaynova was filed under seal in late September and kept secret for three weeks. Officials said the calculation to publicly unveil the accusations now was based on a number of factors, including the unlikelihood that the suspect, who is believed to be in Russia, might travel to a country where she could be arrested and the pending meeting between Bolton and Russian officials, allowing him to raise the issue with them now that the complaint has been made public.

Overriding all of those concerns, officials said, was a desire to raise public awareness about Russian political influence campaigns – to warn voters that such activity was not limited to the 2016 campaign and fake online personas are still trying to manipulate Americans heading to the polls in a matter of days.

The Justice Department has been broadly assessing how it should respond to foreign influence operations targeting U.S. elections, and this summer it issued a lengthy report on the topic. U.S. officials have warned repeatedly about foreign attempts to influence the 2018 midterms.

The Washington Post’s Anton Troianovski in Moscow and Craig Timberg, Spencer S. Hsu and Rosalind S. Helderman in Washington contributed to this report.</s>A Russian woman, allegedly one of the masterminds behind a conspiracy to interfere in both the 2016 and 2018 elections, was charged in the US on Friday in relation to attempts to corrupt next month's congressional midterm vote.

The woman, identified as Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of St. Petersburg, Russia, allegedly served as the chief accountant for an operation known as "Project Lakhta," the Justice Department said pn Friday in a statement. The department identified the operation as 'a Russian umbrella effort funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering.'

The charges come as top US law enforcement and intelligence agencies warn Americans about ongoing efforts by Russia, China and other foreign actors to interfere in the 2018 midterm and 2020 presidential elections.

The charges announced on Friday centred on a conspiracy that included the creation of thousands of social media and email accounts that appeared to be run by US persons as part of what the conspirators referred to as "information warfare against the United States."

Referring to Khusyaynova, the Justice Department said, "The financial documents she controlled include detailed expenses for activities in the United States, such as expenditures for activists, advertisements on social media platforms, registration of domain names, the purchase of proxy servers, and promoting news postings on social networks."</s>A woman employed by a close alley to Russian President Vladimir Putin has been charged by U.S. prosecutors with conspiracy to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections.



The accused, Elena A. Khusyaynova of St. Petersburg, is said to be the chief accountant of “Project Lakhta,” a Russian propaganda effort whose stated mission in the United States is to “spread distrust toward candidates for political office and the political system in general,” according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday by a U.S. District Court in Virginia. 



Project Lakhta, whose operations prosecutors say are ongoing, is said to be funded largely by Yevgeniy V. Prigozhin, an Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef.” (His company, Concord Management, provides food to the Kremlin.)

Prigozhin was himself indicted by the Justice Department in February, accused by the special counsel’s office of funding the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based troll farm that U.S. intelligence officials say spread divisive propaganda to millions of American voters during the 2016 election—primarily with Facebook.

According to the FBI, the Internet Research Agency is but one of several organizations that operated covertly under Project Lakhta’s umbrella.

The conspiracy in which Khusyaynova, 44, is said to have played a central role—chiefly by managing the illicit operation’s finances—involved the creation of thousands of fictitious U.S. personas, including unique email and social media accounts. The accounts were used to “sow discord in the U.S. political system” by inflaming the “passions” of American voters on a list of divisive topics, including “immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL anthem debate.”

The conspiracy, according to one person singled-out in the complaint, sought to “effectively aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population.”

The Russians developed strategies that allowed them to “target audiences with conservative or liberal viewpoints, as well as particular social groups,” the complaint says, such as carefully choosing which news articles to circulate among which groups. “[I]f you write posts in a conservative group, do not use Washington Post or BuzzFeed’s titles,” one of the conspirators allegedly wrote.

Likewise, Project Lakhta members allegedly strategized over how best to package articles in a way that stoked partisans’ indignation. In one example, a “member of the Conspiracy” advised using a Daily Caller article about Sen. John McCain to brand him “as an old geezer who has lost it and who long ago belonged in a home for the elderly.”

The member’s advice continued, they complain says:

The group also sought to smear Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and whether anyone associated with the Trump campaign was wittingly involved. Project Lakhta’s playbook apparently advised members to paint Mueller as “a puppet of the establishment” and list off scandals that occurred during his time as FBI director.

“State the following,” one member allegedly wrote, “It is a fact that the Special Prosecutor who leads the investigation against Trump represents the establishment: a politician with proven connections to the U.S. Democratic Party who says things that should either remove him from his position or disband the entire investigation commission.”

In a statement, the Justice Department said the charges against Khusyaynova do not in any way allege Project Lakhta altered the outcome of the 2016 election. Nor does it suggest any American knowingly participated.

U.S. Attorney Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia, where the case is being heard, said the conspiracy “continues to this day” with the goal of undermining faith in democratic institutions. “This case demonstrates that federal law enforcement authorities will work aggressively to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of unlawful foreign influence activities, and that we will not stand by idly while foreign actors obstruct the lawful functions of our government,” he said.</s>The United States Department of Justice on Friday charged a Russian woman for her alleged role in a conspiracy to interfere in the US political system. The department accused 44-year-old Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of conspiring with others to disrupt the 2018 midterm election among other political procedures.

This is reportedly the first federal case claiming Russian interference in the 2018 election. Prior to this, Washington’s intelligence accused Moscow of meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The criminal complaint against Khusyaynova – who lives in St Petersburg – claimed that she runs a programme called Project Lakhta to spread inflammatory content online. The department of justice said that she continues to engage in “information warfare against the United States” by coordinating a troll farm.

Project Lakhta allegedly used social media and other platforms to push opposing views on matters including immigration, gun control, gun rights, the Confederate flag, race relations, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender issues, the Women’s March and the NFL national anthem debate, said the justice department. “Members of the conspiracy were directed, among other things, to create “political intensity through supporting radical groups” and to “aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population”.”

The United States said the conspiracy programme was funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and the two companies he controls.</s>The finance chief of Russia's leading troll farm was indicted by the US Justice Department on Friday for interfering with US elections, the first person to face charges involving the 2018 congressional midterms.

The indictment said Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova was involved in a criminal conspiracy as the chief accountant for Project Lakhta, a broad political interference operation in the Saint Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency.

Since 2014, Khusyaynova has been handling the finances for operations to sow disinformation and stir up divisiveness in US elections, according to prosecutors.

She also budgeted millions of dollars this year for online social media efforts directed and the United States and Europe.

"Today's charges allege that Russian national Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova conspired with others who were part of a Russian influence campaign to interfere with US democracy," said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.

The Internet Research Agency is controlled by a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, through his Concord Management and Consulting group, prosecutors said.

Prigozhin, sometimes dubbed "Putin's chef" because he has managed catering for the Russian leader, was already indicted in February along with 12 other IRA employees over their disinformation campaigns during the 2016 presidential election.

In that effort, they pumped out millions of postings via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms designed to stir up animosity between political camps and groups in society.

The campaign aimed to boost Donald Trump's chances of winning the presidency, according to US intelligence.

The indictment against Khusyaynova details her budgeting for Project Lakhta month by month for the first six months of 2018, a total of more than 650 million rubles, or $10 million, details that suggested US investigators have gained detailed inside knowledge of the IRA's operations.

Between January 2016 and June 2018, Project Lakhta had a proposed operating budget of more than $35 million for all of its operations, including those directed at the United States.

The money was for expenditures for IRA activists, social media advertising, registering domain names and buying proxy servers, all needed for the group's influence operations.

"The conspirators allegedly took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists," by setting up thousands of accounts made to appear to be owned by Americans, the Justice Department said.

The accounts were used "to create and amplify divisive social and political content targeting US audiences."

In an odd bit of timing, the indictment was announced just minutes after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence expressed concern that China, Iran and Russia could seek to undermine confidence in the November 6 mid-term elections, when control of the US Congress is up for grabs.

The ODNI statement did not, however, say that such efforts had taken place.

It said there had not been any evidence that foreign hackers had compromised any election infrastructure such as voter registration databases or voting machines.

"Increased intelligence and information sharing among federal, state and local partners has improved our awareness of ongoing and persistent threats to election infrastructure," ODNI said in a joint statement with the FBI, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
The United States Justice Department charges 44-year old Elena Khusyaynova of Saint Petersburg with conspiracy to defraud the United States for managing the financing of the social media troll operation that included the Internet Research Agency.