Russian ‘Troll Farm’ Calls Mueller’s Bluff
Lawyers for the company accused of funding Russia’s election interference trolls are demanding that special counsel Robert Mueller turn over reams of information, including the identities of informants, details of any electronic surveillance, and a list of “each and every instance” since 1945 in which the U.S. “engaged in operations to interfere with elections and political processes in any foreign country.”
The ambitious demand for legal discovery surfaced Friday in Mueller’s criminal case against 13 individuals and three Russian companies linked to the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg troll farm that used fake accounts to organize demonstrations on U.S. soil and flood American social media with alt-right memes during the 2016 election. One of those defendants is Concord Management and Consulting, a Russian firm run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close Kremlin ally known as “Putin’s Chef,” who is also named individually as a defendant in the case.
Attorneys at the law firm Reed Smith are representing Concord. Though the Washington, D.C.-based lawyers have formally filed an appearance in the case, the government says they’ve refused to accept service of the court summons, and attempts to serve the Russian defendants through other means—like dropping off the summons with Russia’s prosecutor general in Moscow—have failed. Mueller’s team is seeking a postponement of a May 9th arraignment date until the technicality can be ironed out.
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