In a striking and unexpected abandonment of a
once-heralded prosecution initiated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Justice Department
moved Monday to drop charges against two Russian companies that were accused of funding a social media meme campaign to further their “strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 presidential election.”
Late Monday, with jury selection in the case set to begin in just two weeks, a federal judge granted the DOJ's motion to kill the prosecution for several counts of conspiring to defraud U.S. agencies tasked with combating election interference. The government acknowledged the Russian companies were never likely to actually face punishment anyway and cited possible national security risks with going forward to trial.
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But with the case approaching trial, prosecutors beat a hasty retreat, and said they had to weigh the risk of potentially exposing sensitive national security information against the benefits of continuing with the case against a company that likely wouldn’t face any significant punishment in the United States.
In the
court filing on Monday, prosecutors said Concord had been “eager and aggressive in using the judicial system to gather information about how the United States detects and prevents foreign election interference.”
“In short, Concord has demonstrated its intent to reap the benefits of the Court’s jurisdiction while positioning itself to evade any real obligations or responsibility,” prosecutors wrote in Monday’s filing. “It is no longer in the best interests of justice or the country’s national security to continue this prosecution."