A lot of people in the US still don't believe Russians interfered in the election, and/or that they interfered to support Trump's candidacy. I believe this is mostly designed to show them (1) yes, they were doing a lot, and (2) it was aimed at disparaging Clinton and supporting Trump.
Similarly, the US government hasn't really taken any steps to prevent future meddling in US elections. The goal may have also been to serve as a wake up call to our elected officials to take this issue seriously.
The indictment is not about PR, it is about punishing Russian nationals who participated in this op.
The long arm of US law enforcement may not be able to get these folks in Russia, but it can prevent them from traveling in many countries around the world, and can result in their assets being frozen.
The other thing is that if any of the individuals involved come to fear for their safety from Putin's government, these indictments will be a strong motivator for them to rat other parts of the Russian intelligence apparatus.
i'm not quite sure what you mean by "tactically", but this is significantly different because it's not the administration. Trump has been insisting that any suggestion of russian election interference is a hoax, and now the justice department is indicting russians for interfering in the election.
As he traveled to Hanoi, the second-to-last stop of his Asia trip, Mr. Trump told reporters that Putin "said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did."
"Every time he sees me, he said: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe -- I really believe -- that when he tells me that, he means it," Mr. Trump said, calling the accusation an "artificial barrier" erected by Democrats.
Actually, he has claimed they didn't interfere many times ... for example:
"President Trump said on Saturday that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin was sincere in his denials of interference in the 2016 presidential elections"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/world/asia/trump-putin-el...
Trump has claimed many times that we "don't know" whether it was Russia, and that he believes Putin, who says it wasn't Russia. More recently the message has been that if Russia did interfere then the campaign was not involved/aware.
"I think that he [Putin] is very, very strong in the fact that he didn't do it," Trump said hours before his news conference, going on to trash Brennan, former National Intelligence director James Clapper and ex-FBI director James Comey, all of whom served during the Barack Obama administration.
Indirect disparaging whereby it's implied as a winkwinknudgenudge to his base but he gave himself wiggle room to say the media reporting was inaccurate and not what he meant after all:
Mr. Trump repeated his familiar refrain that “it could” have been Russia or other countries that interfered in the election, and then appeared to suggest that there was hardly an intelligence community consensus on the matter.
"While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations, including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said in a statement after the meeting.
Casting doubt on intelligence agencies that concluded collectively that it was indeed the Russians & not anyone else & that Putin ordered it. Of course he can spin that however he wants since the statement itself is intentionally ambiguous.
Too many quotes from this direct transcript whereby Trump is directly & indirectly implying there was no Russia hacking & if there way it was without Putin's knowledge. You know, like how the Russian army collectively decided to take a vacation in Crimea.
it's probably worth noting that this indictment goes out of its way to specify that the campaign officials these entities communicated with were "unwitting" participants, and the indicted parties were posing as americans.
The Deputy AG was questioned about this at his brief presser. He was very careful in his response saying "...this indictment makes no accusations..."
He refused to comment outside of this particular indictment which is rather narrow in scope relative to the investigation, and had no comment from the special counsel.
Correct, though I'm not sure if that means this represents all connections the Trump campaign may have had with Russians that the SC has found (that we didn't know about previously, e.g. Manafort in Ukraine).
Its to send a message and to make the case publicly. We're probably never going to get any of these guys either. We can ask Putin to hand them over and he'll say "no" and then we'll just be out in the open about where everyone stands.
