[Daily Beast] Evidence that was reportedly shared only with lawyers representing Russia’s Internet Research Agency was altered in a bid to "discredit the investigation," Mueller warns.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s case against Russian trolls accused of sowing disinformation to sway the 2016 election has itself fallen victim to what appears to be yet another Russian disinformation campaign, with troves of evidence altered, padded with garbage, and leaked to the Internet, according to a new court filing.
Mueller described the disinformation op in a court filing on Wednesday as "an apparent effort to discredit the investigation," an effort he traced back to evidence shared with a Russian company owned by none other than Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin ally known as "Putin’s chef" and the reputed puppetmaster of both Russian trolls and Russian mercenaries.
The company, Concord Management and Consulting, is accused of funding the Internet Research Agency troll farm, and as part of Mueller’s case against it, prosecutors had turned over about 800 thousand pages of non-sensitive evidence to Concord attorneys as part of the legal discovery process. Under a protective order, the discovery material is supposed to be used exclusively for preparing a defense.
But traces of that cache showed up in a hoax attempt that targeted journalists last year.
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