Feds Dropping Case for 2 Russian Companies in Troll Probe

Washington, Mar 17 (AP) The Justice Department is moving to drop charges against two Russian companies that were accused of funding a social media campaign to sway American public opinion during the 2016 US presidential election.

Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering were among three companies and 13 individuals charged in 2018 by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of a conspiracy to spread disinformation on social media during the 2016 presidential race. The effort included social media postings and campaigns aimed at dividing American public opinion and sowing discord in the electorate, officials said.

Of the 13 Russians and three Russian companies charged by Mueller in a vast social media disinformation effort, Concord was the sole defendant to enter an appearance in Washington's federal court and contest and the allegations.

Concord is controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman known as "Putin's chef" for his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been hit with US sanctions over Russian interference in the 2016 election and is charged alongside his company in the indictment brought by Mueller.

The company, with the help of a high-powered law firm, filed a series of motions over the last two years, including to dismiss charges and to exclude certain evidence from the case.

In January 2019, prosecutors said confidential material from the Russia investigation, which had been handed over to defense attorneys for Concord, was altered and released online as part of a disinformation campaign to discredit the special counsel's Russia investigation. The files surfaced online in a link posted by a pro-Russia Twitter account. But the Justice Department stopped short of accusing Concord of leaking the material.

Still, they argued that the company's request to have sensitive new evidence sent to Russia "unreasonably risks the national security interests of the United States." Some of the court appearances in the case have been unusually contentious, with the federal judge overseeing it chastising a lawyer for the company, Eric Dubelier, for references in court filings to Looney Tunes and the 1978 raunchy comedy "Animal House" to criticise the Mueller investigation.

"I'll say it plain and simply: Knock it off," US District Judge Dabney Friedrich told Dubelier at a January 2019 court appearance.

Dubelier, who has referred to the case as involving a “made up” crime, has made allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and even once accused the judge of bias.

But with the case approaching trial, prosecutors 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 US.

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."

Concord Catering did not have attorneys appear in court, but prosecutors said they would seek to drop charges against that company as well because it too was controlled by Prigozhin and “based on the likelihood that its approach to litigation would be the same as Concord.”

Prosecutors vowed to continue to pursue their case against the 13 Russians who were named in Mueller's indictment, along with the troll farm that Concord was alleged to have funded, the Internet Research Agency. (AP)

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