An attorney for a Russian firm allegedly involved in the wide-ranging effort to interfere in the 2016 election sought to convince a federal judge this week that his client’s alleged crimes are in fact not crimes at all.
An attorney for a Russian firm allegedly involved in the wide-ranging effort to interfere in the 2016 election sought to convince a federal judge this week that his client’s alleged crimes are in fact not crimes at all.
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In a hearing in a Washington, D.C. courtroom on Monday, Eric Dubelier of the American law firm Reed Smith argued that the case against the Russian consulting company known as Concord, which allegedly funded a “troll factory” in which the Russians created or stole the identities of hundreds of Americans online in order to sow discord and spread propaganda, should be dismissed.
If people lying about who they are on the Internet and engaging in political speech is a crime, he argued, then every politician in America would be in prison.
“This argument is beyond belief,” Dubelier said. “They want to regulate what people say on the internet.”
It was special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, he said, who “made up a crime to fit the facts they have.”