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US-POLITICS-IMPEACHMENT-RUSSIA
Russia hacked Ukrainian gas firm at center of Trump impeachment
WASHINGTON, Jan 14, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Russian spies hacked a Ukrainian
energy company at the center of the impeachment trial of US President Donald
Trump, a cybersecurity firm said Monday.
Russia’s GRU spy agency launched a “phishing” attack in November to access
the email of Burisma Holdings employees, California cyber firm Area 1
Security said in a report.
“The timing of the GRU’s campaign in relation to the 2020 US elections
raises the specter that this is an early warning of what we have anticipated
since the successful cyberattacks undertaken during the 2016 US elections,”
Area 1 co-founders Oren J. Falkowitz and Blake Darche said in the eight-page
document.
Trump was impeached in December over allegations that he improperly
pressured Ukraine to announce an investigation into Burisma and its links to
former board member Hunter Biden, the son of the president’s election rival
Joe Biden.
The GRU figured heavily in the Mueller report on Russian interference in
the 2016 presidential campaign, which concluded that Russia hacked the
Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to help Trump.
The president triggered wide alarm in Washington in July 2018 after he met
President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and appeared to take at face value
Putin’s denials of Russian meddling.
In a July 2019 phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr
Zelensky, Trump pushed for Kiev to investigate a debunked Kremlin conspiracy
theory that Biden, one of the Democrats most likely to challenge Trump for
the White House in November, had tried to quash a graft probe of Burisma to
protect his son.
The GRU — a military intelligence unit — got into the servers of Burisma
Holdings, Area 1 said, although it is not clear what they found or what they
were looking for.
“The Russians appear to be at it again,” tweeted Adam Schiff, the chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee who led Trump’s impeachment investigation
for the Democrats.
“According to a new report, they’re hacking information that could be a
prelude to more election interference in 2020. And again, it appears aimed to
help Trump.”
The report was released with Trump expected to stand trial in the Senate
as early as this week on two articles of impeachment — abuse of power and
obstruction of Congress.
BSS/AFP/FI/1034 hrs