Mueller says files on indicted Russian company were leaked online to discredit investigation

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office filed a complaint on Wednesday, saying a Twitter account, in an attempt to discredit the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, released more than 1,000 sensitive files from an active criminal case.

The Mueller filing objects to a discovery request from Concord Management and Consulting, a Russian agency owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In February 2018, Concord, Prigozhin, and other Russian individuals were indicted, accused of disrupting the 2016 election.

Concord is being represented by the U.S. law firm Reed Smith, and through discovery, Reed Smith lawyers were given access to about four million documents from Mueller's office, most of them marked sensitive. A judge in June told the lawyers they could only discuss or share the sensitive materials if they received court approval, and they could not be "disclosed, transported, or transmitted outside the United States," Politico reports.

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In October, the Twitter account @HackingRedstone tweeted they had hacked into the Mueller investigation's database, and leaked what it described as "files Mueller had about the IRA [Internet Research Agency] and Russian collusion." There were 300,000 files on the website, and the Mueller team and FBI determined that more than 1,000 had watermarks unique to materials shared with Concord during discovery, Politico reports. The FBI also found that the website was registered a week before the tweet was sent, with the IP address in Russia. There was "no evidence" any of Mueller's servers were hacked, the special counsel wrote, and the materials were likely released "to discredit the investigation."