That's the point. 75 criminal indictments sound impressive. Then you hear that it's procedural infractions.
Regarding the 13 companies
"Now that we can see all of the ads for ourselves, it is difficult to argue with Facebook executive Rob Goldman, who said that “swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal.” The main goal, in fact, appears to be exactly what Facebook initially found, according to The Washington Post, before the social-media giant came under pressure from congressional Democrats: “A review by the company found that most of the groups behind the problematic pages had clear financial motives, which suggested that they weren’t working for a foreign government.”"
From the Aaron Mate article.
Yes. Crimes are crimes. Just don't declare guilty pleas "evidence" if they have nothing directly involving the election.
I believe this is an example where concentrating on small details and refuting their importance causes some to lose sight of the larger picture - missing the forest for all the trees, as the saying goes.
People who less familiar with white collar crimes find the the number of charges filed first remarkable (75+) and then disappointing. It's important to keep the larger context in mind.
We know from statements made by our intelligence agencies that there was a coordinated and extensive effort by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election with the aim of damaging HRC and supporting DJT. Full stop. We've also seen from the various indictments issued by Mueller's investigation that there were individuals who also interfered in the election, but may have done so simply for financial gain. These two findings are not mutually exclusive.
In addition, we have multiple US citizens who were in close proximity with the current POTUS who have been charged with crimes against the United States. Manafort and Gates leads that list, with charges that include conspiracy against the US, conspiracy to launder money, failure to register as a foreign agent, among others. Each of these charges have sentences of several years in prison, with the cumulative total of around 80 years.
Flynn, a US General and the National Security Advisor plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian Contacts, which to be clear is an obstruction charge. Papadopoulos did the same.
So - "Big Picture" here - multiple people who helped run DJT's election campaign have been charged with crimes which i) carry substantial prison time and ii) involve dealing with and/or lying about their contacts with Russia. Nothing can wash that away. Guilty pleas are evidence of guilt, and both Flynn and Papadopoulos have plead guilty to lies made to the FBI during the campaign. The charges against Manafort & Gates are the ones which came largely from before teh campaign, but that doesn't make them any less newsworthy, particularly since Manafort, the man now accused of conspiracy against the US - was selected by Trump to lead his campaign. It's possible that Trump knew nothing about this, which points to some extraordinarily poor vetting on his campaign. Or its possible that he knew and either didn't beleive it or didn't care. Regardless, finding
ex post facto that the person who very recently led your operation is facing 8 decades in prison for crimes agains the US would be considered a major problem for any large organization.