National security adviser H.R. McMaster said Saturday that evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election was "now really incontrovertible" after indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three companies.
Speaking at an international security conference in Munich, Germany, McMaster lent credence to a widening scandal that President Donald Trump has routinely dismissed as a hoax.
"The evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain," McMaster said. The U.S. was becoming "more and more adept at tracing the origins of this espionage and subversion," he said.
The indictment announced Friday describes a vast, secret, social-media campaign financed by a Russian entrepreneur with ties to President Vladimir Putin that worked to harm Hillary Clinton's candidacy and promote Trump.
These are the first criminal charges related to election meddling brought in the Mueller investigation. Deputy Attorney General Gen. Rod Rosenstein said there was no allegation in the indictment of an American citizen participating willingly in the scheme.
In a Twitter post, Trump claimed that the charges prove his campaign "did nothing wrong."
At the same Munich meeting with McMaster on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the accusations against his countrymen as "just blabber."