Covert Influence Operation News Today

Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. By the letters, chs. Confidential human source. Now, the trove of documents detail reports of payments to steele, mostly redacted. You can see there, thats a lot of white space. There are two exceptions. The final page is information from a document, from february 2016. Of course, thats long before the russia probe began. It says steele was, quote, verbally admonished by the fbi and that steele acknowledged the admonishment and e...

Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. They are known as the steele dossier. They allege, among other things, that the Trump Campaign had organized collusion with the kremlin. Quote, this is something of huge significance. Way above party politics, that Intelligence Officer told corn, that would be steele. Quote, i think trumps own party should be aware of this stuff, as well. The official confirmation of the fbi investigation into the Trump Campaigns contacts with ru...

The covert influence operation network was made up of 72 accounts with a total following of almost 95,000 users.

In the meantime tonight, new details about that russian woman we have reported on here before, maria butina. she was in court today, pleading guilty to conspiring to act as a russian agent here in the u.s., and now agreeing to cooperate with u.s. prosecutors in any investigation here. so, why was she really here? abcs kyra phillips again tonight. >> reporter: tonight, maria butina pleading guilty to conspiracy, admitting she was sent here by russia to build back channel connections with prominen...

In russia called the right to bear arms. so you have a putin-connected oligarch attached to a gun rights platform. and that is very odd. steven hall, the former chief of russian operations for the cia explains it thusly. the idea of a private gun ownership is anathema to putin. so the question is why? why was a pro-gun campaign being hac hatched by a leader in putins own party? the answer put forward here, that putin was reaching out to attract the nra, specifically over to russia. this is part ...

Oligarch attached to a gun rights platform. and that is very odd. steven hall, the former chief of russian operations for the cia explains it thusly. the idea of a private gun ownership is anathema to putin. so the question is why? why was a pro-gun campaign being hatched by a leader in putins own party? the answer put forward here, that putin was reaching out to attract the nra, specifically over to russia. this is part of what the justice department alleges. and again, the case is only beginni...

This was a covert influence operation. we should be making sure that were talking about, how do we do a counter-covert influence? this is something weve shown were not prepared for. the russians are going to do it again. theyve been doing it for a couple of decades in eastern europe. they did it in our election last time. we should expect to see them again in 18. >> maybe theres stuff happening behind the skoend nd the scenes public isnt aware of. are you aware of initiatives by the white house ...

Collusion between the campaign and russia, which he is very concerned about and denies. as a member of the house intelligence committee, do you think the president should spend more time making sure u.s. elections are never hacked again and less time trying to refute any collusion? >> well, as a member of the house intelligence committee, im involved in this investigation. the most important thing is the investigation is bipartisan and thorough. yes, we should all be concerned with the russian a...

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