Russian military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 president ial election. According to the allegations in the indictment, the defendants worked for two units of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the russian general staff known as the gru. The units engaged in active Cyber Operations to interfere in the 2016 president ial election. The conspirators corresponded with several americans during the course of the conspiracy through the internet. There is no allegation in this indictment that the americans knew they were corresponding with russian Intelligence Officers. The indictments place the blame for the 2016 election meddling squarely on the shoulders of the russian state, not as donald trump has previously alleged, china, a 400 pound man, or, quote, other people in other countries. According to rosenstein, the president was briefed earlier this week that the indictments were coming, but trump and his white house have offered no condemnation of russia, putin, or the individuals charged. In fact, trump has continued to repeatedly praise putin throughout his foreign trip and malign the investigation. Calling it a witch hunt as recently as this morning. I think i have a very Good Relationship with president putin. If we spend time together, i ma i be wrong. Other people have said that, didnt work out. But im different than other people. I think that were being hurt very badly by the, i would call it the witch hunt. I call it the rigged witch hunt. I think that really hurts our country and it really hurts our relationship with russia. I think that we would have a chance tomorrow a very Good Relationship with russia and a very good chance very Good Relationship with president putin. I would hope so. Okay. Ken dilanian, intelligence and National Security reporter for nbc news, frank figliuzzi, matt miller and former u. S. Attorney joyce vance. Matt, i do want to start with you. Given that donald trump today called this a witch hunt and given that Rod Rosenstein briefed him on this indictment days ago, what does that say to you about how seriously donald trump is taking this investigation . Hes taking it seriously. In one way i think hes always taken this seriously in that hes been very concerned about it. Hes clearly been concerned about the aspects that relate to him, the obstruction of justice aspects that hes under investigation for. And the other part of it, hes never taken seriously. Hes never taken this seriously as an attack on the United States. He cares about anything that might affect him. He cares about implications of wrongdoing of people close to him, around him. Whenever it is discussed as an attack on the United States, an attack on our democracy, an attack on our free and fair elections, you see his defensiveness from him and this need to lash out against the investigators. And it is remarkable, i think, that days after he was briefed on this indictment, when he knew it was coming, when he knew there would be public evidence unsealed about a russian conspiracy to attack our elections and just before he went to meet with Vladimir Putin, he was still out attacking the investigators, still out making excuses for the russian government. It is at best an irresponsible course of action by the president. Given that, if he was completely innocent of all the charges and if this was nothing for him, he was not involved in any way, his campaign wasnt of involved in any way, if he knew he was innocent, why wouldnt he take this seriously and say this is a big deal and i want to get to the bottom of this . Why cant he separate those two if he is innocent . Re well, the best theory that you can give, the best possible explanation for his behavior is he just thinks all of these allegations about russian meddling, whether there was any collusion between his campaign or not, but just the allegations of russian med allegdling dampe win. Thats the best possible explanation you can give for it. The other explanation, of course, is that he did something wrong or he knows people around him did something wrong. And i will say to your point about if he is innocent, why doesnt he take this more seriously . The other thing, if he is innocent, he has nothing to hide, why does he keep delaying, why does he keep refusing sitting down talking with the special counsel about what he knows, about what happened in the campaign and what he did what he may or may not have done to obstruct the investigation into the Campaign Activities ones he became president. Ken, the timing of this comes a day after the peter strzok hearing, that contentious hearing where republicans were trying to make him the boogie man. Three days before trumps meeting in helsinki with Vladimir Putin. Katy, it is an incredibly strong move by federal law enforce. Not just federal law enforce 789, the entire intelligence community. It flies in the face of everything donald trump has been saying about this. Whats more, we have breaking news. Dan coates, director of National Intelligence was at a public event. He specifically called out russian hacking and interference. He was asked what he would say to Vladimir Putin. He would say we know what youre doing, how youre doing 2, we know you run the shots, youre making deal significances. You cant pass it off to some hacker somewhere we dont know. We know what you do. You make the choice. It is explicitly calling out, as nbc news has reported, Vladimir Putin directly supervised and was directly personally involved in the election interference op rangs. Donald trump knows that. Thats not in this indictment, but its in the intelligence he has been briefed on. It is inexplicable why we can understand why he wants to say its a hoax that his campaign was colluding with russian interference effort. But why he is unwilling to come to grips with the fact that a foreign power attacked our election, hes got the evidence, and he needs to sort of reorient the government to do something about it to prevent it from happening again, katy. There is also a little bit more news coming out of this indictment, some connecting of the dots that we had been reporting until now. On page 13 of the indictment, frank, the mueller team talks about when d. C. Leaks, an election leaks, the domains were made. It says this. On or about june 8, 2016, they launch d. C. Leaks. Com which they use to release stolen emails. Before it shutdown in around march 2017, the site received over 1 million page views. The conspirators falsely claimed on the site that d. C. Leaks was started by a group of american activists when it was started by the conspirators. The russians. June 9, the day after this website was created, there was that trump tower meeting with don junior, jared kushner, paul manafort, the russian lawyer. So, we dont know what the nexus is other than proximity and time. But if you read through this indictment and every american who cares about the threat to america should read this indictment carefully. Its a great read. Put down the spy novel youre reading, pick up the indictment and read through this. But when you look at the passage youre talking about, katy, you can see there is great effort made to deceive, obfuscate by the russians, attempt to blame it on americans. We see the proximity and time as that is going on, we have Campaign Officials for trump sitting down, breaking bread, meeting with russians. The proximity of that, i dont believe in hunches. I dont believe in coincidences. I believe there is a familiarity and Comfort Level with what the russians are doing in the campaign and that is what were seeing play out in the facetoface meetings. That seems to be a theme, i dont believe in hunches. Federal investigators, i should say. There is also this, and i think its interesting as well, talking about Trump Campaign official or someone who is in contact with trump Campaign Officials, talking directly with gucifer 2. 0 who this indictment names as well as a russian. The conspirators posing as gucifer 2. 0 talked about the release of stolen documents on or about august 15th, 2016. The conspirators posing as gucifer 2. 0 wrote to a person who is in regular contact with senior members of the president ial campaign, of donald j. Trump. Thank you for writing back. Do you find anything in in the docs i posted . On or about august 17, 2016, the conspirators said please tell me if i can help you anyhow. It would be a great pleasure to me. Ken, back to you for a moment on this. Thats roger stone, right . Yeah, and we know that because roger stone this has been reported on previously and roger stone took it upon himself to release screen shots of these messages which are still on the web. You can find them. And they read verbatim like this exchange. And so roger stone has said that he never communicated with any russian intelligence official. This indictment suggests that that is not the case. He may not have known it, but clearly he was communicating with russian intelligence here, katy. Joyce, the white house has released a statement on this today, and they say that the charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone in the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the Election Results and thats what theyve been saying all along. But lets be clear, joyce, this indictment doesnt say thats not what theyre going to find. The investigation is still ongoing. And if you ask pete williams, our justice reporter, he makes it clear that there is more coming. I think that thats absolutely right. You know, Rod Rosenstein, when he announced this indictment today, did not look like a man who was delivering the last chapter in a book. It was clear that he was in the middle of the story. We have now seen the irs indictment which talks about social media manipulation by russia. Here we have the russian hacking piece with a little glimpse of roger stone and perhaps others. It would be very unlikely if mueller did not have additional indictments to drop here. But, katy, i think whats so disturbing about the white houses statement is that they only seem to be concerned with risk to the white house, with risk to trump from this investigation, and they miss the bigger picture, that russia attacked this country as certainly as japan bombed pearl harbor. This was a cyberattack on our elections. And the president of the United States doesnt seem to be concerned as long as mueller doesnt indict people from his campaign. Does mueller Pay Attention to the president s reaction to the white houses reaction . I suspect he pays attention to the reaction of a lot of people. You know, federal prosecutors do something called tickling the wire in drug cases or other cases where they have wiretap. You see the reaction that defendants or subjects have as there is activity during a wiretap, and perhaps as its revealed and taken down. So mueller is definitely looking at how people react to the announcement of this indictment because the most important element of the case, if there will be cases against american citizens or others, will be whether they have knowledge and intent. Whether they were unwitting dupes for the russians or knowing participants. You know, this indictment makes it very clear in the conspiracy count it is naming people who are indicted today, but there are others who are known and unknown to the grand jury. Mueller will be deciding whether there are other coconspirators. In talking about roger stone for just oomt momeanother momen his name has been swirling so much, one thing i think is interesting, frank, so far as we know, he has not been interviewed by the special counsel. Any reason to believe that he could be cooperating . Yeah, his public person a doesnt lend itself to cooperation. Thats not what im get forgive him. Im thinking hes not been interviewed yet if thats accurate because theyre saving this up. They are building their case and they are only going to sit him down when theyre ready to present be document after document, evidence after evidence. The white house, fox news, Rudy Giuliani can come out today and say, this somehow proves that there is no evidence involving trump or campaign members. What we do see in reference to u. S. Persons, like roger stone, are that they are knowingly engaged with a hacker presenting stolen property, stolen data and theyre exchanging theyre in a conversation with these people. So, it may not be that they knew they were russian Intelligence Officers. It may not be they knew they were russians, but they knew they were dealing with some form of criminal conduct. July 27th, matt miller, is a date that keeps coming up. Its the date that donald trump asked russia, if youre listening, find Hillary Clintons emails. Lets listen to that moment. It was july 27, 2016, in the middle of the Democratic National convention. Donald trump comes out, holds a press conference at his Doral Golf Club in miami. Russia, if youre listening, i hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. Matt, i was at that press conference. I heard it. It raised a lot of red flags for me and i said, are you serious . Does it not give you pause to ask a Foreign Government to hack into anybodys email in the u. S. , let alone, a political opponent . And he said, no, no, no, it does not. Youre just trying to save clinton towards me and reiterated again, id love to see those emails. Now we are learning from this indictment that on that very day, after hours, so presumably after donald trump said that, for the very first time, according to the indictment and they say for the first time in this there was a spear Fishing Effort by the conspirators named in this indictment to hack into Hillary Clintons emails. Katy, that was an incredibly damning moment for the president when it happened and its become only more damning with the benefit of hindsight and the benefit of finding out just what was going on in the campaigns. We have since found out that in the spring of 2016, Donald Trumps campaign was approached by someone who said the russians had obtained Hillary Clintons emails. In june of 2016, they were approached by russian attorney seemingly acting on the kremlins behalf who told them that who offered to share information after an intermediary said the russian government wants to help your campaign. The president then goes out and publicly asks for Russian Intelligence Services to hack Hillary Clintons emails and we now know that that very same day they jumped into action. Its kind of astonishing if you think about it. What was happening is the gru, Russian MilitaryIntelligence Service was essentially acting as Donald Trumps personal concierge. He asked hem to get Hillary Clintons emails and they jumped to respond. Frank, i know you say you dont believe in coincidences, but could this be a coincidence . Highly unlikely, katy, highly unlikely. Who is jumping in a second ago . Katy, i want to say your questioning of donald trump looms very important because you gave him a chance to say, i was just kidding, it was hyperbole, and he did not take that chance. And so he is on the record saying, i meant what i said. I wanted them to get the email. And whether he knew that they were going out to get it apparently according to the indictment or not, can you imagine if barack obama or george w. Bush had made a statement and then found out later foreign operatives tried to steal something pursuant to that statement . Can you imagine them not addressing it in public, not being grilled about it . Its just incredible. I think trey gowdys head might explode if that happened. Talking about Rudy Giuliani as well who has never shied away from getting involved in anything, hes got a statement today. The indictments Rod Rosenstein announced are good news for all americans. The russians are nailed. No americans are involved. Time for mueller to end this pursuit of the president and say, President Trump is completely innocent. Joyce, it sounds like hes saying the president is a target of this investigation. It does sound a little bit that way. And Rudy Giuliani as a former u. S. Attorney knows or at least should know that prosecutors dont like to give defendants and, in fact, under the u. S. Attorneys manual, do not give defendants, whether they are targets or subject, a clean bill of health because you dont know where the evidence might go in a case. But this is really damaging for the president. You participated in that press conference where he called for russian participation. He then tried to cover up at least this one meeting in trump towers. And this really brings the obstruction case into focus because one of giulianis complaints has been, you cant obstruct if theres no underlying crime. Well, now we are seeing whether trump is guilty or not, there was, in fact, underlying activity by russia. And that really casts obstruction and trumps efforts to end the russia investigation into a whole new light. Ken dilanian, matt miller, joyce vance, guys, thank you very much. Frank, stick around with us. Coming up, in the wake of todays indictments, some democrats are calling on trump to scrap his summit with Vladimir Putin. So far the white house isnt saying anything has changed. Well look at what we can expect. Plus, memo to congress. Rod rosenstei