Indictment presented by the special counsels office. The indictment charges 12 Russian Military officers by name for conspireing 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 director rat 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. Theres 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 400pound man or other people in other countries. According to rosen tine, the president was briefed earlier this week that the indicts 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 ma line the investigation. Calling it a witch hunt as recently as this morning. I think id have a very Good Relationship with president putin if we spend time together. I may be wrong. Other people have said that didnt work out. Im different than other people. I think 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 our relationship with russia. I think we would have a chance to have a very Good Relationship with russia and a very Good Relationship with president putin. I would hope so. Lets get right to the ken dilanian, National Security reporter for nbc news, frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for Counter Intelligence, former chief speaks plan for the Justice Department, matt miller and joyce vance. Given trump called this a witch hunt and given Rod Rosenstein briefed him on this indictment days ago, what does that say to you how seriously donald trump is taking this investigation . Hes taking it serious lis in one way, i think hes always taken this very seriously if that hes been clearly concerned about the aspects that relate to him, the onstruction of justice hes under investigation for. The other part hes never taken seriously as an attack on the United States. He cares about anything that might affect him. He cares about implications of wrong dong by people around him but whenever its discussed as an attack on the United States and our democracy, an attack on the way on our free and fair elections, you see this 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 attacking the investigators and making excuses for the russian government. It is at best an irresponsible course of action by the president. Matt, given that, if he was completely innocent of all the charges and if this really was nothing for him, if he was not involved in any way or his campaign wasnt involved in any way, if he knew he was innocent, why would he not be able to take this seriously and say this is a very big deal and i want to get to the bottom of this. Why cant he separate those two if he is innocent . Well, the best theory that you can give, the best possible explanation for his behavior he just thinks all of these allegations about russian meddling whether there was any collusion between his campaign or not, but just account allegations of meddling somehow dampen the impact of his win and they ascribe his win to the actions of the russian government and not to what he thinks is the brilliance of his own campaign. Thats the best possible explanation you can give for it. The other explanation is he did something wrong or knows people around him did something wrong. Ill say to your point about if he is innocent, why doesnt he take this more seriously. The other thing you would say, if hes innocent, he has nothing to hide. Why does he keep delaying and talking with the special counsel both 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 once he became president. Ken, the timing of this comes a day after the peter strzok hearing that contentious hearings where republicans tried to make him the boogeymen and two or three days before trumps meeting in helsinki with Vladimir Putin. Katie, as ben wittes said today its an incredibly strong move by federal Law Enforcement. The entire intelligence community. Because this indictment really just flies in the face of everything that donald trump has been saying about as you just said. Whats more, we have a little bit of breaking news here. Dan coates, direct he of National Intelligence explicitly called out russian hacking and asked what he would say to putin. He said that he would say we know what youre doing and we know how youre doing it. We know you run the shots. We know youre making decisions. You cant pass it off to some hacker down somewhere where we dont know. We know what you do. You make the choice. Explicitly calling out that as nbc news reported putin directly supervising was personally involved in this election interference operation. Donald trump knows that. Thats not in this zimt but its in the intelligence hes been briefed on and its explicable we can understand why he wants to say its a hoax that his campaign was col includinging with the Russian Election interference effort. Why is he unwilling to come to grips with the fact a Foreign Government interfered with our election to prevent it from happening again. There is more news coming out of this indictment. Some connecting of the dots that we havent been reporting till 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 other about june 8th, 2016 conspirators launched dc leaks. Com which they used to release stolen emails. Before it shut down around march 2017, the site received over 1 million page views. The conspirators falsely claimed that it was started by a group of american hackivists when in fact it was starred by the russians. June 9th the day after this website was creates that was that trump tower meeting with done junior, jared kushner, paul manafort, the russian lawyer. We dont know what the nexus is other than proximity and time but if you read through this indictment and every america who cares about the threat to america should read it carefully. Its a great read. Put down the spy novel, pick up the indictment and read through this. When you look at the passage youre talking about, you can see that theres great effort made to deceive, ob fuss skate by the russians, pretend to be something theyre not, pretend to blame it on americans and then we see the proximity in time as thats going on, we have Campaign Officials for trump sitting down, breaking bread, meeting with russians the proximity of that, i dont believe net coincidences. Were seeing that play out in all the meetings we know of. That seems to be a theme among federal prosecutors, i dont believe in hunches is what Chuck Rosenburg told me earlier today or federal investigators i should say. Theres also this. Its interesting, as well talking about Trump Campaign official or someone who was in contact with trump Campaign Officials talking directly with guccifer 2. 0 who this indictment names, as well as a russian. The conspirators posing as guccifer 2. 0 communicated with u. S. Personas about the release of stolen documents on other about august 15th, 2016, the conspirators posing as guccifer 2. 0 wrote to a person in regular contact with senior members of the president ial campaign of donald trump. Thank you for writing back. On or about august 17th, 2016 they added please tell me if i can help you anyhow. It would be a great pleasure to me. Ken, back to you for a moment. Thats roger stone, right. Yeah, and we know that because roger stone this has been reported ob previously and roger stone took it upon himself to release screen shots of these messages still on the web. You can find them. They read verbatim like this exchange. Roger stone said he never communicated with any russian intelligence official. This indictment suggests that that is not the case. He may not have known it. Clearly he was communicating with russian intelligence. Joyce, the white house has released a statement on therein 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. Thats what weve been saying all along. Lets be clear. 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. 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. Weve now seen the irs indictment which talks about social media manipulation by russia. Here we have the russian hacking piece with a little glimpse manufacture roger stone and perhaps others. It would be very unlikely if mueller did not have additional indictments to drop here. But katie, 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 cyber attack 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 caused tickling the wire in drug cases or other cases where they have wiretap. You see the reaction that defendants or subjects have as theres activity during a wiretap and perhaps as its revealed and taken down. So mueller is definitely looking how people here 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 had knowledge and intent, whether they were unwitting dupes for russians or knowing participants. You know, this indictment makes it very clear in the conspiracy count that is naming people who are indicted today but that there are others who are known and unknown to the grand jury. Mueller will be deciding whether there are other coconspirators. Talking about roger stone for another moment because his name has been swirling around this so much, one thing that i think is interesting are so far as far as we know, he has not been interviewed by the special counsel. Any reason to believe he could be cooperating . Yeah, his public per season nap certainly doesnt seem to lend itself to cooperation. Thats not what im getting from him. Im thinking hes not been interviewed yet because theyre saving this up. They are building their case and theres only going to sit him down when theyre ready to present document after document evidence after evidence. The white house, fox news, Rudy Giuliani can come out today and say this somehow problems that theres no evidence involving trump or campaign members. But what we do see in reference to u. S. Persons like roger stone are that theyre 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 that they were russian Intelligence Officers. It may not be they knew they were russians but they knew they were dealing with some for of criminal conduct. July 27th, matt miller is a date that keeps coming up, the date that donald trump asked russia, if youre listening, find hoda kotbs emails. Lets listen to that moment. July 27th, 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. I was at that press conference. It raised red flags for me. I said are you serious . Does it not give you pause to ask a Foreign Government to hack nook 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 then reiterated again id love to see those emails. Now were learning fromming 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 spearfish mr. Effort by the conspirators named in this indictment to the hack into Hillary Clintons emails. That was a 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. Weve since pound out in the spring of 2016, Donald Trumps campaign was approached by someone who said that the russians had obtained Hillary Clintons emails. In june of 2016, they were approached by a russian attorney seemingly acted on the kremlins beautifully who offered to share information after an intermediary said the russian government wants to help your campaign. The president then goes out and asks for Russian Intelligence Services to hack Hillary Clintons emails. We know that very same day they jumped into action. Its astonishing if you think about it. The gru, the Russian MilitaryIntelligence Service was essentially acting as Donald Trumps personal concierge. He asked them to get her emails and they jumped to respond. Frank, you dont believe in coincidences but could this be a coincidence. Highly unlikely. Who was jumping in a second ago. I wanted 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. He didnt take that chance. Hes on the record saying i meant what i said. I wanted them to get the email. 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 found out later that 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 incredible. Trey gowdys head might explode if that happened. Talking about Rudy Giuliani who never shied away from getting involved in anything, hes got a statement today. The indictments rosenstein announced are good news for allamericans. 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 s a target of this investigation. It does sound a little bit that way. And rudy gufl as a former u. S. Attorney knows or should know that prosecutors dont like to give defendants and in fact, under the u. S. Attorneys manual, do not give defendants whether theyre targets or subject a clean bill of health because you dont know where the evidence might go in a case. But this was really damage forth 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 were 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, matt, 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 putin. So far the white house isnt saying anything has changed. Well look what we can expect. Plus, memo to congress. Rod rosenstein appear to be fed up with shenanigans like yesterdays hearing on capitol hill. His hessage to lawmakers trying to meddle in an Ongoing Investigation next. Aise to meddle in an Ongoing Investigation next. Message to l to meddle in an Ongoing Investigation next. Take that pen should and use it to sign up with a different insurance company. For drivers with accident forgiveness, Liberty Mutual wont raise their rates because of their first accident. 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