Mark Bazetti News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Contribution, as it were. you can't take money and you can't take help as well, which is one of the focuses of other russian -- well, other foreign, that is russian interference in the campaign. >> you know, mark bazetti, i assume rick gates, experienced political hand and others in the trump campaign, know what the law is as far as getting in-kind campaign contributions from foreigners? >> well, wait, we've all been reporting on this for a long time now, and we've all been puzzled to the extent that the trump campaign had all of these contacts with russians and even offers of support, and no ...

Considerable suspicion. >> jeffrey, just to be precise, it may not necessarily be illegal, but it is clearly wrong to hire an israeli company to create fake social media personas and entities and individuals to go out and mislead the american public. >> well, i think that might actually be illegal. not on the foreign side of things, but just on the hacking side of things. to create false internet entries, whether they are social media or e-mails, i mean that is a crime under american law. here i think, as mark's story very clearly points out, it did not come to fruition, but the plan it seems ...

Manafort, so the chairman. so a senior role in the campaign, and some of the work continued after the election as well, the inauguration, et cetera, some involvement there. in fact, most importantly of all, here is someone who pleaded guilty to crimes and in his guilty plea agreed to cooperate with special counsel investigators. so someone who -- and you wouldn't have gotten that cooperation agreement from robert mueller and his investigators unless rick gates in effect proved his value in what is called a proffer, showed that he was going to be able to provide information that was useful to s...

By russia and other foreign nations to interfere. china is cited as well. so not a small problem. >> yeah. >> certainly did not dims appear in 2016. >> jim sciutto, thanks very much. mark, thanks to you. i want to give credit to your colleagues' bylines and for your strong reporting in "the new york times." more on breaking news right now. democratic congressman ted lew is joining us. thank you for joining us, congressman. >> thank you, wolf. >> what is your reaction to the new report from "the new york times"? >> i have two indiscernible reactions. the first is that a senior trump campaign ...

Bogus personas to target about 5,000 delegates who would be attending the republican national convention, and in the process not only praise donald trump but smear and attack his chief rival at the time, ted cruz. >> right. the focus at the time was on the convention. so they were worried, and the reason why manafort and gates were hired was because they were worried about everyone defecting towards cruz, there being this revolt at the convention. that was the focus. so that's why mr. gates may have had a particular interest in this technology because it was this new technology that might -- t...