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Conservative media, supporters of mr. trump have started to say if anybody did collude with the russians in this attack, that's okay. that's not a big deal. we're not going to be upset about that if we learn that. here's what appears to be the first concrete evidence of an attempt by americans to collude with the russians in their attack. boom. joining us now, shane harris, national security senior writer for "the wall street journal." mr. harris, congratulations on this tonight. i really appreciate you making time to help us through it. >> thanks, rachel. glad to be here. >> let me ask if i g...

Over and over again that he was doing this with mike flynn, who definitely did work for the trump campaign at the time. this was all happening around labor day. mike flynn had joined the trump campaign months earlier. he was a senior adviser to the trump campaign. peter smith, this republican operative in chicago, reportedly said he was in direct communication with flynn about what he was doing while he was doing it, quoting from the journal tonight, quote, in conversations with members of his circle and with others he tried to recruit to help him, mr. smith complied he was working with retire...

? >> sure. oddly enough, peter smith reached out to me. he apparently learned i was looking around and interested in him, which is true. my knowledge of what he was involved in predated my first contact with him. he reached out to me and we had a conversation about what he was doing, which was fairly extensive and obviously he's quoted in the story. and it was at that point that when we suspend that conversation that i continued doing reporting and assumed in this case perhaps incorrectly that i would have the chance to go back and discuss this further with peter smith. but obviously he died a...

Investigators stumbled on evidence or found evidence of what smith was doing and that's part of the potential collusion that they are investigating? >> that's not entirely clear at this point. i think my best kind of assessment of this is that what we have found may be one end of something that other investigators are looking at. you know, as we said in the piece, it's not entirely clear that investigators who have seen this intelligence about russian hackers describing a situation looks very similar to the one that peter smith described, it's not clear he has been identified in any way or any...

Russian government attack. but last summer by late june, it was credibly being reported that that attack by the democratic party appeared to be an attack by the russian government. by labor day, "the washington post" reported this mega story on the russian attack on the institutions of our election and u.s. government efforts to identify and counter the attack. tonight "the wall street journal" reports, shane harris reports, on that very labor day weekend last year, a longtime republican opposition research guy, a wealthy chicago republican named peter smith, who had a history in the arkansas-...