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tv   Anderson Cooper 360  CNN  August 4, 2017 5:00pm-6:00pm PDT

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time, anywhere. "ac 360" with anderson begins right now. good evening. we begin with a cnn exclusive. new details unreported until now. not only did the russian tampering go until the final vote was cast, we're learning it went up to the line when it comes to the line of the first amendment. the adversary, disinformation designed to influence voters from russian sources. we have the scoop tonight. tell us about how some members of the fbi, how they spent election day. >> so, anderson, on election night, counterintelligence was huddled in a room at fbi headquarters here in washington, d.c. on election day, monitoring social media. what they could see was streams of fake news, negative stories about being posted about hillary clinton. some having to do with her health, according to multiple
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sources. they were able to identify suspected russian links to the accounts that appeared to be pushing the fake stories, anderson. >> pamela, was the fbi working with the white house on this? >> there was a coordinated effort, so we learned that teams at homeland security and the office of national intelligence were holding these conference calls every three hours with the white house to discuss any problems, possible problems, and the big focus is whether the vote could be tampered with. there were some minor issues that popped up across the country in related to tampering with the vote from alaska to georgia, but no major incidents or disruptions of the vote, the fbi has said. and by the way, the fbi declined to comment. >> this raises concerns that the fbi was monitoring what people were reading. but this also reported the investigation that is going on now. >> they were really monitoring the fake news, and even that was
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uncomfortable territory for the fbi, given the first amendment's free speech protections. even for fake news this exists. one law enforcement official we spoke with said "we were right on the edge of constitution aal legality. nonetheless, for investigators, this is still part of the counterintelligence investigation that the fbi has been conducting into russian meddling in the election, because there is a need to understand the effect of this kind of fake news campaign on the election and whether anyone in the trump campaign was involved in the fake news operation. and as we know, that investigation continues today, anderson. >> pamela, what's the reaction from officials when donald trump won the election? >> well, the election was mixed. at the end of the night, we're told that officials, some ofrel their big concern was the vote could be tampered with, and there were no major problems. but one official in the obama white house had the opposite
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reaction as everyone was celebrating, this official said something to the extent of, are you kidding? what they did worked, meaning what the russians did worked with the disinformation campaign, and this person felt like the government's response during the campaign and what russia was doing was a "failure of imagination." but of course, anderson, we may never know what kind of impact the russian disinformation campaign had on the election m outcome. >> joining us now is phillip mudd and daniel hoffman. phil, you spent years in the fbi. is it standard practice to have a command center on electionday monitoring fake news? >> it would be standard practice to monitor threats. i remember sitting around the fbi and cia and you would say whether it's the turn of the
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year on january 1 when you're concerned about threats, especially going back to y-2-k, or hooking to see if there's anybody trying to disrupt the inauguration to the voting, to monitor social media in this way is a new world for the fbi. i think there are two quick aspects of this that are kr critically important. the fbi should be talking to the congress about whether there are lessons learned in terms of controlling this information when they talk to people like facebook and twitter in the future. another final point on this that is lost but critically important. that is metta data. i would want to know as soon as i saw this story, did we identify who is involved? can we identify it down to knowing what their internet activity is, and were there any hops, one hop or two hops away from anybody in the trump campaign. this does relate to the russia
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question. >> we know the fbi was prepared for an onslaught of fake news to influence the election. in hindsight, would thcould the stopped snit there's been a lot of criticism with the obama white house how they handled it. >> stopping it would have been exceedingly difficult. there's two critical elements to vladamir putin's life experience. one is that he was a kgb officer. the other is, he's a black belt in judo. one of the key principles in judo is to use your opponent's strength against him. in our case, whereas russia seeks to impose russia sovereignty, cyberspace in the united states is wide open. it's a force multiplier for free expression and commerce. i believe that vladamir putin saw an opportunity effectively to exploit our open internet for his own influence gain. >> the comment made by the one obama white house official, we don't know who it was, saying what the russians did worked,
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there's no real way to ever know that. it's easy to say this was russia disinformation, but it's not clear how fake news stories are on facebook or twitter. >> i don't think it is. but we're muddying the question, we're spending way too much time, including members of the clinton campaign, talking about the impact on the last election. my problem with the current congressional inquiries is they keep getting caught up in circles around democrats, republic republicans, who's got access to information. if we go into the next election cycle, what is the role of the federal government in supporting silicon valley, but also supporting free speech, to keep this stuff off the internet? we've got to get out of this, and ask one question, should the federal government be setting up this kind of center, real time, to monitor the next election in support of people like facebook or twitter to remove this stuff
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realtime. that is 21st century. >> daniel, is this even possible? >> i think that would be quite a challenge. >> yeah. thank you very much. joining us is van jones, gloria, jeffrey, and molly. the idea that americans were going to the polls while the fbi was kind of poring over social media, as phil said, it is a brave new world and raises a lot of concerns. >> it raises a lot of concerns. but part of the thing, if you pull back, you have an obama administration that's between a rock and a hard place. the republicans spent so much time driving down confidence in this white house, spoking suspicions about this president, that here you have a real threat to our most basic institution, and the president and the fbi, they don't know what to do. if they go forward and say the russians are messing with the election, there's a concern the republican also say he's just doing that to help hillary clinton. if they do nothing, you wind up with this outcome now nobody
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knows what to believe. i think the republicans have to take some responsibility for doing their own campaign of disinformation around this birtherism, et cetera, which left us vulnerable to this day to sort out these threats. >> was it just concern by the obama white house about being -- saying -- about being accused of rigging the election or was it the obama white house believing that hillary clinton was going to win and that they can sort this out once that all was done? >> i think it's a messy mix. the truth is messy, as i often say. it's a messy mix. but what i think you can't allow the republicans to keep doing is to be in this situation where if the president had done something, he's wrong. if he does nothing, he's wrong. at some point, that's just hypocritical and unfair to everybody. >> gloria, you heard the quote saying the one fbi official said we were right on the edge of constitutionali constitutionality. is that true? >> it is true. on one hand, is fake news protected by the first
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amendment? we know that public officials can bring an action if there is a reckless disregard for the truth and actual malice. in this case, there appears to be reckless disregard for the truth, because if they have intended to put out fake news, then hillary clinton has some action against but whom? that's the other issue. the other side from the fbi's stand point, though, is that if they're going to be watching this, what are they going to do? what was the action they would have taken if they found it and they saw that it was hurting the election, what would they have done? >> jeff, do you buy any of this, that it had an impact that the idea of, you know, russians flooding twitter with fake news stories have an impact in influencing anything in the election? >> no, i don't, anderson. it's just historically -- i mean, not just in this country, but in any democratic country, opponents flood the media with bizarre and untrue stories about their opponents. i was a child in 1960, but i
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remember a -- what i now a regurgitated story from 1928 when none of us were here that said john f. kennedy, if elected, was going to build a tunnel from the white house, a secret tunnel from the white house to the vatican. it was nuts. it was nuts. but well within first amendment rights. you can go through election after election, barry goldwater and the psychiatrist who said he was unstable. these things are said in hot political campaigns. i'm a first amendment fundamentalist. i'm a little concerned about the trump administration looking into reporters, et cetera, with this. i'm all for clamping down on leaks, but not the reporters. i just think you've got to let this flow. and if foreigners are going to do that, that's fine. it's a different thing if they have high tech access to ballot boxes, that's a different thing. >> molly, where do you see this? >> the issue is foreign propaganda, which is different
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than the kind of speech you're talking about, that the libel laws apply to, and we do have laws about foreign propaganda and procedures to shield the united states from that propaganda, going back to the days of german propaganda. that is the issue. and has been said here, this is the 21st century threat and version of this, that clearly the white house had a very hard time figuring out how to deal with. and to your question, i do think there was an helicopter for the obama administration of assuming that this wasn't going to -- assuming they knew how the election was going to turn out, and assuming that the next administration being the hillary clinton administration, would be the ones to handle it. and there has been a lot of reporting that they did not act as decisively as they would have, because of that asuch shun. more when we come back, including the possibility that the president's own national security adviser is the target of a russian propaganda campaign. and how president trump's time off stacks up against his
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worried that their efforts to secure the process could jeopardize the first amendment. t here's the president last night in west virginia. >> the russia story is a total fabrication. it's just an excuse for the latest loss in the history of american politics. that's all it is. >> back now with the panel. there's also, van, reporting today that h.r. mcmaster, the national security adviser, is under attack online not just from alt-right groups and individuals but russian controlled twitter accounts. >> this is one of the things that is most dangerous is that you are now having this convergence. people on the far right, the so-called at rig eed alt-right, the dirty right because i think they play dirty. they don't like mcmaster and --
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i didn't say everybody on the right, i said this particular section, jeff, which you don't like yourself. so the dirty right that traffics in racism and violence, that section has gotten itself in a posture they don't like mcmaster because they know he doesn't like steve bannon. and they see steve bannon as one of their icons. so they started to gin up stuff. that's all fair and good. that's america. but now jumping on top of that, these russian bots are amplifying. so you're seeing a convergence, which is very, very dangerous of our foreign enemy with some domestic discontent. that mix, i think, is very dangerous. >> i guess the argument is that some of these alt-right groups and russia have similar sort of geopolitical similarities, opposition to the eu, brexit, et cetera. >> yeah. anderson, i'm not listening to
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the alt-right, i'm listening to my conservative friends like sean hannity who has expressed his doubts about h.r. mcmaster and i can tell you why. at least the stories i'm seeing are that, and if they're untrue, please tell me, that he has dismissed from the nsc staff people associated with president trump, and there are still obama holdovers in there. >> he dismissed somebody from the staff who had been put on by general flynn, and somebody he wanted to try to get rid of -- >> listen, in other words, a trump person. and there's where you get this. anderson, i can only tell you that the sensitivity -- i mean, this long predates the trump administration of conservatives to people inside a republican administration doing in conservatives, whether they're reaganite or what have you, is very sensitive, and this has -- this long predates what van
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called the alt-right. >> i guess, jeffrey, what i worry about is our inability to deal with the complexity and the nuance of the challenges now. yes, there are people who i am sure have legitimate concerns about mcmaster, and that's normal politics. you may have people who have illegitimate concerns who are cheerleaders for bannon and some of the worst ideas associated with bannon and now supported by russian bots and i don't see people in your situation expressing enough concern about that. it's disturbing to people. >> van, van, let's go back in history a little bit when you had people who are opposing the vietnam war in the '60s, who were being in many ways supported by the soviet union or the chinese communists. i'm old enough to remember vietnamese flags carried at anti-war -- >> did you think that was a good thing or bad thing? were you a big fan of that at the time?
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>> well, no, but what i'm -- >> that's my point. we agree. >> there's not a thing new about this, van. >> see, jeffrey, this is where people want to blow their brains out when you talk sometimes. just because it's not new doesn't mean it's good for america. there are things that are bad that are old. there are things that are bad that have precedence. this is bad that has a precedence. if you didn't like it in the '60s, why do you oi poapologize it today. >> to jeffrey's point, funding of anti-war groups years ago or idealogical backing of groups by foreign entities is one thing. but the active involvement in a social media campaign that is relentless and ongoing, that's indistinguishable from americans exercising their free speech, that's a whole new level. >> well, there's a couple of differences here.
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number one, this is a hostile regime, and traditionally the american tradition has been when hostile regimes try to meddle under the radar in our domestic affairs, traditional american politicians and the american white house has said hey, get the heck out of here, instead of saying how can we use this and draft on this, how can we make use of this for our own political purposes? so there's a big difference and this is the wink and nod relationship that trump has had with the alt-right as well, instead forthrightly saying these are not my people, he's allied with them when convenient and taken a different side when not. and you have this whole mcmaster thing playing out and this is still a battle for the soul of donald trump, and the president hasn't taken a side which of these foreign policy camps he falls into. the president has arrived at his new jersey golf resort. all presidents have a right to
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vacation, but this president did criticize president obama for golf and vacation days, so we thought we would compare how president trump's time off stacks up to his predecessors. keeping them honest, next. for my constipation, my doctor recommended i switch laxatives. stimulant laxatives make your body go
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the president arrived today at his golf club in new jersey for what's being described as a 17-day working vacation. the president has already taken more vacation day than his predecessor according to cbs news. president trump has taken 41 days off, over the same time span, president obama took 21, george w. bush took 67. it would be a fair assumption he'll be playing golf at his club, though the white house doesn't publicize it. it's understandable the president needs time off. it's a stressful job. he should get time off. every single modern president has spent ample time away from the white house. president obama at martha's vineyard.
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eisenhower at camp david. james k. polk hardly left the office, and the job nearly killed him. the point is presidents need time away. but it is only fair to point out this president was a harsh critic of his predecessor for golfing and taking a vacation. when it was president obama doing it, civilian trump went after him for it. so as you watch this, just remember this president has taken almost twice as much time off as the man he loved to criticize on the campaign trail. >> obama, it was reported today, played 250 rounds of golf. everything is executive order, because he doesn't have enough time, because he's playing so much golf. obama ought to get off the golf course and get down there. i'm going to be working for you, i'm not going to have time to play golf. he played more golf last year than tiger woods. this guy plays more golf than people on the pga tour.
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i love golf, but i don't have time. if i were in the white house, i don't think i would ever see dural again. if i win this, i'm not going to play much golf. i wouldn't leave the white house very much, because these little trips where they cost you a fortune. i love working. i don't take vacations. i'm not like obama where he takes air force one to hawaii. i don't take vacations. i promise you, i will not be taking very long vacations. there's no time for it. other people go away for weeks and weeks. i don't like vacations. obama likes relaxing and going on vacations. i like working. if i get elected president, i'm going to be in the white house a lot. i'm not leaving. we have deals to make. who the hell wanting the leave, right? >> who the hell wants to leave? who indeed. jim acosta joins us from the white house. what is the white house saying about the president's time away? >> reporter: he might want a mulligan for all of those
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comments after that clip, anderson. but the white house at this point is saying that this is going to be a working vacation, as you put it. he's going to deal with a range of issues. from talking to various officials, he's not giving up on repeali ining obamacare. but from what we understand, the new chief of staff, john kelly, is going to be up in bedminister for much of this trip. he has been clamping down on access to the president in the oval office. we heard from the budget director saying he even listens in on phone calls, when mulvaney was calling the president, john kelly was listening in. the question is, whether the chief of staff can make tintaint kind of discipline at the country club. but presidents have work creep up on them while on vacation.
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president obama had to give a state a couple of times because the world did not go on vacation while the president was taking time off. so the president may be going up to his country club in new jersey, but the world may not let him have a vacation that entire time. >> and there's some big developments in the russia probe that are going on, just as the president has. did he have anything to say about the investigation today? >> reporter: no. as a matter of fact, the only time we got to see the president in front of the cameras is when he departed the oval office, got on marine one and started to head up to bedminister. questions were shouted about the investigation and whether he plans on firing bob mueller. he did not answer any questions. anderson, it is very important to point out, the president did not hold a news conference before going on vacation. that is something presidents have been doing over the last two presidencies. barack obama typically held a
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news conference before he went on vacation. george w. bush did this, as well. for our viewers to remember, i think it's very important, donald trump as president of the united states, has only held one full news conference with the news media since being in office, back in february. he had an opportunity to do it today and didn't do it. as i said earlier, there is a possibility that he could potentially do this up in bedminister. last year, we were up in scotland and he took us on a rolling news conference, and he took questions as he went from hole to hole on the golf course in scotland. the question is whether he will do that this time. we're not holding our breath. >> thank you, jim acosta. back with me is my panel. van, the leader of the free world should take vacation, and he can do work wherever he is. but the hypocrisy of going after
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your predecessor for taking too much vacation playing golf is obvious. >> i see nothing wrong with this at all. i see nohypocrisy, we should move on. no, this is ridiculous. this was part of an overall strategy of delegitimizing this president. and i know people don't like when i say this, but i'll tell you how this landed for a lot of african-americans. there is a stereotype that african-americans are lazy. and that goes all the way back to the slavery days. when you start saying an african-american is a lazy person, whether you mean it that way or not, it lands with us as oh, my god, they're stereotyping this guy. and holook, you can tell that president obama was looking hard. he went in there looking like tiger woods and came out looking like morgan freeman. he worked himself to death and was still accused of being lasz
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lazy. so for him to be taking twice as much vacation, even you, jeffrey, have to be embarrassed by this. >> van, i am old enough, and i know you weren't around when democrats in 1960 criticized president eisenhower for playing too much golf and being too lazy. and john f. kennedy got elected and instructed people, he didn't want any photographs of him playing golf. eventually a few photographs did leak out. >> isn't it hypocritical then and now? >> i'm just saying this is what happens. >> do you believe it's hypocritical for the president to have campaigned -- >> i think it's political and it happens all the time. >> but is it hypocritical. >> anderson, let me be serious about this. >> you're not going to answer that. >> i didn't hear any democrats say, congress should have -- should cancel their vacation. i did hear some republicans saying it. and they didn't do it.
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and i think they should have. republicans should have canceled their august recess and stayed there in washington and -- >> but jeff, the question of -- yes or no, is it hypocritical for somebody to run, attacking your predecessor for taking too many vacations -- >> no, every president -- >> if that's your answer, you're saying yes, donald trump is being hypocritical like every other president. >> in the scheme of things, this is nothing. >> this isn't just about politics. it's about what he's achieved so far in his term. and he campaigned on the idea that he is a great deal maker and he's going to go to washington and turn the city upside down. we're at the seven month mark. he hasn't gotten any major legislation through. he has a poor communications strategy. >> other than neil gorsuch. >> yes. >> the stock market.
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unemployment. >> that's a land grab, jeff. any time right now that president trump makes a claim for stock market -- how robust the stock market is or unemployment rates, he's simply raising obama. it's far too early in his administration to claim authority on any of that data. >> doug, when it comes to the vacation destination, president trump almost exclusively goes to his own golf resorts, which gives attention to his own golf resorts, which i guess are clubs, which people can join if they have enough money. it seems like his predecessors visited national parks or spent time in sort of more suburban or everyday settings. >> you know, anderson, you mentioned james k. polk not ever leaving. we should mention the winner was james madison. four months he disappeared.
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i do think that it may be seen as a mistake to constantly only go to his resorts. it's his first year. i would think there's so many great places in the west that would love to have a president in their backyard, putting bay up in ohio, or the wisconsin dells. but this president likes golf. like barack obama, they're addicted to it. but i'm afraid the curse of august may catch up to donald trump. presidents that think they get these 17 days off really don't. barack obama himself had a tea party event exploded on him. there was one august a chemical attack in syria. james foley was beheaded by isis. wildfires. the whole world doesn't stop because donald trump is trying to get away for 17 days. >> don't forget, the white house is being renovated, right? >> yes. that's right. >> jeffrey, nobody thinks it's a bad idea for donald trump to take a vacation.
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listen, what we think is that if you make a promise to the american people, it might possibly one time should matter. he said, i am not going to vacation. we got too many deals to cut. we got too much work to do. obama, according to trump, he's lazy, not working for you. so listen, he set the table. now, since he set the table, then he should play the card game the way he set out. he's not. so part of what we have to deal with here is how many times you have this president making false clams a claims and promises to his base and can he be held accountable? when we come back, the fbi says russia tried to influence the 2016 election using fake news spread on websites. how companies like facebook are responding, next. i will never
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as we reported earlier, cnn has learned the fbi monitored social media on election day, tracking russian fake news campaign. if you had facebook or twitter, your feed likely included fake
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news, fake n-- fabricated storis ant hillary clinton. now we have new reporting how lawmakers are looking how fake news spread on facebook and figuring out what they can do to stop it. >> reporter: there's no question according to the fbi that russia used fake news to try to influence the 2016 election. >> they also pushed fake news and propaganda and they used online amplifiers to spread the information to as many people as possible. >> reporter: what democratic congressional investigators want to know is whether russia colluded with the trump campaign to spread false information about hillary clinton through facebook. >> i commend them. >> reporter: senator mark warner has traveled to facebook headquarters in california. while he won't discuss specifics of the meeting, he tells cnn he wants to know whether the trump
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campaign helped russians to target fake news to specific facebook users. >> i would like to look into the activities of the trump digital campaign. facebook, which basically denied any responsibility around our elections, by the time the french elections took place this spring, they took down 30,000 fake sites. >> reporter: fake sites spreading fake news, mostly negative, about hillary clinton. the democratic theory, somehow the trump campaign and russians colluded to do it. tell me what we're seeing right here. this is why it matters. look at this program that tracks social media. you can clearly see the explosion of completely fabricated stories, fake news, in the months just before november's election. >> in the fall, it just became so much of a problem. >> reporter: gabriel with news whip, a social media analytics
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firm, says fake news spiked asts asts before the month bfrs the elections with headlines like, donald trump protester speaks out, i was paid $3500 to protest trump's rally. the story is from a fake news site made to appear like the real abc news, created by paul warner who said he writes fake news to make money. but that didn't stop his fake story from spreading through conservative media. and there's this story. fbi agents suspected in hillary clinton's e-mail, found dead in apparent murder-suicide. this story was 100% made up, released on a madeup news site of the denver guardian. nothing about it was true. the author admits that. but it had 570,000 shares or comments commen comments on facebook. the question from democrats, how did fake stories become so
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popular so quickly and did someone bay to boost the fake news? facebook was a massive part of the trump campaign's online advertising efforts. >> i went to wall street. >> reporter: 95% of trump's fund raising ads were placed on the platform according to officials. but the trump campaign has flatly denied any russian collusion whatsoever. and though not appearing on camera, the trump campaign official who oversaw all of the trump campaign's digital advertising, is going on record at cnn to say it simply didn't happen. >> trump's followers got amazing kind of engagement. >> reporter: gary coby, the director of the national committee and the trump for president campaign, told cnn by phone, we would never put money behind someone else's facebook page or source and added we did not back anyone's hillary stories and didn't have to do
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with any hillary stories that weren't our own. brad pascal has also denied any involvement with russia. he's been called to testify to that under oath. facebook has done its own internal review and reported it did find maliciousi actors with fake accounts, but says in a statement to cnn, we've been in touch with a number of government officials, including senator warner who are looking into the 2016 u.s. presidential election. we will continue to cooperate with officials as their investigations continue. as we have said, we have seen no evidence that russian actors bought ads on facebook in connection with the election. drew griffin, cnn, new york. up next, two terror plots foiled in australia, including a plan to blow up passenger planes.
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isis commander sent the men a do-it-yourself bomb kit when they used to produce an ied to blow up a passenger plane and they were planning to release deadly toxin gas in a public case. renee joins us as well as paul cruickshank. >> when you look at the grade of weaponry used in the plot here it truly is chilling and an isis commander according to australian police shipped partially assembled bomb components via air cargo from turkey to australia and the bomb parts include high military-grade explosives and the intent was for individuals to build a bomb and place it onboard an etiad airways flight on july 15th. what's new and concerning in all of this is isis is essentially shipping do-it-yourself bomb kits to extremists in the west,
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as you know, building the powerful bombs from scratch and has been one of the difficult things are extremists and they're flying the partially assembled components to the west and talking these individuals through the final steps. >> paul, you have more details about the construction of the bomb. >> well, a couple of major australian media outlets, anderson, say that the police have been examining these devices and they're leaning towards the idea that this was petn involved as the explosive, the australian and one of the newspapers reporting. there's now petn was the same explosive which was used in that shoe bomb attempt right after 9/11 with richard reid, and also the underwear bombing over detroit in 2009 and then the bomb plot against the united states in 2010 where they
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inserted petn into printer cartridges and shippeded it ite united states and this is a powerful explosives and it could have had the possibility of bringing down a plane. very, very disturbing that isis would manage to ship this by airmail all of the way to australia from turkey and then give these instructions over these encrypted apps. they were talking to isis, this cell, from april onwards and so very, very worried, they are in australia about this plot, anderson. the arrest only coming 11 days after this aborted attempt to bring down this etiad jet. >> renee, what about this alleged deadly gas plot. >> so there was another half of this plot was that it involved a plan to release a toxic gas in public. hydrogen sulfide is what they were planning to release. it's very dangerous, very
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flammable. it's an industrial chemical. it essentially attacks the respiratory and the nervous system. so it can be used as a terrorist weapon. a very small amount whether you're talking about 10, 20, 30 parts per million can kill you in literally minutes. the isis commander actually instructed one of the men in australia to disperse this gas in a confined space, potentially public transportation. the men had not successfully built this device because it's just a very difficult thing to achieve even if you're in a lab setting, but chilling to hear the details. they wanted it in that confined space to kill the maximum amount of people, anderson. >> paul, have there been other examples of isis trying to use this chemical? >> no. i mean, there have not been any kind of plots from isis. there was an al qaeda poison gas plot against the new york subway
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in 2003, but that again, was an aborted plot, the high command of al qaeda that said they weren't going to go through with that, but al qaeda was developing these kind of poison gas techniques in various camps in afghanistan before 9/11. the concern has been that isis, with all of their resources have also been doing research and development into chemical weapons into poison gas, and they want to get some sort of chemical component through in an attack against the west because they think that will cause panic and propel them back into the global headlines. i can tell you that officials on both sides of the atlantic very worried that we could see a poison gas attack on the streets of the western capital within the next couple of years. >> paul cruickshank, renee marsh, appreciate the detail sglo. breaking news on the russian investigation and what the fbi was doing to stop it. we'll be right back.
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our breaking news tonight you will only see here takes us inside a fbi counterintelligence and details the efforts to monitor russia's realtime campaign against hillary clinton. pamela joins us now. >> pam, you've learned about what members of the fbi were doing on election day. >> that's right, anderson. we've learned that fbi
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counterintelligence analysts and investigators were lhuddled in room at fbi headquarters monitoring social media and what they were seeing were these streams of fake news, these negative stories being posted about hillary clinton, some having to do with her health according to multiple sources and they were able to identify suspected russian links to these accounts that appeared to be pushing out these fake stories, anderson. >> was the fbi working with the white house on this? >> the fbi was in touch with the white house. so you had teams at the fbi, homeland security and the office of the director of national intelligence holding conference calls every three hours with the team in the situation room and the white house to discuss any possible problems and while there were some minor issues that popped up across the country from alaska to georgia, there were no major incidents or disruptions of the vote and that was really the big focus at the time of the conference calls was whether the machines could be hacked and the vote could be tampered with and that kind of thing,