hospital on her own. clearly we're looking at a first lady who's independent, who is not speaking on this topic but who is asserting her independence and breaking with tradition. >> kate bennett, appreciate it. thanks very much for watching "360." more reporting now. time to hand it over to don lemon. "cnn tonight" starts right now. this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon, and we have breaking news on two huge stories tonight. first, the latest bombshell in the russia investigation, and this is big, 13 russians indicted. charged with attempting to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. deputy attorney general rod rosenstein saying the russians conducted what they called information warfare against the united states, which pours cold water on the president's constant claims the investigation is nothing but a hoax or a witch hunt. now he can't tweet away the fact that a 37-page indictment describes in black and white an

unprecedented campaign by russia to influence the 2016 election. supporting trump, slamming hillary clinton. and communicating with, quote, unwitting people tied to the trump campaign. so what is the president doing about this threat to american democracy? well, he's putting out a statement saying, quote, "we must unite as americans to protect the integrity of our democracy and our elections." you've got to wonder whether the president really wants to do anything. his own intelligence chief testified just this week, he has not specifically directed them to take action against russia. we also have breaking news on the florida high school shooting to tell you about and the shocking failure by the fbi. someone close to confessed high school rampage shooter nikolas cruz called the fbi's tip line on january 5th to report cruz wanted to kill people, and nobody at the bureau followed up. 41 days from the time that tip came in until the day cruz opened fire on that crowded high school.

41 days when the fbi could have learned about red flags like the fact that cruz bought five firearms in the past year. that one of his teachers said the school sent out an e-mail warning that cruz shouldn't be allowed on campus with a backpack. that he was expelled for disciplinary reasons. that his mother had reportedly called police over his violent outbursts more than 30 times. that she died in november. we're also learning exclusively tonight that group chat messages show the shooter was obsessed with race, violence and guns and those red flags missed because nobody followed up on that tip. so all those people repeating over and over if you see something say something, this is just one more example of somebody who saw something and did say something, yet nobody did a single thing to protect the students and the teachers at that high school. and now 17 of them sadly are dead. and there are calls for fbi director christopher wray to

resign. i want to bring in now cnn's senior white house correspondent jeff zeleny with the president in palm beach and cnn crime and justice reporter shimon proek pez. good evening to both of you. the unprecedented links russians went to interfere in our election including posing as americans, stealing identities, and operating social media pages. this is remarkable. what else are you learning in this indictment? >> yeah, it's quite remarkable and this is just one aspect of this investigation, don. it's important to keep in mind. this indictment today, this 37-page indictment really showed us how sophisticated, how well planned as you called it, as the government has called it, this informational warfare operation just was. the goal here, and let me tell you, by all accounts it appears that they were successful here, the russians were successful, to spread distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general. and this man, the man who was

funding this entire operation is a russian tycoon. people call him the russian president vladimir putin's chef. he was funneling the budget for this operation, over a million dollars a month to run this operation. some of that money was used to buy political ads and social media. and then there were these russians. these russians were in touch with unwitting members of the trump campaign. we've got such a good picture of really what this counterintelligence investigation has been doing the last three years or so in trying to infiltrate in what the russians were so successful in doing. >> and what was not in the indictment is also telling, right, shimon? >> we know that the special counsel is continuing his investigation. the members of the fbi agents, the prosecutors on that team are still moving forward. there are other aspects of this investigation that we just don't know about, like the obstruction case. we know that is still ongoing.

we know that michael flynn is investigating, the former national security advisor. what exactly -- what information is he providing? today's indictment really doesn't have anything to do with michael flynn. we also know of another campaign advisor that's cooperating, george papadopoulos. all of these people mueller wanted their cooperation for a reason. what exactly is that reason, and will that reason lead to an indictment and to charges? that is still ongoing. >> jeff, the white house is responding to the counsel and they are strangely claiming victory. >> don, that's true. they are seizing on, i guess, the good parts of this indictment report. now, the president, of course, is at his mar-a-lago retreat for the next three days or so. i can tell you that the idea, the specter, the cloud of this is still hanging over them. but there were some very telling responses today. the president, although he did not speak about it, he was asked questions as he left the white

house and flew down to florida. he did not talk about it, but look at the responses from the white house press secretary and the president. they're pretty telling in what they said and what they didn't say. let's look first at sarah sanders, white house press secretary. she said this. she said, "the special counsel's investigation further indicates that there was no collusion," all caps, "between the trump campaign and russia, and that the outcome of the election was not changed or affected." rod rosenstein never said there was no collusion. that was something he didn't mention at all. when you went on to look at the president's statement again released in written form, he did not answer questions. he said this. "it's time we stop the outlandish partisan attacks and far-fetched theories which only serve to further the agendas of bad actors like russia and do nothing to protect the principles of our institutions." that's pretty extraordinary. one, he is calling out russia, which he has rarely done. but calling these theories

far-fetched, this is the united states department of justice handing down 13 indictments here they believe could be tried and proved in a court of law. the president calling them far-fetched theories. we've heard the president, the soundtrack for the past year is the russia investigation is a hoax, a witch hunt. today his justice department said it indeed is not that. and interestingly rod rosenstein, the deputy astoernlg, who is leading this investigation, he's in charge of bob mueller, the special counsel, he came to the white house and tas to face delivered these findings to the president before he did so to the country. so certainly, don, that was a very interesting meeting because as we know rod rosenstein has been on the potential out list for the president. the question le fire him, will he not, will he dismiss him, will he not, so that meeting of course must be an interesting one. but again as we stand here tonight the obstruction of

justice question has not been addressed in any of this yet at all. >> and this takes it to a different level. i would think it makes it much harder to get rid of rod rosenstein. listen, jeff, you're in mar-a-lago. in palm beach. the president is down there for a golf weekend. he met with victims of a florida school shooting earlier. what do you know about his visit? >> yes, he did. the president and the first lady went immediately to broward county to the area around parkland, florida. they went to a hospital to visit a couple of victims of that shooting that are still there, and then they went to visit law enforcement officials as well. this is what a president does. sadly, he's falling into the line of american presidents who must, you know, stand up as a consoler in chief, if you will. but don, i can tell you on the ground here we have seen in interviews throughout the day, throughout the last couple of days here on cnn and elsewhere students in particular and parents as well are urging, calling for action from their

president, from their politicians. president trump when he came here tonight did not meet face-to-face with any of those. it was a fairly quick visit, pretty sanitized visit in terms of not holding a town meeting of any kind, just meeting with likely supporters. but i can tell you the feeling here is raw. they want washington to do something, anything about guns. >> i'm sure they want their president to come down for more than just a photo-op as well. thank you very much. i appreciate that. i want to bring in cnn's legal analyst michael zeldin who was robert mueller's former assistant at the justice department. national security analyst steve hall, retired chief of russia operations. political analyst ryan lizza and julia ioffe, staff writer at "the atlantic." good evening to all of you. let's see. ryan, let's start with you. there's no denying now that there is russia influence on the election. this is real. there is no hoax here. >> and look, let's be honest, let's be clear about this.

there has not been any denying that since 2016 when the federal government put out a strong same saying that the russian government had interfered in the election. since early 2017 when the intelligence community put out internally a classified document, externally an unclassified document that went into pretty good detail about the russian efforts to interfere in 2016. and capitol hill has been investigating these efforts pretty extensively. and a lot of what we saw today has been known about russia propaganda through social media. what we got today was an extraordinary new amount of detail about those efforts that have long been known but curiously denied by president trump. and that's where i think the most newsworthy thing that happened today is that the president put out a statement that did not endorse these findings, that did not sort of give his justice department a

pat on the back for aggressively prosecuting this -- these russian nationals. but instead put out a defensive statement that, frankly, mischaracterized the indictment and suggested once again that he just does not take seriously the propaganda attack on the united states in 2016 that was meant to benefit him and his campaign. >> the same he's done all along, despite 13 people being indicted. steve, you know all about russian espionage. are you surprised just how far russians went here? they focused on purple states, they created grassroots political groups, social media accounts, they bought political ads. talk about the organizing -- they talked about organizing protests. so talk to me about that. this is pretty severe. >> yeah, the russian intelligence services, i mean this is something they do and they've done for a long time.

for example, if you take a look at -- if you work your way through the indictment and you see all of the different ways that they attain different personalities and manage to pull themselves off as americans this is something that russian illegal support officers, it's a long tradition in the russian intelligence services, how you cover your tracks, how you make yourself look like you're a member of the target society, in this case americans. actually sending a group of russians here to the united states is pretty aggressive. i was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's a political consultant who was saying how in the world would a russian know what a purple state is? and how that's important. well, now we know. they spent considerable time doing their homework on the ground talking to people. not only about electoral behaviors and how people are going to vote and that sort of thing but also what some of the most polarizing parts of society are. so as to get at putin's real goal here, which is to maintain u.s. society and our political system at odds with each other. we're giving them this by having these polarizing issues, whether

it has to do with race, whether it has to do with the guns and gun lobbies or things like that. these are all things that these russian agents who came to the united states were able to sort of absorb much more directly when you're hear on the ground, don. >> julia, let's bring you in. i want to read from the indictment, by early to mid 2016 defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then candidate donald j. trump, disparaging hillary clinton. some defendants posing as u.s. persons and without revealing their russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the trump campaign." you say this goes are to tto th heart of rushgate. >> right, this is what's at issue is to what extent did the donald trump campaign cooperated with these russians knowingly, was there collusion on their side? the russians certainly were doing their piece, and we know a little bit about what the trump

campaign was doing, but there's still a lot of gray area in between. i wanted to push back a little bit on what the previous guest said. you know, we live in an open society. a lot of the russians who were staffing the internet research agency were extremely cosmopolitan young people. there's been a lot of russian reporting on who these people were. they were often journalism students, international relation students at the second -- the second university in russia, the number two school in russia. these are people who can read english, and all that stuff about what a purple state is was all over the american press. in fact, i don't know why the russians went to west virginia and florida because they could have done it all from st. petersburg. it's all online. in some ways this is analogous to what happened on 9/11, where a foreign hostile power takes advantage of some element of openness in american society and uses it against us. the other aspect is what's

interesting from the indictment is you see it wasn't just about sowing chaos, that it was actually a very anti-clinton, specifically anti-clinton operation. you know, they supported bernie sanders. they supported jill stein and donald trump. and the focus of the negativity in a lot of what was outlined in the indictment was hillary clinton. so i think that's also important not to overlook, the fact it wasn't just about trump but it was also about bernie sanders and jill stein. >> steve, i think you want to get in and respond. >> we may be arguing about how many angels dance on the head of a pin here. it's been my experience when you actually go and visit a country and work in a country you come away with a much more in-depth idea as to what some of the socially -- some of the difficulties are in that country. but it's absolutely right. this is not all about donald trump.

it's clear from the indictment what the actual goal of this operation was all along, which many of us have been saying. which is that yes, it was to increase the likelihood that donald trump would get elected, decrease the likelihood that hillary clinton would be elected, but also call up other names out there like bernie sanders and like jill stein. let's remember michael flynn was indeed sitting at the table in moscow being paid by rt, part of the russian government that does its propaganda. but jill stein was at that same table. so it's clear from the indictment what the russians' goal was to try to get as many people as possible to go in a bunch of different directions, thus polarizing our society even more. and indeed they were also saying, for example, for the african-american vote, there were a whole bunch of efforts made to encourage african-americans not to vote and to encourage women not to vote. so it was a really sophisticated -- you're right, it wasn't just a yes, let's get donald trump elected. that was part of it. but it was much more sophisticated than that. and it really ended up well for

them because look where we are today in terms of our politics and our society. >> does today's indictments give cover to robert mueller sought president can't fire him? we'll talk about that. michael, you get the first word on the other side of the break. we'll be right back. ven fine ha, you need our most gentle recipe. new oat delicacy by whole blends. a paraben-free, caring formula. blended with oat milk and rice cream extracts. gentle on scalp with intensive moisture for hair. without the weigh down. new whole blends oat delicacy. and for even more care, whole blends detangling milk. on damp hair, comb through and detangle gently to wrap every strand in softness. only from whole blends. garnier.

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the russians themselves call what they were doing information warfare. it was nothing less than an attack on our democracy as a matter of fact. and our intelligence community has warned us the russians are not done. michael zeldin, steve hall, ryan lizza, and julia ioffe are back. as promised, michael, i have to and you about this. all the defendants were charged with conspiracy. so explain what that means, and i'm curious if there are some broader implications there that may not be revealed of who else could get caught up in this or what happens if other people knew about this operation and said nothing. >> right. so there is so much that's interesting in this indictment. first is the first count of the indictment, this 371 conspiracy, is a conspiracy to defraud the united states government by interfering with the federal election commission, the justice department and the department of the state. we've seen that mueller likes that charge because that's count one in the manafort indictment,

where he too was charged with 371 conspiracy to defraud the federal election commission and the department of justice. i think that this indictment portends probably that this is phase one, that the next phase is the hacking. because the russians, if you will, did the next step of this campaign, which was to hack into podesta and dnc servers, and i think that should be a logical next indictment. and then you get into the very interesting stuff, which is whether cambridge analytica, the bannon group and kushner's data analytics organization cooperated in any way with this social media hacking contribution to the election. the other thing is the wikileaks and the june 9th meeting raised the same possibility of a 371 conspiracy to defraud the united

states, federal elections commission of honest elections. so i think mueller has said in this indictment be ready, there's other stuff coming because there is a lot of activity that is implicated in the same type of behavior that we see in this indictment. mueller's here to stay, don. >> okay, well you answered another question for me. and ryan, we'll talk a little bit more about that, but ryan, i want to play what the president had to say after the charges were announced. and he said -- let's listen to this. do we have the sound bite? okay, this is christopher wray. do we have the christopher wray sound bite? okay, let's play that. >> has the president directed you and your agency to take specific actions to confront and blunt russian activities that are ongoing? >> we're taking a lot of specific efforts to blunt -- >> have they been directed by the president? >> not specifically directed by the president. >> so does all of this go to the president's fear that any talk of election interference is

viewed as undermining the president's seeing russia as a threat to our democracy? >> yeah, i think that's been his position from the beginning, is he's very sensitive about this investigation. he's very sensitive about any commentary about russia's influence in the campaign. because he believes the more that becomes known or understood that it could somehow undermine his legitimacy. and, you know, i was wondering, you know, it was interesting to see what other people on the panel think about this. look, we're not going to get these 13 russians over here and put them on trial. so what was the purpose of this indictment, right? and you have to wonder was mueller saying, you know what, someone in the u.s. government has to step forward, and one, lay out the facts of what really happened here and, two, send a warning to the russians that we know exactly what you did and you better cut it out. and i do wonder if that went into mueller's thinking here,

was the fact there was no orders from the top, from the white house about counteracting russian propaganda. and in effect he's taking matters into his own hands. >> what did you want to say, julia? >> ryan's exactly right. there is not a chance in hell that we're going to see these russians here on u.s. soil face justice here. we have no extradition treaty with the russians. and this has historically been a bone of contention. this was a shot across the bow first at the trump administration and all of the talk this has been a witch hunt and a hoax to say, no, this is not in fact a hoax, this is not a witch hunt. here are -- i mean 37 pages of very fine detail of what the russians did during the election. >> you agree mueller's here to stay? >> and also, like ryan said, to the russians, saying we know what you've been doing. and you know, even if there's no directive from the top, from the oval office to counter you, at

least somebody is seeing what you're up to. >> michael? >> the other thing though, don, so mueller's got multiple work streams under the mandate he got from rosenstein. one of which is -- the first one is to conduct a counterintelligence investigation. this is the first step in his findings about the counterintelligence investigation. i think the second step will be when additional russians get indicted for the hacking. then he has a mandate for what matters may have arisen out of this. and that's the issue of the june 9th meetings, the wikileaks communication between don junior and roger stone, the cambridge analytica and jared kushner data analytics operation. so i think that mueller is sort of following through a logical progression through his mandate. and i'd be very surprised if we don't see additional indictments that stem from this activity irrespective of whether we get these people under extradition and back to the united states.

>> so steve, the president has said he spoke to vladimir putin and vladimir denied it. is there any way this went out without vladimir putin knowing about it? >> absolutely not. this operation is way too important for somebody who himself is a former intelligence officer, who wouldn't want to have to have daily if not more often updates as to what's happening. and to get to julia's point, she's absolutely right. there'll be no extradition from russia to these people who have been indicted. however, viktor but and others have traveled to countries we have agreements with, and they can be brought back to the united states. so it does send a message to the russians. but don, vladimir putin would have known about this, there's no doubt in my mind. >> thank you, steve. thank you, mike p. thank you, ryan. thank you, julia. i appreciate it. when we come back breaking news on the florida school shooting rampage. the fbi admitting it failed to

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governor rick scott calling for the resignation of christopher wray after the bureau's shocking admission they completely failed to follow up on a tip that came in last month about the florida high school shooter. we're also learning exclusively tonight that group chat messages show the shooter was obsessed with race, violence and guns. here with more cnn's drew griffin at the scene of the rampage and brian todd at broward county's sheriff's department headquarters. good evening, gentlemen. drew, tell us about the disturbing messages you're seeing on social media. >> reporter: yeah, we've been able to get inside this -- it's a private instagram group, just

six people. but don, it was filled with homophobic, anti-semitic, and quite frankly racist views. we know that nikolas cruz was on this. he joined in august. he posted pictures of himself wearing body armor and also posing with guns. some of things he said along this chat was he hates jews, blacks, using the n word, and immigrants. and also, don, that he'd like to shoot gay people in the back of the head. but i think the most disturbing of all is he asked the group if it was legal to wear body armor to school. one of these people asked why. he wrote back, "school shooters. i think i am going to kill people." don? >> good lord. brian, let me bring you in here because what are authorities saying about the explicit warning the fbi get about the shooter a month ago? >> reporter: don, this really

could not have been more egregious of a mishandling of information by the fbi. the fbi with a stunning admission today that on january 5th of this year the bureau got a tip on their hotline from a person close to nikolas cruz. and this is what the person said. this is according to the bureau itself. that the person talked about cruzes gun ownership-b his desire to kill people, about his erratic behavior, his disturbing social media posts, and about the potential of him conduct a school shooting. by the bureau's own admission this should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. that's their words. but the really horrible part about this is that information when the bureau got it it never impart td to its miami field office. director christopher wray, he is promising to get to the bottom of this. but as you mentioned a moment ago governor rick scott is furious. he wants director christopher wray to resign. >> and brian, there's other reporting tonight that the school looked into a formal

threat assessment for this young man more than a year ago. what is that about? >> reporter: right, don. this is our affiliate wplg reporting that in january of 2017 this is according to a school document that station obtained, the school requested a, quote, threat assessment of him to determine if he was a danger to the school. this happened after nicholas cruz was involved in an assault. cnn cannot confirm the authenticity of that document. it's not clear if the threat assessment was undertaken and the broward county school board is not commenting on that. again, it's a big warning sign that the school was requesting a threat assessment of this young man more than a year ago. >> so drew, brian having said what he said, can you talk to us about the shooter's lengthy history supposedly with law enforcement? >> last night on your show, don, we talked about the records that we had that the police had been to the cruz home some 30 times since 2010. today we got the actual records behind some of those calls.

many of them involved calls about nicholas cruz and his mental health and the fact that he was seeing therapists and getting help and having behavioral intervention way back from 2013 up until the last one we saw was in 2016 when he was fighting with his mom, a deputy and a mental health expert showed up. the mom had complained that he was cutting himself to get attention, that he was barricading himself in his room. and also the police made reference to the fact that he suffers from mental illness and that he also mentioned in the past that he would like to purchase a firearm. for some reason that, too, didn't raise any attention. the police didn't think he was a harm to anybody and they just didn't even write up a report. they went away. so all of these are adding up to one big heartache for the parents who are trying to understand how all of this could have been missed.

>> absolutely. brian, drew, thank you so much. appreciate your reporting. when we come back our law enforcement experts weigh in. will the fbi change after failing to act on so many red flags and that critical tip about the florida shooter? to your ideal comfort, your sleep number setting. does your bed do that? save 50% on the ultimate limited edition bed. plus 24-month financing ends monday visit sleepnumber.com for a store near you. everyone has a thing. that binge watch over the weekend thing. more checking-in or checking out things. that triple-double thing doing it yourself or tagging a friend thing. more revolutions in the making thing. that play like a girl thing. that four-legged friends thing. at&t gives you more for your thing. more entertainment, internet, and unlimited plans. more for your thing. yeah, that's our thing. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis,

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the fbi admitting that the january 5th tip about the florida shooter which it failed to follow up on should have been assessed under the heading potential threat to life. i want to bring in now cnn national security analyst juliet kayyem, stuart kaplan a former fbi agent and cnn law enforcement analyst james

galliano, a retired fbi supervisory special agent. hello to all of you. stuart, let's start with you. the fbi admitted today they failed to follow up on a tip that nikolas cruz might carry out a school shooting. here's what the fbi says about the tipster. they say, "the caller provided information about cruz's gun ownership, desire to kill people and erratic social media posts as well as potential of him conducting a school shooting." so bluntly, stuart, did the fbi's blunder cost these 17 people their lives? >> well, let me answer it this way because i think in fairness you have to put the tip center in context. the tip center itself is fairly new. it was brought about in 2012. it is run by nonagents. in other words, these employees are support employees. they do not have any investigative skills. they are trained to kind of field the calls with respect to asking the right questions. at the end of the day people may

be surprised the fbi gets approximately 2,000 calls a day. when you run that out through the year you're talking about 700 to a million calls a year. that's a lot of calls. >> i've got to jump in here, stuart. that's disturbing. first of all, you said it's new, 2012. that's five years old. if i had a car it'd be time to turn it in. that's not new. five years old. that's a long time. and they're civilians, they don't have enough wherewithal to pass this along or manpower, that doesn't help the families of the 17 people who have died here. what you're saying is very damning for the fbi, i think. >> well, let me put it this way, and i think jim would agree. when i was an agent the tips would come into the field offices themselves. they would actually be taken by an agent. immediately after taking that call if the agent made a determination, he would get on the phone. now, one of the flus that i see

in this program is that local law enforcement is not included in the correspondence or in the communications. now, when you take this particular situation with nikolas cruz, we know now that local law enforcement had a tremendous amount of contact with this individual. it seems to me that at minimum the local law enforcement should have been immediately contacted to, you know, let them go out and see what's going on. >> so better coordination you're saying between local and federal authorities, right? is that what you're saying there should have been? >> absolutely. i don't think the burden should be just on the fbi. >> okay, james, i want you to weigh in on this. because is he right? and when did it go from agents taking the calls to civilians taking the calls? what is this all about? >> sure, and let me build on what stuart was saying and he's spot on with that. the public access lines that the fbi put in place a few years ago, they're kind of modeled after what we had before, which is people would call into their local field office.

now we have 800 neighbors, 888 lines and after a major shooting or after a major investigation begins sometimes the fbi will put out another tip line and put out a separate number for that. now, what stuart said was the professional support employees. these are bureau employees. so even though we characterize them as civilians or not law enforcement professionals, they are part of the fbi. they take the phone call. but then these are always backed up by an agent, by minimum of a gs-13 special agent that then performs the first level of triage. now -- >> so what happened, james? >> i used to run the new york operations center. >> so what happened -- >> what happened is this -- well, the fbi's made up of people. we've got 35,000 employees. we're all fallible human beings. it also has computer systems. and those computer systems are programmed by the same fallible human beings. somewhere along the way, don, a glitch happened. this is unconscionable. i'm down here. i'm listening to these parents.

i'm seeing these kids do just these gut-wrenching testimonials. trust me, this is hitting me like a gut punch. but i appreciate and respect director wray getting out in front of this and acknowledging and admitting that the fault was ours, we have to find out was it a person or a processor protocol, get to the bottom of it and fix, it don. it's not going to bring back those 17 precious lives, but maybe it helps us prevent the next one. >> listen, juliet, i have the utmost respect for the men and women of the fbi. they do a great job. but as the author of "security mom," the mother of teenagers, as you're listening to, this i'm sure you have an opinion about what happened, the breakdown. what could be done better? what do you think of what happened? >> i'm with director wray, that the fbi screwed up big-time. and they admitted that the protocols were not followed in this instance. look, we've been in a situation before where the mass murderer is unknown, motivation -- think about las vegas. where did this come from?

what animated it? this is like with cruz it's like a million red lights going off from the school and the family and the family he's living with and the neighbors taking pictures and these school kids and the fbi and the police, right? so there was a breakdown in the system, and it should not be defended. i mean in other words, the fbi knows it and needs to do an accounting. someone needs to get fired. something terribly wrong happened. >> should it be christopher wray? that's what rick scott, the governor of florida is saying. he should be fired or resign. >> here's what i would say about christopher wray -- first of all, we know this happened in the field office. this wasn't like a policy -- a situation that wray approved. if governor scott agrees that no one under the age of 21 should be able to buy a gun in florida, then christopher wray should agree that the fbi -- that he will resign as director of the fbi.

governor scott is trying not to talk about the issue that he needs to talk about as governor, which is the gun laws of florida, and is ready to throw someone else under the bus who has already admitted the mistake. this is pure politics by the governor who's not willing to look at himself as a leader of a state that is wrenching right now, and the kinds of laws that allowed him to not only -- i was thinking today i had to rent a car because we're going away this weekend. he couldn't have even rented a car because he would not have been viewed as old enough to rent a car. and in florida he can own a weapon of mass destruction. >> he can buy a -- >> yeah, buy it. that's what i meant. >> quick question, yes or no, do you think stuart should as governor scott says, should he step down? >> absolutely not. in fact, i applaud s.a.c. lasky. he's in the miami division. he got out in front of is it. he accepts responsibility. and we're going to try to fix this problem. >> yeah.

james? >> absolutely not. just like people are asking us to wait until evidence comes in on the senior level missteps on the 7th floor, i think the same thing is due here. it's appropriate to let the investigation get conducted, find out what happened and deal with it appropriately, but the director should not step down. >> i really appreciated the conversation and candor here. thank you so much. when we come back, russian bots not only interfered in the election but they're also promoting propaganda right now, trying to attempt to divide americans over the florida shooting. introducing elvive protein recharge leave-in conditioner. ♪ in just one use, elvive's breakthrough heat-protecting formula leaves your hair with 97% less breakage and 15 times stronger. ♪ elvive revives damaged hair because you're worth it.

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warning tonight that russian linked trolls are at it again, trying to sew discord in america. this time pushing pro gun messages on twitter in the aftermath of the florida massacre. i want to talk about this with mark jacobson a professor at georgetown university. thank you for coming on. >> my pleasure, don.

>> we know that the russians used bots to interfere with the 2016 election. but there was reporting today that hours after the parkland shooting that russian bots were working to divide our country again. how so? >> a couple of organizations, german martial funds aliens for securing democracy and a private sector firm called robot were reporting that what they were seeing was an up tick in traffic that was really trying to exacerbate the differences between people who are for more gun control and people who are afraid an incident like this will result in an enormous crackdown on guns. your guests have talked about it well in terms of whether you call it political warfare, information warfare. these are propaganda campaigns designed to influence attitudes and behaviors. what better place for the russians to try and sew discord than the aftermath of such an emotional event like we've seen down in florida. >> what do we know about the nature of these bot messages? and what is their aim?

what's the end game, mark? >> the end game is sew discord. the russians are not for gun control. they're not for everybody's right to own an automatic weapon. what the russians are about is trying to exacerbate differences that already exist in the united states. we saw that during the 2016 election in terms of exacerbating the racial divide. in fact, that goes back to the 1960s where the russians wanted to try and start a race war in the country. so what we're seeing here is the bots are exacerbating the problem by amplifying messages on the extreme left and the extreme right. so in other words, it's not just hashtags that are about gun control. but it's also hashtags that are anti-nra. in that sense what they want is to destroy any rational discussion, debate or dialogue and just polarize both sides.

that's the end goal. paralyze the united states by polarizing the united states. >> are the people behind the parkland bots the same as behind the elections? >> i don't have hard evidence that they are. but i have no doubt one of two things is going on. first the same sort of money and organizations, for example the internet research agency, are still pushing the trolls and the bots and enabling them to put these things out on social media networks. or -- and this is the scarier part -- that you have individual actors who are learning the tactics and techniques we saw in the 2016 election and just doing them on their own. we have already seen from the indictment today how difficult it is to tell an american from a russian actor online. and i think this is going to be the new normal. so i hope people can start to look into this and figure out exactly where this is coming from. >> okay, so let me ask you then, as just -- i've always wanted to know this. i sort of suspect -- when i'm on

social media who is a bot and who is not? what's a bot and what's not? how do you figure it out? can you know? >> there are some great sites that can enable you to do a pretty good job. what it is -- some things that you see that are familiar in bots maybe you see them following only a certain number of people. maybe you see some that are only propagating certain hashtags. those are clear signs. i actually have a bot that retweets things i say critical of the administration. that's a kind of a friendly bot. but, again, there are technical tools out there that enable -- that can enable you to find out what you're dealing with. >> there were indictments today, mark, 13 russian nationals for interfering in the election. is this evidence -- isn't this evidence that they're going to continue to meddle in our society? >> i'm going to be direct here. page 14 of the indictment is so damning where they say clearly that the purpose of the

operations was -- my words now -- to sew discord. and that specialists were employed in order to exacerbate the differences, whether they were societal or economic differences between the american people. that sounds exactly like what we're seeing in the post-parkland situation. not only are the russians -- did they do it before. i think this is just the start. we better be ready for this in 2018. i don't believe we are. and i think it's going to have an impact again on the elections. >> yes. well that's why we're here reporting. and we've been say ing all along the president refuses to acknowledge it. thank you very much. i appreciate it. when we come bab ba-- back, the president insisting again today there was no collusion between russia and his campaign. but robert mueller is saying some people associated with the campaign were unwittingly involved. we'll tell you how. that's next. stay with me, mr. parker. when a critical patient is far from the hospital,

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♪ i'm jimmy, this is my definition of fresh since 1983. ♪ this is cnn tonight. i'm don lemon. it's 11:00 p.m. on the east coast. live with all the new developments right now in the russian investigation. 13 russians indicted charged with attempting to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. deputy attorney general rod rosenstein the russians conducted information warfare against the united states. yes, they used those words, information warfare. so what is the president doing about