tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC March 18, 2017 3:00am-4:01am PDT
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or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. if you have an image in your head for general douglas macarthur, it's probably this one, right? the iconic hat, the awesome sunglasses, before biden, right? douglas macarthur's sunglasses, obviously the giant corn cob pipe. when he was the commanding general for u.s. troops in the korean war china sent hundreds of thousands of chinese troops over the border into north korea to help the communist side in the korean fight and general douglas macarthur went to president truman when that happened and he told president truman that he wanted the united states to wage war on china in
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response. he wanted to start bombing china and quite famously president truman fired him for that. fired him. removed him. that was a big hairy political deal at the time because general macarthur was really, really popular. he was so popular they threw parades in his honor when he came home from being fired you've seen this footage. some of the most iconic footage of ticker tape parades is from the enormous parade that new york threw for douglas macarthur after he got fired by the president. literally millions of people turned out in tribute to him after he got fired. macarthur was really, really, really popular even thoughe maybe want to start world war iii. all the legends about douglas macarthur were larger than life. in world war ii when he was
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ordered to leave the philippines during the fight against the japanese douglas macarthur famously said when he was leaving "i shall return." and two years later he did come back. he waded assure on leyte island and he said "i have returned." quite a bit of the legend of general douglas macarthur is associated specifically with the philippines. he lived in the philippines for years before world war ii. he lived there while he was running the training of the philippine army. and because he was larger than life, when he was living in the philippines training the philippine army where he lived while he was doing that was in the fanciest room in the fanciest hotel in the whole country. while he was training the philippine army, douglas macarthur lived in the penthouse suite of the manila hotel. other than the presidential palace, it was basically the ritziest place to live in the
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entire country. and his suite at the manila hotel is still there, upgraded and partly preserved. you can, if you have enough money, rent the general douglas macarthur sweet. you can soap up history along with your jacuzzi bath and the other amenities of your luxury stay today's news someday becomes tomorrow's history. and that dynamic still holds. and i'm sorry to say that the general douglas macarthur suite at the manila hotel now features in a new footnote in history -- or at ast will somey, because in today's news it's part of a lurid international military bribery case which everybody calls the fat leonard scandal. >> reporter: three navy officials have been arrested and it's cost the u.s. nay navy millions. at the center of the scandal is
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leonard francis, owner of a dockside business. federal officials charge him with giving cash, prostitutes and tickets to lady gaga to steer contracts his way. after provided with prostitutes, jose sanchez allegedly sent francis a facebook message "yummy, daddy like." >> ugh. leonard francis is fat leonard. he doesn't mind if you call him that, everybody does. in 2015, fat leonard pled guilty to bribing u.s. military officers with everything from spanish suckling pigs to luxury hotel rooms to expensive watches to expensive booze and so on but you can't have a briber without a bribee and it turns out in
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this criminal case there are a lot of bribees. 20 current or former navy officers were charged in this case. 20. 13 of the 20 pled guilty. that was before this week. then this week this happened this week, federal prosecutors announced charges against another nine navy and marine officers, including an admiral and the details in the charging document start out as kind of a fun read then take a sudden turn into oh, my god. you get a lot of detail on their dinners, duck confit, $2,000 a bottle cognac. cigars that were $2,000 a box. the "washington post" reported the menu on a different meal that was also part of the bribes, an $18,000 dinner that started with black truffle soup before moving on to pan-seared duck liver.
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this is how the defense contractor, fat leonard, bribed officers of the u.s. navy's seventh fleet. in exchange those officers would allegedly give him classified information about the movement of u.s. navy ships and confidential investigation about other contractors that fat leonard would use to undercut them so he got the contracts. they even reportedly fed him information on criminal investigations into the bribery by his company so he could keep beating the rap, so he could stay ahead of the investigations. fat leonard built himself a $200 million business supplying u.s. navy ships in ports abroad and he built himself that business by stuffing u.s. navy officers full of foie gras and cognac and other stuff. for example there was in may 2008 what the indictment describes as a "raging multiday party with a rotating carousel
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of prostitutes in attendance during which conspirspores ank all of t dom perignon available at the shangri-la. room and board exceeded $50,000." days later of the commander of the uss "milius" wrote "i manila, that was a crazy couple days, it's been a while since i've done 36 hours of straight drinking. all the dom perignon in the hotel, no less. here's the part that crosses over where it fits into the news cycle. for context here, there are 30 different admirals who have been investigated in conjunction with this bribery scandal. 30. prosecutors say more than 200 people have come under scrutiny in this scandal. it's big.
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it's the biggest corruption case in the history of the united states navy but even given that scope of it which itself is striking it's the particulars that stick with you. a lot of the alleged bribes the dinners and booze and watches and jewelry and prostitutes, those stories circle in manila around this hotel, around the shangri-la hotel. but not all of them. on page 24 of this indictment we get to the part that allegedly takes place in the historic manila hotel and in one specific room of the manila hotel. quoting from the indictment "on or about february 8 through 10, 2007, fat leonard hosted and paid for a lavish party and the services of prostitutes in the macarthur suite of the manila hotel." the indictment lists the u.s. navy officers allegedly there at this particular sex party and then it says this "during the party historical memorabilia
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related to general douglas macarthur were used by the participants in sexual acts." thankfully the indictment does not spell out which memorabilia was involved or which acts. whato theyave macarthur's in the suite? i will say pictures of at least one hat and one corn cob pipe have been put on the internet over the years who say they have been to the douglas macarthur suite so there's that to go on. but i feel like this story, the fat leonard story is amazing in its own right but because it's so amazing it's a really specific piece of evidence as to where we're at as a country right now because it seems impossible that a scandal this lurid with details like this hasn't taken over your newspaper.
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it's impossible that something this big and over the top and ridiculous is not a scandal of national fixation. but it's really not. it's really not because honestly, where we're at as a country, as scandals go this thing can barely compete. there's no room in the scandal-absorbing part of our brains anymore because so many things are cooking all at once right now. for example there's the case of the health secretary tom price who bought and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in health care companies while he was writing and sponsoring and voting on legislation that would affect the price of those stocks. in some cases he was buying stock in multiple companies then days later taking action as a congress that would have the affect of inflating the value of that stock he just bought. aspects of his stock trading while he was chairing an important health committee in congress were reported by the "wall street journal," by cnn, by propublica, by "time" magazine, tons of places but
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republicans still confirmed him as secretary of health and human services. well, sometimes that stuff comes due, news becomes history and now tonight propublica has a hair raising report that when preet bharara, the u.s. attorney in manhattan, when he was fired last weekend unexpectedly and suddenly by the white house, one of the cases preet bharara was overseeing at the time according to propublica was a criminal investigation into tom price and his stock trades while he was in congress. propublica is citing one source in their report. we tried all day to get further comment from anybody involved. the white house told us they weren't aware of any criminal investigation into health secretary tom price. despite repeated efforts to reach tom price himself and ask him if he has been notified he is the subject of a federal criminal investigation we got no comment from tom price or his department, from hhs about it.
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and, in fact, we didn't even get a no comment. we literately got no comment. dial tone to. nobody even there to tell us no. usually what you get is "i'll call you right back" and then they never call. we got nobody. if anybody out there knows how to reach the department of health and human services, let us kno we could not get a singing freaking person to answer the phone all afternoon long today. www.sendittorachel.com. this tom price thing this is the kind of thing that will hopefully result in congress making inquiries, it's no small thing for a cabinet secretary to be under federal criminal investigation just as it's no small thing for a u.s. attorney to be fired when overseeing an investigation, if that is what happened here. so that's a big potential scandal and we can't get anything out of the administration on it.
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maybe congress can. that said, congress is busy right now on monday morning in a normal universe the biggest thing going on would be the start of the confirmation hearings for neil gorsuch, the nominee to be the next supreme court justice. that is obviously a big deal. those hearings are expected to go on for four days. democrats will likely oppose him in large numbers if not unanimously. they may act procedurally to slow roll his nomination as long as possible. substantively democrats appear to be focusing on his work defending torture and his enthusiasm for guantanamo during the george w. bush administration, but lines of inquiry can be hard to predict so we will see starting monday morning. that said i have to tell you even the confirmations for a supreme court nominee are likely to be overshadowed by the other hearings that are starting on capitol hill at the same time on monday morning.
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monday morning 10:00 a.m. eastern we get the first public congressional hearing into the links between the new administration and russia. former intelligence director james clapper and fbi director james comey are due to testify monday morning in the first open session testimony that we've got about the russian intervention into the election to help donald trump and any ties that may exist between russia and the trump campaign. we have reporting our hearts out on this all day and i can tell you there are a lot of rumors circulating right now as to what director comey will testify about on monday. what he will or won't describe in terms of ongoing investigations into links between trump and russia but despite our best efforts it's rumors only, nothing we can report with confidence as to what comey is going to say.
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in this case we'll learn what he has to say by waiting. also today the other inquiry in the senate they made their first announcement about what will be their first public hearing into the russian attack on our election. senator richard burr on the left, senator mark warner on the right announced today about a week and a half after we get comey and clapper testifying on russia on monday, a week and a half later on thursday, march 30 we're going to get the senate starting their inquiry into russia as well and the senate hearing, something i would sign up for if it was a college class and i was still a surly college student. look at the title. i have to say, this sounds awesome "disinformation, a primer in russian active measures and influence campaigns." really? and it's in two parts, the first part in the morning is going to be the history and
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characteristics of russian disinformation campaigns and the second part is the role and capability of cyber operations in support of those activities. yes, please and can i sign up for office hours now with the t.a. and the professor. that sounds great. what's the title again? "disinformation, a primer in russian active measures and influence campaigns." i would read that if that was a novel. but that was just announced today. that's going to be on thursday, march 30. and we also got a related big piece of news today in the form of something that basically in the form of something that wasn't announced. you might remember earlier this week the nsa, fbi and cia all got a letter from the top republican and the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. that letter asked about this guy, michael flynn.
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you know, it's a scandal in itself. it is a scandal surpassing and even eclipsing the alleged use of douglas macarthur memorabilia in a u.s. navy sex and bribery ring in manila. it's a scandal of immense proportions that the national security adviser had to get fired 24 days into his tenure because of the content ohis mmunicationsith a foreign government, with russia. that's an enormous scandaln its own right. one that has a lot of unanswered questions around it. one of the important things that remains unexplained about michael flynn's firing as national security adviser is how anybody knew what he was talking to the russian government about. michael flynn's calls with the russians were apparently listened into by u.s. agencies who were surveilling those calls. it's one thing to listen in on russian government officials but americans are not supposed to be surveilled by u.s. agencies unless there's a court-ordered warrant that says it's okay to do so. michael flynn was surveilled. why? was michael flynn the subject of a warrant?
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was it a warrant for a criminal investigation? was it a warrant for a counterintelligence investigation? and in either instance, if he was on the warrant, if there was a court-ordered warrant to surveil him because of one of those types of investigations, how did the white house end up appointing him to be national security adviser under those circumstances? so the cia, the fbi and the nsa all got a letter demanding that information about michael flynn by today. why was mike flynn surveilled? why was mike flynn -- why were his contacts with the russians surveilled by u.s. agencies. tell us by friday, march 17. tell us by today that letter sent to the nsa, fbi, cia, sent to them by one of the committees that oversees those agencies, fbi, cia, nsa, they can't refuse to hand over this information to the intelligence committee. but apparently they're not doing it.
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i almost can't believe it. this is really, really not normal. the intelligence chair put out a statement today cryptically worded but what it says is that of these three agencies who were sent this letter told to explain this michael flynn thing, of those three agencies only the nsa "partially responded." they say they will fully respond by the end of next week but the cia and fbi haven't responded at all. they haven't said beep, at least not by 9:00 p.m. eastern time. that's nuts. that's impossible. that's at least not normal. i know it seems like an arcane thing about who you you municipal kate with but if agencies like the fbi and cia won't hand over information like this to the committees that oversee them, that's a big national security deal.
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that's not the way things work. those agencies may not want to hand it over, but they have to. they may not want to release that information publicly but they have to release it confidentially to the committee. these agencies are overseen by congress, they cannot say no to a request like this from congress, but apparently they're not answering that's really strange. what's going on with that? one possibility is that mike flynn ended up on that surveillance in error. that it was done improperly or illegally they shouldn't have had him on that surveillance and the fbi and cia may be trying to get its ducks in a row because it may be people who work for those agencies are about to get in big trouble for mishandling this. another darker possibility is
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that there is some damning information about michael flynn, about him being the subject of a warrant and maybe the administration folks who head up the cia and department of justice are impeding because it will look bad for mike flynn and the administration. we don't know. but the fbi not responding to the intelligence committee? that doesn't fly. our constitution doesn't work that way. they have to respond and their non-answer is a big deal. the russian attack on our election last year, the unexplained connections between the trump campaign and russia during that time, during the time of the attack, the strangeness, particularly, the strangeness of the fbi in its treatment of this matter, it's unsettling it's unsettling not just because this is one scandal among so many scandals for this young administration, so many
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scandals that some are being ignored because they're not big enough to warrant attention amid other scandals. this is unsettling not because it's one scandal but because if the worst is true, if the presidency is effectively a russian op, if the american presidency right now is the product of collusion between the russian intelligence services and an american campaign, that is so profoundly big we not only need to stay focused on figuring it out, we need to start preparing for what the consequences are going to be if it proves to be true. we need to start thinking about how we're going to deal with the worst revelations if they do come to light, if they are proved true so tonight we're doing a special report. tonight what we're going to do with most of the rest of the show is we're going to start to try to do that thinking. tonight we are going to talk to some of the people who were the first victims of what happened to us as a country when the russians launched the attack.
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real people who saw it up close and got hit in realtime. they haven't told their story of how they experienced it and what damage it did at the time before e country figured out what was going on but they're going to do that starting tonight starting here. that's our special report, it starts next. hey, searching for a great used car? i don't want one that's had a big wreck just say, show me cars with no accidents reported
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new staffer got there his job got suddenly very weird because something weird started happening in the campaign and it became his beat, his unexpected responsibility to try to make sense of it, to try to explain it, this thing nobody planned for which is that russian government hackers had broken into the democratic party's computer servers, helped themselves to anything they wanted. those lifted documents and e-mail stolen from the democratic party and ultimately from the chairman of the clinton campaign ended up becoming ammunition in an attack on the u.s. election, an attack designed to weaken the democratic candidate, weaken the democricarty, upt their strategy, disrupt their communications and ultimately helphe republican candidate, donald trump, win the election. it's easy enough to say that now but in the moment, in the chaos of the campaign it was hard to persuade the public to pay
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attention to that bigger picture, that the election was being disrupted, it was being tilted. it was being externally operated on by a foreign government in favor of the candidate that that foreign government preferred. but for that new clinton staffer whose job it was to deal with this, this was his life. he was living this everyday. as that campaign nightmare was playing out it became this new staffer's job to learn everything there was to know about this hacking so he could explain it to the world and answer everybody's questions about it. he watched this hijacking of our election in realtime, he saw clues about what was happening early on, he had to figure it out fast, firsthand, live, and now as the country is woken up to the magnitude of what happened to us last year that staffer is ready to talk about it and i think his perspective on what happened is valuable in terms of us really understanding what happened and starting to unravel it. joining us now for this special
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report is glen caplin, his responsibilities included answering questions about wikileaks and russia. thank you for getting a babysitter and coming back. >> thank you for having me back. >> i want to hear this so i'm glad you were able to come back so you started to tell us this story last night. i want to start again at the beginning. from your perspective what happened first? what was the first thing that got weird? >> well, the first thing that got weird was the "washington post" broke the story in mid-june that the dnc had been hacked and that was the first it started to get weird that -- >> you didn't have any indication before that report? >> we had indication once the report was happening, they reached out to us for comment and we were aware of the story a day or two before it broke but
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that contact was the first we were aware of the dnc hack, that was the first time it got weird. where it got disturbing was when a couple days later guccifer 2 through d.c. leaks started dumping th iormation >> and guccifer is -- guccifer 2.0 is like a hacking nom de guerre? it's a persona? >> it's a persona that is believed to be russian intelligence by cyber experts. >> and the guccifer 2 leaks ended up on d.c. leaks web site which is something that didn't exist prior to the campaign. nobody ever heard of. >> correct. and that dump was a massive amount of data, of documents that was not user friendly and was very hard to get your arms around what was there there was it didn't get an enormous amount of attention.
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>> what kind of documents was it? it was all internal to the democratic party. was it donor lists? >> donor lists, research, books, a compilation of clips of vulnerabilities of yourself and your opponent, a donald trump research book. >> so democratic oppo research on donald trump. >> right, but remember at that time donald trump wasn't paying for self-research so the fact that that research book was in there was quite interesting to us and we believed very -- from the first dump that this was intended to help donald trump and undermine hillary clinton and the democratic party. this wasn't about her -- trying to hurt both sides or just undermine the election itself. >> i remember reporting at the time that in the case of the oppo dossier -- the democrats oppo dossier on donald trump there is -- that being published in june meant that any ammunition the democratic party
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politically had against trump was then spent. >> it felt like a gift to donald trump. that research book being out was not hurtful to donald trump, that was a gift to donald trump. that was one of the tells that very early on this was about hurting us. >> so that happened when? >> mid-june. >> what happened next? >> well, what happened next was the wikileaks dump on the eve of the democratic convention. so if you think about it, this is sort of three shifts, the first is a dump of information in the first place. the russians have done espionage for decades. that's not new. every campaign for going back for years has probably been surveilled and there's been espionage. it was the information actually being weaponized and put into the public arena that was new. >> what do you mean by weaponized? >> put in the public arena as opposed to collecting information for a foreign
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government's information and knowing what campaigns are thinking and things like that, which is the normal -- >> rather than them stealing it to use for themselves as the russian government, they were redeploying it into the american bloodstream to have an effect on the way we were dealing with each other as americans. >> correct. >> you talked about how there was a big shift, an operational shift that you saw between that guccifer -- the first leak and the wikileaks one, that it was more sophisticated in terms of how it could be weaponized, how it could be used here. i want to get into more detail with you on that in just a second. glen caplin, senior spokesperson for the hillary clinton campaign on the issue of the russian attack at the time. we'll be right back with more. we can't stay here!
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continuing our discussion with glen caplin who spent his part of the 2016 election studying russian interference in the campaign and trying to craft some kind of response in the moment. glen, you were saying after this initial leak with guccifer posted on d.c. leaks, the second thing that happened was seemingly more sophisticated leak that came through wikileaks. >> much more. the first one was sloppy, had russian metadata on it. >> meaning? >> meaning traces on the actual documents.
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there was russian language on. >> it so you could tell it was russian hackers? >> correct. >> now we're going to wikileaks timed on the eve of the convention, highly searchable user friendly search function, we could very easily cull the wheat from the chaff in terms of the e-mails and reporters were able to very quickly search for the bernie e-mails or the dws e-mails. that got metastasized very quickly. >> you said in the earlier leak you talked to somebody who was an expert in these things who told you the russians were good at obtaining stuff but bad at deploying it for propaganda purposes. the second round, the second level of the attack cured that for them. >> correct, and the guccifer 2 persona claimed publicly to have given that information to wikileaks at the time. >> what was the affect on the campaign? the timing was insane, right?
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this all happened the day after the end of the republican convention, the weekend -- literally on the eve of the democrats convention. what was the effect? >> it created a lot of stress on the campaign at the convention, there's no question about that. but it's hard to overstate how disturbing it is to have this unprecedented intrusion in our democracy. and we tried very hard to tell that story from the candidate herself, she spoke about it in all three debates. campaign chairman john podesta spoke about it, campaign director robby mook. we tried to tell the story of the much -- of this unprecedented disturbing intrusion in our democracy and unfortunately -- >> didn't stick. the coverage tended -- was more about what was in the e-mails as opposed to why the
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e-mails existed, who is responsible for putting the e-mails into the public discourse and why and that was frustrating. >> and your job was to try to explain this to people in a way that would make them get it, it was just a completely unreceptive media environment. >> i think there are a couple lessons that need to be learned. i think political campaigns have a lesson to learn because this is not a theoretical threat, this is a real and present danger for every campaign going forward. this is something they have to deal with so political campaigns have to learn the lesson of how they protect their information going forward. the media needs to learn the lesson of how do you cover something like this when an adversarial foreign government wants you reporting on the details of this information. in the end, none of the e-mails
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themselves were particularly damaging but for the last 35 days of the election it was a head wind that was constantly in the news and what does government do? and that's why it's disturbing to see a president who rather than taking this issue on doesn't believe the intelligence. >> did you feel like you had support from the administration in dealing with this as a national security concern or a crime? >> the administration on october 7 attributed this hack to the russian government but what happened otober 7 was after the announcement you had the "access hollywood" hollywood tape and then an hour later you had the first dump of podesta e-mails. from kileaks. >> so one wonders if there's a coincidence or not. >> on that point, there's air force basely a very -- these signs point in a worrying direction, it was addressed by
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caplin, a senior spokesperson for the clinton campaign. he got a very early very close look at the russian attack on democratic information. i want to bring in his boss, robby mook who ran the clinton campaign. thank you for being here. >> my pleasure. >> i want to ask you about this point glen was make about how frustrating it was to feel like you guys were describing this accurately, you were putting appropriate emphasis on what was going on here about the outrageousness and the unique nature of the fact that russia had interfered in the campaign but it just couldn't be heard. i know you well enough to know from our considerations on the air to know you were frustrated. looking back with a few months in hindsight do you feel like there's anything different you could have done? is there something you wish you could have changed about the way you handled it to make people understand better? >> it's a good question. i think we were frustrated
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because as glen said, when the story first came out in the "washington post" it was a one and done. i know when that first leak through wikileaks happened at the dnc i was on tv sunday morning trying to point to the fact this was the russians and part of a strategy and i think most people just treated it like spin and i think part of that is just because it was so unprecedented. it seemed like something out of a spy novel or something. in retrospect, i wish we could have tried to muster more national security officials to work with reporters and background them to really understand how it wasn't just that this was very possible but it had to be true based on, as glen said, there were russian -- there was russian language in the metadata, the hackers that went into the dnc, they were observed for a little while before they pulled up the
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drawbridges and they were working russian hours. they weren't working on russian holidays. it was totally clear that this is what's happening and i wish we could have donor provide that information so it didn't seem so fictional really. >> and it's partly that maybe people didn't believe it, they weren't prepared to believe it but also even if they did believe it, i'm not sure people understood just how unusual and radical a departure this is from the way things go. we all hear about there being data breaches in private companies or government agencies all the time and we've sort of -- it's become background noise. this was an international attack by a foreign power to try to change our politics. >> that's right and to be honest with you i though this day it's not being taken as seriously as i think it should in some circumstances and i don't know that the urgency is there to root it out because it's not just the fact that they steal information and selectively leak it out, there's also a network in place through social media to disseminate disinformation as you said russian active measures
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to create confusion or spread things that aren't true. if we allow these sorts of behaviors to remain and become entrenched in our political process it could have enormous impact on the legislative process. that's what i'm worried about we complain about super pacs and how they overtime through punishing legislators who don't vote the way a corporation or wealthy people like that legislators start to fall in line and they make a decision on how to vote with the idea that punishment could come and i'm concerned a legislator could say i'm not going to take that vote against russia because they could hack into my personal e-mail, the e-mails of my family, into my campaign, we cannot allow that to happen, we have to take action to prevent this in the future. >> the prospect that this wasn't
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just a russian attack, but that it was a russian attack in which the trump campaign was complicit, is obviously yet further level of concern. i have one last question on that point. i'm going to ask you that after the break. we'll be right back. way to say this. it's over. i've found a permanent escape from monotony. together, we are perfectly balanced. our senses awake. our hearts racing as one. i know this is sudden, but they say...if you love something set it free. see you around, giulia setting hearts a blaze...ways... doing next to nothing for days weekenders. even when a weekend's not enough, there's a hilton for you. book your break direct with hilton.com and join the weeklong weekenders. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis
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jen, one of your colleagues on the campaign, she said on msnbc about the trump campaign and the russians, i believe that there was collusion. i believe that the trump staff, trump associates in some form, were at a minimum coordinating with wikileaks. in the timing of the leaks they were way too prepared. when wikileaks came out with their leak du jour in the morning the trump campaign was ready to go with their statement about that." she's saying her impression. what is your view on that point, what did you observe in that regard? there is a lot of connections to the trump campaign and russia that we need to fully understand. so yes, what jen is saying, i agree with. i think every american, whether they're a trump voter or a hillary voter, deserves the answer to this very, very important question and we need to get to the bottom of it. >> when you were seeing stuff happen in realtime, did you feel the wikileaks stuff that was happening and the trump campaign stuff, did it seem coordinated? did you see evidence of anything --
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>> we were seeing rt tweet the wikileaks dump of the day before wikileaks did. >> that's collusion between russian government and wikileaks. >> roger stone during the campaign said that he was back-channeling with julian assange. he seemed to predict the podesta e-mails. >> not a formal campaign adviser but a long-time associate of mr. trump? >> a long-time confidant who has publicly taken credit for paul manafort getting the job as campaign manager. there's a lot of connections here. follow the dots and the puzzle's coming together. we need to understand the full picture. but every single american deserves an answer to this question. >> robby, same question. obviously collusion is the big scary possibility here. nobody said that they have
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direct evidence of collusion. in your experience of it, did you see evidence for that? >> well, as glen said, i think we've t to answeth question. it can be pretty simply done. congress can get to the bottom of this and they seem to be beginning that process, that's good. you know, as glen mentioned, roger stone admitted that there were some communications there. i would also just say, you know, let's step back for a second. the whole reason we're having the discussion about michael flynn and this wiretapping is because the nsa was tapping russian agents. and in the course of tapping those agents, those agents were speaking to trump aides. and so we know that there were conversations, we just -- we're waiting to find out what they were about. as i said, congress can solve this pretty quickly. the last thing i'd say about it, though, is it's so important that this not be seen as relitigating the election or partisan witch hunt. we've got to get to the bottom of this to make sure it doesn't happen again. i've been encouraged at least
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to get ready for those gorsuch heargssunday night 5:00 p.m. eastern, a special look at gorsuch and those hearings hosted by ari melber. you should watch this. msnbc live is next. good morning. i'm dara brown in new york at msnbc world headquarters. here is what is happening. big news overnight. rex tillerson with new remarks on north korea. hear what he called a dangerous situation and one question he did not address at all. and a paris airport closing after an incident involving a soldier and gun. a live report in minutes. the wiretap saga, new information from sources in congress on whether there is any clear evidence to the president's climbs from two weeks ago. and what is the truth behind whether meals on wheels will suffer in the new budget forwarded by the president? all that right now on
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