i do get great ratings, you have to admit that pip love to negotia -- i love to negotiate things and all that stuff. i won. i won. i'm having a good time. tomorrow they'll say donald trump rants and raves at the president. i'm not ranting and raving, i'm just telling you, you're dishonest people. >> the new president one year ago today, his last and only solo news conference in congress. thank you so very much for being here with us. have a good weekend and good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. so i think the biggest thing that we learned today is that this guy has quite a lot of rabbits stuffed into that hat. it's always a surprise with the special counsel. on day one, not quite a surprise when the special counsel robert mueller turned in his first

multi count felony indictment against paul manafort. he had to pick a guy in the trump campaign orbit that might getting in trouble in the special counsel russia investigation. it wouldn't be crazy to pick paul manafort. he was a really high-profile figure. he was campaign chairman. he left the campaign over his doings in the former soviet union. and actually, we got paul manafort news tonight. mueller is actually making new criminal charges against paul manafort this evening on top of everything else he's doing. but even on that first day when the criminal charges were unsealed against paul manafort, even that day there was already a surprise from paul manafort because in addition to the charges against paul manafort, hey, who is that guy? even now months later when we show file footage of this man rick gates, people think we're showing file footage of some random clip art model or maybe a cop or body guard. rick gates, that was the surprise indictment on day one

from robert mueller in october. nobody knew who rick gates was. then the next time we heard from the special counsel, again, maybe nobody was all that surprised to see michael flynn turn up in court since he, too, had been very high profile and he, too, had had to bow out famously under a cloud of suspicion and intrigue under his contacts with the russian government. but even on the second of the indictment days, even when they hauled in flynn, again, there was a surprise from the special counsel. flynn's guilty plea. he'll be a cooperating witness for the prosecution? that was definitely a surprise. on that same day, surprise again because hey, who is this guy? george papadopoulos who is also pleading guilty? who on god's green earth is george papadopoulos? not a high profile guy from the campaign. if george papadopoulos and rick

gates were two guys out of three in a lineup, what are the odds you pick either one of them out without a name tag? there have been surprises from the very beginning. there is so much attention, so much interest, so much intense reporting pressure on the details of the mueller investigation and it turns out they do not leak, and we really have no idea ever what the special counsel is about to do in this case next. and if you talk to anybody who tells you today that oh, yeah, they saw today's indictment coming, they saw this indictment coming, they saw this new guilty plea and cooperation agreement coming, they could have told you this is happening before it happened, you should break up with that person because that person lies to you. there is nobody outside the special counsel's office who knew before today we were about to get what we got. we were about to get a guilty plea and cooperation agreement from richard pinedo. he signs his name ricky. he's a united states citizen.

he basically bought and sold bank account numbers online. so people could set up fraudulent payment accounts online under fake identities. his lawyer later in the day put out a statement admitting the crime that his client had pled guilty to but giving an apparently rushed explanation why his guilty plea isn't as bad as it sounds in this context. he said quote, mr. pinedo had absolutely no knowledge of the identity and motivation of the purchasers of the information he provided to the extent that mr. pinedo's actions assisted any individuals including foreign nationals from interfering the american presidential election, was done completely without his knowledge or understanding. you know what he means even though the statement is screwed up. lawyers basically saying hey, listen, my guy, he's pleading

guilty. my guy just makes money online trafficking and identity theft but i swear, he didn't know he was helping the russians attack us. richard pinedo. the major indictment unsealed today against a bunch of russians makes it clear how the online trade and stolen identities in fact did help the russians attack us. whether or not mr. pinedo knew that would happen with the information he was selling. the russians, according to the big indictment today used stolen credit card numbers, stolen bank account numbers, stolen identities from real americans to open online accounts, online payment accounts to facilitate the financial part of their attack, their financial part of what mueller and his team of prosecutors lay out today as a large, well-coordinated, expensive, thorough operation to

try to swing the 2016 presidential election to donald trump. so why was this one american guy arrested and charged and flipped into a cooperating witness in conjunction with this case today? why did mueller bring these charges today against these 13 russian individuals and the internet research agency they worked for in russia and two of the companies in russia used to fund the operations of that internet research agency? i don't know. i don't know why this all happened today and frankly, neither do you. but there is a ton of new information that we just learned today from this, yet another surprise move from the special counsel. so we've been able to surmise, just civilians watching this story, we've been able to surmise from the beginning that there were three prongs to the russian attack. three ways that they attacked

us, number one, attacked our actual election system and hacked into the voting roles in more than 20 states. two, attacked the democratic party. hacked into and stole documents from the clinton campaign and dnc and three, they attacked us, the public or at least they targeted all of us. when they decided that they wouldn't just steal those democratic documents and use them for spying purposes, instead, they would turn them around and release them back into the u.s. in a weaponized way to try to hurt our perception of one side in the election. they targeted us with those documents that they stole. they targeted us with propaganda and targeted us with considerable effort to manipulate the american social media environment and all sorts of different online discussions about our election to change our perception of our own politics and political figures. we've been able to see that from the outside and in terms of that third prong of the russian effort, the part where they were

targeting we the public, there is a lot of good bluk repopubli reporting how the last russian attack played out and of the russians buying online ads to influence the election and the russian twitter bots and facebook groups and persona designed to look american and polarizing as it is and frankly, they were designed to most -- boost donald trump's chances in the election and to weaken hillary clinton. there has been -- you've been hearing this story for the past year because there is a bunch of really good journalism about those russian efforts in the past year. but that was just one prong of the three-prong attack. they attacked the election system and targeted the public. against the other two prongs of that attack they are breaking into the dnc, breaking into the voter rolls. you know, who would have thought the first part of this three-prong attack to result in real criminal charges against russians wouldn't be hacking

into the democratic party, wouldn't be hacking into state rolls, it would be this third prong, the stuff they did to try to influence public opinion online. i, at least, would not have predicted if there were going to be russian criminal charges here. criminal charges against russian citizens. i wouldn't have predicted they would be for that part of the attack. but now they brought criminal charges and thanks to the very detailed indictment, we have a ton of new information about what the special counsel believes russia did and why the special counsel believes it's not just an american -- not just america being victimized by a russia intelligence operation. we have detail why the special counsel thinks what russia did in terms of targeting the u.s. public is an actual crime. now, i have no idea how mueller and his team got the kinds of documents they got to put together this indictment. but they have got a lot of

primary source material. they have direct quotes from internal reviews from inside this internet research agency from which the russians were running this campaign. this is a quote from the indictment. quote, on or about september 14th, 2016 in an internal review of an organization-created and controlled facebook group called secure borders, the account specialist was criticized for having a quote, low number of posts dedicated to criticizing hillary clinton. the specialist was told, quote, it's imperative to intensify criticizing hillary clinton in future posts. how did the mueller team get that -- those direct quotes from an internal review about one of these russian created facebook groups? how did they get that? they quote from internal documents saying the goal for the setting up was to create

leaders of public opinion in america quoting from the internal documents at the internet research agency. how did they get direct quotes and documents like that out of this russian operation inside russia? how did they get the exact internal structure of the russian team that was working on the operation to attack the u.s. election? they got them all listed by job title and full names and rank in the organization and who they reported to. they know the internal name that the russians were using for the u.s. election operation inside this organization. they called it the translator project. special counsel also appears to have obtained personal e-mails. personal e-mails from at least one individual russian who they are charging today. one individual russian they say was involved in the attack on the election. quote, defendants and their co-conspirators thereafter destroyed evidence and for the purpose of impeding the investigation. on or about september 13th, 2017, kaverzina wrote in an e-mail to a family member. we had a slight crisis here at work. the fbi busted our way.

-- busted our activity. not a joke. "we had a slight crisis here at work, the fbi busted in and further wrote "i created all these pictures and posts." how did mueller and his team get this kind of material? how did they get the real names of the people working inside this organization in russia, the people that created pictures and posts where the americans believed it was their people? the part and parcel was they -- how did they get these people's individual e-mails, names and work products from inside this russian organization? the indictment today claims that two of the named defendants anna bogacheva and andrew krylova traveled in 2014 to collect intelligence for this operation.

the president today, president trump today exclaimed about that date because 2014 was before he had even declared he was running for president. the implication of his tweet today he should be seen as in the clear as he says at the end of his tweet there, no collusion because the russians started this operation before he was technically running. well, if the indictment is correct, the russians did start this operation before he was technically running. looked at from another angle, you can say they started their operation right after his trip to moscow when he returned from his trip to moscow in november 2013 for the miss universe pageant. i don't know if that's relevant. i don't know if this was pegged to when he was going to start running or anything else about his relationships with russia if that's at all relevant. honestly, in this indictment, there is nothing else when it

comes to the question whether any americans knowingly colluded. the indictment doesn't make any allegations about that at all. what this indictment is a ton more information and serious criminal charges concerning what the russians did. and you can tell from the guilty plea of the one american guy they charged today and you can tell from a lot of the specificity in the indictment that parts of how they were able to trace all of this was clearly money. i mean, the russian operation paid out a lot of money to do what they did. they paid for online ads that were pro-trump and anti--clinton. and paid for real, live americans who apparently didn't know they were participate income a russian op and set up pro-trump and anti--clinton rallies. they paid for, on more than one occasion, this unusual thing, quote, on or about august 18,

2016, defendants and co-conspirators sent money using a false u.s. persona. they sent this money to a real u.s. person to quote build a cage large enough to hold an actress depicting hillary clinton in a prison uniform. elsewhere, quote, for example defendants and co-conspirators asked one u.s. person to built a cage on a platt -- flatbed truck and another u.s. person to wear a costume portraying hillary clinton in a uniform. they paid these individuals to complete the requests. it's amazing thing to know that that kind of anti hillary clinton prop was a kremlin-funded operation on an american street. but it also looks like the payment trail there is one that was found and followed by the special counsel and his prosecutors.

and so now we've got these criminal charges against 13 different russians and the russian internet research agency, the troll farm and two russian organizations used as funding sources for that and in addition to these charges, we have chapter and verse, not just on the russian game plan but how it can be charged as a criminal matter in u.s. federal court. by not reporting these expenditures to election authorities, by making illegal expenditures and making them try to influence the election and obtaining visas to visit the u.s. those are crimes. those are alleged crimes in this indictment. so they are saying this isn't just something the russians did which we should see in a spy versus spy context, what the russians did was a criminal conspiracy that involved a number of chargeable criminal acts they believe they ex prove -- can prove in court. totally new advance in this special counsel investigation

and brings me to some questions. question one, how did they get all this stuff? question two, i thought, i mentioned this a moment ago, i thought if they bring criminal charges against any russians, it would be for hacking into the democrats' computers or maybe for hacking into state voter roles. given that those things are not in this indictment at all, should we expect those things won't be charged or should we expect more russians will be criminally indicted for the hacking attacks, as well? third question, the indictment says a number of times that there are other people associated with the conspiracy who aren't named in the indictment. like this -- quote, from in or and 2014 to present, defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other and with persons known and unknown to the grand jury to defraud the united states by impairing, destructing the local government

through fraud and deceit with interfering with the process including the presidential election of 2016. defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other and with persons known and unknown to the grand jury. who are these persons known and unknown? especially who are these persons known to the grand jury who conspired with defendants? and if the grand jury knows who they are and the government knows that they conspired with defendants, why aren't those other people in the indictment? and are those people going to turn out to be russians or americans? and that brings me to my big question here, that brings me to the reason i cancelled my day off today in the middle of my day off today and veered off the highway and drove to the studio instead of taking susan away for a nice weekend like i was planning. sorry, honey. here is my question and why i'm here tonight, why bring charges like this against a bunch of russian people who, frankly, you're not going to get into a courtroom? why do that? and why do it now? legally, if in the future you're going to charge other people, you're maybe going to charge

americans with being part of this operation as a criminal conspiracy, does it help the prosecutor to have initially charged the conspiracy as a crime, to be laying down a law that there was a crime here in the first place. if you're going to charge other people with conspiring in a crime later, does it help to have charged this as a crime in the first place? that is actually a question i think we can get answered here tonight and that's why i cancelled my day off. but i will just say one other think before we bring on the experts that can answer some of this stuff, there has been and this is just my observation, i feel like there has been a bunch of stern finger wagging today that this indictment shows we americans should be more careful who we pay attention to online. that we should take care to not be duped by foreign operations like this. what this indictment actually shows if anything, this foreign operation wasn't some practical joke.

this wasn't a crank call. this wasn't a lark. this was a russian intelligence operation at its most ambitious. they say the budget for this was more than a million dollars a month. it was expensive. it was extensive. it was well thought out. it was run by professionals and it was effective. we also need our own professionals going after these guys to protect us against operations like this, to catch them when they do it, to stop them when they mount operations like this that target the american public so aggressively. this indictment today was a surprise in so many ways like all the other indictment days have had their surprises. but the biggest surprise i had

after covering this story so closely for this whole freaking year now, the surprise for me personally was hearing these charges and hearing what they were charging the russians for, it was the first time that i felt like finally, finally for the first time since we realized this was happening, finally it feels like someone is defending us and going after them. and taking seriously what they did and showing not incidentally, showing what this adversary is designed for and capable of and still working on for our election this year. finally somebody is defending us and taking it seriously and doing something about it. that alone for me today is the biggest shock. clock ticking ] what can a president do in thirty seconds? he can fire an fbi director who won't pledge his loyalty. he can order the deportation of a million immigrant children. he can threaten an unstable dictator armed with nuclear weapons. he can go into a rage

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a new kind of network designed to save you money. visit your local xfinity store today. even as we're trying to digest this indictment the from 13 citizens and three russian companies for a well spelled out series of allegations about the russian campaign to interfere in our election in 2016, even as we are absorbing this big new indictment and the story that it tells, we've got new breaking news tonight from one of the special counsel's other indictments. this is just happened. ever since former trump campaign chair paul manafort was indicted in october on multiple charges including money laundering, his legal team and special counsel's office have been locked in on going wrangling about basically his release package.

his bail package and the terms of his house arrest that are keeping him from being held in jail awaiting trial. paul manafort has never been fully released from house arrest. the team has not been satisfied with he has put up as security for the $10 million bond for him to be let out. they have gone back and forth on this for awhile. the basic idea of the bond is you have to put up $10 million so if you run to evade prosecution to skip out on your trial, we get to collect $10 million from your life here and from your loved ones and from your -- from everybody that knows you. that's the basic idea. but honestly, the fighting over it is a little boring. it's hard to follow what they are fighting about and whether or not he can be released to go to the gym and whether he's wearing an ankle bracelet and the rest of it. it's all these little details. it's been a little boring.

there's been a lot of it. tonight it is not boring at all anymore because tonight the special counsel's team filed with the court what looked to be their latest ping-pong report, the reasons why they find the latest bail offer insufficient. but then on page 3 of what they filed tonight, something very new and surprising pops up. they are basically making new criminal charges against him or at least describing them. quote, further the proposed package is deficient in the government's view in light of additional criminal conduct that we have learned since the court's initial bail determination that conduct includes frauds conspiracy. and that's subject of the bail discussion. they have evidence manafort got this mortgage with false and fraud representations to the federal savings bank. for example, manafort provided

the bank with doctored statements overstating income by millions. they have evidence related to this and bank frauds and conspiracies the court may find relevant and the banks may foreclose to secure his release. respectfully submitted robert mueller iii, special counsel. now, that's dramatic. it's not clear whether robert mueller intends to charge paul manafort in connection with the newly discovered bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies or if he's just letting us know that he knows about them but this is an unsealed filing just dropped tonight. tonight. this comes after today's special counsel indictment of the 13 russians. why are they unveiling new charges against paul manafort tonight? why is this all happening at once? joining us now is joyce vance former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama. joyce, this is a lot to absorb, thank you for helping us understand it. >> sure, happy to be here with

you. >> i'm going to ask you to stay after we take a break because i want to talk to you more broadly about what we learned from the conspiracy. -- the russia conspiracy indictment that we got today. there is so much in it. i want to ask you about this breaking news. i was not expecting to see that we were getting not exactly new charges but allegations of new criminal conduct against paul manafort tonight. what do you make of this including the timing? >> it's awfully interesting. one possible conclusion is that this means mueller concluded a concluded a plea deal with gates and that gates is giving them new information. but it's also real interesting because it could be a prelude to no longer permit manafort to be on bond and instead him being held in custody pending trial. that could be interesting. it would certainly mean that they meant business about the

manafort trial at this point. >> as far as i can tell, again, i'm not a lawyer. i look at the way this is described to the judge. this seems like a fairly detailed threat of further charges to robert mueller but this doesn't actually represent the government, the special counsel's office bringing charges. it's alerting the court they may be brought in the future? >> that's exactly right and because it goes to whether or not manafort has been honest with the court and forthcoming, about conditions that would secure his release, it suggests that they are thinking about the judge taking him into custody pending trial. >> cnn had a bombshell report rick gates is pursuing a plea deal if what you say is correct, that may be a sign that this has been fruitful already. if this means paul manafort will change his life to be held in jail instead of house arrest, this is really turning the screws. joyce, as i promised, i would love to hold you over if you don't mind.

i have a lot to talk with you about this russian indictment. thank you for being with us tonight. can you stay with us? >> absolutely. >> all right. we'll be back with joyce vance. stay with us. don't we need that cable box to watch tv? nope. don't we need to run? nope. it just explodes in a high pitched 'yeahhh.' yeahhh! try directv now for $10 a month for 3 months. no satellite needed. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream.

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you have had any assurances from the russians that they will provide these individuals for prosecution? >> no communications with the russians about this. we'll follow the ordinary process of seeking cooperation

and extra digmbass extradition. thank you. >> rod rosenstein today talking about the normal process of seeking extradition and citizens and three russian organizations have been criminally charged in the united states. the normal process means they will never ever see the inside of a u.s. courtroom, raising the question of what the strategy is bringing criminal charges against them today in this time and in this way. joining us is joyce vance. joyce, let me get your top line reaction to this indictment. obviously, we had two things happen today in that courtroom. we had an american citizen plead guilty and announce cooperation with the special counsel after apparently having marketed bank account numbers and other false identity documents online and then we've got this big indictment of russians who presumably will never, ever face u.s. justice. >> that seems like a safe assumption here. it will be difficult, if not

impossible, to get them to the united states for trial. and, as you say, this indictment is more of a novel than a spartan indictment. the question is who is this intended for? it will certainly socialize the american public to the idea that there was in fact russian interference in the election. >> and that that russian interference was a criminal matter, it wasn't some sort of strategic standoff as international relations defining this as criminal conduct to me as a surprise. i thought if any russians would get charged here, it might be for some of the hacking, sort of digital breaking and entering that we've had described towards the democrats and state election roles but then i started wondering if as a legal matter,

just as a legal strategy if it makes sense to define this as a crime so overtly in part because you plan down the road to charge other people with conspiracy for having participated in this criminal conspiracy maybe it helps, seen as laying down a predicate for people for the fact anybody involved in it participated in a crime? >> you know, i guess that's a possibility but i would think that that would be more of a byproduct of this indictment that's it's intent because the core crime is it's illegal for a foreigner to influence an american election. i had always thought we might see russians indicted but i expected we would see them indicted along with american counterparts. so this is a little bit of a curiosity. it does have this impact of clarifying for us that mueller believes that this is an election-based crime although there is a wire fraud and a

banking fraud charge in here and we got this aggravated i.d. theft charge that comes to light, but it does definitely hint that there could be americans down the road. we know that deputy attorney general rod rosenstein was awfully careful today in the press conference and indictment as of today does not involve americans. there is also unindicted co-conspirators. >> and is that normal to say they conspired together with persons known and unknown to the grand jury. if they knowingly conspired to persons known by the grand jury, why aren't those persons charged? >> that's pretty typical language prosecutors use. for whatever reason the co-conspirators will never been -- be indicted. perhaps there is a failure of evidence. perhaps they are cooperating with the investigation and will be charged by information down the road.

but one thing that's clear, even though we don't know who those unindicted co-conspirators are, they know who they are and this could be mueller signaling it's time to come in and cooperate if they ever intend to. >> joyce vance, former u.s. attorney from the great state of alabama. joyce, clear and chilling, as always. thank you. really good to have you here. >> thanks. >> lots more questions and apparently news that continues to develop over the course of this evening. stay with us. we'll be right back. woman: i'm a fighter. always have been. when i found out i had age-related macular degeneration, amd, i wanted to fight back.

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politically behind that. the only person i know to ask about how russia might react to 13 of their citizens being charged today in the special counsel's investigation, the only person i know to ask who i would absolutely trust his answer is mike mcfaul and he joins us live from munich. mr. ambassador, it is really, really beyond the call of duty for you to do this for us, but thank you for doing this -- joining us tonight. >> glad to be here, rachel, i just got here yesterday so i'm still on california time. >> excellent. good. we'll keep you up for a few hours then. >> all right. >> how do you think russia would react to this indictment today. 13 russian citizens indicted. nobody believes the u.s. will have an easy time getting into -- them into any american courtroom, maybe ever. how do you think russia will respond to this? >> well, yeah, it's going to be hard to get them to have putin send them to america but i think this has a pretty big deterrent

effect for a couple of reasons. number one, if they are not going to be sent by the russian government, if they show up in london, if they are on the french riff area, if they are anywhere they want to go where we have closer ties with the countries, they will have real problems. that's a big deterrent. their lives changed as a result. number two in my opinion what this document does is criminalizes this behavior in terms of interaction in our elections, right, with bots, with buying ads, all these things ambiguous. i think that will deter russia from doing this in the future. >> there aren't people charged to be direct employees or at least it's not clear there is an agency charged and two other organizations that are funding

sources for this agency, and then there are the people who are charged, both that oligarch that runs that agency and people that appearing to involved in the operation. does this, when you look at this indictment, does it look like a russian government, russian intelligence operation or hybrid or particularly russian? how should we see this? >> well, everything in russia is hybrid, right? they are cutouts and ways they can deny it and of course, mr. putin and the kremlin will deny they had anything to do with this. to me, i know this organization very well. i know the leader of it very well. he's a very close confidante to vladimir putin. he's in the inner circle and there is just no way that they would under take such an operation in the united states of america without getting approval from the kremlin and without getting approval from vladimir putin. think about our democratic society that's highly decentralized.

can you imagine an american entity doing this inside russia without talking to the white house? it's inconceivable to me that this was not green lighted by the kremlin. >> were you surprised by the scale of what they did by the number of different types of operations described, the way which they were organized and the amount of money spent and the way they adapted tactics, depending on how they thought they were doing? were you surprised at the extent of it? >> i was to be honest with you. you and i have followed this for a long time. remember, rachel, last week, you said is anybody else thinking about this russia thing anymore? a lot of people are thinking about it today. for me, the scale of what they did and the various ways that they did it, i think were quite incredible, but it's also quite incredible that we discovered it all and i think we should give a nod to mr. mueller and intelligence agencies because it

was multiple that discovered what was going on. that's really good sign for our intelligence community. >> mike mcfaul, munich night owl for us tonight. again, sir, sorry to disturb your sleep your first night there. thank you for joining us. really appreciate it. >> all right. thanks for having me. we'll be joined next by a former special fbi agent that was one of the first people to warn about what this indictment says happened in the election months before any of us knew. he's here next. liberty mutual stood with me

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guess or my estimate working in the intelligence field is that there is some sort of russian intel asset funding them in one way or another through some sort of scheme. the one thing misconstrued is that it's covert. you can hack stuff and be covert but you can't influence and be covert, you have to show your hand. that's why we've been able to discovery it online. >> that was a year ago. march 2017, the senate intelligence committee held one

of the only open hearings on russia's attack on our election. one expert spoke so bluntly and so presciently on what the attacks likely were, got us wondering how clint watts saw this so clearly before the rest of us did, particularly before we got this indictment spelling out a scenario for the russian attack that almost exactly matches up to what he said had likely happened almost a year ago. joining us now clinton watts, former fbi special agent. thank you for being with us and trying to let us know earlier than anybody else did. >> it's been an interesting journey. it was hard to convince people four years ago when we got started on this. >> when you read the indictment today and there were so many things that matched up with basically what you had described, what you'd seen trails of online, what you surmised about how they might be being controlled or coordinated within russia, did you see anything in the indictment that

was truly a surprise or that made you think this was bigger or different than you expected? >> there was only one thing. it was highly consistent with what we saw. we started tracking them in 2014 and the reason we knew it was connected to russia is because they initially came to us in dialogue about syria. so they would troll me about syria. we would watch them over time. and they kept shifting to pro-russian positions until they descended on the u.s. debate. and the end of 2014 they started talking about social issues like you saw in the indictment. the only real surprise in the indictment that i didn't know about was the level of technical signature building they were doing to mask themselves as looking like americans. it's one thing to make fake accounts to look and talk like americans but it's different to set up a virtual network in the u.s. so if you did just rudimentary tracking it would still look american. that's one thing that's key they

sent people to do reconnaissance in america and set up apparatus to make it look authentic. that was a key revelation today. >> the visits in 2014, there's one spelled out in a lot of detail, we get the two named russian defendants described as coming here in about a three to four week period in the summer of 2014, there's also a reference to another unnamed person in the indictment. and that's described as collecting intelligence. we had a list of states those defendants supposedly visited. do you have any sense of what kind of intelligence gathering that might have been? >> what i imagine they were trying to do was a couple different things, which i think is important to note in the indictment. one, they took about personally identifiable information, which is called p.i.i., which they

used to make actual credit cards and accounts and set up payment systems. they wanted to pay people for doing things. to do that you would think you can do that online but it's a lot easier if you do in-depth reconnaissance inside the states or purchases that way. the other thing is setting up the infrastructure of where do we have our servers at so it looks real. and the third step would be a landscape of what the election was going to look like in 2014, going into 2015. so what does it feel like on the ground. that's what we would do in intelligence operations. >> do you think some of the financial building that you described is how it was unravelled by the fbi and other intelligence agencies that fed into this indictment today? >> it's the key. you can see it with the fake social media accounts, but it's difficult to verify this comes from the troll farm but what does allow that is when they make purchases. and that's why when facebook came forward and said we tracked these back to the research

agency, that's essential because it nails it down to who the identities are behind it. it's always why it's more difficult to track to twitter because you're not making purchases and you don't have to register the same way to prove your actual authenticity as a person with those accounts. so the financial backbone is probably what brought this down and makes it so definitive. >> makes it all -- i think it gives us a clearer sense, even at a gut level, of how additional charges or clarification might come to us if we can follow the financial trails. >> yes. it makes me think they have interviewed someone who's been there, they have someone on the inside or someone who's gotten them technical information or some sort of manuscript that allowed them to understand how the place was operating because it was a detailed indictment.

>> knowing what their monthly budget was by september 2016 was remarkable. clint watts, a former special agent. a prescient learner for the nation on this. thank you for joining us and thanks from your service. >> thank you. i want to bring into the conversation my friend michael beschloss. i feel like i don't just want to talk to you tonight, i feel like i need to. >> thank you, rachel. pleasure to be with you always. >> what we got today from this indictment is a very detailed, sort of lurid description at length with lots of details of a foreign intelligence operation that targeted the u.s. public on a large scale with large stakes. has there ever been a foreign intelligence operation that affected the u.s. public and u.s. politics in this way? >> well, i think what we saw today, rachel, really took a step toward the possibility that this is the biggest covert

action operation against american interests that we may have ever seen. it's going to take a while to find out. this is something that under mined faith in our democracy, pitted groups against each other, and maybe, we may know soon, may have decided who was the president of the united states. when you've got an election that was decided by 77,000 voters in three states almost anything can affect it. >> you talked in the past how previous presidents have worried about whether or not russia or other adversary nations were taking covert action because you -- i've heard you talk about presidents worrying about that, not just because of the direct effect of a foreign covert action against us, but because of the expectation that the united states government, united states military would have to hit back so hard against something like that that it might bring us to the brink of a real war.

>> that's absolutely true. the biggest case of that was 1963 when john kennedy was assassinated and a lot of people said maybe the russians were behind this. oswald, the accused assassin, had been to russia, defected, came back, married the niece of a soviet intelligence official. and the person most worried was lyndon johnson, the new president. because he knew if americans thought the russians were behind the killing of our president and a change of power there might be a huge demand among americans to retaliate against the soviet union in a way that might lead to nuclear war. that's one of the reasons lbj did the warren commission. he went to the chief justice and said i hope you find a verdict that will resolve suspicions like this. >> which even in its narrative explains the seriousness of this kind of attack, historically

how the united states would have reacted to something targeting the u.s. public like this. this kind of major covert action. the contrast of what's happening now is counter historical. >> you have president trump today, didn't respond, didn't say how he would protect us. now it's time for the "last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> i'm sorry glad you had michael on tonight. that's the thing i was thinking about the most today is the presidential response to what was revealed today. >> and honestly, the -- i mean,