whatever fuels the next great rivalry. be it a new idea or just the need to win. we the consumers will be the judge of who comes out on top. london where president trump was greeted by massive street protests and prime minister theresa may. this afternoon at the exact moment when president trump was meeting the queen of england at windsor castle, back home in the u.s., the justice department announced a string of new charges in the russia investigation. we're going to cover a lot of ground tonight starting with these new indictments. for more on that, we're going to turn back to new york to ari melber. take it away. >> thank you very much, richard. there is, indeed, major news today in this russia investigation. bob mueller charging 12 mill tear military intelligence officers with conspiracy, and other serious crimes. mueller says the objective was to medal in the 2016 election. these charges come just three

days before president trump's scheduled one-on-one meeting with putin in finland. tonight, the white house says that meeting still on. now, here is the first thing to know about this indictment. it is exhaustive. mueller making the case against putin's agents with far more detail than would be legally required. over 29 pages of meticulous detail, mueller showing how these 12 russian military intelligence operatives allegedly worked to impact the election. these are not random hackers or the proverbial 400-pound guy sitting on his bed. these are putin government officials hacking their way through our political system, targeting not only clinton aides, but we're learning here from today's indictment, targeting entities opposed to trump in 2016, which includes the democrats national party and their congressional election shop then leaking that stolen material through fictitious online personas including d.c. leaks and guccifer 2.0.

right there, those entities are obviously quite important because mueller is not just indicting russians with this filing today, he's using what is a historic indictment to reveal how russia's strategy works, which might help inoculate some americans against the next cyber strike, whenever it may come. and mueller is showing this was not just about stealing e-mails. it was about deceiving the american public. we can think of it as a kind of information laundering, because long before trump was playing down the russia threat, these russian agents knew direct linking of material against clinton could be less effective. mueller chose today that material was presented as the product of these independent hackers or released through -- organization one. time to damage clinton at the most pivot toll period. today mueller's boss calling for nonpartisanship in announcing the charges, a marked contrast to the gop's partisan attacks on

the fbi official just yesterday at the contentious house hearing. >> blame for election interference belongs to the criminals who committed election interference. we need to work together to hold the perpetrator accountable. it's important for us to avoid thinking politically as republicans or democrats, instead to think patriotically as americans. our response must not depend on which side was victimized. >> there's a lot more in here. these new charges show how far this went beyond e-mail in the indictment. mueller laying out in detail how the russian military intelligence officers used all kinds of sophisticated tactics including spear phishing to implant something called malware, what russian agents use to create a kind of surveillance-style tool which allows them to actually track operatives, in this case, people who were working inside the dnc in realtime. this is a big deal. it's sort of a keyboard equivalent of a foreign powers

wiretap and, again, this was used for russia's agenda to impact our election. now, you know, it has become pretty common to ask if this scandal is worse than watergate. in terms of size and duration, today, mueller's indictment says, yes, this wasn't some third-rate cyber burglary. this was a big, long-term operation from a nuclear-armed foreign adversary of the united states. so that's one way to answer the question. now, in terms of whether there was top american involvement, mueller's indictment does not answer that question of whether it was worse than watergate in that sense in today's filing. we know that scandal toppled the presidency not only because of the crimes committed, but obviously because of who knew about them. the president. today's indictment states that the russian e-mail hacking began the same day candidate donald trump asked for it with russian agents making their first attempt to access clinton's personal e-mails on july 27th, 2016.

now, that's not technical proof trump knew about it when he asked, but it ain't helpful to him, either. then you have the suspicions that americans have, well, they don't stop there, mueller noting an unnamed u.s. candidate for congress asked the russians for stolen documents, which they provided. and they gave stolen data to a state lobbyist and online source of political news. seeming to confirm previous reports identifying a republican consultant in florida in that effort. and then this tantalizing sentence. russian operatives talked about their stolen material with, quote, a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of donald j. trump. many pointing to roger stone tonight as that person. he is denying it. the americans impacted here go far beyond those kind of political elites. in this filing, again, all this new stuff we're just getting into our newsroom and figuring out today, in this filing, mueller says the russians stole

personal information for half a million americans. the illinois state board of elections. this, of course, all comes at the moment when the president is having tea with queen elizabeth and three days before he's due to sit down with vladimir putin. a meeting that makes the trump administration look far weaker with the doj saying today that donald trump, he knew about these charges before we did, before the public did, before anyone heard about it when this filing came out from the grand jury today. he knew as of last week. democrats saying trump should cancel this meeting, top republicans not joining that request as of this hour. the white house is full steam ahead. now, let's take it all in. we know bob mueller doesn't preview his moves so nobody knows what he will precisely do next. today's indictment, it doesn't read like a final chapter. these references to an unnamed trump associate, whoever that may be, and to anonymous other americans mixed up in what is

now a charged criminal international conspiracy. and if mueller doesn't talk, some witnesses do. we were thinking back on this today, previously nbc news reported that witnesses were facing questions from mueller's investigators over what trump knew about hacked democratic e-mails before they went public and more seriously, whether he was involved in their, quote, strategic release. russia launched this cyber attack on the u.s. and that has gone largely unpunished by the trump administration. we know trump was dragged to sanctions for russia by congress. tonts tonight he skipping opportunity to to stand tall and tough on the world stage. and let's be clear about how big this is. tonight, we learned something no one knew in public yesterday, it does look like the russians were listening to trump's hacking request on july 27th, 2016. today we learned they are

charged with committing that requested crime that day. and so the questions that remain are significant, but far more narrow. was that a coincidence? some kind of overreaction to overheated candidate rhetoric? or was it a key step advancing an international criminal conspiracy unfolding in plain sight? i'm joined now by carol lee, nbc's national political reporter who along with our colleague, katy tur, broke that exclusive story i just mentioned about those questions that witnesses were being asked by mueller investigators in february, which feels very pertinent tonight. carol, thank you for your reporting. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> when we look at that line of questioning, what does that tell you about how early mueller was reviewing this issue, and what it means in today's indictment? >> well, if you look at what we reported in february, we -- there were a number of things in that story, but two of them stick out pretty significantly now in light of this indictment. the first is this july 27th,

2016, comment that now-president trump made that you just referenced that russia, if you're listening, can you find hillary clinton's missing 30,000 e-mails? you know, we reported at the time in february that witnesses were being asked whether somebody had direct -- somebody outside of the trump campaign had directed then-candidate trump to say that. you know, now we know that that day is quite significant in that it was the first time that russia seems to have actually tried to go and do what donald trump suggested russia do. the second piece that sticks out is roger stone. in our story in february, we talked about two witnesses who said that they were being asked a lot of questions about roger stone, not just roger stone in terms of his contacts with wikileaks, whether he met with julian assange and questions like that but about his -- the nature of his relationship with then-candidate trump, how close were they, under what circumstances did he leave the

trump campaign, how often did they still talk? there was this what looked to be some sort of effort to either kind of connect, make some kind of connection or probe, whether there was some kind of connection these two things. now looking at this indictment, the question that hangs over this is whether there was, "a," something to the july 27th comments that candidate trump made and "b" if there's something more to roger stone's role because we now know in the indictment that he is believed to be the unnamed person to contacts with senior members of the trump campaign also in contact with russian hackers. then if those two things merge in some way. i think you're slightly correct in that this seems to be -- this indictment seems to be the next step to getting closer to the question that is really the biggest one hanging over all of this, which is is there any american, anyone involved with the trump campaign, or associated with president trump, who was knowingly colluding with russians? >> right. when you refer to whether trump

was encouraged to ask this, you're saying that mueller may be investigating whether someone who knew more, and thus would have more criminal culpability, basically intimated to donald trump he could get more out of russia if it he would just open these flood gates on july 27th? >> right. that's one possibility. i think we, like, a lot of times in these sorts of stories, covering the mueller investigation, there's just a lot more questions than there are answers. that's definitely one possibility that they were trying to figure out if there was some effort to use then-candidate trump as a vessel in some way. whether, you know, it was asking him to -- advising him to say something publicly that somebody wanted him to say, and then there's a question of did he know something? we just don't know the answer to that question. the other thing we reported in our story in february is in that same news conference, president trump talked about lifting sanctions against russia and also suggested, you know,

accepting russia's annexation of crimea. these were questions that robert mueller team was asking witnesses about, who advised him to do that. there's clearly this very, very strong interest in the people around the president and why the president was saying things that we all saw him say during the campaign in public. >> carol lee from nbc news, thank you so much for sharing more of your reporting. >> thanks, ari. >> i want to turn to david kris, former attorney general for national security for the justice department. what do you see as most important in this indictment? and why in your view does it say more than it has to? >> yeah, well, a major missing piece of mueller's mosaic of charges in this indictment. previously we saw a good deal of propaganda efforts. concealment and lying. until today, we hadn't seen any charges on the hacking of the dnc, on the clinton campaign, and that was a major part of the russian election interference efforts.

so this sort of rounds out mueller's accounting of the russian efforts to influence our election in 2016. >> and is he saying more, you think, if for a legal strategy or why? >> well, i think that this indictment is what prosecutors would call a speaking indictment. it tells a compelling storying a narrative of the events that it describes and in the relations to the charges it brings. it does for the hacking what the previous indictment of the internet research agency did for the propaganda elements of the russian campaign. that is, it takes information that we knew in some sense from the intelligence community's assessment released in january 2017 but it presents it in a rich, compelling narrative with a clear story and plenty of detail that helps people understand exactly what was going on and i think it's valuable in part for that reason.

>> we hear a lot about the doj's independence. the national security division, which is where you previously worked, is one area that intersects more deliberately with other parts of the government because some things relate to the cia, the pentagon and other decisions to be made. that's why rosenstein made it very clear that the president was advanced warned on this as far back as last week. walk us through how something like today's indictment overlaps with the rest of the national security apparatus of the united states? and are there ever cases you've been in where you see, yes, oh, we found something bad, but it traces back to a major nuclear adversary, are we sure we want to deal with this in the courts to begin with? >> yeah, so one of the most challenging elements in an indictment like this one is the fact that a good deal of the information the government has in its possession will have been obtained from sensitive intelligence sources and methods and there is always a robust interagency debate about how, if at all, we can bring charges

that will make the criminal case in a compelling way, but without risking undue disclosure and compromise of sources and methods and i'm sure that such a debate occurred in this case, and then, of course, there's the ultimate decision about, you know, whether criminal prosecution is the right tool for the particular problem that we're addressing. often, it is. >> before i let you go, i have to ask you the other question on the minds of many people, i think some of our viewers based on what i understand, do you view the way this indictment is written as the last chapter, the last indictment in this case, or a preview of more to come? >> oh, i do not think it is the last chapter at all. what mueller is doing is following standard procedure. in these kinds of complex investigations to start with the low-hanging fruit, the readily provable stuff then work your way in toward the bull's-eye. i'm willing to bet that president trump and his closest associates right now are and

probably should be worried that depending on what the evidence is in the next round of activity, the walls may feel like they're closing in. >> well, david, i know you to be a careful prosecutor and speaker, so that is particularly notable coming from you with the caveat that i know you would bring to any forward-looking statement with the notion of the walls closing in and there being other indictments. certainly something on many people's minds and many people inside the white house. david kris, former assistant general for national security. thank you so much for your time tonight. >> thank you. what we're going to do is fit in a short break. we have much more on these charges today ahead including the top democrat on the house intelligence committee will join us here live. we also have live reporting from richard engel who you saw at the top of the hour from the uk with questions about russia's interference and how they followed the president. we'll be right back. >> mr. president, would you tell putin to stay out of u.s. elections? >> yes. h i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib not caused by a heart valve problem.

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welcome back to london. this is a bit of an unusual episode of "on assignment" because we're dealing with the breaking news only the russia investigation. later we'll go back to ari who will talk to the top democrat on the house intelligence committee for more on the indictments. the justice department said today the president had been briefed about the pending charges earlier this week. yets, today at a press conference with the british prime minister, the president once again called the russia investigation a witch hunt and despite the criminal charges against russian intelligence officers, the president still plans to go to helsinki on monday to meet with vladimir putin. this is the culmination of a european tour that has bruised,

battered, and tested our relationships. the president, it seems, likes to keep our enemies close, and throw our allies under the bus. today, it was theresa may's turn under the wheels. britain woke up today to an interview president trump gave to a leading tabloid. in it, he criticized may's negotiating skills,ing threatened another trade war, and endorsed her worst political enemy. it was so bad that today the president tried to take it all back. they put on a united front for the cameras, but the meeting with the british prime minister today began with a rare thing from the president. an apology. >> when i saw her this morning, i said i want to apologize because i said such good things about you. she said, don't worry, it's only the press. >> that's one thing they seem to agree on, it's all the press' fault. >> it's called fake news. we solve a lot of problems with the good old recording instrument.

>> theresa may was very british about it all. >> as you heard from the president, the united states is keen for us, we're keen to work with them, and we will do a trade deal with them and with others around the rest of the world. >> but there's a reason why they were standing at the prime minister's country retreat and not in london. because this is what the people of this country had to say. >> donald trump, go away! >> they marked him. they ridiculed him. they knocked him down. this protest feels very personal. people here tell us they're offended not just by the president's policies but by his words, not just by what he's doing, but who he is. >> i hate him. i hate this man. i hate everything he does and everything he stands for. >> he should not mess with london. >> they called it a carnival of resistance. it was an enormous march. organizers claim a quarter of a million people turned up, many

fueled by the perception that their prime minister was appeasing a bully. >> i think humiliation for theresa may to suck up to donald trump, state visit, hold his hands, refuse to offer moral leadership in condemning his policies, then what does he do, intervenes in british politics. >> president trump is deeply unpopular here, a recent poll found that just 11% of people in britain think he's doing a good job. the other 89% made their voices and their horns heard. ♪ but the president was hearing another tune all together. he was getting the tour that american tourists dream of. his very own changing of the guard. and a personal welcome from the queen of england. there were a few awkward moments, of course, but he got the royal treatment he came for.

>> the whole thing. would be laid out for him and he wants it. he wants it. >> bonnie greer, a playwright originally from chicago, moved here more than 20 years ago. >> he'll be grinning from ear to ear and he'll have a big picture he can take back to mar-a-lago. that's what he wants. that's what they'll give him. >> the queen, of course, doesn't get to choose who drops in for tea at windsor castle. that decision was made by another extra in the trump reality show, theresa may. >> i would give our relationship with the uk, and now especially after this two days with your prime minister, i would say the highest level of special. am i allowed to go -- am i allowed to go higher than that? i'm not sure. it's the highest level of special. >> there was another relationship that journalists here wanted to know about. >> now your british trip is coming to a close, could you tell us the three or four things you hope to achieve in your meeting with vladimir putin?

>> the president had a whole shopping list of things from ukraine, to syria, to nuclear weapons, eventually he remembered one more. >> i know you'll ask will we be talking about meddling? and i will absolutely bring that up. i don't think you'll have any gee, i did it, i did it, you got me. there won't be a perry mason here i don't think, but you never know what happens, right? i will absolutely firmly ask the question. >> we'll be back after the break with more on the knew charges today in the russia investigation. and later, our exclusive reporting on the questionable finances around the president's golf resorts. he's spending the night at one of them in scotland right now. stay with us. plaque psoriasis can be relentless.

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and welcome back to london. the president is at one of his golf courses in scotland tonight and in a few minutes, we'll take an exclusive look at the questionable finances of those courses. but first, ari is in new york with more on today's major indictments in the russia investigation. ari? >> thank you, richard. tonight we are all still processing and learning a lot more about this bob mueller indictment against 12 russian agents over hacking into the democratic party. plus hillary clinton's campaign e-mails. and disseminating that hacked information all at the most pivotal times in the general election of the 2016 campaign. now, as promised, we turn to the top democrat in the house intelligence committee, congressman adam schiff, who's been leading his own parallel investigation into all this. thank you for joining us on this

busy evening, congressman. when you look at what is alleged in this new indictment, do you think these russian agents could have pulled all of it off alone? >> well, it's hard to say. i mean, certainly, there's plenty of evidence that there were communications with americans and we knew this before the indictment. one of the thing that's not even mentioned in this indictment is the fact that the russians told the trump campaign through george papadopoulos, we know, perhaps through others, that they were in possession of the very same stolen documents that are laid out in the indictment. that happened in april. we know from this indictment that it was just the month before that they did the hacking, so almost immediately thereafter, they're telling the trump campaign we have this, and as you pointed out earlier on the show, when the president goes out in july and says, hey, russians, if you're listening, these are some other e-mails we're interested in your hacking, they go out and attempt to hack those, too. and i think it's very

significant not just that bob mueller puts the date, july 27th, in the indictment, but even the time. they want us to know that this happened after donald trump made that speech and i think that's a pretty significant tell as well. >> so we're lucky to have you, given your mastery of the timeline. viewers hearing you may think, okay, if they already had stuff in april which they were sharing, at least information about that, what exactly was different about what they were pursuing in july? >> well, what we've seen is there were hacks of a number of different democratic institutions, and there was also a lot of thought and cave put into what is the best timeline to start releasing this material? one of the other interesting aspects, again, when you put this indictment together from what we know from the investigation and some of the other plea documents is you have that june 9th meeting in trump tower where the trump campaign at the highest levels offered derogatory information on

hillary clinton. the message that goes back to the kremlin is we'd love to help but we're disappointed at what you produced at the meeting. days later, julian assange announced he's received the russian e-mails or stolen e-mails from the russians. he doesn't mention the russians per se, but we know that's where they came from and we also see a suggestion by don junior that the best time they can use the help is late summer and of course we see that's what the russians do. they start dribbling these out in late summer to maximal effect. >> so you're laying out a rather subtle approach to conspiracy, or collusion. which is the notion that there's some sort of menu and the russians are offering all kinds of things and getting relatively high-level access to the trump campaign saying we're cooler to this, warmer to that, also here's the time where it would

be most helpful. based on your knowledge, as well as whatever you can glean and share from your own investigation, does that rise to the level of criminal intent or at the end of the day, is that the russians doing what many people know they've done, which is throw a lot of stuff at the united states with or without american encouragement? >> what we see is really classic russian tradecraft. that is they'll make outreaches to people, to americans. they'll begin by using intermediaries. they'll then see whether there's a receptivity to the approach and if there is, they'll follow it up with other approaches. and this is the pattern we see with the approach through the professor to papadopoulos, then the approach to the foreign ministry, then the approach to the meeting at trump tower, and you see that they're getting the message effectively back from the trump campaign, yes, we are receptive to this, in fact, the president's -- the president, himself, as candidate says quite publicly that he wants the russians to help by hacking and you see the russians come

through. now, whether there is sufficient proof of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt involving the trump campaign, bob mueller is in the best position to know, what i can see are different pieces of this puzzle. but what i can see also has missing pieces. i don't know, for example, who papadopoulos talked to about the russian approach. we were going to bring in john mashburn, one of the policy advisers for the trump campaign this week. he'd agreed to come in, but as soon as we informed the majority he was going to come testify, the majority intervened to tell him not to come. the majority doesn't want to know who in the trump campaign was aware of this approach and who might have been in the know prior to the meeting in trump tower. but bob mueller knows at this point, and we'll just have to wait to see whether the next indictment on the hacking and dumping operation, if there's another, is focused on americans. >> as you say, bob mueller knows, donald trump knew for some time here with advanced warning and what your colleagues yesterday in that rather

contentious hearing knew i think is also an open question given just how ferocious some of the political pushback has been. congressman schiff, top democrat on the house intelligence, thank you so much for being here tonight. >> thank you. >> much appreciated. we have a lot more tonight on the blockbuster indictments as well as an exclusive look at some new and big questions about the financing of donald trump's scottish golf courses. please, stay with us. and the safey for "most parallel parallel parking job" goes to... [ drum roll ] ...emily lapier from ames, iowa.

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and welcome back to london. despite strong opposition from several democrats, the president is still planning to meet with vladimir putin, but not right away. putin, you see, is busy sunday night hosting the finals of the soccer world cup, so president trump has to wait. as we saw, london is out of the question. so we hopped on air force one and went to scotland to spend the weekend at a golf resort, one of three that he owns on this side of the pond. we have also been spending time in scotland lately investigating the finances of those golf resorts. what we discovered is numbers that simply don't add up. a presidential visit is a great way to promote a golf resort, and it doesn't hurt when the president is also the owner. >> it's reasonable to say he's getting a publicity value 100 times over what the cost is of him visiting these properties. >> robert wiseman is the director of public citizen, a watchdog group which has often

criticized the president. >> every time we in the media show president trump, with a trump logo behind him, we're building his brand. >> absolutely. he is completely aware of it. >> he's turning the presidency into a great big branding exercise. >> based on the cost of past presidential trips, wiseman and his team have projected that this weekend could cost the taxpayer around $1.9 million of which around $200,000 will be spent at trump turnberry. >> secret service agent stays on his property, or eats at his restaurant, that's a payment that's going to go to the trump businesses. >> and there were a whole lot of secret service agents in turnberry right now. this is a beautiful corner of scotland. you'd think with president trump serving as marketer in chief, a golf course here would be a money-making machine but it turns out president trump doesn't just come here to sink a

few holes on the lush and manicured greens, he's seeking an enormous amount of money, which begs the question, why? public records show the president paid more than $50 million for this property when he bought it in 2014. even though it was losing money. since then, he spent another $85 million on renovations, but the resort continues to lose millions of dollars each year. of all the luxuries the president enjoys, golf courses may be the most expensive. >> now, nobody knew trump could do that, right? >> it's his escape. it's the place where he feels most at home and he lets his guard down and reveals himself. >> american golf writer, alan shipnuck, made national headlines with the things president says on the golf course. he says the trump you'll get on the green -- >> we'll do our best. >> -- is the same trump you'll get in the white house. >> it sounded good.

>> i've never seen anyone drive a golf cart where donald trump drives his golf carts, driving on the greens, driving on the "t" boxes. they're trump courses. >> if you're king of the castle, you get to do what -- >> ownership has its privileges. >> you think that's why he wants to own these places, so he can do things like that? >> of course. it's a big part of it. he gets to reshape them in his own image, whether it's the gold facets or tacky waterfalls or the ability to break all the rules. >> the president owns a total of three golf courses on this side of the ocean, two in scotland, and one in ireland. in scotland and ireland, private companies have to file detailed annual financial reports which are then made publicly available. that's why we know more about the president's businesses here than anywhere else. all three courses are losing money, and the president is still more than $200 million in the hole from them.

>> they've just become these sinkholes of money. spent to much money to build the courses and the case of turnberry to renovate this huge old hotel and to build these new holes and he's not getting it back. >> why would he keep putting money into losing investments? >> it's one of the great mysteries of the golf world, what was trump thinking? i'm not a hotelier, real estate agent. if you look at the numbers, they don't add up. >> to make sense of the numbers, we tracked down neil, these days he runs a posh polo club, but starting is 2006, he was the project manager for trump's first golf investment in scotland. >> he invests a lot of money, but he didn't ask anyone, it was all his own money. >> that was all cash? >> yeah, he paid asking price, he paid for it then my first three paychecks, if you like, were not wired to my bank but were checks signed personally by donald trump. >> did that surprise you, did

that surprise other people in the organization? >> this was very unusual, and they told me that. they said, you know, doesn't really do this often. >> to say that as a real estate developer, donald trump didn't often pay cash is a major understatement. he built an ohm pyre with other peoples money. and he was proud of it. >> i know debt. >> donald trump has always brought everything on credit, all of a sudden at this moment in this life, in his career as he's getting mixed up with politics, why did he start paying cash? it leads to a lot of innuendo, leads to a lot of speculation about where did the money come from, what were his motives? >> and they're not making money. they were losing money beforehand. >> as a pure investment, they don't make any sense. >> nor does the fact that the president had such an enormous amount of cash on hand. >> i did this out of cash flow and we just have an absolutely zero-debt property. >> the president's cash flow, like his golf handicap, is hard

to establish. citing an ongoing audit, he has refused to make his tax returns public so there's no easy way to figure out the source of his funds. >> i obviously can't comment on that because what i know is i know where the money came from, i saw the statements. i saw the invoices. i settled everything. he paid all his bills on time. which in the development world is, you know, quite unusual. >> so you saw what came out of his account, but would you know how the money got in there? >> no. i would not have known. >> what are your sources telling you about money going into these properties? where did the money come from? >> they've been sounding alarms since the sale went through. you know, where'd the money come from? and who was behind the money and what was the purpose of it? you know, that's been a constant in these sales and as trump became president, the drum beats got much louder. >> one of the things fueling those suspicions is something respected golf reporter james

dodson says his heard from eric trump in 2013 when he was asked about the funding for his family's golf courses. "we don't rely on american banks," he was quoted as saying, "we have all the funding we need out of russia." more recently, he denied saying those words calling the report fake news. the president has denied taking in russian money, "no loans, no nothing," he tweeted. why would the president invest his own money in turnberry? >> turnberry is a great golf course. >> are golf courses a profitable investment, a good way to make money? >> almost never. having a club -- and having members is great way to lose a fortune. >> someone else's money. >> someone's losing money. i don't know who's losing money at turnberry. it seems like it's become kind of a black hole for money. up next, the protests have died down for now in london but

america's allies in europe are still coming to grips with what the president has done here so far.

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in addition to learning about the new charges in the russia investigation, we also learned today from some exclusive reporting by our nbc news colleagues that the president's own military chiefs went straight into damage control mode after this week's nato summit. the commander in chief had

apparently warned other leaders behind closed doors that unless they increase their defense budgets, the u.s. would, quote, do our own thing. pentagon staffers were told to get on the phone with our allies to reassure them that the president is still committed to nato. nato was set up to contain the threat from russia, a threat that is still real today. it is still the world's most powerful military alliance. its members fight and train shoulder to shoulder. this recent show of force took place right on russia's doorstep. but nato has only ever been as strong as its most important member. the united states contributes more money, more hardware and more personnel than any of the other 28 member countries. this display of military might is about sending a message to russia and its increasingly nervous neighbors.

a message that any attack will immediately send powerful american warships roaring into battle. and american gis landing on europe's shores to defend our allies, just as they did during world war ii. but for several years now, the idea that nato was a relic designed to fight the wars of the past has been strongly argued in right-wing circles. >> this is the corpse of an international institution that's become zombified. it's dead. what you do with a zombie is you shoot it in the head. >> michael desh teaches political science at note name. you called nato a zombie. what a zombie? >> it was a colorful metaphor to make a point. >> do you think nato is outdated? >> yes. it's run its course. >> that's right. >> that sentiment turned into a key talking point in the trump campaign.

>> i have said that nato was obsolete. >> and it is. it's obsolete. >> nato is obsolete. it's old. it's fat. it's sloppy. >> after taking office, trump walked back some of that language and focused instead on attacking other nato members for not spending enough on their own defense. >> nato, you got to start paying your bills. the united states is not going to take care of everyone. >> the president claims to have gotten that commitment in brussels this week. >> the people have stepped up today like they have never stepped up before. >> but critics say his transactional view of nato where you get out what you put in is undermining the entire ethos of the alliance. >> they are sworn to stand together against aggression. >> when nato was created 70 years ago, americans made a lofty promise. >> to come to the aid of any one of them who may be attacked. >> undertaking that burden is

what gave american presidents the right to call themselves the leaders of the free world. but that's one title our current president has never claimed. >> from now on, it's going to be america first. >> fundamentally i think he does not see the value that nato brings to u.s. security. >> mark helped shape u.s. policy on nato and russia. >> it plays well at home because americans are frustrated about free riding and overcommitment of u.s. security. so it is a political tool he uses to gain support at home. >> critics say nato's mission ended with the fall of the berlin wall and the end of the cold war. but the rise of vladimir putin brought about a new age of confrontation. four years ago i watched as russians marched into ukraine and occupied the region of crimea.

this is a ukrainian military facility but there are no supply envoys coming in and out right now because they've been blocked by militia volunteer men. it looks like they'll be here for quite awhile. >> putin got away with it. crimea is now firmly in russian hands. ten years ago when russia invaded georgia, nato didn't intervene because georgia is not a member country. now it is allowing the russian war in ukraine to rage on for the same reason. that has all of russia's neighbors worried. in sweden, the government wants people to be prepared for war, and that fear is spreading across europe even to nato member countries. in those closest to russia, people are joining volunteer defense forces in record numbers. and in norway, the biggest hit on tv is a show that imagines a future under russian occupation. putin clearly sees a war coming, and he's getting ready for it.

still, he thinks russia is getting a bum rap. >> i'm not saying that putin is a nice guy, but on the other hand the united states and nato made moves that were clearly provocative. >> so you think nato provokes russia and makes russia aggressive? >> it takes two to tango, richard. i would say we bear some responsibilities. >> responsibility because nato has been expanding, adding new member states from russia's former sphere of influence. pushing nato away, as president trump has been doing, strikes desh as reasonable. >> there is a feeling now that president trump is willing to sacrifice nato to make vladimir putin happy. are they right? >> no. i don't think that they're right. >> but to our allies in europe, putin's russia poses a clear and present danger, a danger that president trump is ignoring as he prepares for his big meeting

with the russian leader. >> when i see an american president smiling with a dictator in singapore and smiling and shaking hands with a dictator in moscow and castigating our closest friends and our allies, in many ways president trump is actually fulfilling president putin's objectives. >> how? >> because he would love the image of a meeting with russia to be the dominating headline. of president trump's swing through europe. instead, you will get a headline that trump meets with putin and agrees to cooperate. >> we'll be right back.

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