Agents of Chaos (2020): Season 1, Episode 2 - Part Two - full transcript

We've all been through
a lot together.

It was corrupt, it was dirty cops,

it was leakers and liars.

I don't know that other presidents
would have been able to take it.

Some people said no,
they wouldn't have.

Dirty cops. Bad people.

For over three years,
we went through hell.

We first went through
"Russia, Russia, Russia".

We had the witch hunt.

We then went through
the Mueller Report.

I did nothing wrong.



It was all bullshit.

TRUMP ACQUITTED

AGENTS OF CHAOS
PART 2

YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED

The long shadow of Vladimir Putin
falls on Capitol Hill tomorrow.

We now count at least nine figures
in the Trump campaign

who have met with the Russians.

Collusion.

The word does not exist
in the legal books.

There's no evidence of collusion.

There is circumstantial evidence
of collusion.

How is it not collusion?

Overt, knowing collusion.
That's what the dossier says.

It's hard to say when the word
collusion took over our minds.



But it was probably around the time
we first heard about this dossier,

a secret document compiled
by an ex-British spy,

painting a lurid picture
worthy of a James Bond movie.

The allegations in this dossier that
the Russians have got

compromising material
on Donald Trump...

To some, the dossier promised hard
evidence that Trump was in bed,

literally, with the Russians.

The pee pee tape supposedly
took place on that bed.

Hallelujah! It's comedy Christmas!

To others, it was a dangerous hoax,
created by Trump's opponents

to destroy his presidency.

...infamous, salacious
Trump dossier.

Piece of garbage.

Fusion GPS, that was the firm behind
the infamous Steele dossier.

Everyone knows Fusion GPS was
the political strategy firm

paid for by the Clinton campaign to dig
up Russian dirt on Donald Trump.

Fusion GPS Co-Founder Glenn
Simpson pleading the fifth...

A few weeks after Trump's
inauguration, my phone rang.

It was someone who knew
about the mysterious dossier.

But this person wasn't just a source.

His company had commissioned
the document itself.

He wanted me to meet him
at a secret location in California.

Alright, we're rolling.

I was becoming concerned that
if I didn't tell some people this story,

and something did happen to me,
it would never get out.

Glenn Simpson is a former reporter
who now does investigations

for private clients,
including politicians.

Early in 2016, Simpson was looking
into Donald Trump

on behalf of Trump's opponents.

Simpson hired Christopher Steele,
the author of the dossier,

to help investigate Trump's ties
to Russia.

What we were seeing,
from both Chris' reports

and also from all the other work
we were doing,

was what appeared
to be a full blown conspiracy

between the Trump campaign
and the Kremlin.

If he's really conspiring
with the Russians,

does that mean I'm in danger
from the Russians?

I had scary conversations
with the wife and kids

about moving to Canada.

He didn't move to Canada.

Instead, Fusion GPS continued
to investigate Trump.

And Trump aimed his Twitter fire
straight back at Fusion.

Simpson and his partners had the
tweets framed like badges of honor

from their wars against the President.

Mr. Simpson,
why are you taking the Fifth?

Mr. Simpson, are you facing
legal or criminal exposure?

There's been a lot of extreme
and laughable versions of this.

Most extreme is that,
knowing in June of 2016,

that Donald Trump would score
a hundred to one upset victory

over Clinton,
we began to frame him,

so that we could ensnare him
in a Vladimir Putin scandal

and ruin his presidency.

Which definitely gives us more credit
than we deserve.

It doesn't do us any good to mislead
or make anything up.

We weren't trying to prove anything
about Donald Trump's connections

to Russia. We wanted to know
what they were.

COLLUSION

- So you're not a journalist?
- I am not a journalist.

- You're a gun for hire.
- Call me what you want.

I'm a consultant.
I work for clients.

Sometimes they're from this country.

Sometimes they're
from other countries.

Sometimes they're Republicans.
Sometimes they're Democrats.

In 2012, we had been hired
to look into Mitt Romney.

We were asked to do that because
I had been a business reporter

at the Wall Street Journal.

Romney's a self-made tycoon
with a very opaque financial history,

it wasn't clear how much taxes
he paid.

When 2016 rolled around,
we had another tycoon,

and I figured no one would know
how to do the work on him.

You're fired.

A Republican friend of mine,
who's involved

with a lot of dark money,
is the best term for it,

reached into one of the pockets
that he knew about

and found some funding for us.

It was the centrist establishment wing
of the Republican Party.

They definitely didn't want someone
who had a lot of nontraditional views

for a conservative.

Simpson wouldn't say it, but they were
working on behalf of Marco Rubio.

In the beginning of any new project,

you want to read everything that's
already been written about that subject.

So I ordered a used copy
of every Donald Trump book.

Sliced them up, pull apart the spines,

and put them
into a two-sided scanner.

And then you run it through an optical
character recognition program.

And that allows you to index the books

and, therefore, when you're looking
for everything about Melania,

you just type in Melania.

After books comes lawsuits.

I've been investigating wealthy people
and big companies

for most of my adult life.

In the case of Donald Trump, the
number of lawsuits was off the charts.

I've never seen anything like it.

I'm a Washington person.
Trump is a New York person.

Washington is about government
and policy.

Donald Trump is about real estate
and girls and things like that.

I never really paid much attention
to Donald Trump.

He was just a kind of buffoonish
character from another city.

And I was surprised, when I did start
reading up on him,

to have all these gangsters coming up.

We gathered a lot of string on his
connections to the Italian mafia.

But the gangster that most interested
me was Felix Sater

because he was Russian.

What was the old quote
by Winston Churchill?

"Russia is a riddle trapped in..."

"It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery
inside an enigma."

Felix is a bit of an enigma himself.

He was a tough kid,
born in the Soviet Union,

who grew up in Brooklyn,

with a father who was muscle
for the Russian mob.

Felix worked briefly on Wall Street
before serving time

for attacking a broker
with a broken margarita glass.

But children are not their fathers.

Sater's ties to Russian intelligence
made him a valuable FBI informant,

who even played a role in tracking
down Osama Bin Laden.

When he emerged from prison,
Sater went to work

in the only industry less regulated
than Wall Street, real estate.

And that's where he met
Donald Trump.

Did you have any insight
in what his motivation was?

"I could win, I could be president."

"But if I lose,
I'll make a lot of money."

Do you think he saw it that way?

Maybe. I don't know.

There'd be nothing wrong
with him thinking

that running for president
could enhance his business.

The other people that ran,
it was good for business for them.

Their business happens
to be politics.

Is there a different standard
for a businessman?

This is not a cage match.

Aren't they all running
to see what happens?

There's no downside, 'cause
they get a better name recognition.

There's always another election later.

There's always a new post
to be filled.

And the higher your name recognition,
the better the post.

In business,
better the name recognition,

the more possibility to build
more towers or sell more things.

Everyone wants to create
a huge conspiracy

in how inappropriate and improper
everything is.

Give me a break.

I walked into his office and told him

that I'm going to be the biggest
developer in New York

and he needs to get on board now
before it's too late.

He started laughing,
and I started doing business with him.

I thought it would benefit me.

And, obviously, he thought
it would benefit him.

Which is why people do business
in the first place.

How many times have you conversed
with Mr. Sater?

- Over the years?
- If you could estimate.

Not many.

If he were sitting in the room
right now,

I really wouldn't know
what he looked like.

There was plenty of pictures of him
and Felix.

There was plenty of first-hand
accounts of them being together.

Anytime someone doesn't want
to answer a question

you have to ask why.
When they lie, you have to ask why.

I'm pretty sure he'd recognize me.

Our first project was
Trump Phoenix.

And then we did
Trump Fort Lauderdale.

We did the Trump Soho.
We looked at doing Trump London,

Trump Paris, Trump Istanbul.

We were developing real estate.
We were developing Trump Towers.

And if Russian buyers had bought
some units...

Well, you know what they say,

"any customer whose check clears
is a good customer".

But I wasn't bringing Russian money
into the Trump Organization.

Never have. Not one dollar.

Or not one ruble.

I will suspend my campaign.

... deeper faith that the Lord
will show me the way forward.

There's a lot of people who love me,
they just won't vote for me.

But it's okay.
It's not a problem.

But let's be honest.

The media has given these personal
attacks that Donald Trump has made

an incredible amount of coverage.

The press wouldn't stop writing
about him.

He was getting a lot of ink worldwide.

I was sitting in my backyard,
reading the news on my iPad.

And it just dawned on me.
"This would be the perfect time."

"I think we could get a Trump Tower
Moscow deal done."

I called Michael Cohen, said,
"I wanna come by and talk".

My vision was to build
the tallest building in Europe.

I actually used to dream about making
it the tallest building in the world.

It's a billion dollar deal.
Absolutely.

Vladimir Putin.

In terms of leadership,
he's getting an A

and our president
is not doing so well.

Trump was essentially adopting,

rather than the bipartisan US foreign
policy vis-a-vis Russia,

Putin's foreign policy.

Questioning NATO

and sanctions that had been imposed
upon Russia

because of their activities in Ukraine.

Essentially, taking Putin's side
of the fight.

And that was odd, to say the least.

Well, he is a very colorful person.
Talented, without any doubt.

We've got no business judging
his merits,

it's up to the US voters.

But he's the indisputable leader
of the presidential race.

We're gonna have a great relationship
with Putin and Russia.

How can we not welcome that?
Of course, we do.

Of course Russians preferred Trump,

because Trump said
that he preferred Russians.

If Clinton had said that, Russians
would have preferred Clinton.

And if they both had said
that they liked Russia

and wanted to be friends with Russia,

Russia would have said:
"We'd be happy with whatever!"

US Presidential candidate
Donald Trump has praised

Russian President Vladimir Putin's
leadership skills.

"In terms of leadership
he is getting an A."

"Our president is not doing so well
though," said the billionaire.

Positive press was happening
in Russia about him.

He was saying good things
about Russia.

I certainly was happy
that he was saying those things

because I was trying to get
a Trump Tower Moscow deal done.

Are you from Russia?

I think our relationship with Russia
will be very good.

Vladimir Putin was on 60 Minutes
with me three weeks ago, right?

Putin. And they have one
of the highest ratings

they've had in a long time.
So I'm going to give him total credit.

Felix Sater: I just watched
the Trump press conference.

Loved Putin/Russia reference.

I need that part of the press
conference cut into a short clip

to be played for Putin.

Clearly a project of that size,

the highest levels of power would
have had to allow it to happen.

In Russia, especially in Moscow,

everything ends at the very, very top.

The bigger the deal, the more likely
it would get to the very, very top.

It would have been very helpful
if it was blessed at the top.

The entire system is so messed up

that if you try to work legitimately,
you will fail.

You cannot operate there without
what they call a roof,

which is protection from somebody.

Because somebody else is gonna
want to take you out,

and somebody else is going to use
the tax department

or the police department
to attack you and destroy you.

So, you need the protection
of a politician,

or an intelligence guy,
or a policeman,

or somebody of that nature.

And it starts at the very, very top,

and it goes all the way through
the entire society.

All the way down to the guy who owns
a fruit stand,

he pays somebody off to stand there.

I was trying to do a deal.

I believe we will have a very
good relationship with Russia.

I believe that I will have a very good
relationship with Putin. Go ahead.

Mr. Trump is perfect
for Russian oligarchy

because he shares a basic
philosophical tenet

that the rules are a joke.

There are no laws.
Law is for losers.

Anyone who cares about anyone else
is a moron.

So it's a perfectly transactional
gangster world out there.

Anyone who tells you otherwise
is a fool.

That is in perfect harmony
with Mr. Putin and his group.

There are no ethics.
There's no morality. It's all a joke.

Americans, from that point of view,
are worse than Russians.

We talk about the rule of law,
we talk about justice,

as though we believed in it.
But we must not.

For them, someone like
Hillary Clinton is a hypocrite.

But Mr. Trump is normal.
Mr. Trump is just a normal man.

That's the way men are supposed
to behave,

because we all know that all this
other stuff is just nonsense.

Mr. Trump is not a real oligarch,
he is a fake oligarch.

He has an ambition
to be a real oligarch.

And this is why he looks up to Putin.

He looks up to these people as the
guys who have actually made it.

These are the made men.
And he knows that he's not.

Mr. Trump makes it obvious
that he has no values whatsoever

aside from the enrichment
of Mr. Trump.

So here's the question.

Was Trump running to win or was
he just running to make more money?

After all, his role as a presidential
candidate would massively inflate

the value of his name.

You have to understand that
Donald doesn't really develop.

Donald licenses his name.
He's got a brand.

And his brand is Trump.

I went a few times to Russia
to try to build a Trump Tower,

way before the election.

In the past, his profile
wasn't as big in Russia

and the developers in Russia,
at the time,

couldn't understand why they would
pay him a premium

to use his name if they couldn't
resell It for a higher number.

Russia.

This 19-year-old hopes to either
host her own TV show

or become a professional piano
player in the future. Russia!

Trump made himself more attractive
to potential partners in Russia

when he brought his Miss Universe
contest to Moscow in 2013.

The pageant was co-produced
with a Russian businessman,

Aras Agalarov, whose son,
Emin, wanted a singing career.

This whole relationship was initiated
by Emin Agalarov,

to host the Miss Universe contest
in Moscow,

which supposedly would give us
exposure, international exposure,

would give Emin international
exposure,

because he would sing two songs
at the Miss Universe final.

We were promised
some Western sponsors.

Sponsorships did not materialize
to the extent we hoped.

We lost a lot of money.
But Emin did sing his songs.

I had a great weekend with you
and your family.

Trump Tower Moscow is next.
Emin was wow!

Mr. Trump announced that he wants to
do a Trump Tower in Moscow with us.

But by September of 2014,

we realized that the Trump
Organization has lost interest.

Turns out they walked away because
they jumped on Felix Sater's deal.

Me and Michael Cohen
were having lunch one day,

talking about marketing
of the building.

And I said: "Wow, we give
a top floor unit to Putin."

"The whole floor."

"We could probably charge an extra
two hundred and fifty million dollars"

"from all the Russians that would
want to live in the building."

Everyone did their part.

Sater and Cohen inked a letter
of intent on the Moscow tower deal

as Trump praised Putin
on the campaign trail.

I'll get along with Putin.
I was on 60 Minutes with Putin,

he was my stablemate
three weeks ago.

The messy mashup of business
and politics was echoed in Russia.

Through his father,
Emin Agalarov got a message

from the Russian government
to give to Trump.

The Russians had documents that
would incriminate Hillary Clinton.

Emin used his music agent to convey
the message to Donald Trump Jr.

As part of its support for Trump,

the Russian government would
hand over the dirt on Hillary.

Donald Trump Jr. was enthusiastic.

On June 9th, he invited
his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner,

and Trump's campaign manager,
Paul Manafort,

to rendezvous with a group
of Russians at Trump Tower.

We spoke to someone who was there,
representing the Agalarovs.

I walked towards the tower.

We took the elevator and just walked
into this big conference room.

I sat there pretty much silent
for the whole meeting.

I think I produced
like one sentence.

And that was it,
the meeting ended.

For security purposes, they were
supposed to report the meetings

with foreigners.

Why wouldn't someone report
that meeting?

The only reason someone would
not report it is if they forgot about it

because it was so boring.

You've got all these people
in that room.

It would certainly seem like
this is it,

this is the ultimate conspiracy.

But on the other hand, particularly
having talked to some people,

it seems like it was a nothing burger.

I've heard that phrase used
to describe it.

So what is your view?

So you have Russia on one side
saying, "We want to help you,"

and you have the campaign on the
other side, through Don Jr. saying,

"Love it!"

You have a willingness
on both sides that's expressed.

Now, it is true at the meeting,
it is kind of a fizzle

in the sense that one side's,
"Where's the dirt?"

and the other side's,
"We don't really have a lot."

"We didn't put it in a box
with a bow."

But you don't have a situation
where you're sitting there going,

"Gee, I wonder if the Russians
might do it."

They're doing it. But you don't give
something for nothing.

And we know what Russia wanted
from the meeting.

Russia wanted to get rid
of the Magnitsky Act.

The Russian government hated
the Magnitsky Act,

a law passed by the US Congress
that imposed economic sanctions

following the killing of a Russian
anti-fraud whistleblower.

The law became a powerful tool for
targeting international corruption.

Getting rid of the Magnitsky Act
was a prize worth paying for.

Just to make sure there's no doubt,
it is illegal

for a foreigner to give anything
of value to a presidential campaign.

Period. Full stop.
It is also illegal to accept it.

You had Jared Kushner,
Paul Manafort and Don Jr. all there

to see what Russia could give them.

But they didn't have anything to offer
in exchange

that would lead
to the negotiation working.

It seemed like everyone wanted
to make a deal,

but they were trapped
in different movies.

The Russians were playing roles from
a John Le Carre spy thriller,

and the Trump team was deep
in Godfather territory.

Stranger still was the fact that Russia
really did have dirt to dish.

The next day, the Agalarovs promised
Trump "a sizable birthday gift".

On June 14, his actual birthday,

a painting arrived at Trump Tower

and Russian military intelligence
published the first large dump

of thousands of emails stolen from
the Democratic National Committee.

It was on that same day that the
business side of the Trump operation

decided to change direction
on another Russian project.

I wanted to take Michael Cohen,
and Donald if possible,

to the St. Petersburg
Economic Conference.

All of the wealthiest people
in Russia, everyone is there.

And in a two, three day time frame,

we could get a Trump Tower
Moscow deal done.

The reason that we couldn't go
was because of politics.

Trump had never run for office before.

Did someone have to tell him
that it was a bad look

to be doing a Moscow Tower deal
while running for president?

We had numerous developers that
wanted to develop property

in Moscow and other places,
but we decided not to do it.

Michael Cohen said: "We're gonna
have to postpone"

"and let's see how things happen
after the RNC."

At that point it dawned on me

that there's just no way that we
could continue doing this deal.

Why couldn't he do both
if it's just business?

Because I don't think we're geared
to accept

a businessman being a businessman

at the same time as being
the president of the United States.

I could have made maybe as much
as 100 million dollars on this deal,

or Donald Trump getting
elected president.

Which one are you guessing
I'm sort of leaning towards?

Despite what Sater says, the Trump
Tower deal wasn't dead yet.

It was just put on the backburner,

so Trump could keep playing
the role of a legitimate candidate.

To make the act convincing,
he had rushed to announce

the members of his foreign
policy advisory team.

Mr. Trump, welcome
to the Washington Post.

Thank you for making time.
Can we close those doors?

We heard you might be announcing
your foreign policy advisory team soon.

If you want I can give you
some of the names.

I'd be delighted.

Carter Page PhD,

George Papadopoulos, he's an oil
and energy consultant.

Excellent guy.

I'd never heard of Carter Page.

I'd never heard
of George Papadopoulos.

They've been reported
as Russia experts.

They were not viewed by Russia
experts as Russia experts.

There was not a lot of depth on the
George Papadopoulos resume.

He had like "Model UN"
still on his resume.

He was still living at home in Chicago,

traveling around trying to kind of
generate some foreign consulting.

But really had very, very little
background to bring to the role

of campaign foreign policy advisor.

Basking in his newfound notoriety,

Papadopoulos began dining out
on his access to the Trump campaign.

Over drinks, he bragged
to an Australian diplomat

about cards he probably should
have played closer to his vest.

In May, unknown to us, George
Papadopoulos makes a comment

to a diplomat
from a friendly foreign nation,

in which he indicates that the Russians
have offered to assist the campaign

by dumping negative material
on Hillary Clinton.

Right about the same time,
all of the cyber activity

we've been watching so closely
comes to a peak

as the Russians target the DNC
and Hillary Clinton.

The thousands of hacked emails,
leaked to Wikileaks,

rock the Democratic National
Committee.

A trove of emails hacked from
the DNC is creating fresh scrutiny.

After that happens, and we are
standing with the smoking hole

watching the wake of that
aggressive intelligence activity,

it is only then that the friendly
foreign diplomat brings the comments

of George Papadopoulos
to our attention.

So it's the combination of those
two things that makes us realize

that we now need to investigate
whether or not

a campaign for the presidency of the
United States has actively coordinated

with what we know are hostile acts
by a foreign intelligence service.

It doesn't get any more serious
than that.

We tried to be very careful about
conducting an investigation

of a candidate
in the middle of an election.

But we didn't have the luxury
of standing on the sidelines

and watching the Russians select the
next President of the United States.

And that's why we opened
the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Why was it called Crossfire Hurricane?

As a leader in the FBI,
you're constantly flummoxed

by how in the hell did they
ever come up with this name.

But it had a certain ring to it,
so it stuck.

During the early phases
of Crossfire Hurricane,

we very quickly tried to think of folks
who we knew were associated

with the campaign who we also
knew had significant contacts

with the Russian government
or Russian intelligence

And that caused us to focus
on four people.

The first, of course,
was George Papadopoulos.

The second was Carter Page,

who is an individual who had been
known to us

because of his past contact
with Russian intelligence officers.

The third was Paul Manafort,

who we knew had ties with
the government of Russia

and the Russian-supported government
in Ukraine.

And the final person
was General Michael Flynn,

who, during his time
out of government,

had had fairly high profile contacts
with the Russian government

and President Putin.

Lock her up, that's right.
Lock her up!

That was who Trump identified as
people who were advising him

on foreign policy.

This was, after all, part of the appeal
of the Trump campaign.

The idea that he would bust up
the Beltway system,

drain the swamp, and replace it
with outsiders and mavericks.

Breaking news, Donald Trump has
clinched the Republican nomination

for president.

Like him or not, the Republicans
were gonna make him their guy.

So, we were gonna be out of a job.

Our work for this other Republican
was gonna come to an end.

There was a running discussion,
internally, at my company

about whether we would work
for the Democrats,

Hillary Clinton in particular,

and I was not particularly eager
to do that.

When I was at the Wall Street Journal,
I was tossed into covering

Bill Clinton,
The Whitewater scandal.

I never met Hillary Clinton.
Happy to say.

And not hoping to anytime soon.

By the spring, we were sitting on a
mountain of stuff about Donald Trump,

Hillary Clinton was planning
to raise and spend a billion dollars.

As a business proposition,

we were the guys who knew more
about Trump than anyone.

We were obviously cognizant by then
that something weird was going on

with Russia, and so I started
mentally earmarking Chris

as the right person to help us figure
out what was going on in Russia.

Steele, Chris Steele.

If you don't know him,
you know his work.

In 2016, Fusion hired
the ex-British spy to investigate

what Russians were saying
about Trump.

A few weeks later
his first report came in.

It was based on unnamed Russian
sources whose claims were unverified,

but the materials were explosive.

They concluded that the Russian
government was cultivating Trump

as an asset to do the bidding
of the Kremlin.

A possible reason?

Russian intelligence may have
videotaped Trump

in the Ritz Carlton Presidential Suite

watching two Russian prostitutes
taking golden showers on a bed

where President Obama
had once slept.

This is what's called the dossier?

Well, this was
the first installment.

What struck me about it was the
allegation that there had been

a collaboration between
Donald Trump and the Kremlin.

Started as a business relationship

and a intelligence relationship

and had blossomed into a much more
explicit political collaboration.

A portion of the memo outlined
some sexual activities

that allegedly occurred in a hotel.

We would call it
the Ritz Carlton episode

in polite company.

To me, that wasn't the interesting part
of the memo.

It was that the Russians
were up to something.

And that the something
they were up to

Donald Trump was aware of
and willing to accept.

That to me was, "Holy shit".

I was very concerned about
what looked like

a foreign government
getting involved on one side

in the American presidential election.

Chris is a former government agent,
so he wanted to report this.

He said: "I know someone
at the FBI and they know me."

Gave them the first couple memos
and he didn't hear anything back.

This was the beginning of a long
and lonely period for me,

and my partners, and Chris,

in that we felt like
we could see something

that everyone else couldn't see.

I ultimately was given a copy
of those reports.

And they're incredible.

Like things you would never imagine
seeing in an intelligence report.

We set about the tedious task
of trying to confirm,

trying to vet, each one of those
claims or facts individually.

Your gut instinct wants to be like,
"this can't possibly be true,"

but at the same time, you realize,

"well, there's enough in here that's
close to what we already know."

For instance, the report includes the
fact that Carter Page gave a speech

in July in Moscow.

Page traveled to Moscow that summer
to give a commencement address.

Another American asked to give that
address had a slightly higher profile.

I'm glad to be here in July
instead of January.

It was a pretty prestigious gig.

It seemed like this was arranged
by the government of Russia

to curry favor
with the Trump campaign.

Chris' version was a lot more
sinister than that.

Chris' version was that Carter Page
had been acting as an intermediary

between the Russians
and the Trump campaign.

Congratulations and thank you!

Carter had come across our radar
years earlier

while we were investigating two known
Russian intelligence operatives

here in the United States.

Carter had actually been approached
by the FBI, told,

these folks might be working on behalf
of the government of Russia,

you should probably not maintain
contact with them.

Not only did Carter not follow
that friendly advice,

he promptly recontacted those
individuals and informed them

that he had been approached
by the FBI.

He thought of himself as being,
to some extent,

aligned with these
Russian intelligence officers.

The dossier claimed that while
in Russia in the summer of 2016,

Page met with senior government
officials

and was offered an enormous bribe.

If Trump won and put an end
to sanctions,

Page and other Trump associates
would get a brokerage fee on the sale

of part of Rosneft,
Russia's biggest oil company.

The most incriminating thing I ever did

is having my picture
actually taken in Moscow.

I have been speaking in Moscow,

in Russia and in other places,

for well over a decade.

I was invited by some scholars
that I knew,

some people that I had known
for many years, to give a speech.

So I was invited
as the commencement speaker.

It was a totally benign trip.

Let's talk about the dossier.

One of the things it focused
on was a meeting.

What's that all about?

I gave my speech
and the Deputy Prime Minister,

he also gave a speech.

Briefly said hello to him
as we were walking off the stage.

And so people say

"you met with a senior Russian
government official."

Was he a senior Russian official?

Yes.

And what about
the whole Rosneft thing?

Did you meet anybody from Rosneft
when you were there in July?

Well, in 2016,
there was the European Cup.

I was invited to a party

and I happened to see someone
that I knew.

In the dossier, they said that I was
offered a bribe of 19 percent stake

in this massive oil company.

The reality is everyone was focused
on Ronaldo getting a goal.

The level of discussion, in terms
of substantive matters,

was nothing.

It was a pretty weak substitute

for getting an eleven billion dollar
bribe offer.

Page was playing games.

He had met with the head
of investment relations at Rosneft

and discussed sanctions
and Rosneft's sale.

The sale,
not the proposed commission,

was 19 percent of the company.

A pushy bit player
in Russian oil markets,

Page saw flattery
as the art of the deal.

He lavishly praised Putin
and the CEO of Rosneft,

calling himself
an "advisor to the Kremlin".

Through phone intercepts, his Russian
spy handlers disparaged him

as an idiot.

His American boss at Eurasia group
raised the ante.

He called Page a wackadoodle.

Carter Page is not some mastermind
of foreign policy.

The title of tonight's presentation

is based on a song
from a famous recording artist

who supported Mrs. Clinton during
her election campaign, Jay-Z.

Sometimes, the least likely people
become

the most advantageous targets.

That lack of sophistication that might
make him particularly dangerous.

Carter Page is who he seems to be,

which is a unsuccessful,
greedy, striver.

But, in espionage, they target
people who are vulnerable.

Horny. Hungry. Ambitious.

Maybe not that bright.
Maybe a little eccentric.

So, when you see all of these bozos
walking on stage in this whole affair,

the normal human reaction is to say,

"that guy can't possibly be
in the middle of an espionage plot"

"'cause he's too ridiculous".

But actually that's exactly
why he's in the middle of that plot,

because you can't manipulate people
who have it all together.

Did you feel that this
was important enough

that you should begin to start seeding
the clouds, journalistically,

in terms of helping people to
understand what might be going on?

We did, in the summer of 2016,
begin to gather as much information

that would be useful to journalists.

Glenn invited me and other
journalists to a Washington restaurant,

The Tabard Inn, for a background
meeting with Christopher Steele.

He was all business.
Not a lot of small talk.

And he proceeds to tell me
these really astonishing things

about one of Trump's foreign policy
advisors, Carter Page.

He had been told that Page
had had meetings in Moscow

with a Putin intimate and another
character who was,

according to Steele,
running the Kremlin's operations

in the US election.

And, when I pressed Steele,

he indicated to me that the FBI was
in possession of this material

and was interested in following up.

What was eventually revealed
is that they put in

these two Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance court applications

for hacking of my emails
and wiretapping of my phone.

This outrageous FISA warrant involved
extensive surveillance

of myself and all the people
I had any contact with.

This was an incredibly high profile,
unbelievably sensitive investigation.

Our pursuit of a FISA warrant targeting
Carter Page began

before we ever saw
any of the Steele reporting.

The FBI uses FISA to try to determine

whether the person is an agent
of a foreign power.

You have to have a pretty solid
investigation to stand on

before you go to the court and say,

"We believe that this person may
be acting as an agent"

"agent of a foreign power."

When the Steele reporting
came into our hands,

there were certainly facts in that
reporting that were relevant

to the Carter Page application.

It's not uncommon to put information
into a FISA package

that you are not 100% confident of,

as long as you tell the court what
you know and what you don't know,

what's been vetted,
what hasn't been vetted.

The strength or weaknesses
of the source.

We had a lot of conversations about
how to represent what we thought

of the Steele information.

We felt that that made
the package stronger.

Ultimately, DOJ agreed with us,
and it went forward.

I did some reporting and established

that the FBI had gotten
this information,

and was investigating it.

Page would not respond to multiple
requests I made for comment.

I called him, I sent emails.
He never responded.

But then after my story broke,
he gave an interview

to another journalist saying,

"These allegations by Isikoff
and Yahoo! are bullshit."

"I never met with these people."

He wrote a letter to the FBI offering
to come in and tell them that.

I sent a letter to then FBI Director,
James Comey,

two days after this Yahoo! News
article came out.

And I wrote to him, and I said,

"Listen, these two allegations
are just absolutely preposterous."

I concluded my letter by saying,

"If you have any doubt
or any questions,"

"please do not hesitate to contact me."

I actually didn't meet with any
of the people they mentioned,

or any other sanctioned official.
So, it's just smoke and mirrors.

Page started giving TV interviews
in which he said

fifteen different things,
half of which were contradictory.

But even if I had,
there's no law against that.

The problem was a journalistic one.

Isikoff used details from the dossier
and some of them were wrong.

More troublesome
from the FBI's perspective,

Isikoffs article made public
an FBI investigation

that was supposed to stay secret
until all the facts were checked.

That's like the worst thing that can
possibly happen to you

as a counterintelligence investigation.

The ability to kind of proceed covertly
with that investigation was obliterated.

March of 2017,

the FBI showed up unannounced,
started asking me questions.

It was eventually revealed

that I was under this outrageous
surveillance process.

I've been the victim of one of the most
horrendous civil rights violations

in recent US election history.

I am just sort of a sacrificial lamb.

You're not a traitor to the country?

There seemed to be two ways
to think about Carter Page.

Was he an innocent victim of the deep
state or a Russian spy?

The truth was more complicated

and rooted in what was and wasn't
known in the summer of 2016.

Was it reasonable then
for the FBI to ask for a wiretap?

Subsequent investigations revealed
deep flaws in the FISA process

but concluded
there was no political bias.

Yet, later on, many groused

that it was wrong for the FBI
to seek a wiretap on Page

by including material paid for
by the Clinton campaign,

the so-called dossier.

This totally worthless dossier
has had an incredible life.

It's like a zombie.

You cannot drive a stake through
this piece of garbage thing

that a foreign spy cooked up
for the Democrats.

There's been a lot said about,

"because this information was
generated by someone"

"who supported one
of the candidates,"

"therefore you have to write it off
as political oppo research"

"and it can't possibly be true."
That's not true.

FBI agents work with information
provided to them

by people who have an agenda,

or a bias, or a preference
all the time.

That's basically
all the information you get.

The Steele reporting is not quite as
binary as people like to portray it.

So much about the dossier
was impossible to confirm.

Was it wholly or partly true?
Or completely false?

Steele's wouldn't reveal his key
sources until after the election.

Like the FBI, Glenn Simpson initially
evaluated the dossier's claims

based largely on how much
he trusted Steele.

The two men had worked
together before.

In fact, months before Simpson
hired Steele,

Steele had hired Simpson to help
on a job for an anonymous client.

It appeared to have nothing
to do with the American election.

I probably do 10 cases at a time.

There are big cases and then there's
a lot of little cases that come in.

Frequently, I don't really care
who the client is.

In early 2016, Chris Steele asked if
I could help him in an investigation

of Paul Manafort.

I was working for Chris, investigating
Manafort and his money.

Manafort has been part
of my consciousness

since I had consciousness
in Washington.

He's a figure from the Reagan-era,

and he was a famous dark,
vulture lobbyist.

Paul Manafort is a very good reminder

that not all Americans are nice people
promoting democracy abroad.

For decades, Paul Manafort
earned money by teaching

dictators around the world how
to get inside the American system,

to influence foreign policy.

He learned how to manipulate
democratic systems from within,

and then go abroad
and sell that skill.

During my career
at The Wall Street Journal,

I wrote an article about Paul Manafort.

He was making money
in the former Soviet Union,

working for people
who were avaricious kleptocrats.

Paul Manafort had been
most recently associated

with the pro-Russian president
of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.

When Manafort first meets
Yanukovych,

he's this Soviet, grubby dude trying
to turn himself into a politician.

Manafort does everything from getting
him a haircut and a hair dye job

to better suits to elocution.
All of those kinds of things.

When Yanukovych attended
the Davos Forum to rub elbows

with his fellow heads of state,

Manafort hovered on the edges
of the party,

keeping tabs on his prize client.

If Yanukovych needed advice,
he had Manafort on speed dial.

But Manafort was no help in 2014,

when Ukraine erupted
in political violence

and Yanukovych fled Ukraine
for Russia.

Everyone in the political world
in Ukraine is corrupt.

Yanukovych was a sort of higher level
of corruption than most.

Paul Manafort, welcome back
to Meet The Press.

Are you running this campaign now?

Donald Trump is running
this campaign,

and I'm working directly
for Donald Trump.

And here you had this American
who rescued Yanukovych

and was working for him
as a consultant

and then now suddenly
he's the campaign manager

for the Republican candidate
for president? It was astonishing.

And now there are people in the
national security apparatus

who are saying that they have
questions about Donald Trump

now getting classified briefings,
because of you,

because of your close
ties to Viktor Yanukovych and others.

How do you respond to that?

I have no foreign clients now.

I have no clients.
I have one client: Donald Trump.

Usually, when people say they have
a client, they're getting paid.

But Manafort was working for free.

This was interesting,
especially for Glenn Simpson.

Remember, before Manafort
joined the Trump campaign,

Fusion had been hired by Christopher
Steele to track down Manafort's assets.

That investigation was on behalf
of someone who gave Manafort

a large amount of money
that Manafort apparently stole.

And that was a Russian.

I don't believe to this day that I have
ever been told who the creditor was.

I began to suspect that it might
be Oleg Deripaska.

Oleg Deripaska is a brilliant, erudite,

fabulously wealthy Russian oligarch

who is close to Vladimir Putin.

Let's say I'm a businessman in Russia.

I want to get favorable treatment in,
let's say, Ukraine.

In order to do that, I want the regime
that is going to win to be my people.

I want to install the president.

The MO for Deripaska was to have
Paul Manafort promoting regimes

that would be friendly to Oleg
Deripaska's business.

Paul Manafort doesn't know beans
about business.

What he knows is about
getting people elected.

Oleg Deripaska and Manafort had
a very interesting relationship

which appeared to fall apart
just around the time

that Yanukovych flees Ukraine.

And Manafort is sort
of persona non grata at that point.

POLITICO wrote a big story about
nobody knows where Paul Manafort is.

No one knew where
Paul Manafort was

because he was being hunted
by a Russian oligarch.

So it was obviously a very fun case,

and Chris and I were having a great
time tracking down Paul Manafort.

And then, all of a sudden,
up pops Paul Manafort

as the new Trump campaign manager.

You couldn't ask
for a more bizarre scenario.

Are there any ties between Mr. Trump,
you, or your campaign

and Putin and his regime?

That's absurd
and there's no basis to it.

So to be clear, Mr. Trump has
no financial relationships

with any Russian oligarchs?

That's what he said.
That's what I said.

That's obviously what our position is.

Manafort, in hock
to a Russian oligarch

very close to Vladimir Putin

seemed to raise a whole host
of questions

about the nature of his relationships
and whether he could be influenced

as a result of these ties.

When our team figured out that Oleg
Deripaska had hired Steele,

who had hired Fusion to track down
Paul Manafort's money,

my head just about exploded.

It just seemed obvious that Deripaska
had coerced Manafort

to seek out the gig with Trump

in order to be Russia's man
inside Trump Tower,

and thereby settle his debt
with Deripaska.

Why else would Deripaska
call off his search

for Manafort's money
once Manafort joined the campaign?

Deripaska ends up suing Manafort,

gets a default judgement,
and then agreeing,

"I'm just gonna put that lawsuit
on hold."

It just made no sense.

Why are you not just going ahead
and enforcing your judgement?

Paul Manafort certainly had tens
of millions of dollars in real estate.

Something's odd.

We tried to speak to Oleg Deripaska.

You can imagine why somebody in his
position might not want to speak to us.

Did Manafort owe you millions of dollars

when he was the head
of the Trump campaign?

Fake news.

That's the real news.
We just want the real truth.

Did he owe you millions of dollars?

It's the news for idiots.

Did he offer you those private
briefings to try and repay

some of that debt to you,
is that why he offered them?

Get lost please, thank you.

Deripaska wasn't going to solve
this mystery for anyone.

So it made sense to explore the
relationships surrounding Manafort.

That led to another character.

A Ukrainian-born consultant
for Manafort

who turned out to be a Russian spy.

There's one other person
in the cast of characters

and his name was Konstantin Kilimnik.

I'm going to make this reference,

and you will get it since
you're a filmmaker,

but probably most of your audience,
unless they're my age or older,

are gonna be like, "Who?"

He is Peter Lorre.

When you're slapped,
you'll take it and like it.

He worked for Paul Manafort in Kyiv.

He ran his office there.
He spoke the language.

He was affiliated
with Russian intelligence.

I was reading every email
between Kilimnik and Manafort.

At the end of July,
Kilimnik flies to Moscow

and he says that, "I'm meeting with
the guy who gave you"

"the large jar of caviar".

"He has things that he wants me
to tell you,"

"but it'll take a couple hours
because it's a long caviar story."

"And it has to be in person."

They've been communicating
by email and WhatsApp

and all sorts of ways constantly.

So this was already like,
what's so important?

We see that Kilimnik flies
to New York City,

meets with Paul Manafort across
the street from the Trump Tower,

at the Grand Havana Club.

He's here for basically 24 hours,
and flies all the way back to Moscow.

You or the audience might be going,

"And what happened?
What was said?"

So, if you wanna know what
it's like being an investigator,

that's what we know.

They also knew there was someone
else at the meeting,

Paul Manafort's right-hand man,
Rick Gates.

Gates agreed to become a cooperating
witness in the Mueller investigation.

He confirmed that he'd arrived
at the Grand Havana Club late.

He missed the first part
of the conversation

between Manafort and Kilimnik.

But Mueller's team figured out
what was on the table,

nothing less than the partition
of Manafort's old stomping round,

Ukraine.

We talked to a pollster who worked
with Paul Manafort in Ukraine.

And the proposed questions
include things like,

"What if Yanukovych were
to come back to Ukraine?"

"What if Ukraine were to be
split in two?"

"How about Yanukovych takes over
the eastern part of the country"

"for Russia and we just take it?"

This is what Russia was looking for

and that they were going to want
the Trump administration's support.

Because in order to do this,

Russia would need to know
that America was on board.

Fighting for Ukraine
and having it remain

in the sphere of Western influence
is Republican orthodoxy.

People of Ukraine,
this is your moment,

and the destiny you seek lies
in Europe.

Senator McCain would be rolling
in his grave at the idea

that America would actually give over
half of Ukraine to the Russians.

But the times were changing.

It was the height of the election
campaign and Republicans,

at least the ones in Trump Tower,

were less interested in protecting
Ukraine from Russia

than in putting Trump
in the White House.

So it made sense that Manafort,
Kilimnik, and Gates

weren't just discussing
Ukrainian politics.

Rick Gates told us that he was
ordered by Paul Manafort

to share internal polling data
with Konstantin Kilimnik,

focused on what was described
as battleground states,

but not all of them I think would have
been known to be battleground states.

Let me put it this way,

if Hillary Clinton thought they
were battleground states,

it makes It even more inexplicable that
she didn't show up in Wisconsin.

I thought, at the time, given the margin
in Wisconsin, and Michigan,

and Pennsylvania, they may well
have swayed the election

by targeting particular populations,
especially in Wisconsin.

And I'm not sure that the Kremlin
was sophisticated enough

to do that all by themselves.

It's quite unusual to share polling
data outside of the campaign,

but the issue is why?

You can imagine what Konstantin
Kilimnik could do with it.

But that doesn't mean he did do
the worst case scenario,

which is that the Russians
operationalized what they were getting.

It was interesting, of course,
that it was repeatedly given

to Konstantin Kilimnik.
Not just on one occasion.

It was interesting,
but it didn't prove anything.

There's no evidence of a deal that
Russia would help Trump win

in exchange for Trump's help
annexing eastern Ukraine.

That's not how the game is played.

Manafort was one of the inventors
of the Favor Factory,

a magical place where political
access is turned into money.

Manafort wasn't instructed to join the
Trump campaign by Oleg Deripaska.

It was Manafort's idea.
He told Kilimnik to make sure

Deripaska had seen reports
about his new gig.

Then he told Gates the new job
would be "good for business".

It was all just winks and nods.

Given his long history of leveraging
political relationships

for self-enrichment,
I think it's pretty obvious.

The plan was, one way or another,
to fix his financial problems.

In other words, he's close to Donald
Trump, so he can sell influence,

so that'll cancel his debts.

Yup. That's pretty much It.

We want America to understand
who Donald Trump the man is,

not just Donald Trump the candidate.

He was a bad guy
in a position of trust.

Shouldn't have been there.
Was up to no good.

We provided journalists
with information about Manafort,

and about Deripaska,

and pointed them to places
where they could get more.

NBC News has learned this week,
from court documents,

Manafort has business connections
to two oligarchs,

with ties to the Russian mafia.

Millions of dollars in undisclosed
cash payments for Manafort.

Manafort's name is scrawled
twenty-two times for a total

of 12.7 million dollars.

A handwritten list of cash payments
that's known in Ukraine

as "the black ledger".

Another bombshell from
the Trump campaign today.

The resignation of the embattled
campaign chairman, Paul Manafort,

amid a wave of bad headlines.

When I look back at the things
that I feel good about,

one of them was Paul Manafort getting
fired from the Trump campaign.

Paul Manafort was just one part
of the documented clear willingness,

by members of the Trump campaign,

to get information
from a Russian source.

You have a Papadopoulos outreach,
a Page outreach,

you then have
the Trump Tower meeting

where you have Russian outreach,

and you certainly have
campaign willingness.

Fast forward to the
Paul Manafort-Kilimnik connection.

I mean, of course you have the
President actually saying out loud...

Russia, if you're listening,

I hope you're able to find
the 30 000 emails...

Which they, by the way,
acted on within a few hours.

I think I'd get along very well
with Vladimir Putin.

I just think so.
I think I'd get along well with him.

Let's put the word "collusion"
aside for a moment,

because no one knows what it means,
and it's not a legal term.

And let's instead
use the word seduction.

Let's imagine that you're in a bar

and there's an attractive person
across the bar,

you exchange a few glances,
the other person buys you a drink.

Then you move to a table
and then things go on from there.

Let's say that later on I'm forced
to reconstruct what happened

on the basis of written documents.

Am I going to find a document in which
you've written on a napkin,

"Dear Mr. or Ms. so-and-so,
at the end of the bar,"

"I find you extremely attractive.
You match my taste perfectly."

"How about we go through
the motions of sitting at a table,"

"having a chat, and then going
to my hotel room?"

"Sincerely..." No, we're not going
to find that cocktail napkin.

Nevertheless, anybody who
is present at the scene,

and who is aware of human society,
can put together what happened.

The Trump-Russia thing
is more like that.

There isn't going to be a document
where Mr. Trump writes to Mr. Putin

and says: "Dear Mr. Putin,
I'm a long-time admirer."

"As you know, I have profited
from Russian capital"

"for more than a decade."

"I think your ways of rule
are admirable"

"and I would like to imitate them."

"How about we work together?
Love, Donald Trump."

We're probably not gonna
find that letter.

But, nevertheless,
he makes those sentiments.

And it sounds like I'm joking,
but I'm really not.

Those sentiments
he makes perfectly clear.

He broadcasts them on television,
on Twitter.

He doesn't literally communicate
with Mr. Putin.

He doesn't have to because Mr. Putin
is watching his every move.

Did Mr. Trump call-up
and say he needed help?

He didn't have to because
Russia was there for him.

December 2018

Let me just ask you again though.

Is Russia, as Robert Mueller alleged,
attempting to influence

the 2020 elections
in the United States?

I'm going to let you in on a secret.
We will absolutely be doing that.

So we can properly entertain you
over there. But don't tell anyone.

Do you want to use this opportunity

to clearly state that Russia
isn't doing that?

You know, we've got
our own problems to deal with.

America has problems too.

Maybe Putin was giving us
good advice,

that we should stop worrying about
Russia, and look at ourselves.

After all, the Russian interference
only worked

because America was
a vulnerable target.

OUTRAGE MACHINES

In the effort to delegitimize Trump,

by tarring him with the very truthful
fact of Russian interference,

we are helping the core goal
of Russian propaganda,

which is to cause broad-based lack
of trust in American democracy

for a decade.

We've been building a system
to try to look at the ways

in which public discourse
is happening online.

We collected every single story
that was out there on the web

whether it's from major news sites,
like the New York Times,

or on blog posts,
or specific subreddits.

To give us a picture of who
was talking about what,

how different candidates were being
discussed,

and put them all in what is really
the largest data set

that's been collected
about American politics.

Four million stories overall.

In the initial aftermath
of the 2016 election

the mainstream focused on exotic
and possibly foreign actors.

It was Macedonian teenagers using
Facebook clickbait.

It was Cambridge Analytica
using Facebook data.

It was the Russians using bots.

It's quite clear that outrage became
an enormously profitable activity.

Take Seth Rich.

Twenty-seven-year-old Seth Rich,
murdered

as he walked in a neighborhood
in Northwest DC.

The victim had worked with the
Democratic National Committee.

Seth Rich was a DNC staffer

who was murdered in a botched
robbery in DC

towards the end of the primary season.

Three days after Seth Rich's death,

an obscure website asserts
that Seth Rich was murdered

by hired gunmen working
for Hillary Clinton

for some murky role he was supposed
to have had in leaking

the DNC emails to Wikileaks.

None of this is anywhere
near related to truth or reality.

It was a completely bogus
conspiracy theory,

but it starts to get traction
on the far corners of the internet.

And then, before too long, voila,

Donald Trump's longtime political
advisor, Roger Stone, picks it up

and tweets, "another dead body
in the Clintons' wake".

Then Julian Assange feeds
the conspiracy theory

when he gives an interview
to a Dutch TV reporter.

Our whistleblowers go to significant
efforts to get us material

and often very significant risks.

There was a 27-year-old that works
for the DNC...

What are you suggesting?

I'm suggesting that our sources
take risks

and they become concerned
to see things occurring like that.

But was he one of your sources then?

We don't comment on
who our sources are.

But why make the suggestion?

That's quite something,
to suggest a murder.

In the summer of 2016, the big spike
in attention happens

when Wikileaks announces a reward
with the implication

that Seth Rich was the source
of the DNC hacks.

Basically, that Rich was a Bernie
supporter and was murdered

by Clinton associates trying to prevent
him from releasing emails

that show Hillary had stolen
the primaries from Bernie.

From there, it's just a short step
to Fox News.

The conspiracy theories online
have taken a life of their own.

But today Fox 5 has learned
there is new information

that could prove these theorists
are in fact right.

The stories reported
by the Fox DC affiliate

and by Fox and Friends in the
morning...

Remember that DNC staff member
by the name of Seth Rich?

...all the way to Hannity, where it gets
its most wide popularity.

More on the story of murdered
Democratic National Committee staffer.

They keep hammering on
on this story.

Twelve days after he was killed,
it shows up on WikiLeaks.

He gave WikiLeaks
the DNC emails so...

Rich's contact with WikiLeaks
corroborated by...

And then, once Fox News said it,

once it's in the mainstream, it becomes
completely legitimate to continue

to have a life of its own throughout
the online environment.

Now the family says they want
the DC police to reveal details.

DC police can't get their shit together.

And this marker is pretty much on the
spot where police found Seth Rich.

As Julian Assange said thirty days
after Seth Rich was murdered...

To make it look like it was anybody
but the CIA.

He's a patriot! In a lot of ways.

He wanted to be involved
in the political process.

It got unbelievable traction from
the allies of Donald Trump.

By early 2017, the Trump White House
itself is promoting the idea.

Steve Bannon sends a text message
to a 60 Minutes reporter,

saying that Rich's death was a,
quote, "contract kill, obviously".

That story didn't come out of nowhere.

I discovered that it was circulated
by the SVR,

the Russian Intelligence Service,

That website is a frequent vehicle
for Kremlin propaganda.

It was part and parcel of what the
Russians were doing

throughout the 2016 campaign.

It was harmful to Hillary Clinton,
suggesting, once again,

that Hillary Clinton was implicated
in a mysterious murder.

It also deflected from what we now
know the Russians were actually doing

during the campaign.
And that is hacking the DNC.

Who is in control of those emails?

Who has Mrs. Clinton's email
inventory?

The Russians? WikiLeaks?
No one knows.

Where there's smoke, there's fire.
Lots of smoke right now.

There it is, the definitive proof that
the whole Russia story was a hoax.

Here you've got it.
It was really this kid,

Seth Rich, who was at the center
of it all. It was all nonsense.

I completely agree that what happened
fits our definition of propaganda.

The only question that I'm raising,
in the context of Russia,

is how important is that relative
to the internal dynamics

of the American media ecosystem
that makes us so susceptible

to these kinds of incursions.

There were a lot of people that didn't
want to believe

what the Russians were doing.

They didn't want to believe that there
was a systematic campaign

to interfere in our election
by a foreign government.

They didn't want to believe that the
Russians had provided emails

to WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange knew very well
that Seth Rich was not his source

for the DNC emails because Assange
was deep in conversation

with the actual hacker, Guccifer 2.0.

While Guccifer was pretending
to be a Romanian prankster,

he was a fake persona for the actual
source, Russian military intelligence.

In conversations with Assange,

Guccifer arranged for the upload
of tens of thousands of DNC emails

4 days after Rich's murder.

So why did Assange feel compelled
to tease the fakery

of the Seth Rich story, much
to the sorrow of Rich's family?

For years, Assange's mantra has been
that he never talks about sources.

Why break that rule now,
just to hide the Russian hand?

In 2017, our executive producer,
Lowell Bergman, visited Assange

in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

But Assange refused to answer any
questions related to Rich or Russia.

With so many chaos agents trying
to mess with the Clinton campaign,

it was probably inevitable
that the trolls, military hackers,

WikiLeaks, and Trumpland
would start to converge.

From March to November,
Trump talked 39 times

to his longtime booster,
Roger Stone,

exchanged messages
with Julian Assange,

who was talking to the GRU
through Guccifer,

whose fake Romanian identity
the trolls promoted online,

while other Russian trolls fanned
the Seth Rich conspiracy

to draw attention away from Russia.

It was a three-ring circus
of election meddling.

I was attending all these different
meetings and I was like,

"Wait a minute.
They're stealing information"

"and then they're leaking it
on WikiLeaks,"

"and then WikiLeaks is pushing
this information"

"to certain American news
organizations,"

"which are then being used by Russian
trolls to push the news"

"certain American populations
of voters."

But at this point, the Russian focus
seemed that it was shifting.

We began to see the intrusions
in the electoral systems.

There was a period in which
the overwhelming concern

was that the objective wasn't just to
mess with the information-space,

but to actually mess
with the infrastructure

voting roles, possibly voter counts,

to disrupt the vote on election day.

One of the core pieces of our
democracy is being able to go

to a ballot box,
issue your ballot in secret,

with privacy, and then ensure
that it gets counted.

We have lots of things in place
to make sure that happens

and can be confidential,
and you can be assured of your vote.

Once we start looking at ways to use
the internet to do that,

you start introducing
all of these question marks.

We heard about the problems
that they were having in Illinois

with their voter registration database.

We started hearing about the problems
they were having in Arizona.

The hacking attempt on Arizona's
voter database started

in rural Gila County,

when an elections worker opened
an email attachment.

Arizona, Illinois, Florida, and nearly
two-dozen other states

have seen similar scanning, probing,
or breaches of their election systems.

So, at the time, I started to reach out
to folks, and talking to FBI,

talking to the intelligence community.

It became this cross-agency
working group.

We met almost every week to discuss
what intrusions we were seeing.

One of the things that the GRU
hackers very quickly realized,

looking into how the electoral system
in the United States works,

is that the federal government
has very little to do with it.

Elections are primarily a state
and local matter.

An adversary from a foreign country,
actively probing state level systems,

that was a new thing.

But we began to realize that
to change the votes

in an election, that's actually
really, really, really hard.

You need to pick the places where
the votes are going to be close,

you have to gain access
to those voting machines,

and you have to change just enough
votes to change the outcome,

but not so many votes that people
actually think it's weird.

Possible, but it starts to read
like a Dan Brown novel.

It's not a very likely scenario.

The more likely scenarios
that would be pursued

would be things that would
undermine the integrity

of the electoral infrastructure
as a whole.

A much easier scenario is to say

"Well, what if we penetrated
a voter registration database?"

That's available online
because the whole point of it

is for people to be able to register
to vote online.

So, one of the scenarios
we began looking at

was what if you just corrupted
some of the data

in a voter registration database.

And, therefore, when people
showed up on election day,

they wouldn't actually be able to vote.

It was astonishing how easy it was
to hack into their systems.

It's like they needed to be briefed
on proper cyber hygiene.

It shouldn't be that easy.

How big was the scope
of the Russian effort?

Was it just Illinois and Arizona?

The number question.

We had technical data supporting
reconnaissance

on a very large number of states.

We had to assume that they'd at least,
if you will,

sort of rattled the door knobs
on every single state.

To the White House, it looked like
Russia was trying to hack

the whole voting system.

And investigations concluded after
the election revealed they were right.

But many state election officials,
responsible for administering the vote,

had a very strict definition of hacking.

This whole national issue of the
potential "hacking" of the election,

which frankly we've had to kind
of debunk.

You vote on a machine. That machine
is not connected to the internet.

This election official didn't get
the memo,

you don't need to be connected
to the internet to be hacked.

It all depends upon what
your definition of "hacking" is.

If you're looking for proof that
one vote was changed in Missouri,

then you can say, "we weren't hacked".

But it's not actually that simple.

It's better to think about it

in terms of a neighborhood
burglary metaphor.

Imagine you have a neighborhood
with fifty homes.

If hackers penetrated the perimeter
of the neighborhood,

and left theft tools behind,
we've been hacked, haven't we?

That's how I define hacking.

If the burglar got into the fence line
in twenty homes,

have you been hacked?
Do you feel economically violated?

If the burglar breached not only
the fence line,

but opened the front door in seven
homes in this neighborhood of fifty,

have you been hacked?

I say you've been hacked.

If Illinois is the example,

because they're the only state
at the time that admitted it,

if not only did the hackers breach the
perimeter of the neighborhood,

got through the fence line, got into
the house, opened the door,

went into the safe deposit box, and
put their hands on the jewelry.

Now we agree that's a hack, right?
Apparently we don't.

This was not just a standard set
of espionage.

And what we were concerned about
what they were trying to do

to the electoral infrastructure.

So, at that point, we said,
"We need to do something"

"to blunt the effectiveness
of what they're trying to do."

By August, there was significant
concern in the intelligence community,

in the Department
of Homeland Security,

and in the White House.

So, a decision was made by the
President that he would privately,

but very firmly, warn Putin

that any effort to tamper
with the election

would be faced with very severe
consequences for Russia.

According to national security
officials,

Obama told Putin
that if he changed votes,

the US would destroy
Russia's economy.

It was a bold threat,

but warning Putin in private
was as far as Obama would go.

The view was, "Hillary's probably
gonna win,"

"and if we do something
to raise awareness,"

"we'll be accused of putting our thumb
on the scale, and therefore,"

"the Obama administration would
delegitimate her legitimate win."

And so, there was a sense
that you go to Congress,

to warn the American people

and make this a credible call to arms
to defend American democracy.

Because I was the Democratic leader
in the Senate,

I was briefed by the CIA often,
but this one was different.

It was in August, I got a call from
the CIA Director, John Brennan.

And he asked me if I would go
to a secure line,

and I found one at the FBI,

and basically what he wanted to relay
to me is that Russia was meddling

in our elections.

Harry was already very concerned
about what the Russians were up to.

But when he heard that the CIA had
a high confidence

that the Russians were doing this,
it really made his blood boil.

I had met with Ryan and McConnell

to get them to alert the governors
of the respective states

that there's something going wrong
with our election process,

and McConnell and Ryan refused
to do that.

They didn't want to alert anyone
that Russians were involved in this.

They said that if we mentioned
a specific country,

they wouldn't go along with it.

I felt terribly disappointed that
they refused to go along

with something that I thought
was so factual.

Did you ask them why not?
What's your reluctance?

Well, they didn't want to do it.

They thought it was partisan.
That's what they said.

In September 2016, McConnell puts
himself on the side

of the Russian intervention.

He makes it harder for American
government institutions to explain

to the American public what is
happening and to act accordingly.

This was an attack
on American sovereignty.

And the moment that you say
I only care who it's helping,

is the moment when you're saying you
don't care about American sovereignty.

The Republicans should
not have betrayed their country

by saying that it's fine for Russia to
intervene so long as they intervene

on the side of our guy.

But, regardless of what
the Republicans were gonna do,

the Obama people
should have done much more.

What is Homeland Security doing
to protect the American election

from foreign interference?

We're in the mode now of wanting
to leave no stone unturned.

At the time, Secretary Jeh Johnson
was running DHS.

We had a plan in place to work with
state and local election officials

to make sure that voting infrastructure
is secure as possible.

Secretary Johnson talked
to election officials in all 50 states.

He introduced who we were and said,

we haven't worked with you all
much in the past,

but we believe there's a threat
to your systems

and we would like to make sure that
you know that there are some things

that we can do for you.

But, because of the way
classification works,

because of the way the intelligence
community does things,

we weren't allowed to say that Russia
was the ones doing

the election infrastructure hack.

As the campaign entered
its final phase,

the Homeland Security department
offered states federal resources

to secure voting machines
and voter registration databases.

Georgia's Secretary of State,
Brian Kemp,

was among a small group
who declined the help.

I think the states are better suited
to react more quickly

to these type of things.

I think we do have the ability
to do that

and it's our duty to do that under
the constitution.

As we have seen before, the initial
engagement between the states

and the federal government
is not always positive.

According to this letter from Kemp

to the Homeland Security Secretary
Jeh Johnson,

there was an attempted breach of the
Georgia Secretary of State's network,

linked to a computer with
a Homeland Security address.

Kemp didn't just turn down help
from the federal government,

he publicly accused Homeland Security
of hacking into the system.

We're mad as hell.
It's outrageous

to think about our own federal
government doing this to us.

The hack turned out to be nothing
more than an employee

from Homeland Security looking up
info from the state website.

Investigators have concluded
the Department did not scan

the Georgia's Secretary
of State's network.

The incident was a false positive.

Even though he was in touch
with Homeland Security

about federal efforts to help secure
Georgia's voting system,

Kemp turned the lie into a classic tale
about federal overreach

and states' rights.

We're gonna get along just fine.

Some state election officials thought
that this was some sort of takeover.

For us, that kind of thing
was maddening.

We weren't coming at it
from a political perspective.

We saw a security threat, we wanted
to do whatever we could

to help shore up that security threat.

Some states never ended up working
with us. Some really wanted the help.

If people know Russia is messing
with the election,

if you'd been able to communicate
that, do you think it would've helped?

It's something that I have struggled
with for a long time

thinking through that scenario,
if we could have talked about that.

And part of me wants to say that if the
federal government comes to you

specifically and says,

"Hey, we know something,"

"and we would really like it if you
would look at your systems"

"and make sure they are as secure
as possible",

that, in my mind, at the time,
should have been enough.

Maybe, but what harm would have
been caused by being honest

about the source of the hacks?

What good is intelligence
if you can't ever disclose it?

The norms within the cyber intelligence
community are very strongly against

releasing information,

and there was a resistance for fear
of exposing sources and methods

that could implicate the ability
of the cyber community

to keep Americans safe.

Their instinct was to remain quiet
and not expose what they know.

The closest thing we ever really got,
in the lead up to the election,

was the public release
from Secretary Johnson,

saying that the DNC leaks
were associated

with the Russian government,

and in that same document we talked
about, that Russia was the ones

trying to hack into
election infrastructure.

In the week leading up, got the notice
that the statement was gonna come out

on Friday afternoon.
It was a big day.

October 7

01:25:40,120 --> 01:25:45,240
October 7th, this was one giant
clusterfuck of a day

in which a lot of shit happened.
Can you say that on HBO?

You can.
In fact, it's encouraged.

Well, there you go.

That water is gonna rise
rather rapidly.

Folks might look out one minute
and see the water is where

they always like to see it, and two
minutes later, it may be in their house.

So, the next four or five hours,
very critical here.

It starts with Hurricane Matthew,
in Florida.

And this intense wind that you can just
feel pushing up against your back.

Hillary Clinton asks for a briefing
from Jeh Johnson,

Secretary of Homeland Security.

Johnson figures, "Well, if I'm gonna
give Hillary a briefing,"

"I got to give Trump a briefing."

So he calls Trump early that morning,

October 7th, and Trump
couldn't have been friendlier.

"Hey Jeh! How's it going?"

"Hey, what are you gonna
be doing after this is over?"

Cause Johnson only had a few more
months as Homeland Security.

"Well, I'll probably be going back
to my law office in New York."

And Trump says, "Well, you'll have to
come by and see me at Trump Tower."

"We'll have lunch!"

And Johnson says, "You know, there
are some scenarios, Mr. Trump,"

"where you might be someplace
other than Trump Tower."

"You're running for President."

And Trump says, "Oh yeah, right!"

It was almost like an afterthought,

which gives you some insight into
what Trump thought he was up to.

October 7th was the pivotal day
in the election campaign.

The seventeen intelligence agencies,
including Homeland Security,

said they were unanimous that Russia
was hacking our election.

Will there be any consequences
for this action of publicly naming

and shaming Russia?

US intelligence officials say that when
you catch someone red-handed,

that those countries often pull back.

Remains to be seen if that will
be the case with Russia.

When I saw the statement,

I was actually surprised
how forward-leaning it was.

I don't mean the confidence level,
I mean being that explicit in public.

I was glad that we were brave enough
to come out and say that.

And it was like a kind of,
"Wow, we got that one done day!"

It's not every day that you work in the
U.S. government and you go home

at the end of the day thinking,
"We did something really good!"

And that was one of those days.
And then I got home,

and my husband's like,
"Did you see the news?"

And I was like, "Yeah! Did you see
the news?" He said, "Yeah."

The Trump campaign
is in full damage control mode

following a troubling story broken
by the Washington Post today.

Hours ago, the Post, publishing
a report, along with video,

of Mr. Trump and NBC's Billy Bush
discussing women

in what can only be described
as vulgar and lewd terms.

I was sitting in a brewery
with my family.

Got the notice that the statement
was going to come out.

I get the next alert on my phone
about that Access Hollywood tape.

I'm automatically attracted to beautiful
women. I just start kissing them

It's like a magnet. I just kiss.
I don't even wait.

And when you're a star, they let you
do it. You can do anything.

Grab them by the pussy.
You can do anything.

We knew, right off the bat, our story
just got buried by that.

I was in Coachella.

I was very apprehensive about
sneaking away to California,

to go have fun in the desert
for a weekend,

in the last month
of the presidential campaign.

The pussy tape breaks and Hallelujah!
Now I can relax.

So we sat around laughing,
and drinking beer,

and watching the Trump
campaign meltdown.

This race is over.

Bob Dylan was fantastic,
and we were hanging out,

and I made the mistake of looking
at my phone.

WikiLeaks has posted thousands
of emails hacked

from Hillary Clinton's campaign
chairman.

It was exploding with WikiLeaks
dumping the Podesta emails.

Things went tits up at that point.
So, you know, ruined my weekend.

I had to get back to Washington.

Because of the size of scandal
of the Access Hollywood thing,

I did not think that there was any way
that anything else could overtake that.

Lo and behold, it did. I thought the
timing of that sure did look funny.

WikiLeaks announced its dump
of the Podesta emails 29 minutes

after the announcement
of the Access Hollywood tape.

Russian intelligence had stolen
the Podesta emails in March

and appeared to have sent them
to WikiLeaks in August.

Yet WikiLeaks waited to release
until October 7th.

It happened to be Putin's birthday.

Trump campaign put out a statement:
"This was locker room banter."

"Bill Clinton has said far worse to me
on the golf course..."

There was a big spike in coverage
of Access Hollywood

and the Podesta email dump.

But that's ultimately overshadowed
completely

by the Comey announcement,

reopening the Clinton
emails investigation.

In July, we had closed
the Hillary Clinton email case.

But, in October, in a completely
unrelated case,

the New York field office seized a
computer owned by Anthony Weiner,

which was also used by his wife,
Huma Abedin,

who worked as a staffer
to Secretary Clinton.

There were emails in there that looked
like they were from the domain

that was at the center
of the Clinton investigation.

The team at headquarters and the
team in New York started figuring out

how we could make sure that we
weren't just looking at duplicates

of material we'd already seen.

I felt very strongly that
we should know what we had

before we made any sort
of notification to Congress,

or to the public, or to anyone else,

that we were, once again, looking at
emails associated with Hillary Clinton.

That was not the course that Jim
picked and he made the decision,

that weekend, to notify Congress
that we were reopening the case.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

We have breaking news.

The FBI is reopening its investigation
into Hillary Clinton's email.

Comey wrote, "the FBI has learned
of the existence of emails"

"that appear pertinent
to the investigation."

It is extraordinary that we would see
something like this

just eleven days out
from a presidential election.

The news was certainly significant
to Donald Trump.

Stupidity is not a reason that
you're going to be innocent.

After a few days of our technical folks
grinding through emails

on that laptop they quickly determined
that there wasn't anything in there

that we hadn't already seen.

It didn't affect our conclusions
in the Clinton case in any way.

Had we done that work before
we notified Congress or the world,

we likely would have avoided creating
an incredibly challenging situation.

There is no question the new exposure
is hurting Hillary Clinton.

A new ABC News poll says 34%
of Americans are now less likely

to vote for her.
Mrs. Clinton is not happy.

Comey's reopening the Clinton email
investigation reflected an assumption

about the election campaign:

everyone thought Hillary would win.

That's why Obama was reticent
to push back against Russia.

That's why the media focused
so intensely on Hillary's emails.

That's what led Comey to break
two FBI rules:

don't comment on ongoing
investigations

and don't make announcements
just before an election

that could impact the outcome.

And by raising the spectre
of more Democratic emails,

Comey also re-energized paranoia
about election rigging.

In Hillary Clinton's America, the system
stays rigged against Americans.

I have seen first-hand how the system
is rigged against our citizens

just like it was rigged
against Bernie Sanders!

He never had a chance.
Never had a chance.

Trump had been singing this tune
for months to appeal

to disaffected Bernie voters.

Even before the Russian
email hacks were published.

We're in a rigged system, folks.

And I'm telling you, November 8th,
we better be careful

because that election's gonna
be rigged.

Late in the campaign, when Russian
intelligence dumped

the stolen Podesta emails, Trump
turned up the volume to eleven.

There is a tradition in this country,
in fact,

one of the prides of this country
is the peaceful transition of power,

in part for the good of the country.

Are you saying you're not prepared
now to commit to that principle?

I will tell you at the time.
I'll keep you in suspense.

He's laying down the story,
should he lose, why it was.

There is always the plan B.

Is this a pattern with Mr. Trump,
if he starts losing,

he starts lashing out and calling
the system rigged?

There was even a time when he didn't
get an Emmy for his TV program

three years in a row,
and he started tweeting

that the Emmys were
rigged against him.

- Should have gotten it.
- This is a mindset.

The system is totally rigged
and broken.

First, the issue of voter fraud.

On social media, Russian trolls
harmonized with the Trump chorus,

"voter fraud, rigged election".

They were amping up their game

and deciding that they couldn't lose
no matter who won the election

if they discredited the process.

Despite the entirely baseless nature
of Trump's claims,

they are gaining significant traction.

41% of voters say the election
could be stolen from Trump,

including 73% of Republicans who think
the election could be swiped from him.

Hillary needs to be taken out.
If she gets into government,

I'll do everything in my power
to take her out of power.

If I have to be a patriot, I will.

I would like to promise and pledge

to all of my voters and supporters,

and to all of the people
of the United States,

that I will totally accept the results

of this great and historic
presidential election

if I win.

November 8

01:36:29,320 --> 01:36:31,400
Good morning.
Beyond the big doors behind me,

this is Fire Station 69,

one of 854 polling precincts that are
now open in Miami, Dade County.

In the lead up to the election,
our focus was almost entirely

on election infrastructure issues.

We were not necessarily aware
of the extent of the interference piece

using social media until well after
the election.

We wanna win. We do wanna win.

On election day, of the thousands
of messages pushing

the voter fraud hashtag,
virtually every one supported Trump.

The Twitter handle TEN-GOP had
been a passionate supporter of Trump

throughout the campaign, gathering
over a hundred thousand followers.

The account appeared
to be associated

with the Republican Party
in Tennessee.

On election day,
TEN-GOP tweeted 47 times.

Later, TEN-GOP was revealed to be
among the thousands of accounts

controlled from the troll farm
in St. Petersburg.

The main elements of the operation,

the ones that worked were
the disinformation

and the hacked information,

pushing that towards particular sets
of American voters

to suppress the vote
for Hillary Clinton.

I think it was a very dirty campaign.

The media was, like, very involved.

Clearly the candidates were not well
liked. So, I'll be glad when it's over.

How confident is team Clinton?

They are preparing two versions
of her speech.

With that said, I think it would come
as a real shock to this campaign

if she ended up delivering that
concession speech.

Even the Russians probably concluded
that Hillary Clinton was gonna to win.

The evidence is that
they really expected her to win.

But it doesn't matter.

They had a disruption operation
planned.

People are always looking
for the strategy

of how Putin's Kremlin operates.

Like, they're gonna do this one thing,
and everything is to this one thing.

That fundamentally misunderstands
a Russian operation.

They seed multiple elements
and then they go with what works.

With the election operation,

the one that ended up working was
the social media operation,

not necessarily hacking.

People are misattributing
the lack of action.

They didn't need to do anything.

Didn't need to because Trump won?

They were poised to do it.
They were in the systems.

They could've done it.
They didn't need to.

What could they have done after?

They could have screwed up the ability
of systems to report the vote.

They could have disappeared things
from the computer systems.

Presumably, in order to be able to...

To raise doubts.

They could have disrupted systems

to undermine confidence
in the reported results.

Combined with a campaign claiming
that there would be falsification,

that misinformation
would have fallen on fertile ground.

It's been a long day of voting,
all across this country.

Donald Trump has won
the state of Florida,

one of his must-win states right there.

Has won the state of Wisconsin.

You see the states out there.

For Hillary to win, she basically
has to run the table right now.

I think Vladimir Putin's probably
very excited right now,

and I think other world leaders
are a little fearful.

Trump himself had an oddly
quizzical look on his face,

like a man weighing his options.

He knew what most voters didn't,

his deal for the Moscow Trump Tower
was still on the table.

Even if he lost, he would make
a fortune.

And if he won, well, president
was still a good fallback plan.

If you're an American, you've spent
most of the 21st century forgetting

that there is a rest of the world.

And so, when the rest
of the world comes,

it doesn't just knock on your door,
but breaks down your door,

and takes all of your goodies,
and then leaves with a smirk,

you'd really prefer not to believe it.

And in that move, Putin takes
democracy itself, and he says,

"Look, I'm showing you
this is all a joke,"

"the American system's
just hypocrisy."

No other network is calling it
right now,

but the Associated Press just tweeted
out that they are declaring

Donald Trump the winner
of this election.

This means that Donald Trump will be
the 45th President

of the United States,

winning the most unreal, surreal
election we have ever seen.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

I always wondered why Trump
picked the Stones song,

"You can't always get what you want",
to play at his rallies.

But looking back,
it made a crazy kind of sense.

He wasn't talking to himself.
He was talking to us.

Trump knew
he wasn't what we wanted.

But he was certain he could deliver
what he thought we needed,

a wrecking ball.

And who better to tear down
our failing institutions

than the man who had made his fortune
repeating a simple line on TV,

you're fired.

To Donald Trump and his victory!

Part of my job, at the NSC,
was to watch Russian news.

It was not the fun part of the job.

So we were watching, you know,
the Russian reaction

and they looked surprised, and there
were toasts and celebrations.

It was like New Year's Eve.
I think they were very surprised.

It was pretty sophisticated

for a bunch of Russians
who don't actually understand us

and who think the American political
system basically functions

in the same way
as the Russian one does.

If they were getting direction and
suggestions from people

in the Trump orbit about
how to target social media,

which platforms to use, what kind of
information would make a difference...

They had some good advice.

When news broke about the scale of
the Russian social media operation,

Twitter began to shut down
the Russian troll accounts,

including TEN-GOP.

Before disappearing, the trolls had
a final exchange with the man

they had worked so hard
to put in the Oval Office.

- So nice. Thank you!
- We love you, Mr. President!

No one will ever know whether they
were following their pattern to disrupt

or whether they had a specific
strategy to elect Trump.

They could just make the public
lose faith in the process,

make the public like the winner less.

I think they were surprised
at how far they got.

In 2016, our sovereignty was violated
by a foreign power,

which found a way to substantially
interfere in our democratic process.

We faced an attack of a new kind.

It's disheartening and,
on a historical scale, scandalous,

that we have failed to respond
to this attack.

Some of the lessons of 2016
are going to take decades

or generations to solve.

Years after the election,

it feels like we have barely started
to learn those lessons.

One reason for that is we got
caught up following sexier stories,

like the idea that Trump
was a Manchurian candidate.

And we lost track of the reams
of evidence showing

that we had been attacked
and needed to defend ourselves.

Did you yourself buy parts
of the Steele dossier narrative

back then that you don't buy now?

Obviously I had the experience
with the Carter Page story.

It raised questions as to whether
everything that Steele was saying

was on the money.

And with the Mueller Report,

it became clear to me that when it
came to the sensational allegations

in the dossier, there just wasn't
evidence to support it.

The facts were damning enough
on their face.

People wanted
an even sexier narrative,

and the Steele dossier
provided that narrative.

On the other hand,

Steele was a serious guy,
I don't think he was making shit up.

The President tweeted "WOW, Dossier
is bogus. Clinton campaign,"

"DNC funded Dossier. FBI Tainted."

May 2017

Just last week, FBI Director James
Comey saying that it makes him

quote, "mildly nauseous" that he might
have affected the outcome

of the election. Well, tonight,
that FBI director has now been fired.

The irony of this whole false narrative
of the FBI deep state trying

to submarine the President or overturn
the election of Donald Trump...

I mean, honestly,
there's no organization in DC

that had more of an impact on
helping Donald Trump get elected

than the FBI. That was not intentional.

But the facts are what they are and I
think that's what history will show.

We now have a letter from the Attorney
General sent to Capitol Hill

notifying them, officially, that Special
Counsel Robert S. Mueller the third

has concluded his investigation
of Russian interference

in the 2016 election. So we may know
a lot more very soon...

The Mueller report wasn't available
to the public. Not yet.

By law, Mueller and his team first
had to submit their work

to Trump's Attorney General,
William Barr,

who'd been on the job
for about six weeks.

Before anyone had a chance
to read the report itself

Barr wrote his own summary
and went on TV to tell us

what he thought we needed to know.

After nearly two years of investigation,

thousands of subpoenas,
hundreds of warrants,

and witness interviews,

the Special Counsel confirmed that
the Russian government sponsored

efforts to illegally interfere
with the 2016 presidential election,

but did not find that the Trump
campaign or other Americans colluded

in those efforts.

When the Mueller report
was first presented by Barr,

did you feel that was
a fair characterization?

I'm not gonna answer that.

And that's one where I do
know the answer. Sorry.

Do you suspect that Trump,
or people around him,

is a traitor?
Is that too strong a word?

I think that cooperating with the
Russian government to undermine

American democracy and win
the election is treason.

If foreigners, if Russia, if China,

if someone else offers you
information on an opponent,

should they accept it
or should they call the FBI?

I think maybe you do both.
I think you might want to listen.

There's nothing wrong with listening.

If somebody called, from a country,
Norway,

"we have information
on your opponent,"

I think I'd want to hear it.

Two weeks later, Trump asked
the president of Ukraine

to investigate Joe Biden,
his opponent in 2020.

Trump also wanted help advancing
the story

that Russia had not helped him win
in 2016. And that was just a lie.

Now, the main political faultline
is not right and left.

The main political faultline
is true or false.

These are dueling ideals. Those are
different ways of doing politics.

If you want to have the rule of law,

you have to have facts, because
you can't have law without facts.

You can read Russia's intervention
in our elections in 2016

as them against us.

But you can also look at Russia
and say,

"That's where we might be going."

The elections are a joke!

When we look at Russia's intervention,
maybe it worked

because we're a little bit more
like them than we think we are.

What is happening in the United
States is a manifestation

of some deep internal crises.

This is something we've been
observing for a while,

ever since the current president
came to power.

When he won, and he won clearly
and in an democratic way,

the losing side came up
with all sorts of fables,

simply to question his legitimacy

We're very, very ready for this.

Going to be pretty soon
at only five people.

I saved hundreds
of thousands of lives.

Black lives matter!

If you don't dominate,
you'll look like a bunch of jerks.

- Who are they aiming that at?
- At us!

Hands up! Don't shoot!

How strong is our democracy?

Are the protests across the nation
a sign of the end

of the American experiment,

or a demand that we finally live up to
the ideals we profess to believe in?

You are so lucky I'm president.
That's all I can tell you.

The Russian attack on our elections
in 2016 was meant to mock

those ideals by making us look
at ourselves in a funhouse mirror.

We're still vulnerable
to the manufacture of lies

and the machinery of outrage.

But unlike Russia, we still get
to make a real choice on ballots

that are fairly counted.

Yet, in elections to come, the way
we choose our candidates

begs a question.

Just how much
does the truth matter?

And in a popular democracy,
what's more important,

how we play the game,
or winning at any cost?

Trump: Rigged 2020 election

It turns out that our national security
isn't just about our enemies.

It's also about us.

National security starts at home,

with our own resilience,
our own politics,

and the honor of our leaders.

The more we fail to live up
to our principles,

the more vulnerable
we are to the next attack.