Colleagues that i have been through a lot of battles with together, as well as a new friend, jonna mendez, who i have on excellent authority the piece of critical information that, after being a Washington Post reporter for decades, recently decided she could not do without the New York Times and became a paid subscriber. [applause] thats all you need to know tonight. We already love her. Tonights topic is trump and the Russian Investigation and this consuming, competitive, maddening story we have been a part of over the past year, some as reporters, some as readers. No doubt if you came tonight, you have been following this quite closely. And i dont know if tonight it will all be clear, and if it is, please tell us because we would love clarity on anything. [laughter] hopefully it will be a lively discussion. So to start, i thought i would first of all say it has been almost a year since the Intelligence Communitys assessment about what happened in the 2016 election came out, about russian hacking, Extensive Campaign disruption. This was the official Intelligence Community product. I want to start out with scott and say, ok, it has been a year since that came out, and there has been a whole lot of reporting and revelations and investigations by journalists, federal investigators, etc. What can we say about the contours of this Russian Campaign as we know it now . Lets separate collusion, the famous word, from what the russians are known to have done. Everybody here has been reading about this daily, but it might help to sort of run through it quickly and remind ourselves what the russians did, why they did it, and what its impact may have been. This is the sort of lightning tour of what happened. Basically, i think you can divide the russian operation into hacking and leaking, then the social media campaign, essentially creating fake americans on facebook and twitter to repeat messages. And then there was an element of overt propaganda, which was much less significant with sputnik and rt and so on, where they were expressing their preference in the president ial race. So why did it happen . I think there was a personal motive on the part of putin. Hillary clinton had publicly spoken for the rights of people demonstrating in moscow in 2011. I happened to be there at the time. It was unprecedented in the putin era, for large numbers, hundreds of thousands of people to get out on the streets of moscow. They carried white ribbons and said very unkind things about Vladimir Putin. He took that very personally, and she i dont think for her it was much of an american politician thing to say, we support democracy, we support people demonstrating for democracy, but he took that to heart. And there were other things, certainly from putins point of view, that were american operations against russia. I dont think we would see them that way. For example, one would be the outing of doping in sports. For us to of hard to, see it that way, but i think for putin, it was an attack on russia with a large american component. And another thing we would not have seen in this way, the panama papers, which exposed this old buddy of putins who, who suddenly it turned out had 2 billion hiding away in offshore accounts. Thats not normal for cellists. It turns out Classical Music is extremely lucrative in russia. [laughter] incorrectly saw that as a cia operation against him. In that sense it was personal. It was also strategic. Russia did not appreciate the socalled color revolutions in ukraine and georgia. Whenever the u. S. Was seen as encouraging what we would consider to be a democracy in neighboring countries, or in russia, they kind of take that as an attack. And so i think part of the strategic goal was to damage the brand of u. S. Democracy, make it so that the u. S. Looks so screwed up and tangled up that no one would ever say, we want to be like them. I have to say they had some success at that. Finally, did it matter . You can read a lot of people saying, oh, this was completely insignificant. You know they spent 100,000 on , facebook ads, compared to tens of millions by both the Clinton Campaign and Trump Campaign. Thats true, but as the social media part of this has unfolded, and you look back at the impact of the leaks, lets just remind ourselves of what the impact was. One thing that happened was Debbie Wasserman schultz had to resign as chairwoman of the Democratic Party literally the day before the Democratic National convention. That was the big story. Any message the democrats had was completely stepped on. So it completely disrupted the Democratic National convention. 20,000 emails dumped by wikileaks all at once. Then the john Podesta Emails, the emails of Hillary Clintons Campaign Chairman, were dribbled out by wikileaks the same day that the access Hollywood Tape of donald trump was made public. Interestingly. So they started dumping the Podesta Emails and just kept going day after day after day, up until the election. And one of these things, i remember i was really struck by i went back and looked at some beaches. Idate trumps the one i recommend look at his , speech in wilkesbarre, pennsylvania. 20,000 or 25,000 people, a really rousing speech. Hes got the crowd in the palm of his hand. In a way, the centerpiece of that speech is excerpts from, little phrases from Hillary Clintons speeches she had refused to make public, but unfortunately for her were included in the Podesta Emails. He is literally reading from these things. If you think of that, at the time i dont think people were thinking about that as a russian operation, but if you think about it as a russian contribution to our election campaign, it is striking. So then i think there has been a , lot of emphasis on the ads on facebook, but if you look at the pages that the russians created on facebook and the many accounts on twitter, facebook was very reluctant to come up with this, but eventually acknowledged that 126 million americans had been as they say served the pages created by russians, about half the adult population. Thats a remarkable number. Tweets from russian related accounts, twitter estimated, were almost 1 of all election related tweets, which is certainly significant. With a margin of a little over 100,000 votes in three states, i think it is impossible to say that that activity made a difference or the difference in the election, but it is also hard to say that it did not, because that was a pretty Successful Campaign on their part. So thats before we get to anything related to the Trump Campaign. But that is what we are talking about tonight. Mark one thing to think about, since you spent a lot of time in russia, this question that is going around the russians could never have done this without some kind of help. They did not have the political knowledge to know which districts to target, which states to target. Some would say that is absurd, they can watch cnn to know. But dont answer that yet. Think about it, and we will get back. That gets to the issue of the question of collusion. I want to move to mike to sort of address this other part of the issue. There is this question of collusion. The other side of the coin here, which you have spent a lot of time focusing on, is what has trump done since becoming president. And was there obstruction of justice in the actions of the president to try to derail the investigation and would that be something that is potentially as threatening to the president as any question of collusion . Can you walk us through that . If you look at muellers investigation you can imagine you have two buckets. You have a collusion bucket and an obstruction bucket. In regards to trump, there is a lot more things to look at in the obstruction bucket. There are not a lot of things we know about on the collusion side. About trump specifically. Specifically on the president. But there are a lot of things he has Done Since Taking Office that raise questions about what his motivations and intentions were. February 14 being the biggest one, where he went to comey and asked him to end the flynn investigation. Was that trying to impede an ongoing active fbi investigation . The firing of comey, what were the true intentions of getting rid of comey . Was he trying to obstruct the russia investigation, or was he simply trying to hold him accountable because he was too mean to Hillary Clinton during the campaign . [laughter] michael the other question being this statement that came out from an air force one flight in response to a story our colleagues were putting out about a meeting that happened in 2016 between the Trump Campaign and russians who were promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. In that case, was trump trying to throw sand into the gears of muellers investigation by putting out information that was not true . Among those things, there is a broader question about the president , which is his obsession with loyalty. Why is it that he was so obsessed with his attorney general Jeff Sessions running the investigation . Why did he keep coming back to the question of sessions being disloyal to him by recusing himself from the investigation . These are sort of these larger, broader questions that mueller has been drilling down on in the interviews he has done. He has spent a lot of time with the white house counsels office, with the lawyers there. He has spent time looking at handwritten documents from people like Reince Priebus that sort of get to what was the , president s mindset, and did he have corrupt intentions . When he tried to do those things. And out of the larger body of things, there is a lot more there on the question of obstruction then there are on his ties to russia. So can you n obstruction case . Despite the evidence, does it mean molar is more likely to go after the president for obstruction . What is the hurdle he is trying to clear . Obstruction is difficult because you have to prove he had corrupt intent, but he is the president of the United States and can fire the fbi director. He does have immense power over the Justice Department to get instructions. Was he simply exercising his executive powers as the head of the executive branch, or was he trying to cover something up . What would make this case easier is if there were something outside of his normal powers as president. Did he destroy evidence . Impeached foras asking someone to provide false statements under oath. We dont have anything like that on the president that we have on our side. Based on what is publicly available on questions of obstruction, there is not really a clearcut case. Mark a lot more to discuss later on. Joanna, you are the real expert here. Having been in this world for 25 it is the anniversary of a lot of things. From the year revelation of the infamous steel dossier, which, no matter how has it is examined, it gained in promise, at least as a political issue. Republicans are trying to attack document totical smear donald trump. Democrats see it as a rosetta stone, this is the map that will get to the collusion case and get donald trump out of office. You are a professional intelligence veteran. How do you see that document a year later, and how would her former colleagues at the cia have looked at this dossier when they first saw it . Tomorrow a year ago when the thing became public. The 10th of january, 2016. I stayed up and downloaded that thing and read it like, three times. [laughter] i have been interested in this from the beginning. The first thing i thought, and my colleague that i spoke to who had read it thought, was it looked like the real deal. It looked like an Intelligence Report with look, like raw intelligence coming in from the field. It is not one long, continuous document. It is a series of two page, threepage reports that he provided from june through december of 2016. Typically he draws no conclusions. He is bringing forward facts, citing sources. He does not name them, he should not name them. But it is raw intelligence. A lot of it let me take that back some of it will always be wrong because collecting intelligence is not a science. You have to go through and find, that date was wrong, that person was you are always evaluating that way, and because of that, most Intelligence Officers who read that report initially would have been a little suspicious of how true it would end up to be. Over time, what is interesting to me is that, while they have not been able to cooperate every detail of the report, i am unaware of any details in that report that have been proven false. Is know that Vladimir Putin in the background in russia, with a big eraser, and he is doing everything he can to undercut the report. And everything he can do includes assassinating investigative journalists. Be glad you guys are on the right side of the world on that one. They take extreme measures, and i am sure he has taken extreme measures. It will never be totally substantiated, but i it just rang true its how you do on intelligence investigation, the format of the , itg, the way he worded it was clearly a former intelligence officer. Mark let me push you on this question of what is true and what is not true. If it does turn out to be true, there has been a whole lot of people lying over the last year, and we will find out what the case is there. But you take specifically one citation in the dossier, one critical piece of information, setting aside some of the more intense the more entertaining aspects of the dossier, which we wont get into tonight. There is this question a lot of people jumped on, which is Michael Cohen, Donald Trumps longtime lawyer. It talked about it meeting he had in prague with a russian official operative who was a sort of cut out for the kremlin, a member of the intelligence service. One question that has been raised is, first of all, Michael Cohen said, on the record, i have never been to prague. So that is factually wrong. The question is, ok, maybe there is a location wrong, a gauge wrong. A date wrong. I am just asking a process question. How might a professional officer with, acting in good faith, have sources who might get some things wrong in this kind of world that chris steele is operating in . Ofna i think the quality his sources has proven to be high. I think the people he validated by putting them into his report, he felt strongly that there was truth there. I have to tell you, i read parts of that report aloud to my husband, tony mendez, who was a fairly wellknown counterfeiter, forger working at the cia. That Michael Cohen does not say he was in prague at that day and time does not carry a lot of water with my husband. Nohe is citing, there is plane ticket showing my arrival, no passport stamped showing i , that wasgh control tonys business for much of his life. It is possible for michael to have not come to an airport, not coming across border control. Everything. It is the fbis business to try to run those things down. Of the using some comments, the Communications Intelligence from our allies in europe, from the dutch, from the britishk, who were picking up theirl intelligence electronic intercepts has been one way they were able to push some of that forward in the document. Mark to round out this first part on, what do we know now, the one outstanding question is this. Was there collusion . Was there not collusion . Whoolleagues at the times have been working on this for a re is our answer is the certainly a whole lot more after a year of reporting that we know about contacts between trump advisors, campaign officials, hangerson, and russian government officials, russian operatives. There has been a whole lot of more suspicious evidence than there was an actual hard evidence of meetings that had been denied. If you go back to the beginning of last year, there was a categorical denial from the president that anybody in his campaign had anything to do with russia at any point. That has been systematically proven to be not the case over the last year, by the reporting of a lot of people. The question is that still remains, was there a systematic attempt by the Trump Campaign and the president himself to work with the russians in what is now known as this Disruption Campaign that scott laid out . Hink that is going to be and some of you in questions may push back on that but we have tried to be careful in what we know and what we dont know, and what are some of the Big Questions. In my mind, there are still a lot of Big Questions out there. This may be the year it all becomes clear. We may be, five years from now, talking to the same group of people with the same questions. Scott, the questions i asked earlier about the russians with the russians need american help to do what they did and to carry out this kind of fairly sophisticated Political Campaign . This is kind of my opinion, and people can disagree with it, but i dont actually think the russians needed any help. I think it is somewhat to think that russians, many of whom is spent time in university here and have a good understanding of america, very good english, with the help to do would need help to do what they did. They did not need help with the hacking. They did not need help with the leaking, particularly because they went through wikileaks. Wikileaks has a volunteers who can advise them. Has a of volunteers who can advise them. But how against you have to be to dump emails on the eve of the Democratic National convention . It was not super sophisticated. We hear that there was a micro targeted Facebook Advertising at the level of precincts and so on. So much, andthat facebook has been so stingy with details. I went back to facebook last week and asked them again, and they said that there was no geographic as you probably know, facebook has a dropdown menu, and you can be specific in how you target facebook tags. Facebook ads. You can do women between 25 and 33 and live in these three states and vote democratic. In this case, there was ideological targeting, but there was no geographic targeting before the level of the state. The most common estate targeted was maryland, not a swing state. Targeting heyre the targeting of those ads was not particularly sophisticated. I would say the russians did not need help. Jonna, you spent a lot of your career looking at russians from the other side. I think one thing that has been is n this post9 11 era those of us who remember growing up in the cold war remember that the single biggest threat was the russian threat. In the post9 11 era, those who cover the Intelligence Community are guilty of focusing on the cia as hunting and killing rather than going out and doing spy stuff. That never went away. Been a thing that has reminder of for the last year or so is how much the people in the cia dont like the russians, and the feeling is mutual, and that sort of spy versus spy quality as wellting in moscow as russians operating here, that has not gotten a lot of attention. If you could talk about what it is like operating for american operators in moscow, even in the putin era . Jonna it is a great question. Somebody earlier asked me if i had been assigned to moscow. I never wanted to live there. Drab and dreary and cold and dark and not my kind of place. But tony and i are in the middle of writing a new book, moscow rules, and we are taking you back to the cold war and talking about things that went on. June, june as last 6, 2016, there was an american officer at the embassy in moscow to the main gate in , paid, got out of the car the driver, started walking into his embassy which was american soil. There was a guard shack at the gate, not so much to keep americans in. It is all about keeping the russians out. And this is all on a security tape that you can look at on youtube. But this figure comes shooting out of the guard shack and attacks the american diplomat, or he was diplomatically documented, and proceeds to beat him to a bloody pulp. It is a shocking piece of film. Who may or may not have been a cia officer, is on his back on the ground. The thug in the military uniform is on top of him, beating him. The american officer, like a turtle on his back, starts sliding the two of them into the doors of the embassy, gets one leg hooked behind the door. They both slipped through the gate and into the american embassy, and you can see through the glass doors that the man continues to beat him. Officer outed the the next day, and he never went back. One of the moscow rules we talk t is never pistol off never piss off your surveillance. I dont know what this guy did, i dont know his name, but seabody told the of the security that he was going to be coming through the gate, and make sure he understands how the Embassy Security that he was going to be coming through the gate, and to make sure he understands how we feel. The american diplomatic corps was becoming so sodlike that something had to be so thu glike that something had to be done. North of moscow, a helicopter came down and started making runs at a car while it was driving down the road. Another embassy officer, somebody, kgb, broke into his apartment while he was away and defecated on his living room rug. This went on and on. It was intimidation. It was, you guys back off. That was the same time the meeting happened at trump man discussing the adoption of russian orphans. You know. There is two sides to this coin. Polites the side that is and seems to observe the diplomatic niceties, but on the other hand, in moscow, our officers had walltowall ,urveillance, multiple teams teams that you can see, and teams hanging behind the teams that you could not see, but they were there. You could not do anything because of that surveillance. Has was then, today, and always been the major problem of working in moscow, is the surveillance. Thawed for war never Intelligence Officers. [laughter] time have spent a lot of in the office, in the bureau, this past year, trying to look ,t this and make sense of it but one of the questions in the back of our mind is how you responsibly cover a story like this. One question is always are we spending too much time on it . Are we giving it a responsible amount of attention . Too much attention . Not enough attention . It is not enough attention for some. Can you walk through how the decisions have been made on how we go about the coverage and think about this story as a whole . One thing thats been remarkable about this story and what has gone on the past year is every time it looked like it was petering out, something happened, and it moved forward. Whether that was disclosures about meetings earlier in the year and intelligence at the u. S. That the u. S. Had, or the comey firing, the fact that learning about the concerns comey had about his relationship you know, and then, coming into the fall, where there were these major indictments. He often lose track of the fact that the Campaign Chairman and National Security adviser have both been charged in this case. And that is not a small thing, you know, by any means, and sometimes, i think we lose sight of it. I think what has kept us on this the storyhe fact that of the trump folks has continued to change. If the story they had told in january of 2017 had largely held up, then there would not be as much to look at, but the fact that it has changed and we have learned more things, and more questions have come out, it has forced us to continue to look and to prod. Now, we sit at the sort of interesting point in the story where i think, over the summer, we had some anticipation of where it was going and he was going to be charged and stuff, but right now, we dont know. Maybe it is over with in a few months, but president is sitting down and being interviewed by mueller. Maybe mike flynn has amount of information he has given bob mueller that we dont know about that will change the direction of the story. We are at one of these phases again where the story could either peter out or go to the next level, and history has shown that it has always surprised us. If you think about the day of the election, the day after the election, november 2016, the russians, the Deputy Foreign minister actually made a statement, and it was like we were in contact with these guys throughout the whole campaign, and the spokeswoman said not true. Never happened. Didnt talk to anyone. Russia who . That was telling from the very beginning. The other thing that we struggled with is does the president just naturally make false statements . Is that his natural being . Or is there a reason why on this issue, he has behaved the way that he has . And that is something, you know, that still remains to be seen. Not onlyion will be what has happened, but what will happen. For all the talk of what happened in 2016 is anotherah, there election coming up this year, and another president ial election in 2020. Scott, would there be any reason for the russians not to do what continue done, to not what worked pretty well, and is there any attention being paid to . Lets make sure this doesnt happen again as opposed to last year . We need to do some reporting on whats going on in the various corners of the government. We need to make sure this does not happen again. We need at least some lip service to it. Certainly, the Intelligence Services and everybody else are alerted to the possibility in a way they werent in 2016. We look at what the preparations have been. One thing that discourages these agencies to proposing major tighten up their Cyber Security or track activity is the president of the United States keeps saying that russia is a hoax. That doesnt make you want to say mr. President , we had a great idea. We are going to spend a lot of time working on the russia problem. So i suspect it has not been a whole lot done. Front, there media is also sort of countermeasures there as well. These companies are judged by the stock market, by their Monthly Average users, and this is more of a factor for twitter then for facebook. 15 e is more estimates that or more of all twitter users are automated, bots, fake. So if twitter were to crack down on that, their Monthly Averages is would dive, their stock price would dive, and it could be a big disaster. In a way i think it was like pulling teeth. I spent a lot of less summer working on the question of what the russians had done on facebook and twitter, and it was kind of like pulling teeth to get any cooperation from the companies. They were not eager to talk about it. They are certainly talking about things they are doing to keep it from happening again. It is tough for them as well. The way those companies eventually paid attention to this is the facebook discovered that adds had been bought in rubles using a credit card that went straight to the socalled Internet Research agency, which is the most famous sort of p role factory in the world. If the russians took just minimal sort of precautions next time and used an american credit card with a fake american name, it is not clear that these companies could actually detect the fake russian activity. But to your point about the president and how the intelligence agencies responded, the president has never certainly as president said anything protocol about putin. The president criticizes all sorts of those, but has yet to criticize putin. If you work for him and you are a political appointee, that sends a certain message. That is a question i wanted to put to jonah. We have a few more minutes before we had to take questions. So if you are thinking about a question, and you would like to ask one, you should start lining askand getting ready to one, because we will move to that in a few minutes, so just a five minute warning. Theres policy implications here. There is to bring big t, important, countries, and at the center of this has been the debate of the attempt to sabotage an american election, and, you know, trumps argument to actuallyying come in good faith, have a better relationship with the russians. Now, i cannot. It is no longer because my enemies have, you know, painted me as a kremlin stooge, so now, my hands are tied. You talk about, you know, what are the real world and locations this has had on americarussia relations . Well, i can speak about the implications, the effect it has had on the american Intelligence Community. The years i worked with the cia was 27 years. 27, not 25. It never really mattered. The politics never really mattered. I would not know of the person i was working with, who i was going out and doing fairly dangerous things, i did not know if they were republican or democrat, and i really didnt care. It was all about the job. It was about collecting the information and getting it to the policymakers here in washington, d. C. , unbiased information that they could analyze and take that information to a president and his cabinet, and everything would move forward. That has all kind of changed right now. Everything is suspect. Every single thing is suspect. The cia is suspect. The fbi is suspect. The Justice Department is suspect. Used toh, what we consider to be the ground truth, is kind of hard to track down these days. It depends on who you are talking to. Whose truth you are discussing. What i worry about is for the future, where everything is becoming so ragged and on a part that there cannot be consensus on where that grain of truth is. When we are giving intelligence to a president who doesnt even ,ead it, who doesnt believe it who doesnt trust it, who doesnt use it. And then that president assads to take our head of cia and maybe put his guy in, a guy who is not beyond fiddling with the truth. That is kind of what we have now, as i see it. Mike pompeo is saying things that do not agree with what the intelligence analyses coming out of his organization say. He is twisting the truth of it. Cia, the valuee of cias intelligence around the world is going to take a huge hit. I dont know how you come back from that. What is the practical effect of that . President s for decades have appointed their friends to be directors, Democratic Political operatives, republican operatives, who have been cia director. What in your mind is worse or more egregious or damaging for the cia . The people working at the cia today. Ale is to the floor. They see what is going on. They have always had great pride in the work they do, and the risks they take. The risks may ask foreigners around the world to take. Those are the guys who are going to get jailed, executed, shot. As happens many times. Just in the period of the last four years to five years. There are new rows of stars, each one trying to collect the intelligence for policymakers. I am not sure where that actually leads, but it is a very unhealthy place to be cured it is going on at the fbi. I had a friend recently interviewing for the book, fbi officer, senior officer, and he said, you know, when trump said the fbi is in tatters because of comey, he said we loved comey. The fbi loved comey. He ran a great shop. He was what we respected. Its going to be in tatters if trump keeps this up as hes moving all the key people out of the fbi. I find it absolutely frightening. So many people liked comey. Excellent points. Thank you. I was just going to sort of throw out a curveball for people to contemplate and maybe people will want to respond to this. It is something that have bothered me for the past year. Since the dossier became public. And actually, before that, because we got a look at some of the stuff earlier than a year ago. If Michael Cohen did not go to prague, that one, in particular, i spent some time trying to prove or disprove because i had some details. Some of the things are very vague and hard to nail down. Aat one said he met with person who is with a russian Cultural Organization which has an office in prague. Heres the question. If thats not true, who made it up . And the thing that occurred to me was this was not planted by. Ome clinton operative this was probably concocted by russian intelligence because of that level of detail, and when you think about christopher steele, the retired British Intelligence agent, calling his buddies who called their buddies in moscow to get this information, the fsb is certainly capable of following those trails and polluting them with certain, you know, disinformation. Completethis is just a speculative hypothesis, but one we should all keep in mind. We believe that russia carried out a very successful Information Operation aimed largely at Hillary Clinton. What if they also, kind of hedging their bets, also carried out and Information Operation aimed at donald trump, and that some of the dossier is, was put there by russian you know, intelligence, with the idea of casting a shadow over trump. If that happens, the operation was, everyone would agree, extremely successful. If there was an operation against trump, it cast a shadow over the first year of his president , right . It isre was no collusion, daunting to think about this as a russian achievement. Thanks for making it more confusing. [laughter] wow. What do you think . I think you are taking doublethink and triple think to new highs and lows. [laughter] i mean, anything is possible. You are absolutely right. That could have been another piece of this. I think, with the dossier, time is going to tell. How much of it actually checks out, and how much of it they can disprove, but keep in mind, have they disproved any of it . I think not. Meaning the trump associates, they certainly think they disproved a lot of it. I dont think that counts. Just do the final plug for investigative journalism. My argument would be that over the last year, we have learned a whole lot more about connections, if there are any meetings and contacts, etc. There is work of reporting. That, i think, is checked out. I agree time will tell. Viewed fiveier is to 10 years from now. I would love to start taking questions, and the same definition as always is to please ask a question, make it facing, dont give a preamble or a long statement. Thank you. You have spoken of collusion or obstruction. What about the Money Laundering strand in all of this . How much work is mother doing on all of it mueller doing on all of this . I am not chris steele, by the way. [laughter] take ann, i will initial i mean, this has been part of not only what is in the dossier, but one of the questions here has been the extent that donald trump is compromised from years earlier in business dealings with the russians involving properties and Money Laundering. His properties, golf courses, whatever, were fronts for russian Money Laundering. This has been the subject of a lot of reporting as well. Thus far, the only, you know, Money Laundering aspect of this investigation has involved paul manafort. And his dealings, the allegations against paul manafort. It is a great question that we do not know. Unfortunately, sometimes, we are looking at muellers investigation from the outside. We would love to know more than we do, but it has been this question of what is his mandate, and how far would he take it . Is he all may looking at, the events of one year, the previous year, and is he going to take a hard look, go down the rabbit finances, pasts business dealings. Trump said that is a redline. But if he closes the investigation without looking at those issues, a lot of people are going to say they should have. We do not know the answer. It certainly is something that has been the subject of a lot of hard examination in the last year. Power,ont have subpoena and he does. It is very frustrating as a reporter to look at Something Like Money Laundering. It is very difficult to get the goods. Thank you very much for putting this panel together. I thought maybe revisiting the question you posed earlier about the upcoming election, and may be diving into that more. Are there patterns from the 2016 campaigns that although this was the president ial one, are there patterns that can be applied to the congressional races that come up, and any beginnings of stories that you are starting to look at . The only in that comes to mind is this got very little attention, because the stories were so big that stories that might have been big kind of got lost in the shuffle. In addition to hacking the dnc, the russians have the Congressional Campaign committee. This persona for russian intelligence which was calling himself this is a to point no, who said he was a solo roaming hacker, but u. S. Intelligence concluded it was Russian Military intelligence. You could communicate with him by email, by twitter, and he had a kind of customized service, and you know, Political Bloggers in New Hampshire and florida were the cases they looked at. Contacted christopher to po gusifer 2. 0. He supplied it to the bloggers and they actually had big impacts on several races around the country, so whether we are going to see a repeat is anyones guess. , this also had quickly that you know, the 2016 was not, a lot of hard lessons for the government and what they did do and did not do. I think there was hard lessons for the media as well. And what, you know, how the media took some of this information, ran with it, organized this information by distributing it in the media without giving it a whole lot of thought of where was coming from. If we think it is credible, real information, it does not matter the source. , the question of elections Going Forward and, you know, covering politics and other issues, the media should also look at itself and see its role in the impact it has on these stories. Question, but i would be interested to hear if anyone else has any strong opinions, so you mentioned the very low level sophistication required to carry out this attack as it regarded o interference of social media. I have been working on a similar case of political interference with respect to the cyber attack against qatar, the diplomatic crisis, so given that we are no longer talking about this, it is solely being helped by great powers. I was curious which countries youre looking at as a possible oft instigators of this kind nefarious interference. Thank you so much. I think that is more a question for my colleague here than for me. , without anye special expertise in that field, that clearly, china has the capability as the population, as the technology, everything, they are watching closely to see how you play this game, whether they are going to jump in an attempt to do any gaming of their own. I think it would be up in the air. But there are a lot of countries around the world. One of the things that is striking about hacking and this kind of information manipulation is it is a game almost anyone can play, and two things come to mind. One is north korea. A starving, bankrupt country. Not a large country. Adeptas proven extremely at creating a network of hackers and going to town and doing a lot of damage to a lot of major institutions, and the other thing that comes to mind that is not directly related to a foreign country. A year ago, i wrote about a 23yearold new College Graduate to pay off student loans, sat down at the kitchen table, not a fake. A domain on the internet called christiantimesnewspaper. Com. She found antiHillary Clinton fake news sort of created more clicks than anything else, and sentes and his stop his stuff out, had an and on its impact and reached millions of people and made 22 thousand dollars in what he estimated to be a total of 20 hours worked. He had special training. That is one of the the serving things about this era is you dont need to be super sophisticated to do this. The other thing on that would be what consequences russia ever has to pay for this. So far, they had no consequences from the united eights. If the democrats were to take the white house back, what would like . How much of a penalty are they going to pay . Right now, they had paid none. Mine is all most the exact reverse of that question both from an intelligence perspective and working with social media companies. Is there an online white had version of what russia did. Either the American Public or intelligence agencies make a positive impact using these tools. Do we want to take that . [laughter] yeah, we dont specialize in white hats. [laughter] we dont tell good stories. I read just the other day about an effort to use social media to get factual information out. A very odd concept. [laughter] but you know, i can imagine that that might be somewhat something that will catch on. Public educating the using these tools, which are obviously very powerful and have done some good in the world. It was credited to some degree to social media. Maybe there will be a more sophisticated attempt to use them in a positive way to inform the public about the vote. Is there enough incentive for the companies to weigh in, you know . Ofto this point, they sort stood back and said we are for good. They have kind of gotten a reckoning. The question is, has that sunk in enough . I dont knowas if anyone here has taken advantage of this. You can go to the health page canfind a place where you ask facebook whether you have been exposed to any of the fake russian pages. And they will give you an answer. So, they are beginning to respond in a minimal way. A few more questions, sir. Yes, good evening. Simple question. What are the implications if trump is found guilty of either of structure and or collusion . Mean depends on what you by found guilty. There is a longstanding legal policy that you cannot indict the president. What mueller could do is send his information to congress and congress would deal with that in an impeachment way. The house would decide whether to impeach him or get rid of him. That is sort of the path it would take. That largely depends on who controls capital hill. He will conclude his investigation in april, then the republicans will deal with it, but after november, it could be different folks. Will bese, donald trump running for president come november. I think there is a large believe that the democrats probably regardless of what mueller does, will do everything they can to go after him and take him down. Just add to that, just thinking about this in terms of recent revelations maybe about his psychological mental state, would you see in your own opinions, would there be more to it in terms of what he could do personally . O you mean . Like could he pardon himself . Since you study them a lot the constantly surprises us everyday. [laughter] ability tohown the always outdo himself and keep his story going. We often turn around in the office and kind of look at each other and realize it may be very boring if you were not around. He likes to distract when something is going on, when it starts getting too hot or they start getting too close, and he always seems that something to throw out there to get the media and everyone else excited again. He has so many things he can throw out at this point, including his great, big button on his desk that i think that is where i worry about what he might do if it starts closing in on him. I really do. I am not sure he has limits like most of our children are taught when they are five years old. Sure. Relates to a lot of things people have asked about Money Laundering, possibly sanctions. There are several past two donald trump tax returns. Will probably tell you who he has been doing business with. Do you know of any press organization or other organization who is trying to get into the publics view through lawsuits . All of you have been libeled. You have not yet, but you will be. All of you have been libeled and no one has come back at the president. The Washington Post ran has been damaged. No one has gone after the suit thatin a libel would produce tax returns. Etc. , etc. Of question is, do you know any organization with a concrete legal effort to get his tax returns somewhere into the Legal Process, and the corollary to that is when do you think people who believe in balance are going to take the gloves off . Sorry, say that last part again . When do you think people who believe in balance are going to take the gloves off and start going the Legal Process that he has always threatened other people. Who want to jump in there . [laughter] well, you know, thats a great question you are asking. Be thatthe answer may tax returns are privileged and confidential by law. Fantasized that some irs employee with access to his tax returns might drop it in an envelope and make our day, but so far, no luck. [laughter] irs employees in the audience. His accountants would all be subject to civil penalties. But i think, in some ways, if that has not happened, you can the freedom of information act im not sure we have any notion of a great Legal Process by which we could demand his tax returns. But, you know, we will think about it. On whenody want to take we are going to take the gloves off . Is it possible mueller can get the tax returns . Legalely accepted amongst experts and a whitecollar case that if you are investigating someone, you would have their tax returns. Never been reported that he has his tax returns, but it is hard to believe. Thank you. Taking the gloves off. , you know, what the president has done with us, he criticizes us a lot. That ourel, everyday, mission has never been as clearly defined as it is now. The interest in what we do has never been as great. And for us, it is a pretty unique time. Realized wethat we are in a very particular point of history. It gets us out of bed in the morning. In terms of brand damage, that gentleman said the New York Times brand has been damaged. I think it is more obligated than that. I think the sort of tragic element of what has happened in more recent years is that the New York Times brand has been severely damaged with maybe 20 or 30 of americans who do not read the New York Times, but hear about it in other places, including the president s twitter account. And who now really do believe that if it is in the New York Times, its probably false. Thethats very painful, but flipside is also true. Many in the New York Times assume that if something is on fox news, it is also false. In the good old days of three networks or four networks, and one newspaper or two newspapers on your lawn each morning, everyone sort of forming their opinions based on the same set of facts. Now, many people have completely different ideas of what has happened in the last couple of years. That is a disturbing divide in the country. From has accelerated something that was already ongoing for quite some time. Stratified it even more. At the same time, i think he has pretty it has been a pretty fake news has been a very effective tool to sort of go at the media rich large writ large. And people who may not have a particular love for trump, there seedss seeds be that get planted. We had whether the damage will be lasting. A followup to the white hat question, and we laughed, but this is fairly serious. I know your job is to find out what happened, but what struck me is the first time in a conversation a friend said, you know, its not the russians fault. The americans let this happen. This is how you run your campaigns, this is how polarized you are, this is where your people get their news, this is their level of civic education. So if you each had to name one thing to start to prevent this in the future, what would that be . And if we come up emptyhanded, isnt that scary . I will be brief. And maybe they. But i happen to think that nobody, this election has been probably more closely scrutinized than any election in recent memory in terms of what happened, what was done outside of people you, and certainly, peoples view. Electioninly, the result has generated a lot of intense emotions from a lot of people. It led to the level of engagement that people did not have before. I think that people are taking a lot less for granted about how our elections work. This is a very a sick answer, but it is in essence a basic understanding of not only the importance of elections and understanding getting information about the elections, but also not taking for granted that they are just going to work. And that there is no one outside trying to influence. People are going to be pretty aware of this Going Forward and be attuned to it. That is not a bad thing. I think they spoke really has to deal with the issue of fake news, and how do they communicate to folks if something comes from a reputable news source or it doesnt. That is a really hard question, first gets into amendment, political expression, and i dont have the answer to it. I think there has to be a way for the average person to say ok, i should believe that, and no, i shouldnt believe that. And thats really hard. I see so many of my colleagues, my friends, and my family who are engaged now. We were never engaged in politics before. Women are one obvious group. The power of women today is not to be underestimated. I was in that womens march the day after the inauguration. Day, emails were flying about how we begin. Run for office, get involved. I think that that is going to be one of the good things that comes out of this, and i think you are going to have a much more engaged population in america the next time we have an election. Alabamalooking at the election recently. Black women in alabama decided to stand up and voted 97 or something. It is an incredible number and shows the power that a population can have if they want to try and take things into their own hands. So maybe that is a positive. Isthe only thing i will add that therce your point russians were operating by and large with american materials through if you look at the facebook pages which were for gun rights and antiimmigrants and black lives matter and antiblack lives matter, and you know, all those things. Mes werethe me actually stolen from american activists. They did not even have to concoct it, so they were sort of pouring gasoline on a fire that was already raging in many ways. Whether that will make people think again about whether they are being exploited, you know, whether they want to think a little harder before vilifying the opposition, it remains to be seen. The last question, we have to make it relatively quick. I am told it is time to wrap up. I know you guys have written extensively about the russian sanctions and conversations that general flynn has had with Russian Ambassador kislyak, so i am really curious to hear, one, aboutw that flynn lied the number of phone calls and the details of the fumbles with kislyak. How does the one president at a time rule work with potentially the collusion case if before President Trump was in office, he was working against the obama toinistrations decision place sanctions on the russians, and does that play into any potential case via mueller steam . Muellers team . Michael flynn should not have been talking about sanctions before they were in office. ,etting aside the line or not and something called the logan act. It says that one president at a time, and youre not supposed to make Foreign Policy if youre not in office. So if mueller really wanted to make a case, suppose he could. It is weak law. It has not really been brought in cases in the past. Tries to bring a logan act case, he will get laughed at. Is a way to tie it in with other things, but the the has is whether been enough gray area in the past in terms of transitions reaching out to foreign governments, trying to make their case about what they are going to do. At least based on what we know, it is still pretty great about whether there will be any violations. In terms of flynn, because to the vicen to lie president and to the fbi, so the same question on flynn is the same question on trump. Did flynn lied because flynn just lied about different things, or was he lying to cover something up . And we still dont know what the answer is. I guess is we will get it at some point, but it is one of these large questions hanging over the whole thing about what was the true motivation there, and you know, why, if it involves something as sensitive as sanctions, did he lie about it . To be continued. Indeed. Thank you so much to our panel. Absolutely awesome. [laughter] thank you for your time. Thank you for coming out tonight. Please check our website. We have lots of events to share and more. S, culture, thank you. [applause] next, q a with author a. J. Book about harry truman becoming president after the death of franklin roosevelt. Theresa may takes questions from members of the house. After that, it is on Election Security and integrity. Announcer this week on q a a. J. Baime. He discusses his book the the ntal president , and four months that changed the world. A. J. Baime you have a book called the accidental president harry s. Truman and the president that changed the world. When did you get interested in making a book like this
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