Its 2 00 in washington and 7 00 p. M. In london. This afternoon we are following two breaking stories. This afternoon the Justice Department of justice announced 12 new indictments to muellers investigation. Demonstrators took to the streets by the thousands in london to protest Donald Trumps visit to the uk. We begin in washington where Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein announced 12 new indictments, all related to the hacking of the Democratic National committee and Hillary Clintons campaign during the 2016 election. Today a grand jury in the district of columbia returned an indictment prepared by the special counsels office. The indictment charges 12 Russian Military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 president ial election. I have not identified the victims. Its important for us to avoid thinking politically as republicans or democrats. Instead to think as americans. Our response must not depend on which side was victimized. There will always be adversaries who seek to exacerbate our divisions and try to confuse, divide and conquer us. So long as we are united in our commitment to the values enshrined in the constitution, they will not succeed. The indictments named 12 russian intelligence offices and revealed they attempted to spearfish emails for the first time on july 27, 2016. The very same day that then candidate donald trump made these comments during a News Conference that i attended in florida. Russia, if youre listening, i hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. Do you have any qualms about asking a Foreign Government russia, china, anybody to interfere, to hack into a system of anybodys in this country let the president talk. Heres the problem no, no. You called for it. He has no respect you said i welcome them to find those 30,000 emails well, they probably have them. I would like them released. Does it give you pause . No. If they have them we might as well find them. Do you know what gives me more pause that a person in our government crooked Hillary Clinton a person in our government would delete or get rid of 33,000 emails. That gives me a big problem. After she gets a subpoena. She gets subpoenaed and gets rid of 33,000 emails. That gives me a problem. If russia or china or any other country has those emails, to be honest with you, i would love to see them. The question remains what this news will mean for mondays scheduled summit in helsinki between President Trump and Vladimir Putin. It puts added pressure on the president to confront the russian leader over his role in the interference of the president ial campaign. Joining me now, ken delanian, nbc Legal Correspondent and host of the beat, ari melber, ben witis, legal analyst and editor in chief at law fair and from Brookings Institution and Chuck Rosenberg, msnbc contributor and former fbi senior official. Ken, i want to start with you. This indictment came as news to everybody. All we got was an announcement for an 11 45 announcement from Rod Rosenstein. Then we found out that 12 more russians are indicted for the hack of the dnc which until today we hadnt heard much if anything about in some time. Yeah. It came as a surprise today. Not a surprise writ large though. In march nbc news reported this indictment would happen, that Robert Mueller gathered the evidence and was preparing to charge the russians who hacked the democrats and leaked documents. Before that in the fall the wall street journal reported that some of the evidence was being gathered. It is not clear why he waited to long. Whats surprising about todays developments is its coming on the eve of the summit with Vladimir Putin. When we were discussing what the News Conference could be about i ruled out the idea that it could be this indictment that i did expect charging russian intelligence officials. It is such a dramatic thing to charge the intelligence officials of an adversary government anyway. To do it a few days before you sit down with the leader of the government is amazing. One question i have is whether donald trump had a say in the matter. Did he have the ability to ask rosenstein to delay or not or was rosenstein simply briefing him . Rosenstein said he informed the president this would happen last week. Taking a step back, this is part two of Robert Muellers effort to tell the story of how the russians attacked the 2016 election. Part one was in february. He issued a massive indictment against several russians and other defendants showing how the russians manipulated social media or purchased ads on facebook illegally and were mucking around in the campaign. Nothing in that indictment mentioned hacking. Todays indictment shows how Russian Military intelligence, using sophisticated methods hacked into the Democratic National committee and hacked john podesta and distributed that. First on their own and then chose wikileaks. It is called organization one, but it is clear thats what it is talking about. The exchange you played is remarkable. It shows there is a direct nexus between Donald Trumps statements and the actions of these russian hackers. What happens in part three . Well, thats a great question. A lot of people believe the remaining chapter here is whether any americans were part of either of these conspiracies either the conspiracy to mess around with social media or to hack, leak and disseminate. Todays indictment does mention an unnamed person who was in regular contact with the campaign. Its become clear to me looking at it that its roger stone. Hes previously acknowledged Text Messages that track exactly what the Text Messages mentioned in this indictment. At the time he acknowledged this he said i was never in contact with any russian intelligence officials. Thats already been proven to be false or at least hes been in contact with russians according to a Previous Story a few months ago. He had a meeting with a russian official. Now we are seeing he was in contact with someone accused of being a russian operative. You talk about roger stone. That brings me back to a school that carol lee and i had in february of what Robert Mueller is asking witnesses according to witnesses direct questions about what donald trump knew and when he knew it when it came to the stolen emails. They look back to that date. We played it at the top of the show. July 27 when the now president , then candidate asked russia, if youre listening i want to find those 30,000 emails. Theyre asking why donald trump would say that. Is it because he knew something and he was trying to cover his tracks and muddy the water . Did he have an intermediary . Was someone talking behind the scenes giving donald trump information about what wikileaks may have had or what may have been out there for stolen emails and what he could use and if he did have an intermediary who could that person be. They have been asking a lot of questions about roger stone. Ken pointed out roger stone denied this and donald trump denied any collusion whatsoever. Al ir ari, we keep hearing the july 27 date again and again. The campaign after that tried to claim they were kidding. Oh, no, donald trump was kidding. As you saw in the follow up exchange i had with the now president , then candidate, he was not kidding. He went back again, doubled down if you want to use that cliche, tripled down. Russia, find those emails, i would love to see them. It was a bizarre statement at the time. If taken literally it was seeking foreign help which can be a crime itself. They immediately tried to get away from it being literal. You as a journalist pressed him at the time. Those questions obviously proved prescient and perhaps you were triggering him. He tried to say people raising those questions were, quote, trying to help his opponent. Thats not what todays indictment says. It says that people who worked for Vladimir Putins military were trying to interfere in the election to help donald trump. This is a huge Sweeping Change in whats been charged. Everything up to this point involves putting pieces together. Bob mueller isnt talking today. Hes indicting. The other important point i would draw everyone to on page six is the object of the conspiracy. The object of the conspiracy is to interfere in a manner that hurt one side, helped another and to do it through felonious activity. Ken was reporting it involves the insinuation, the anonymous allegation at this juncture some other persons were involved. That makes it a conspiracy. We cannot predict at this hour whether there will be more charges related or not. As a lawyer i can tell you most crimes go unsolved which is to say most crimes that the government even learns about arent ultimately charged. The difference is the credible paper trail from the bitcoin and the fake identity accounts used and the way bob mueller is showing here as he showed to paul manafort, we see you, we are listening to you. We are seeing that here. If you were on another side of the conspiracy, the part that might be unsolved there is a lot to be nervous about in the detail in the indictment today. Lets read the object you mentioned. It lays out everything so clearly. The object of the conspiracy was to hack into the computers of u. S. Persons and entities involved in the 2016 u. S. President ial elections, steal documents from the computers and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 u. S. President ial election. Chuck rosenberg, what is Robert Mueller doing with the indictments and hes not talking at all. Then we hear big news from him once in a while. Only in the form of court documents. Thats exactly the way real prosecutors and real agents do their work. Once we retire from that line of work, we talk about it on televisi television. When we are engaged in that line of work we do it in a courtroom. Thats what i expect from bob mueller. Whats he doing here . A couple of things. One, hes Holding Accountable people responsible for hacking in to the clinton campaign, the dnc and the dccc. Two, hes sending a clear message that russia interfered in our election. The indictment is a masterpiece. I urge people to read it. Very detailed and precise. Obviously took a lot of work and a lot of time to put it together. Three, hes telling us and i think this is a fair implication. There is more to come. Who are the americans who were in contact with the russians . What did they know and when . What did they do . Was it done willfully or negligently . There are more shoes to drop. I urge people to read the indictment. You will see the fbi and the department of justice, despite the nonsense we hear from the hill, you will see those two organizations at their very best. Let me read another passage for you, chuck, if i may. Page 15 on or about august 15, 2016 the conspirators posing at guccifer 2. 0 received a request for stolen documents for a candidate for the u. S. Congress. They responded using the persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidates opponent. We also know a lot of documents that were hacked came from the dccc. Not a lot of those documents were released. We havent seen a lot of the documents. The midterm elections are coming up about four months from now. Do you think Robert Mueller has an eye on that . Well, in a sense he does. It is the practice of the department of justice not to interfere in elections. By that i mean if he has other charges he wants to bring and i suspect he does he would do it well before or after the midterm elections. So a very interesting passage that you just read. There are obviously other tentacles to this conspiracy. They are careful in this indictment not to name people who are not charged. It is a practice of the department to leave those folks unnamed. Either you charge them or you dont. You dont smear them in an indictment when you are not actually charging them. But really interesting, i think, for all of us to read this carefully and see what those other tentacles are. Again, i suspect other shoes to drop. At the bottom of the last hour i was talking to chuck todd. He believes part three of this, if this was part two who hacked the dnc, part three will be the americans who may or may not have been involved. Thats what the indictments could show if Robert Mueller comes out with a third set of indictments. Whats your take on that . It makes sense to me. We knew we would be getting the indictment at some point. Ken referenced that earlier. Its like walking past a Jewelry Store with the window broken out and ultimately finding the guys who burglarized it. We knew the dnc was hacked. We knew the dccc was hacked. It was a matter of time before we learned who did it. That happened today. We also know i believe we know that americans were involved. Again, how many and whether they were willing participants, negligent participants, time will tell. I think thats the next shoe. Who were the americans who were involved with the russians . Why were they involved with the russians . What specifically did they ask for and what did they get in return . Your questioning of then candidate trump, i think, is incredibly important. I tend not to believe in coincidences. As a longtime prosecutor, things tend to happen for a reason. Evidence is linked to evidence. Coincidences are things you find in movies, not in real life. Time will tale ell if we are ri spoken like a federal prosecutor. Ari . I would echo that. It goes to the bedevilling of donald trump. He had more legal troubles than any other declared candidate for public office. Where there is smoke there is at least smoke. Anyw he knew his way around and understands sometimes you are better off doing the worst thing in public or with plausible deniebden deniability than writing it down privately. You turn to whats in the indictment. I would put it differently than mr. Rosenberg but i dont completely disagree. I wouldnt say we knew it was coming. We have a president who fired an fbi director and oversaw the removal of the deputy fbi director who is now of course involved in a very high profile skirmish with the administration. I dont think if you go back far enough it was inevitable that any of the charges would come out. It was the firing of james comey that led to the appointment of the special counsel. We are dealing with facts that relate to the integrity of the election system, the hacking of emails, the stealing of over half a million voter information just in this indictment alone named, and the object of the conspiracy to affect the outcome of the election. None of it may have been charged in public in the light of day if not for the fact that donald trump clearly intervened, fired the fbi director and said on tv it was with russia on his mind. It is so remarkable. Chuck references movies and conspiracies and coincidences. This is so remarkable it is easy to forget how unlikely and convoluted some of it is and what we are learning in a process and a probe thats not done yet is just how deep it goes. To say nothing of the fact that there are unnamed americans cited here. And how often we are told not to take the president s words seriously. The president said he fired james comey because of the russia thing. The president said he wanted russia to find Hillary Clintons emails. Oh, no, no, dont listen to him, we hear from Donald Trumps staff immediately after when the comments proved to be problematic. Ben, what do you make of the timing of the indictment . This comes a day after the hearing on the hill with peter strozk and a couple of days before the president will sit down with Vladimir Putin. Yeah, i think it is an enormous show of strength on the part of federal Law Enforcement, frankly. You know, yesterday we had we actually saw the real witch hunt which is a congressional witch hunt against a supposedly you know, evil federal Law Enforcement people who were trying to get the president. They actually had a federal agent in front of a Congressional Committee berating him for ten hours. Yelling at him, badgering him. And, you know, it is peter strozk is probably not the ideal exemplar of the fbi at this point. He did a remarkable job standing up for the values and ideas and behavior of the bureau yesterday. All in defense of this investigation. Today, we actually see what this investigation is really about which, you know, we knew except that theres been an ongoing effort to distract us from that and prevent us from talking about that. Ironically by calling this a witch hunt. In addition and what that is about is russian intervention in american politics by criminal means. In addition, the fact that it takes place two days or a few days before the president is to meet with Vladimir Putin, i think the fact that that didnt dissuade the Justice Department and the special counsel from moving forward on the time schedule that they thought appropriate is a real show of strength on their part. I thought it was interesting that Rod Rosenstein said today that he had briefed the president on it which and that he did that so that when the president goes and talks to Vladimir Putin he knows the truth about what russia had done and that he was armed with appropriate information. I thought that showed an appropriate, a, deference to the president in his capacity as the person who has to conduct Foreign Policy. But also an appropriate deference to the actual Foreign Policy interests of the United States. So i thought the timing was really interesting along both of the axes you identify. Ben, this morning the president called this a witch hunt. Again, Richard Engel a little while ago tried to make the distinction that the president is just talking about the investigation into him and not the wider investigation. Is that distinction being made in the general public or does it seem like the president is slamming the entire investigation . Since the president also says that Vladimir Putin says he didnt do it and that we have to listen to him, im not sure thats a distinction that is actually meaningful. He denies the premise not merely that there was any collusion, but that there was anything to collude with. Both the Internet Research agency indictment in february and this indictment today show that the Justice Department believes that it can prove using admissible evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the premise is wrong and that there is a serious set of an actual pair of conspiracies to interfere with our election, both organized out of moscow by russians or agents of the russian state or the russian state itself. And, you know, i agree very much with chuck both chucks actually that the remaining big question and the other shoe to drop is who on this side of the atlantic may have knowingly participated in either or both of those conspiracies. Matt miller, the president is still meeting with Vladimir Putin on monday. The president of finland, his Office Confirmed that to us. Mark warner, democrat in the senate as well as the democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer have called on the president to cancel the meeting. Can you make an argument its good for him to go into the meeting with the knowledge in hand or i dont know. What do you think . If hes going to go in and behave like a president protecting National Security, go in and seek to hold Vladimir Putin accountable for the actions described in the indictment, it very much is appropriate for him to go forward with the meeting. There arent indications thats what hes going to do. That would require 180degree turn on his part. Before hes always made excuses for Vladimir Putin and only grudgingly acknowledged, usually under pressure thats what happened. If you look at the response from the white house today, the initial response to the unsealing of the indictment was to say as we have said all along the indictment shows no collusion on our part, no one involved from our campaign. Never anywhere in the statement do they say this indictment reveals unacceptable interference in the political process by the russian government. They still cannot seem to take that step we expect a president to take. You see again him acting in this case like a defendant, not like the president , like someone worried about being under investigation and worried about what people around him might have done and not like someone who is charged with protecting the National Security of the United States. Another interesting point that i havent heard talked about that much is all the information, all the emails they have from the dccc, from the Congressional Fund raising arm. According to the indictment on or about august 22, 2016, the conspirators transferred approximately 2. 5 gigabytes of data stolen from the dccc to a then registered state lobbyist and on line source of political news. The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying information for more than 2,000 democratic donors. We havent heard a lot of that information. We are four months from the midterms. Could we potentially see the emails and that information used nefariously in the leadup to the next election . Thats a great and disturbing question. I think there is reporting out there about who this is and what the context of this particular instance is. But taking a step back, this is an interesting aspect of this thats not well explored that the russians didnt just meddle in the president ial election. They played in state and local races. Im not sure we know the full extent of that. It is an interesting and disturbing facet. There is very little to stop them from doing it again. You could argue they could have more impact, particularly in the midterms on a statebystate basis and get less attention. I want to segue into another point about the indictment. We have been talking about the amazing detective work involved in putting together the who, how and why of how the russians did this hack. How did they prove that these particular russian Intelligence Officers were responsible . It is not laid out in the indictment. It isnt just Computer Forensics but a massive intelligence gathering effort that includes intercepts by the National Security agency, potentially human sources. Theres been reporting that, for example, the netherlands was able to hack into the cameras security cameras and the web cams of one of the russian hacking groups and fed that information to the United States Intelligence Agency. So we were all up in their stuff. This is an example. We have laid out how much we know about this operation. Often, the u. S. Government is reluctant to do this. There is a chance they are exposing sources and methods that could go away. Clearly Robert Mueller feels it is important enough in this case to make the case against the russian Intelligence Officers that he was willing to put this in their domain. We were all up in their stuff. First time i have heard that on tv. Stick with me. This is what rosenstein said today about how the hackers did their work. They also hacked into the Computer Networks of a Congressional Campaign committee and a National Political committee. The defendants covertly monitored the computers and planted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code, stole emails and other documents. Joining the conversation msnbc contributor Betsy Woodruff for the daily beast, msnbc National Security analyst clint watts, a former fbi special agent and author of messing with the enemy, surviving in a social media world of hackers, terrorists, russians and fake news and David Hickton who led the fbi cyber unit named in the indictment during the obama administration. David, how did the mueller investigators piece it together . How did they get how did they find out with as much confidence as they have that this was done by russian Intelligence Officers known as the gru . When you talk about cyber enforcement it can be very complicated or reduced down to this. It is about attribution and defeat i defeati defeating anonymous. Its about pinning the tail on the cyber donkey. I was proud to lead a group i thought were the best cyber investigators here. Three squads at the fbi who are identified in the press release as part of todays announcement. The hackers tried to avoid detection. In china, they are part of a group but they avoid detection by having an architecture of compromised computers which turned their signatures anonymous. In russia they subcontract hackers. I think a very interesting question for the president to ask Vladimir Putin if the meeting goes forward is to rebut his assertion in some public source interviews that these people are just doing this on their own. This indictment is an exquisite piece of craftsmanship. It identifies 12 specific people precisely who worked for Russian Military intelligence. The president in the past has claimed that you cant really know who does the hacking. Hes expressed doubts in the past, even when the Intelligence Community has expressed a great deal of confidence they knew what was happening and what was going on. How would you rebut that claim from the president if he tries to make it again . The president s comments going all the way back to the campaign are jawdropping. He has rebuked the consensus opinion of our entire Intelligence Agency and tried to suggest that someone in their bedroom was doing this maliciously and we didnt know who was doing it. In my work in the federal government, i developed the confidence that we can identify cyber hackers with the same precision that we can send a drone to a specific location. There is nothing mysterious about it. Now the senate Intelligence Community has agreed with our Intelligence Community. I want to make one other point. I think this bears stating. The precision of the evidence needed to frame an indictment like the one announced today goes way beyond the gathering of intelligence. The evidence that goes into the indictment has to be used in court. So i think there are double layers of precision here and i am completely confounded why the president of the United States would continue to create doubt about this. This whole indictment is available on line if you are at home and you want to see it, read along with us, go ahead. We are going to page 14 now. Clint, i want your take on this. Here is what it says. On or about june 8, 2016, at approximately the same time that the d. C. Leaks. Com website was launched the conspirators created a d. C. Leaks Facebook Page using a preexisting social media account under the fictitious name alice donovan. In addition to the d. C. Leaks Facebook Page the conspirators used other social media accounts in the names of fictitious u. S. Persons such as jason scott and richard gingray to promote the d. C. Leaks website. The conspirators accessed accounts from the computers managed by potemkin and coconspirators. What do you make of these fake accounts and the way they were able to use them to their advantage to try to not only seed the information on social media and push it to reporters as well. Thats a consistent theme. They were trying to get things injected into the main stream media. They did it with guccifer 2. 0. Al l Alice Donovans name has come up before. Just below that they were talking about black lives matter, blacks against hillary. That ties back into the Facebook Pages and the things we have seen that have come out of the intelligence committees. We see a reporter was sent stolen documents pertaining to the black lives matter movement. The reporter offered to write an article about the release. It shows how the russian system knew how to engage with the media both social media, fringe and mainstream to get them enticed to produce and perform a function unwittingly to try to influence the election. This is an octopus with many arms. They not only had the social media campaign. They not only hacked into the dnc according to the indictment and hacked into Hillary Clintons Campaign Emails including john podesta, but there was an effort according to rosenstein today to get into state board of elections. There was an effort to get into the private information of attorneys general to try and get information on voter rolls. They do say there is no evidence that there was anything successfully changed during the election. But they do lay out that this was an effort. Right. Another thing we learned today is the russians actually received information on thousands and thousands of American Voters. Those are American Voters whose personal information, their names and Voter Registration info is now in the hands of russian Intelligence Officers. Thats something people find to be deeply disturbing. It shows the Russian Campaign wasnt just a campaign of disinformation, an influence operation. It actually may have been potentially targeted directly at our election infrastructure. One of the big concerns for many folks on capitol hill, particularly democrats and we hear it also from republicans, is that there isnt enough preemptive work put together to keep this type of thing from happening again in the midterm elections coming up. There are serious concerns that there isnt enough communication between dhs and state Election Officials. There isnt enough additional investment in cyber security. Not enough additional investment in trying to shore up the election infrastructure and many of these election infrastructure components could potentially be vulnerable to future hacking. Thats something that worries folks i talked to on the hill. Whats been done . Theres been increased communication between dhs and the statelevel individuals responsible for overseeing elections. This is something where you can see the administration putting points on the board. One of the big challenges is elections arent run by the federal government. For all 50 states there are 50 different state Election Officials with Different Levels of resources, access to Different Levels of money, Different Levels of sophistication for their cyber security. Many of the statelevel Election Officials are nervous when the feds come knocking on their door to get involved in the way elections work. Dhs the working to build relationships, try to increase communication between dhs which is responsible for election infrastructure and the statelevel officials. It seems theres been progress made. There is still concern that the progress may not be adequate across the board. Talking about this investigation or effort by the russians, seeming like an octopus with different arms. There was the effort to steal the information. One unit working on that. Another unit working on disseminating it. There was a social media campaign. Given the breadth of it and given that 12 members of the Russian Intelligence Service have just been named, is there a way for putin to say he knew nothing about this . First, with regard to the conversation of betsy, the university of pittsburgh Cyber Institute has a Blue Ribbon Commission where we are working to protect pennsylvania elections. With regard to your question about what putin knows or doesnt know, i agree with the other commentators that its fair to infer that other shoes will drop. I agree with the Deputy Attorney general who is a good and cautious lawyer who seemed to be saying lets not conclude from what happened today that there was no collusion. Lets not conclude there was collusion. He was arguing that we should all create space or room for the special prosecutor to do his job. I endorse that. There is some fake news that the special prosecutor has been slow and un productiproductive. Thats preposterous. Hes been hugely productive at a rapid rate of speed. Just compare his progress and timeline to other special prosecutors in the past. Bob mueller enjoys a bipartisan level of respect which is unequalled in the department of justice. Anyone like myself who served as a prosecutor considers him a prosecutors prosecutor. I think it is unfair to try to read too much into what will happen Going Forward. If Chuck Rosenberg suggests people read the indictment and look at what happened today in the context as a Building Block of other things that happened previously, the next step to follow would seem to be who in the United States and perhaps who working with the Trump Campaign was connected to these individuals. What about Vladimir Putin . How much is it safe to assume or is it safe to assume anything of what he knew about this. I can only go off my opinion. An operation this large that stretches over this many organizations, hes a former intelligence officer. I would be shocked if he didnt know what his intelligence agencies were up to. This is the gru. He comes from the fsb. Their roots in the kgb. How would he not know this is going on. At the same time diplomats often echo talking points and overtly say things mirrored by the social media influence efforts and things placed into the media. For Vladimir Putin to say he had no knowledge of it, i think it is remarkable now. We have the evidence. The president can walk in. I dont understand why he would walk into a meeting with president putin without anybody else around, particularly next week, which hes talked about doing. Good point. I would like to see him deliver the indictment to him and say to president putin, you said there is nothing to this. You have no evidence. Heres what we have. From the reporting out there this meeting the president is having with Vladimir Putin will only have internship tpreters, takers or anything else. Well see if there will be more information about who will be in the meeting. In the meantime, thank you very much. Everyone else, stick with me if you can. On the phone now is chris hayes, host of all in. Chris, this is the first time we are checking in with you today. What do you make of the indictment . It is a shoe we knew would drop but landed thunderously. Both because of the timing, scope, breadth, new details, the bread crumb trail towards whats still coming. It is an enormous deal. There is this oscillating way in which this has gone on for a long time and in which we get a little view into the scope of whats being investigated. It suggests something enormous. It tightens as the special Counsel Office which doesnt leak by and large at all as far as i can tell. Goes about their work and we are back on the outside of the black box. It gets opened for a little bit again. This is a moment where we are very close based on solely publically available and established information and allegations put into writing by the special prosecutor to collusion between the Trump Campaign and the russian operation. In the indictment, there are there is talk about conspirators having contact with unnamed americans. The americans not knowing who they were in contact with. There is also talk in this indictment about guccifer or someone having communications with a senior Trump Campaign official, also somebody in contact with senior Trump Campaign officials. What more do you want to learn about that . What more do you think we can expect to learn about that . Thats where the nexus of all of this becomes incredibly important. One thing i will say is we already know roger stone was in contact with guccifer who is named in the indictment as a russian intelligence agent. The question then becomes what did he know about his identity, his true motives. There are emails back and forth that appears to be from wikileaks, organization one. There is more we could know about that. One thing thats key here and this is true of the indictments of the Internet Research agency in which there is a snippet of an email that one of the people indicted sent to family members saying, long day at work, im destroying stuff so the fbi cant find it. We get glimpses into the breadth of access probably american Counter Intelligence and the special Prosecutors Office has into the communications of the conspirators in this conspiracy. It was a conspiracy. One imagines there is more where that came from. Who knew what when, who passed along information . Those questions hang over all of us. Stone obviously, i think at this point, who has already been a focal point for a lot of reasons, becomes more of one. It is now confirmed or alleged by the federal prosecutor he was interacting with a Russian Foreign agent involved in criminal sabotage of the american election. The indictment describes communications between guccifer 2. 0 and a person in regular contact with senior members of the Trump Campaign. The indictment says that guccifer 2. 0 wrote please tell me if i can help you. According to ken dilanian the quote appears in the screen shots of Text Messages or messages that stone has released and acknowledged making it clear the person who was in regular contact with senior members of the Trump Campaign is roger stone. I will add this, chris. Carol lee and i had a story in february, a scoop about what muellers team was asking donald trump and what he may have known. They were curious about the News Conference where donald trump said, russia, if you are listening i would like those emails. They want to know why donald trump would say that then. Later that day after hours for the first time conspirators had a spearfishing campaign to try and get in to clinton Campaign Emails for the first time. There is that end of it. Muellers team was asking witnesses why did donald trump ask that then and was there some sort of back channel . Was he working with somebody . Maybe not directly in the campaign but outside of the campaign on the timing of the wikileaks emails. Did he know they were coming . Did he know when they were coming . Was he working to say when they should be released. The other person that would be caught up in the questioning was roger stone. Thats right. All eyes are on roger stone. As far as we know and unless things changed in the last few days, roger stone has not been contacted by the special counsel which, you know, all of the criminal Defense Attorneys and prosecutors i talked to said its not a good sign for him this late into the investigation, given how much scrutiny there is of his actions. The other thing about roger stone, stone is a guy who literally has the tattoo of a criminal president on his back richard nixon. He has delighted for the duration of his career of working the dark side of politics. Hes bragged about lying. Bragged about denial. He bragged about dirty tricks and, you know, rat effing, to use a turn. Its not crazy this selfavowed devotee of the last president chased from office for being a criminal and heading up a criminal conspiracy would engage in things that were at the very best the gray area of the law. Theres probably more shoes to drop as regards roger stone. We should say stone has denied any guilt associated with coordination. Yeah. Youre not kidding. He literally does have nixons face tattooed on the middle of his back. Dont believe us . Google it. Chris hayes, host of all in. Thank you very much. Thank you. President trump is in the uk where protesters have been marching through the city of london. Thousands upon thousands of them. A smaller crowd remains at this hour. Its getting later in london, 7 46 now. Earlier President Trump held a joint News Conference with Prime Minister theresa may. He boasted about the great relationship he hopes to establish with russias Vladimir Putin on monday. He said this about the topic of Russian Election interference before the dojs news broke. I know you will ask will we talk about meddling. I will absolutely bring that up. I dont think you will have any, gee, i did it, you got me. There wont be a perry mason here, i dont think. You never know, but i will firmly ask the question. This is before the doj and Rod Rosenstein came out with the indictments. The president knew about it. Rosenstein said in his News Conference he briefed the president on what they found and what they were doing earlier in the week. He knew full well during the press conference. Joining me now, a man who studied putin for years ben judah, author of fragile empire, how russia fell in and out of love with Vladimir Putin. He also wrote this is london. The White House Reporter for the Associated Press will be in the room on monday. And Nina Kruscheva of the school of International Affairs at the new school. If her name is familiar shes also a close relative of nikitnikita nikita kruschev. Johnen that, whats going on with the White House Team now . Have you had contact with any of them in regards to this news release . We have gotten a pretty standard response from Sarah Huckabee sanders saying it shows no americans were willingly involved. Thats right. The white house is putting out the boilerplate response suggesting that these indictments prove the Trump Campaign was not involved with the Russian Election interference. Of course the dojs announcement is an unpleasant additive to this trip. There are already questions swirling about his summit on monday with Vladimir Putin, particularly the time when hes going to be one on one with no aides inside the room outside of translators. There will be pressure for him to press putin on what happened in 2016. Something hes consistently refused to do in other encounters with him overseas. One in germany, one in vooietna. This will be his longest visit with putin. There is no escaping the matter of russian meddling for donald trump. Even overseas at a moment that was supposed to be triumphant. The audience with the queen today, the indictments came down at almost exactly the same time leading to an upsetting split screen image for donald trump and the white house which once again is asked to deal with this election story. Did they have any idea it would have been happening while he was meeting with the queen . We have been asking on that. There is a suggestion they received a headsup that it would come today. Whether they precisely knew it was a matter of a time when the president would be at Windsor Castle with the queen is still unclear. This is something you heard the president bring up. He brought it up voluntarily yesterday during the press conference at nato, which i was also at. He anticipated this was coming. He knows the eyes of the world will be on him on monday and expecting him to hold putins feet to the fire. Its unrealistic and passes prologue that he will do that. Hes said before putin said to him, i didnt do it. Trump has not weighed in necessarily whether he believed putin but didnt suggest he would challenge him on the matt nina, you know this better than most. You know the politics of russia, you know the way russians manipulate pop particularlitics russians want to get out of western leaders. The president going in and keeping with this monday with Vladimir Putin, is it a good idea, bad idea . I think it is a good idea. Either donald trump is going to confront putin, which i dont believe he will, and the conversation will go from there, or we at least know that donald trump is not going to confront putin under any circumstances or any terms and the conversation will either stop or go from there. So i think for us its a good way to endi the guessing game. Do they like each other as much as they say or do they not like each other. I would like to offer a different view on whether donald trump is i think he was really embarrassed by this double screen. Hes been saying he doesnt trust american Intelligence Officers, he doesnt trust the doj, he doesnt trust Robert Mueller, so for him it is absolutely a possibility that this kind of indictment would only take him closer into the arms of Vladimir Putin. What is at risk if he goes down and sits down with Vladimir Putin and theres only translators there, theres no note takers. And i think there are going to say look at those clowns, they are coming up to sabotage our meeting with this ridiculous thing. Why . Because he doesnt trust doj. They have been saying they betrayed him. He doesnt trust mueller, he calls it a witch hunti. Remember when he was talking about colin powell going to the united nations, thats what he can say that once again they really tried to get me and the fake news media, as we are here being called, can you imagine reported it during the time that i was meeting with the queen. So theres a lot of ways that donald trump the showman and the alpha male to present it to his benefit in his meeting with Vladimir Putin. Of course for Vladimir Putin, this indictment can also be a wonderful thing. You think its going to embarrass him. No. These people are going to get medals, theyre going to be at the service of the nation, and hes once again can be more united in trump in saying the world doesnt understand the great alpha males as we are. Ben, what is your take . How is Vladimir Putin going to use this in mondays meeting . I think the first thing we have to say is what a startling success for russian intelligence. Im almost certain that this operation will be studied in intelligence academies of china, saudi arabia, india and russia for generations. Its one of the most startling successes of recent times. What does this mean for Vladimir Putin Going Forward . I think it means that this technique of trying to identify where out of a mixture of inertia, inability to recognize threats and of partisan blindness, america has left doors wide open into its National Security. There was clearly no serious locks or serious defenses placed in this sort of cyber dimension. We see another one, which is the doors of the United States are wide open into its Financial Systems for dark money to flood in through anonymous companies. And whats the reaction going to be for our allies, ben . I mean hes coming off this very tense nato meeting. He has just trashed the british Prime Minister on british soil. Whats their reaction to not only this indictment and the president continuing to go on to have this meeting . Prior to his arrival in europe, the governments in the uk and in france and in germany were preparing various scenarios for how it could go. And the worstcase scenario was, which we didnt quite get to, but they were definitely preparing for, was that some kind of demand which would see nato effectively rolled up or thrown into an even deeper crisis than it already was. So i think theres been a certain sigh of relief that the worstcase scenario hasnt happened. In terms of what this means for his relationship now Going Forward with theresa may, i dont think you need to be a genius to say that she will clearly hate him for having repeatedly undermined her authority as Prime Minister, her plan for brexit, insulted her, belittled her. I can tell you confidently that in number 10 and that in the British Foreign service, the attitude of emnity towards this white house is something unseen since before the first world war. Jonathan lemur, ben judea, nina, thank you for waiting with us during this hour, we appreciate it. Staying with the president s trip overseas, the queen welcomed President Trump and the first lady to Windsor Castle a short time ago for afternoon tea. You may remember Windsor Castle from the royal wedding, harry to meghan a couple of months ago. Meanwhile protests raged across britain. In london, thousands blanketed the streets to make it clear to trump that he was not welcome in their country. Richard engle is amid the protests in london. Nick oheinz is an editor and Steve Clemons is a washington editor at large at the atlantic. Richard, first to you. Whats it been like out there today . Reporter well, ill say that the protests are now dying down a little bit. It has just started to rain here in london. The protests have been going on now for about eight hours already. So theyre thinning out. You have people still out here, still having a good time with their signs. They have been setting up some sort of bandstand, but the massive demonstrations, the tens of thousands of people who were on the streets, that is pretty much dying down at this stage. But today the people of london did send a very strong message. They sent a message that they say President Trump is not welcome here and they believe they accomplished a great deal. Because of these demonstrations, he didnt come into the center of london. He flew on helicopters from place to place and avoided the protests and avoided that blimp that went up for a couple of hours this morning, a blimp of baby trump. So they say it was a good day. Niko, the president says that he apologized to theresa may. Interesting because the president never apologizes, doesnt admit to apologizing. Is that alone enough . Well, theres no way to overestimate the anger in london about what trump said in the interview, which came out the first day of his tour here. It seemed like things were going quite well. He had a good dinner with the Prime Minister. Little did they know that the Newspaper Presses were rolling and this bombshell interview was about to appear. If trump had been trying to upset the Prime Minister as much as he could, he couldnt have done a better job because he named theresa mays hated rival, her nemesis, boris johnson, whos been a thorn in her side throughout this brexit negotiating position. He specifically undermined her negotiations and suggested that he would have been able to do it better. Theresa may was absolutely seething. And as you say, trump never apologizes, so you can be sure that there was some extremely strong words shared behind the scenes. I do think that trump tried very hard to do to make up for that and he was showering the Prime Minister with praise, but at the same time you could tell that he hadnt really changed his position. He still put more praise on boris johnson, who people have called the british trump, of course, and he repeated this idea that Theresa Mays Brexit negotiations might not allow for a good negotiated treaty with the u. S. In the future. You know, steve, it is interesting, ive never seen the president walk anything back when it comes to things hes said in the past. Ive seen him try to claim that i didnt say that and he did certainly to an extent do that today, but it does seem like hes trying to soften his tone. He also did an interview, were reading, with piers morgan. Well see what comes out of that. That interview has not aired yet, it just wrapped up. Why do you think that he is trying to smooth things over with may in a way that he hasnt done with Angela Merkel or Justin Trudeau or anybody else . Because i think every single advisor around him said he went across an unforgivable line. I think the british communicated that as well. I think they were probably behind the scenes on the verge of cancelling the trip. Everyone i know not the trip, but the meeting, thought that it would be a mistake for theresa may to go forward. While she tried to put the best face on it, and i agree that donald trump showered her with false praise because i dont believe it was sincere at all. No one knows the real trump better than you do, katy, but what we saw today was a false contrive ans while the British Public seethed. Donald trump kicks our closest allies in the teeth regularly and recklessly while hugging thugs around the world. This has finally reached an alarm point. I think hes walking it back because he finally realized, someone lit a match and said you cant proceed this way. This could all come apart is my guess. Im speculating. Richard engle, niko hines, Steve Clemons, thank you very much. I will remind everybody that back during the campaign the British Public circulated a petition to ban donald trump from entering that country. It got so many signatures that it had to be taken up in parliament. Ultimately, as you can see, he was not banned. Ali velshi takes things over right now, hi, ali. Thank you, have a good one. Good afternoon, everybody, im ali velshi. The takes for the upcoming Putin Meeting could not be higher, so says nancy pelosi. There are new federal indictments in the attack on u. S. Democracy. They point to specific direct targeted involvement by russian intelligence agents in the 2016 president ial campaign, and it comes just three days before trump meets with putin, a meeting democrats
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