reporter: this was his doing. this started at the beginning of a conversation when he called putin to congratulate him and used that word congratulate him when his advisers asked him not to. he wanted to have a one-on-one meeting. his advisers were saying that he wanted to have a meeting like his with kim jong-un last month in singapore. one key difference, vladimir putin has been around the block with four american presidents, 18 years, two decades of this. he was not the new kid on the block today. this summit was done on putin time. he made the president wait. he controlled this entire event today. erin, it seemed to show. all right. jeff zeleny, thank you very much. we re going to have much more on that, by the way, putin showing up 40 minutes late and more on that in just a moment. there is, though, more breaking news this hour as the president codesies to putin and enrages his intelligence chiefs in his own party. the justice department charging a russian national tonight
offer, okay? it sure is an incredible offer. get some russians in questioning the russians. okay. point made. the president also said the u.s. should reciprocate by helping the kremlin question top putin critic bill browder, a man who is reportedly on putin s hit list. bill browder is now outfront. i want to be clear, bill, as i always am, when you speak to us from a remote location where you are tonight that you have asked us not to reveal your location because of safety concerns, which, of course, are directly linked to president putin. what we just heard sounds like a quid pro quo, right? we can question our guys. they re going to get to get you in exchange. so it s a quid pro quo. you re the quo. are you a bargaining chip here between putin and trump? well, i m putin wants me pretty badly. this is not the first time that he s made an attempt to get me. on may 30th, i was arrested in
my people came to me, dan coats came to me and some others, they said they think it s russia. i have president putin. he just said it s not russia. i will say this, i don t see any reason why it would be. it s hard to know what to do with that, all right? that s how a lot of people have felt about it today. let s be clear because i guess we still have to make sure we say this. russian meddling in the united states election is not a matter of dispute, it has been proven forensically again and again and again. there isn t a intelligence chief, there isn t a republican, not even a democrat in any political sphere or as i said forensic sphere who questions it because it is a fact. that is why the rebuke of donald trump, the president of the united states, has been so swift. the statements from republicans today coming in one after the other. john mccain starting it. one of the most disgraceful performances by an american president in history. mitt romney, disgraceful and
there is not another person on the screen. michael anten was going to be here. he s the former national security council spokesman. he cancelled and he knows i am going to tell you this because he could not defend the president on his actions today. john, let me start with you because i thought that moment was incredible. just the smirk on president putin s face. he wouldn t take the paper. no. maybe he thinks if i gave someone a piece of paper, i don t know what he s thinking. the point is this is pretty incredible and chris wallace appears to have confronted him with this directly. not so far as we know, the president of the united states. chris wallace was infinitely tougher and more skeptical with vladimir putin than president trump. certainly in public. you can only assume it was even worse in private. today is a day that they will be writing about in history books. we have never seen an american
the u.s.-russia relationship back to normal. so he did want him to win. that is what he is specifically referring to there. as of tonight, 25 russians have been indicted by bob mueller for meddling in the u.s. election, including top military officials with direct ties to president putin. which is why trump s director of national intelligence today took the unprecedented step, think about this, this is the director of national intelligence, he came out today with his own statement. didn t clear it through the white house. in fact, takes on the president directly and takes on the president. dan coats, who you just heard the president call out by name, right, he says, quote, we have been clear in our assessments of the russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy. when he says ongoing and pervasive, remember this, he gave a chilling warning just this weekend that russia at this moment as the president of the united states defends