the nickname for that boss is putin s cook. and our russia experts are here to teach me how to pronounce his real name. back with us, amy night and malcolm nance. tell us about putin s cook and his appearance in the indictment. yes, i ve known about mr mr. pergoshin. he s been written about in the independent russian media, and there have been be some scandals and he s well known to be close to president putin, but interestingly enough he was in prison for nine years during the soviet period for theft and dealing with prostitutes. so he s kind of a sleazy guy. again, i was rather surprised that he would have been the person who was leading this whole effort.
we have that photograph, i believe, that we can put up on the screen. this person was paid by the russians to do this. to be dressed up at hillary clinton in a prison uniform. that s the kind of thing you were seeing on the clinton campaign every day. absolutely. they list out a number of campaign memes and hashtags they use, the indictment does, and one of the key ones was hillary for prison. and for many people on line we saw that in and out, mostly from the right but sometimes from the left. and the disruption that happened at the democratic convention. you heard people there chanting lock her up. but obviously chanting lock her up at the republican convention and a bunch of events. so, you know, i think if you looked at social media and looked at this indictment, you d see a lot of ties between narratives that were being spread. now we know from a russian
arguing that a not guilty verdict means you re innocent. it does not. not guilty means there wasn t enough evidence presented to convict someone. it does not mean that they are actually innocent. and the fact that this indictment addresses one segment of russian meddling, which is limited to the social media aspects is not the same as saying there was no collusion, although that is what the president announced in capital letters, boldly stated, it does not mean that. it means there may be another indictment and we ll have to wait and see. benjamin, you know these players and the protocols. were you surprised to not see robert mueller standing there at that announcement today? so i think that mueller has clearly made a strategic decision to say nothing. and, you know, the voice of his office is what they say in
what they call the perception management of the information battle space for donald trump to enter in with preconceived notions about what was good for russia. that would be anti-nato, anti-european union and ant anti-immigrant, which you know was his platform. did you see the hand of vladimir putin in this? yes, i did. one of the interesting things is the indictment seems to confirm the christopher steele report because he talks about the russians sort of earmarking donald trump and cultivating him for several years. so to me he also discusses the cyber operations. so it s very interesting for the people who have tlieed ried to discredit the steele dossier
never do anything with prostituted in a russia hotel but this indictment shows that russia is willing to send people to the united states to do what they have to do. what if vladimir putin had donald trump under surveillance not just in moscow but in new york city and elsewhere for years. what if vladimir putin knew everything about donald trump and stormy daniels before that became public? what if vladimir putin knew everything about donald trump and every playboy play mate who donald trump has had affairs with, including karen mcdoogle, whose relationship was revealed today in the new yorker? what if vladimir putin knows more about donald trump than anyone else could find out about donald trump and what if donald trump knows that vladimir putin knows all of that? that would explain donald