That the president has been acid wously denying for more than a year now, that there was a in fact a major russian operation to interfere in the 2016 u. S. Election. And, you know, the Intelligence Community has been saying for a year now that they have high confidence that that is the case. And here you have the u. S. Department of justice and a grant Ju Grand Jury saying they can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, using admissible evidence. And that, you know, is a Rod Rosenstein today was extremely careful not to offend the president and make sure that no americans were witting participants in this plot. But that is a remarkable factual repudiation of the entire
he was very careful to stay within what is alleged in the indictment. But he did make a point on several occasions of saying that no americans are accused of participation in this. And i do think that was probably aimed at the president in a fashion that allows the president at least until such a time as
this is a report from the pool reporter on the south lawn at the white house, you re going to see the camera lens trying to pick up the first pictures of air force one there in the air, they re aloft and en route to andrews. president left the oval office at 3:04 p.m. eastern time, that s ten minutes away, we should be seeing the chopper, walk to air force one without the reporters assembled. he seemed to say something we couldn t hear over the rotor noise of the helicopter, he said something about russia and affairs with women. marine one airborne at 3:09, so that was roughly six minutes ago. matt miller has just joined our conversation, chief justice department spokesperson, matt, we have yet to get to you, what stuck out to you? let me pick up on this
with vladimir putin, we know they spoke by phone yesterday. today the president elaborated on the conversation. it was great. he said very nice things about what i ve done for this country in terms of the economy. then also said some negative things in terms of what is going on elsewhere. but the primary point was to talk about north korea. because we would love to have his help on north korea. china s helping. russia s not helping. we would like to have russia s help. very important. to our lead-off panel for a busy and confusing friday night. peter baker chief white house correspondent for the new york times and msnbc political analyst and former assistant water gate special counsel and legal analyst and matthew noosebum, white house reporter for politico. peter, to you first. ronald reagan used to pretend the rotor noise from the helicopter was too
inside the compound was spent gathering up intelligence, computers, hard drives and files that could provide valuable information on al qaeda members and operations. as the americans left the compound with bin laden s body, they blew up one of their helicopters that had crash landed in the compound. revealing one of the u.s. military s most closely guarded secrets. the remains of what. peers to be a stealth helicopter. a modified version of a blackhawk that reduces rotor noise and makes it difficult to detect by radar. pentagon officials refused to comment. now, remarkably as the s.e.a.l.s were moving through the compound on the clearing mission and, in fact, engaging some of the al qaeda whether armed or not some of the s.e.a.l.s were actually gathering up some 22 women and children to take them out of harm s way at the same time, richard. all right. the very latest of an evolving story, nbc s jim miklaszewski,
pretend that the rotor noise from the helicopter was into impossibly loud for him to hear any reporter s questions. this was quite different today. the press pool is standing there, the president chooses to walk over to them, as he does on occasion. he chose to take questions. he knew russia questions were coming. why do what he did, why say what he said today, do you think? that s a great point. in fact this has turned out to be his preferred method of communicating with the white house press corps with the helicopter in the background, on the lawn, with the noise. it s kind of an odd choice just esthetically because it s hard to hear, it s hard to have a real interchange. but this is his preferred method for communication for some reason. today in particular he did have a message he wanted to get across. that message was, you know, implicitly at least, time to shut it down, this is not leading anywhere. he s encouraging the allies out there who have begun this tack on the special c