kremlin-funded operation on an american street. but it also looks like the payment trail there is one that was found and followed by the special counsel and his prosecutors. and so now we ve got these criminal charges against 13 different russians and the russian internet research agency, the troll farm, and two russian organizations that were used as funding sources for that op. and in addition to these charges, we ve got chapter and verse. not just on the russian game plan. but how it can be charged as a criminal matter in u.s. federal court. by not reporting these expenditures to election authorities. by making illegal expenditures as foreigners trying to influence our election. by obtaining visas to visit the u.s. under false pretenses. those are crimes. those are alleged crimes in this indictment. so they re saying this isn t something the russians did which we should see in a spy versus spy context. what the russians did was a
real live americans. they paid americans to set up pro-trump and anti-clinton rallies. they paid to buy supplies for protests and marches. they paid for well, on more than one occasion, this unusual thing. quote, on or about august 18th, 2016, defendants and their co conspirators sent money via interstate wire to a real u.s. person using one of their u.s. personas. they sent this money to a real u.s. person to, quote, build a cage large enough to hold an actress depicting hillary clinton in a prison uniform. also in the indictment, quote, for example, defendants and their co conspirators asked one u.s. person to build a cage on a flat beg truck and another person to wear a costume portraying hillary clinton in a prison uniform. they paid these individuals to complete the requests. and it s an amazing thing to know that that kind of anti hillary clinton prop was a
universe pageant. i don t know i don t know if that s relevant. i don t know if this was pegged to when he was going to start running or anything else about his relationships with russia. if that s at all relevant. honestly, in this indictment, if that s what you re looking for, you re not going to find it. there is nothing in this indictment either way when it comes to the question of whether any americans knowingly colluded with this russian operation. the indictment doesn t make any allegations about that at all. what this indictment is, is a ton more information and serious criminal charges concerning what the russians did. and you can tell from the guilty plea of the one american guy they charged today, and you can tell from a lot of the specificity in the indictment that parts of how they were able to trace all of this was clearly money. i mean, the russian operation paid out a lot of money to do what they did. they paid out for online ads that were pro trump and anti clinton.
with persons known and unknown to the grand jury to defraud the united states by impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful government for the purpose of interfering with the u.s. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016. defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other and with persons known and unknown to the grand jury. who were these persons known and unknown? especially who are these persons known to the grand jury? who conspired with defendants? and if the grand jury knows who they are, and the government knows that they conspired with the defendants, why aren t those other people in the dimtd? indictment and are those people going to turn out to be russians or americans? and that brings me to my big question here. that brings me to the reason i cancelled my day off today. in the middle of my day off today, and veered off the highway and drove to this studio instead of taking susan away for a nice, long weekend, like i wa
rachel, i just got here yesterday, so i m still on california time. absolutely. good. we ll keep you up for a few hours then. how do you think that russia all right will react to this indictment today? 13 russian citizens indicted. nobody believes the u.s. will have an easy time getting them into any american courtroom maybe ever. how do you think russia will respond to this? well, yeah. it s going to be hard to get them to get putin to send them to america. but i think this is a pretty big deterrent effect for a couple of reasons. number one, they re not going to be sent by the russian government. if they show up in london, if they re on the french rivera, if they re anywhere we want to go where we have closer ties with those countries, they re going to have real problems. so that s a big deterrent. their lives have just changed as a result of this. and number two, what s, in my opinion, very important that this document does is it criminalizes this behavior in