Election sabotage. Do you feel vindicated in the mueller investigation. What is in the indictment. Russians recruited and paid real americans to engage in political activities. And why whats not in the indictment could mean big trouble for the president. No puppet no, puppet. Youre the puppet. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Robert mueller just revealed again weve only scratched the surface of what he and his team discovered about the 2016 election. He charged 13 russian nationals with interfering in the American American political process through what they caused information warfare. While various aspects have been reported by the press in dribs and drabs, the indictment lays out the full picture in extraordinary detail. It traces the different phases of the operation beginning way back in 2014 and continuing through election day. What it reveals is a highly sophisticated well fund and integrated enterprise. Effectively a Third Campaign. A Third Campaign controlled by a kremlin ally that worked against one of the candidates, Hillary Clinton, and ultimately backed her opponent, the man who is now president of the United States. According to the indictment, the operation began four years ago long before election with intensive studies of different political groups active on social media. In june of 2014, two defendants travelled to the u. S. Stopping in nevada, california, new mexico, colorado, illinois, michigan, louisiana, texas and new york to gather intelligence. Later, the alleged conspirators commonly referreded to targeting purple states. The defendants working out of a russian troll farm called the Internet Research agency went on to create group pages looked like they were run by americans. Some efforts have been previously exposed like groups like secured border, twitter handles like 10 gop which i myself had retweeted at one point. We didnt just how professionalized those efforts were. With socalled specialists divided into day shift and nightshift hours instructed to make posts in accordance with the appropriate u. S. Time zone. Like any sophisticated digital operation, they tracked the size of the online audiences reached through posts, different types of inengage the, changes in audience size all reported up the chain. In an internal review, the account specialist for the page was criticized for having a low number of posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton and told it was imperative to criticize her in different post. They took their activities offline organizing actual political rallies in the u. S. , coordinating with unwitting is activists and Trump Campaign staff and paid people to show up at events in costume like this guy spotted by a reporter outside a trump rally in pennsylvania a month before the election. Dont let the governmentrun media elect crooked hillary. In the laughter half of 2016, these russian operatives used fake american accounts to push conspiracy theorys about democratic voter fraud and discourage people of color from voting according to the indictment. Just days before the election, they brought an ad to promote a post on one of their accounts called a olympicty visit that read choose peace and vote for jill stein. Trust me, its not a wasted vote. The russians pulled it off using stolen identities to open bank accounts, send money through paypal and routed web traffic through the u. S. To conceal russian origins. When it was over, they took steps to erase their digital trail, one defendant writing in an email to a Family Member, we had a slight crisis here at work. The fbi busted our activity. Not a joke. So i got preoccupied with covering tracks together with the colleagues. Further wrote, i created all these pictures and posts. The americans believed it was written by their people. Now, the indictment today only concerns russian information operations. It does not even touch on the criminal theft of documents from the dnc or the Clinton Campaign or the question of potential collusion with the Trump Campaign which almost certainly means there are more shoes left to drop. The president of course, already declared victory today tweeting russia started their antiu. S. Campaign in 2014 long of i announced i would run for president. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump Campaign did nothing wrong, no collusion. Mueller makes no determination whether the russian efforts affected the election outcome. He leaves no doubt they put a large thumb on the scale. Matt miller from the justice department, msnbc justice and security analyst, Betsy Woodruff a little reporter with the daily beast. Matt, this indictment is a remarkable document. Whats your reaction . This indictment lays out a much more farsweeping conspiracy to violate u. S. Election laws than we really knew. We knew about a lot of social media activity on twitter, facebook. We had no idea that russians sent operatives over to the United States to gather intelligence, that they were in addition to organizing rallies on ground they were paying people to attend rallies. This is a well financed at one point over 1 Million Dollar a month operation. Well financed, well researched, well executed conspiracy to violate election laws. It is own one piece of the puzzle. As point out, this had nothing to do with the hacks of documents at the dnc or john podesta. Many election observers will have more of a dramatic impact. People are looking at the screen at the president of the United States down in florida who we are expecting some comments from. Well listen in. Got here over to the hospital in less than 21 minutes. She had no chance. Between the First Responders your people who got her, you know who im talking about, they got her there, scott. What a job youve done. The doctors did a great job over at the hospital. The combination is incredible. I hope youre getting credit. Believe me, you deserve it. Job youve done is unparalleled. Mr. President , these are the leaders who they led swat teens, staging areas. The president down in florida visiting with the sheriff of broud county, an individual we spoke with last night. He visit aid hospital just before then. Matt and betsy, are you still there . Were sort of curious that the president who looked like he didnt want to visit with vips of the mass murder that happened down there and decided to go there. Whether hes going to be addressing any of this, were going to keep an eye on that. But the president did have to address this indictment earlier today in a tweet. What was striking to me is how this essentially has him pinned because he has been calling this a hoax even things like the facebook ads from almost the beginning. Right. And whats clear from muellers indictment, thats not the case. At one point trump suggested maybe russia interfered or maybe it was some 400pound guy in his mops basement. This makes it Crystal Clear that it was russia, that it wasnt ran dop tros in the United States. One thing that really popped out at me from the this indictment sort of buried towards the back is the fact that not only did russian operatives interact with americans in some cases pay americans to do specific tasks, americans actually paid russian operatives not with evidence they knew they were paying russians for ad space on some of the social media pages they developed. Thats a powerful indicator of just how influential these social media presences they had were. The fact ha americans would see these pangs and say it makes sense tones actually pay to get space on the plat fors that they have develop. Thats extraordinary. And matt, it confirms the basically contours of we have to say what Hillary Clinton was seeing at the time. I mean, the entire campaign you go back and look at debate footage. It is so striking. She is saying Vladimir Putin is actively trying to get you elected. He says no, puppet. Youre the puppet. Today you have the federal government pulling its full weight behind a series of claims they say they can back up in court that spell out exactly that. Hillary clinton warned us at the time, it was obvious to a lot of people watching the federal government sort of warned us at the time, only one voice of the federal government, the Republican Party and congress was unwilling to join in the opposition. You had the then candidate, now president of the United States out there publicly not just benefitting from the russian operation. We have to remember, this is a crucial point, actively encouraging it, encouraging it in july when he encouraged them to hack Hillary Clintons emails and where he was talking about the wiki leak hacks constantly. This is a president who called it a hoax after the election and continues to call this investigation a witch hunt. Hae is been actively promoting the russian interference in the election for now over a year and a half. So for him to, the statement he made today was a bit of a climbdown where he has to admit there was some intervention but he continues to make claims that arent back up by facts. His claim he was vindicated today. Theres nothing in this indictment that vindicates him, nothing that rosenstein said that vindicates him. What we saw today was the first step of a charge. There could be multiple actors charged in the months to come. Well talk about that as time goes on. Matt miller and Betsy Woodruff, thank you for hanging with me there. Appreciate it. Juliaoff if i a staff writer and former fbi double agent who il filtrated russian interrogation. Naveed, the scope of this, just as an interrogation professional, you have to take a step back and kind of be impressed. Just the sheer scope confident trade craft here. Absolutely. You know what, chris, what jumped out at me was the thing that wasnt mentioned. That was specifically one of the last things obama did in december of 2016 was throw out essentially the totality of the russian interference intelligence here in the United States. He threw out 35 Russian Diplomats which is in fact what flynn was talking to kislyak. When trump comes out and says it clears him, that dotted line is still a dotted line, not connected, the bona fide russian interrogation offic investigation officers and people operating under false cover, that is clearly part of this. We know russia was involved. When had he say intelligence collection, that means spying. There were people here recruiting spies gathering intelligence. Thats an important point. I picture these folks, you know, driving around nevada, getting gas, a rental car. Having political conversations in diners like american political reporters do. Are they watching cable news . But you know, the scope of this, its something you and i have spoken about on the air. And. Other venues in which you said whats remarkable to you about the operation it showed sophistication of grasp of american politics you had not seen from Russian Operations in washington before. What is your take away from reading the indictment . It reminds me a lot of the indictment that was issued when the illegals were caught in 2010. I dont know if you remember that, anna chapman and a bunch of other spies. It got deep in the weeds of their operations. It was at that point, it was going to think tank events and reading newspapers and radioing back to moscow. But that was 2007, 2008. The internet wasnt quite as advanced. It is interesting they felt this time they still had to get on the ground whether he a lot of stuff was readily available online. They could done it from the comfort r of foggy st. Petersburg. Theres a gran knewlarity involved. They paid people to dress as hillary behind barpz defendants and coconspirators asked one u. S. Person to build a cage on a truck and another to wear a costume portraying clinton in a prison costume. They paid the individuals to complete the request. That the meme, hillary for prison was not just the russians that came up with it. They played a role in furthering what became extremely extremely common meme in the american electorate. Yeah, look, and to what julia is saying, im very skeptical, having sat down with russian Intelligence Officers, my sense is that russia understands u. S. Customs and politics as an outsider. It tends to be that it feels like there were more than just the russians involved. There had to have been americans directinging whether advising them how to do this. This is far too targeted for someone in russia to figure out the specs. I go back to the intelligence collection. That is code for spying. To me that means they were recruiting the other part was they didnt go into detail, u. S. Persons to do part of their bidding. The indictment goes into that about the americans they contacted. The americans they paid. The other thing i think we need to not overlook in this indictment is the extent to wit russians saw the to the help Bernie Sanders and jill stein and to suppress the vote. So it wasnt just about hillary versus trump. It was also about you know, anybody but hillary or stay home and dont vote. That is a great point. This was a if there was a target of it, it was an antihillary operation they were running. That could be jill stein, Bernie Sanders, donald trump, that could be suppressing voters of color which was a clear objective. Julia . The other thing i wanted to say, theres no chance in hell essentially that any of these 13 russians are going to see justice in the u. S. The u. S. And russia dont have an extradition treaty. Theres no way were going to see these people here, trais face trial here. This is a shot across the bow to the trump administration. No collusion, no collusion. We keep hearing this from the white house. And saying, all of this is a witch hunt, this is a democratic delusion. And here trump is sending this is not a message to the russians. This is a message to the president and his base saying no collusion . How about all this. Well, and we should say this. We dont know what is out after this. Well talk about this more most of the show today. But theres a bunch of things about the hacking that we still dont know. But one thing, that vide from a Counter Intelligence standpoint, Robert Mueller seems to know a lot. At one point, he quotes an email that one of these alleged coconspirators sent to the family, we read it in the introbeing like we got busted by the fbi. Im covering my tracks and you read that an think, wow, theyve got eyes on a lot here. Sources and methods. I come back the starting date of 204 is so interesting to me. Someone has covered carter page in this, the fact that page was involved in this 2015 case and he met with russian svr officers in 2013 in new york. Theres a nexus to all these operations, to the 356 russian Intelligence Officers obama threw out. Theres going fob more that will drop. Well see not the dotted line but a solid line that points squarely back to russia. Final point to you, julia. One thing not in the indictment is the Vladimir Putin or the russian government. This one individual evgeny who runs a catering business and what do you knowing all you do about russia and reporting there, what is that relationship look like . Its a very, very close relationship in russia. Hes known as putins chef very much in keeping with how the russians do things. Theres probably not going to be any of putins fingerprints on this, right . Probably what it looked like was putin essentially saying who will rid me of this you know troublesome hillary. And everybody else kind of gets what ha means. And swingsing into action. But its all trusted entities. And plausible deniability has always been a crucial, crucial part of this. We saw this in crimea in 2014 and further on. There is always a bit of distance between putin and execut executors. I remember covering the soldiers without flags on their uniforms, one of the creepiest things ive seen. Great to have you. One of the more notable things about the announcement today of muellers indictment of russian individuals and companies accused of interfering in the 2016 president ial election was the theater and craft around the announcement. With me to read between the lines is frank feg lew zi, former assistant director of Counter Intelligence to the fbi and harry lipman. Harry, ill begin with you with Rod Rosenstein. Previous indictments did not have rosenstein taking questions. They did not have him owning the work product of mueller. Todays did. Whats the significance of that . Its a big vindication for Rod Rosenstein. Hes been maybe a sharper whipping boy for trump and the white house and trump partisans even than mueller. This is he gets a chance now to play the traditional role that a Deputy Attorney general plays, the embodiment of truth, justice and the american way. Against what was after all, an attack on u. S. Soil by a hostile power. So i dont think its accidental that he chose to do the press conference. But its perfectly deserved. Its a deserved victory lap. And i think part of what it tries to signal, its a big momentum changer in general, makes it much harder to shop the witch hunt charges and the like. But its big not only because of the crimes but nature of them and puts it on the sort of axis of National Security and above partisanship. Its going to be very hard for Congressional Republicans or anyone really to poopoo this. So rosenstein wears the mantle of this Important Development and justifiably. An