The breaking news tonight, a guilty plea and two indictments. A former Campaign Staff admits to lying about contacts with russia. Plus Donald Trumps former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and associate rick gates charged with 12 counts in a 31page indictment. Tonight while were still learning about Robert Muellers straulg investigation and where its headed next. And new reporting this evening on the reaction from inside the Trump White House from the president himself. The 11th hour getting under way on a monday night. On a monday night, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 284 of the Trump Administration and the special Counsel Robert Mueller has his first guilty plea and he has handed down his first indictments in a case that is clearly just getting started. And today came the most serious charge yet. That a foreign government, russia had information damaging to Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of stolen emails not yet known to the world and a member of the Trump Campaign worked to put the russians in touch with the Trump Campaign inner circle. The day started with news of two people being indicted, former Trump Campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime business associate rick gates, shown here prior to the republican convention. Both men are facing 12 charges, including conspiracy against the United States, Money Laundering and being an unregistered foreign agent. Both pleaded not guilty today in court. Manafort took over the Trump Campaign as chairman, running it for much of the summer of 2016, including the aforementioned gop convention. Today his lawyer called the indictment ridiculous. Well, i think you all saw it today that President Donald Trump was correct. There is no evidence that mr. Manafort or the Trump Campaign colluded with the russian government. Mr. Manafort represented proeuropean Union Campaigns for the ukrainian. And in that he was seeking to further democracy and to help the ukraine come closer to the United States and the eu. Those activities ended in 2014. Over two years before mr. Manafort served in the Trump Campaign. Lets back up earlier in the day. Tonights reporting is indicating the administration was relieved by this mornings initial news. The president himself wrote on twitter, sorry, but this is years ago before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump Campaign. But why arent crooked hillary and the dems the focus . Also accident there is no collusion. But mueller was not done when the president wrote that. The Washington Post reports the president s celebration was short looifd. A few minutes later Court Documents were unsealed showing that George Papadopoulos, an unpaid Foreign Policy adviser on Trumps Campaign pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the fbi about his efforts to broker a relationship between trump and russian president vladimir putin. The case proids the clearest evidence yet of links between Trumps Campaign and russian officials. Before today George Papadopoulos was a largely unknown, unpaid Trump Campaign adviser. Though the president did talk about him when he discussed his campaign Foreign Policy team with the Washington Post last year. Yorj papadopoulos, hes an oil and energy consultant. Excellent guy. It turns out papadopoulos was arrested in july when getting off a plane at washington Dulles Airport and hes been cooperating with muellers team. All of it kept quiet for months until today. And today the white house tried to distance the president from him. Sarah, can you just explain what George Papadopouloss role with the campaign was. It was extremely limited. It was a volunteer position. And again, no activity was ever done in an official capacity on behalf of the campaign in that regard. What about the outreach that he was making to Campaign Officials to try to put together this meeting you mean the outreach that was repeatedly denied and pushed away and said were not going to take any action on that in. Can you explain what happened with his outreach . He reached out and Nothing Happened beyond that, which i think shows, one, his level of importance in the campaign and two, shows what little role he had within coordinating anything officially for the campaign. One answer back you heard her say his outreach was repeatedly denied. Here is what the court paperwork says on that. After several weeks of further communications regarding a potential off the record meeting with russian officials, the unnamed Campaign Supervisor told defendant papadopoulos that, quote, i would encourage you and another Foreign Policy adviser to the campaign to make the trip if little feces elbow. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee sanders also repeatedly said the real scandal here is about Hillary Clinton. But look, todays announcement has nothing to do with the president , has nothing to do with the president s campaign or campaign activity. The real collusion scandal, as weve said several times before, has everything to do with the clinton campaign, fusion gps and russia. George papadopoulos is about the campaign. It is specifically about the campaign sbloo it has nothing to do with the activities of the campaign. It has to do with his failure to tell the troou. That doesnt have anything to do with the campaign or the campaigns activities. That was the public message from the white house podium. Behind closed doors the Washington Post reports this. Quote, the walls are closing in said one senior republican in close contact with top staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. Every one is freaking out. The white house also repeated today they think this investigation will be over soon. But this is what one of muellers attorneys has told the judge about this case. Your honor, the criminal justice interest being vindicated here is theres a large scale Ongoing Investigation of which this case is a small part. To our leadoff monday night panel now. Robert costa, ashley parker, upstairs at home with the tv on trump fumes over russia indictments. More on that in a bit. And jeremy bash. Welcome to you all. Counselor, you get the lead question because i need legalese translated into english. Three people today mentioned. Who has been charged with what . Manafort and gates were charged, indicted by a federal grand jury with multiple counts, 12 counts of Money Laundering, tax revags, conspiracy to defraud the United States, all related to a covert russian influence operation in an effort to lobby washington and other clals secretly, hide the payments and exert influence over policy. Manafort has been doing this for about a decade. Now, lets go to the other legal case. That was a case against George Papadopoulos in which he pleaded guilty. So he is now a convict. Hes been convicted of a crime. Sl usc is 001, lying to the feds. You cant do that. He did that in two interviews to the fbi in january and february of this yoerment he was picked up, as you noted in dull has airport on july 27thment and he has been turning states evidence, cooperating with the feds, possibly wearing a wire, telling all he knows and he pleaded guilty in secret on october 5th. And thats given the feds and bob muellers investigation multiple opportunities to learn further what he knew. And importantly about him, hes the one who was offered, quoted, dirt on Hillary Clinton in that april 2016 meeting with russian intelligence. And just to followup quicklyment manafort was the name sky written for us today. Papadopoulos, though, was the headline from today because of the potential damage he could cause to the trump circle. And he was in the Trump Campaign, again, let me just unpack the russian intelligence. They spotted, assessed, recruited him. Offered him dirt on Hillary Clinton to support trump and to interfere in the election. And did he cut off ties . He told the supervise, did he say no, did they report it to the feds . No, he didnt. They actually continued the conversation of the they used skype, in tern meetings and they tried to see whether or not this relationship would go further. Robert, you and ashley and our friend philip rauker have published this fascinating piece tonight on what started as drama in the residence portion of the white house and spilled out into the corridors of the west wing of the you quote 20 sources talking about the president s reaction. How did this go over in the residence . What we learned, brian, during the course of our reporting was that the president spent much of this morning up in his residence at the white house, playing legal analyst, Television Critic as he digested these bomb shells of news stories about people who had been affiliated with his campaign. Hes of course unhappy being associated with in kind of vefgts. But its really telling that hes listening to his lawyers and his own instipgs to try to guide him through this thorny process ask this difficult moment in his presidency. Ashley parker, muscle memory took over programs after the first two indictments, reached for his phone, tweeted out what he wanted to be his message. The problem is the story changed when we learned about papadopoulos and it will be interesting referencing Roberts Point to see if lawyers or reflexes win out by, way, tomorrow morning. Thats exactly right. One thing that was so striking is we learned that the president and the white house today were following along with this just sort of we were and the rest of america was kind of trying to make sense of it in real time. The white house didnt have any heads up other than the news reports friday that said indictments were likely coming monday. And as you saw, even monday the president didnt really know what to expect when he sent that tweet. That was a tweet, you know, our sources told us where he felt vindicated. He felt that the indictment against manafort and gates, you know, it didnt mention him. It didnt mention possible collusion between russia and his campaign and that was sort of the end of it. What was striking was to see him tweet that out and just moments later the president learns again that just like the rest of us that theres more and it looks a lot worse for him. Jeremy bash, if you are on the president s legal team, how did your world just change as opposed to friday . What are you preparing for now . Well, you have multiple people now who can basically turn states evidence and testify against members of the trump inner circle, members of the trump family and maybe even the president himself. Not just manafort and gates but this individual papadopoulos who is going to go for a more lenient sentence. I think the other thing thats on the table, brian, are pardons. Theres discussions tonight about whether or not they should pardon the individuals who were indicted or pardon and commute the sentence of the individual who is convicted. What happens if that happens because mueller is not going to stop. I dont assume hell be intimidated by net of pardon on his work product. What happens . Because thats an absolute power we give our president. It is and i think if the president does use the pardon power to these individuals who so clearly violated the law, the trust and National Security, i think it evokes the ultimate stl rises can its up to congress of the United States to determine whether or not our demander in chief remains fit for office. So costa, that brings us to what has normally been your pete. And that is the building, the dome behind you. How is this going to play with the lawmakers with an r after their names on capitol hill and what of the Trump Presidency as of tonight . You see two camps emerging within the republican party. One is mor combative. Theyre urging the president privately and their allies within the white house to be moron taking alwith the special counsel to question his teams credibility as this process moves forward. And the other camp, prien, is those who think this process has to move forward on its own and the republicans should stay away from politicizing the special counsel. Focus more on trying to pass a tax cut package and that really seems to be the split that i see in my reporting. Im not sure yet, based on my conversation today, which side will whip out in the gop. Ashley, i dont know if youve seen this. It will be the first time were seeing it. John kelly sat down tonight with laura inning ham on fox news and apparently engaged in some perhaps Wishful Thinking regarding the timeline of muellers effort. Well watch together and talk about it on the other side. It should wrap up soon. I mean, it would seem that theyre towards the end of the witness pile and i dont know how much longer it could possibly go on, but were in great hopes that it wraps up. It is very distracting to the president , as it would be to any citizen to be investigated for something while staim trying to carry the weight of what being president of the United States means on hits shoulder. Im quite certain it is distracting to the president , but when you think about the fact that no one was talking about papadopoulos on friday or saturday and this is the new thing, it does indicate the percentage of the stuff we all know. I think thats right. I think it is a little bit of Wishful Thinking on kellys part. I will say its Wishful Thinking shared by a number of west wing staffers. I heard that a lot today. I heard that ty cobb the president s lawyer also has been telling the white house that he expects and hopes that this will be over soon. But i think what you saw with mueller, these indictments was an opening salvo. It was very forceful and hes clearly done a lot of research and is well into his investigation. But as much as these indictments were indictments in their own right, it was also sending a message to other people who hes yet to talk to potentially that hes not messing around. And if you especially look at the manafort and gates charges, russia and collusion is not mentioned, but one of the theories weve heard is that hes sort of getting them on other issues like, for instance, Money Laundering, with the hope of flipping them or getting them to cooperate in a manner in which they havent so far, which again could lead to more people and more questions and more sort of surprises like papadopoulos we saw today. Hey, robert, right quick. You guys wrote tonight they were relieved it wasnt flynn. Why is that . Because, brian, general flynn remains under investigation with his own grand jury at the moment, and he was the National Security adviser, albeit briefly in this administration. He was also someone who was a true confident of then candidate donald trump, and so they believe he was part of the inner circle in a way that mab fort and rick gates and George Papadopoulos were never part of the trump orbit. And so they were on edge today about whats next with general flynn, whats his level, if any of cooperation. Never want to speculate about a grand jury, but it still sits out there, ominousel for many people in the west wing. And finally, jeremy, i want to talk about a public serve ant, someone whose salary we all pay as taxpayers and thats Sarah Huckabee sanders. Do you have any problem with some of the answers coming from that podium in that room . Shes a u. S. Government official. She swore an oath to the constitution to up hole the constitution. She stands in front of the seal of the white house and behind that important podium communicating on behalf of our government to the American People. She should say very clearly that what russia did during the election was intolerable, floshl and that we will cooperate with the investigation. Period. Our thanks to our first segment guests here tonight. A lot to react to. And journalists are have been busy this evening well put it that way. Thank you all. Our first break and still ahead, what does todays news mean for a twitter enabled president who likes to be in control of his own message . Might have heard us refer to that earlier. And next, what could be the legal exposure for the president now is that one of his Campaign Advisers has pleaded guilty. Well talk about muellers investigation with two veteran attorneys when