The Daily - Why Believing Putin Will Be Hard This Time

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

President Trump has said in the past that he believes President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “means it” when he denies Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers, handed down three days before the two leaders were scheduled to meet, tells a different story. Guest: Matt Apuzzo, a reporter for The New York Times in Washington, explains the indictment and how it may figure in the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, President Trump and President Putin meet today in Helsinki. What it means that just three days ago, the U.S. government indicted 12 Russian officials for their meddling in the 2016 election. It's Monday, July 16th.

Mattapuzzo, what happened last time President Trump and President Putin met? So last time they met was in Asia last November at a summit. It was like a pull-aside meeting. On the way home, the president had an interview with reporters aboard Air Force One. And they said, hey, how'd your meeting with Putin go? And he said it was really well. And the reporter said, well, did you guys talk at all about, you know, Russian efforts to interfere with the election? And the president, you know, said several times, he said, Putin said he didn't meddle.

He didn't meddle. You can only ask this question so many times. He didn't do it. And he also made it clear that when Putin said that, that he believed it. He said, every time he sees me, he says, I didn't do that. I haven't seen even once any direct proof of Russian interference in the presidential election

in the United States. I really believe him when he tells me that. I really believe that he means it. And that Putin was getting insulted by the fact that that kept coming up. Hackers can be anywhere. They can be in Russia, in Asia. They can even be hackers, by the way, in the United States, who very skillfully and professionally shifted the blame, as we say, onto Russia. Could you accept that? And so it was a weird thing because you had the president of the United States

again saying, I believe Putin, that he didn't try to meddle in the election. When the intelligence agencies of the United States all said, yeah, Putin did try to meddle in the election. And he did it because he preferred Donald Trump. It once again seemed to be Donald Trump siding with Russia over the consensus of the American government. So eight months later, the two men meet again

today in Helsinki. And it's almost like everything has changed and nothing has changed. Once again, reporters are asking President Trump, are you going to ask Putin if he meddled in our election? Right. And the president says. We'll be talking to President Putin about a number of things. Ukraine. We'll be talking about Syria. We'll be talking about other parts of the Middle East. I will be talking about nuclear proliferation. Yeah, I'll ask him. I'll bring it up. And we'll be talking about other things. I know you'll ask, will we be talking about meddling? And I will absolutely bring that up. I don't think you'll have any, gee, I did it, I did it, you got me. There won't be a Perry Mason here, I don't think, but you never know what happens, right? I did it, I did it, you got me. There won't be a Perry Mason here, I don't think,

but you never know what happens, right? I'm not expecting a Perry Mason moment here, but of course I'll bring it up. But I will absolutely firmly ask the question. And hopefully we'll have a very good relationship with Russia. But it is different now. It's different now because there's a lot more going on, right? Good afternoon. Today, a grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment presented by the special counsel's office. The indictment charges 12 Russian military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Robert Mueller of the special counsel

just indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers and directly accused them of doing exactly what Vladimir Putin said he didn't do, which is interfering in the election. Eleven of the defendants are charged with conspiring to hack into computers, steal documents, and release those documents with the intent to interfere in the election. And Mueller did it in a way that's very different from what the U.S. government has done before, where they sort of say, oh, we have high confidence that Russia did this. What Mueller did was he put out an indictment and said,

here are the names of the Russian intelligence officers, and here's how they did the hacking. The units engaged in active cyber operations to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. There was one unit that engaged in active cyber operations by stealing information and a different unit that was responsible for disseminating the stolen information. It was the most detailed, you know, official accounting of the Russian hacking that occurred

during the 2016 presidential election, and Mueller dropped it right as President Trump is about to meet with Vladimir Putin. So it is going to be different, because it becomes harder for Vladimir Putin to deny it, and if he does deny it, I mean, it just becomes so much harder for Donald Trump to say, yeah, I believe him.

And what kind of new detail do we have from these indictments that help us understand how the hacking operation worked? Well, it's a remarkable document because it tells the story. I mean, a lot of indictments can be a little hard to read.

This is a pretty narrative indictment. You know, so it talks about how on April 12th, 2016, the conspirators, these are the Russian intelligence officers, used stolen credentials of a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee employee to access the DCCC network. First, they used a scheme known as spear phishing, which involves sending misleading email messages and tricking the users into disclosing their passwords and security information. One of the emails had a link to an attached spreadsheet, and it looked like polling data. It was called like Hillary Clinton favorable rating dot XLSX. But what you were actually getting is you were getting a piece of malicious code that was called X-Agent. The defendants covertly monitored the computers and planted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code and stole emails and other documents. And so you'd be going

about your business doing, you know, Clinton campaign stuff or trying to elect Democrats to Congress. And the Russian government would be logging every one of your keystrokes. They could go in and they could steal additional passwords. So, you know, you're there logging into your account. And because every one of your keystrokes is recorded, the Russians were then able to use that account to sort of like ping pong into another account and then do the same thing over there. And that's how they got the emails. In addition to releasing documents directly to the public, the defendants transferred stolen documents to another organization that is not identified by name in the indictment. And they used that organization as a pass-through to release the documents.

They discussed the timing of the release in an attempt to enhance the impact on the election. And so when these emails started to come out, people were sticking their head up and saying, hey, I'm interested in reading those. And so journalists were doing that. Roger Stone, a longtime advisor to President Trump, the indictment says that a candidate for Congress who's not identified also reached out and was trying to get these emails. So this was wildly successful from a intelligence operational standpoint

because everybody wanted what these intelligence officers were handing out. Matt, is one of the things that these new indictments make very clear in naming names, that these were not just random Russian hackers. These were Russian government officials, and therefore, kind of undeniably, tied in to Vladimir Putin. That's exactly right. The intention here is to not just say it was Russia in the generic sense, and not even to say it was, you know, Russian intelligence officials in a generic sense.

I mean, one paragraph after another in this indictment says, here's this first defendant, you know, here's a second defendant. And they both work for the Russian military. Unit 26165. Here's the address to where they are assigned. Here's the month and year that they came onto the job. Here's what their title was. You know, Dmitry Badin, assistant head of department.

title was, you know, Dimitri Badin, assistant head of department. In and around 2016, he and others supervised the co-conspirators to target the DCCC, the DNC, and others. It is a deeply documented indictment. And is it unusual for him to show this much of his investigative process? What's unusual is that you're getting this level of detail in a counterintelligence case. You know, counterintelligence is this sort of spy versus spy game that countries play. So in a normal situation, you might not do this because you would say, you know what, I don't want Russia to know exactly what level of detail we know, because then they kind of might know how we figured it out. But here, I think the United States government made a decision that it was in the public interest to know all the facts,

and that that interest outweighed any desire to keep things secret for sources and methods reasons. Mm-hmm. So this latest from the Mueller investigation shows undeniable evidence of meddling by the Russian government. But does any of the evidence presented in these indictments, Matt, support the idea that the Trump campaign was in on this hacking or in any way colluding with the Russians? So when I read this indictment, I don't read this as a document about what I guess has become shorthanded as collusion. I mean, the closest this document comes is the bit about Roger Stone, and we've

obviously known that that had happened. So I don't read this as a collusion document. Got it. So what does this represent to you beyond the additional details about how the hacking was carried out? I testify today with significant regret, recognizing that my texts have created confusion and caused pain for people I love. One of the interesting things to me is just the timing of this, which is the lead FBI agent on the Russian meddling case during the election. on the Russian meddling case during the election. His name was Pete Strzok, and he actually testified on Capitol Hill last week. And certain private messages of mine have provided ammunition for misguided attacks

against the FBI, an institution that I love deeply and have served proudly for over 20 years. You know, it sort of devolved into this sideshow. And I've talked to FBI agents around the country. You've embarrassed them. You've embarrassed yourself. And I can't help but wonder,

when I see you looking there with a little smirk, how many times did you look so innocent into your wife's eyes and lie to her about Lisa? Mr. Chairman, this is outrageous. The credibility of a witness is always the winnings, Omar. Mr. Chairman, please. Mr. Chairman, this is intolerable harassment of the witness. What is wrong with that? You need your medication.

The gentleman controls the time. I ask that the witness be permitted to respond to that. He will be permitted to respond. He will be permitted to respond. Did you ever talk to Hillary Clinton? But when you sort of cut through the sideshow, it amounted to Republicans saying, we've seen your text messages and you didn't like Donald Trump. Well, it wasn't the discovery of your text, Mr. Strzok. It was the existence of your bias that got you kicked off. No, Mr. Gowdy, it wasn't. And you had strong anti-Trump views.

And we think that this whole Mueller investigation began in your brain, and you're an anti-Trump guy. And so why shouldn't we think that the entire Mueller investigation is tainted by your bias? Not once in my 26 years of defending our nation did my personal opinions impact any official action I took. And Strzok kind of shot back and said, no, like I've never let my personal views influence the investigation. And he said, you have to remember what was going on in 2016.

We had every reason to be really concerned about what we were seeing. I understand we're living in a political era in which insults and insinuation often drown out honesty and integrity. But the honest truth is that Russian interference in our elections constitutes a grave attack on our democracy.

And this document actually kind of offers more details about what they were seeing. So if you read this indictment and you see the detail that the U.S. government was able to get, and then you kind of overlay what the U.S. knew about the Trump campaign at that time. If you're the FBI and you see that while this hacking is going on, you have a Trump campaign advisor getting close to somebody with Russian intelligence ties and is being offered campaign assistance and is being told about hacked emails. And Papadopoulos, George Papadopoulos, the campaign advisor, is saying, yeah, this sounds great. I would love to get Donald Trump in a room with Vladimir Putin. When you put those things together,

you can kind of see why the FBI was really freaked out in 2016. And the idea that this is all just a liberal witch hunt and that ultimately this is all going to fall apart, when you see a document like this, I think it just kind of shows that whatever biases there were at the FBI, this isn't an investigation about nothing. So you're saying that this indictment helps explain why the FBI would be so alarmed by the Trump campaign team's relationships, its communications, even its meetings with Russian officials, that they're discovering as they start realizing the scope of the meddling. Absolutely. I mean, take one example. July 27th, 2016. What do I have to get involved with Putin for? I have nothing to do with Putin. I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me. He doesn't respect our

president. And if it is Russia, which is probably not, nobody knows who it is, but if it is Russia, which is probably not, nobody knows who it is. But if it is Russia, it's really bad for a different reason. Because it shows how little respect they have for our country when they would hack into a major party and get everything. But it would be interesting to see. I will tell you this. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails

that are missing. The Mueller indictment says that same day, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into the servers that were used by Mrs. Clinton's personal offices. And what does that tell us? Well, I mean, is it a coincidence, right? Or was Russia listening? He says, Russia, are you listening? Well, was somebody listening? I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That'll be next. Yes, sir. So how do you expect President Trump to talk about the Mueller investigation, given what has now been made public in these indictments? what has now been made public in these indictments. Well, right after the indictments came down, we heard from the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani,

who basically said, all right, you've got your case against the Russians. Time to pack up and go home. You should wrap things up. From ABC News, it's This Week. Here now, Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl. Good morning. So, you know, we didn't hear anything from the White House immediately condemning the Russian hacking activity that was described in the document.

Thank you for joining us, Ambassador Bolton. Glad to be with you. This summit comes just after Robert Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officials. Does the president feel blindsided or undermined by the timing of that indictment coming just as he's about to sit down with President Putin? No, quite the contrary. The president was briefed on this indictment coming. I spoke with him about it. He was perfectly prepared to have it come before the meeting with Putin. I would say, in fact, it strengthens his hand. It shows that the justice system, the Department of Justice, are aware of these Russian efforts at election meddling.

And I think the president can put this on the table and say this is a serious matter. We need to talk about it. So I don't expect a huge shift in messaging from the president's lawyers or from the White House. Right. So it sounds like basically the president is not really changing his tune on this. So far, I don't see any sign that he is. Yesterday, he spent some time with CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glore at the president's golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland. The Russians who were indicted, would you ask Putin to send them here? Well, I might. I hadn't thought of that, but certainly I'll be asking about it.

But again, this was during the Obama administration. They were doing whatever it was during the Obama administration. And I heard that they were trying, or people were trying to hack into the RNC, too, the Republican National Committee, but we had much better defenses. I've been told that by a number of people. we had much better defenses. I've been told that by a number of people. We had much better defenses, so they couldn't. I think the DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses, and they were able to be hacked. But I heard they were trying to hack the Republicans, too.

But, and this may be wrong, but they had much stronger defenses. But, and this may be wrong, but they had much stronger defenses. The president's been sort of a moving target on this, right? I mean, sometimes he says, I think it was probably Russia. I agree with the intelligence community. But in other times, like after his meeting with Putin, he said, you know, I believe Putin. So I don't know how he's going to respond after this meeting with Putin, when of course the first thing he's going to get asked

is, did you talk about Russia meddling? What did Putin say? And do you believe him? It's just getting harder. It's getting harder for President Trump to say, well, it might not have been Russia. It could have been China. It not have been Russia. It could have been China. It could have been anybody. It could have been a 400-pound computer hacker sitting on his bed. Those have been talking points before, and it's getting harder for him to lean on those. But I don't know if he's going to stick with it or if we're going to hear something new after he meets with Vladimir Putin again.

So it seems like this indictment not only makes it harder to believe Putin when he denies that Russia meddled in the election, it makes it harder to believe Trump and his Republican allies when they say that this is all just a liberal witch hunt. That's exactly right. Matt, thank you very much.

Great talking to you, Michael. Since the Russian indictments were announced on Friday, top Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner on NBC, have called on Trump to cancel his meeting with Putin. What we have now, which was unprecedented, is Russian intervention in our elections, where they hacked into Democrats and Democratic officials' emails, released them to benefit Trump and hurt Clinton, where they intervened in over 20 states' electoral systems, where they used social media in ways that were unprecedented. And if an American leader and an American administration

wouldn't start a meeting with the head of the country that did that intervention and make that the top priority, then this meeting really shouldn't take place. Remember, Russia massively intervened. They are an adversary, and my fear is this president in particular has been really reluctant to call out that activity, has been completely reluctant to call out Putin as a bad actor. And that's why we need to make sure there are at least other people in the room. The White House quickly dismissed the suggestion.

Trump and Putin are scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. inside the presidential palace in Helsinki. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Sunday night, the Times reported that the same Russian military unit accused of meddling in the U.S. election may also have been responsible for poisoning a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain. British investigators believe that the March attack

was probably carried out by current or former members of the unit, known as the GRU. And... Who's your biggest competitor, your biggest foe globally right now? Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. In an interview from Scotland with CBS's Jeff Glore, President Trump said he considers the European Union to be an enemy of the U.S., a remark that startled the Economic Alliance. Now, you wouldn't think of the European Council, Donald Tusk, wrote on Twitter,

quote, Finally. He told me I should sue the EU. Sue the EU. Sue the EU. Not go into negotiations, sue them. Tell me I should sue the EU. Sue the EU. Sue the EU.

Not go into negotiations, sue them. On Sunday, British Prime Minister Theresa May revealed that during their meeting in London last week, President Trump advised her to sue the EU to speed up Britain's removal from the alliance. May said that she politely declined the suggestion. Actually, no, no. We're going into negotiations with him. But interestingly... That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.