Russians have
learned that there
is an asymmetry in
conventional warfare.
The Russian military
does not match
that of the United
States by far.
How do you then balance
out the asymmetry?
One way to do that is to invest
in much cheaper measures.
These nonconventional
active measures
to try to weaken
western institutions,
undermine western democracies
versus sending in the tanks.
Putin realizes that if
we're divided as a nation
we cannot protect ourselves
from threats within and without.
From the Russian
point of view,
political warfare is just
part of the art of war.
What they're driving
at over the longer term
is to watch democracy
crumble from the inside out.
I'm sitting with
him at dinner.
I told him I'd been
at the memorial
of the siege of Leningrad.
He said I'll tell you a story.
He said my father was
one of those people
who was on the front lines.
And had gotten 24
hours off to go home.
As he was walking down the
street to his apartment,
he saw a big pile of bodies
which was not at all uncommon.
He saw a leg sticking out
and a shoe on the foot
and he recognized that
as being his wife.
So he stopped and he screamed
and said, well, that's my wife.
That's my wife.
I want my wife.
The body collectors told him
to leave and he kept demanding.
At this point he's pulling
his wife from under the pile.
He took her to their apartment
and nursed her back to health.
And then after the war she
gave birth to Vladimir Putin.
Putin sees himself as
literally pulling the body
of Russia out of the pile,
the dust bin of history.
You know, we are
going to revive you.
You are not dead.
And I will take care of you.
I mean, that is the mindset.
I think his ambitions always
were to be the president
and then gather all the
instruments of power
into the presidency.
His devotion to reasserting
Russia's greatness
is certainly in
his self interest
because he wants to be the czar.
He wants to be the
richest man in the world
and he wants to settle scores.
He made his way
up through the KGB.
His role in the KGB
was to support Russian
intelligence officers
living under assumed identities
under deep cover inside
the United States
and developing active measures
to impact the policies
of the United States.
The KGB was power.
If you said that you were
with the KGB, doors were open.
People would stand aside.
In 1991 when the
Soviet Union collapsed,
every republic that
emerged from the debris
of the Soviet Union
agreed at the time
to recognize the republics in
their then existing borders.
Putin, like many Russians,
feels that the dissolution,
the dissolving of
the Soviet Union
was a horrific thing because
it made the Russian people
and Russia itself smaller.
And the Americans are
celebrating all of this.
I think he's dedicated
to building it back up.
The first time I met
him in the spring of 1991,
he was the deputy
mayor of St. Petersburg
working for the mayor whose
name was Anatoly Sobchak.
Sobchak was this charismatic
western leaning guy
allied with Boris Yeltsin.
His deputy was the
exact opposite of that.
Non descript, grave bureaucrat.
A very soft spoken.
Had you asked me back then
to name a thousand people
that might be the next
president of Russia
he would not have made my list.
He supported Mayor Sobchak
but he was also organizing
this incredible network
of former KGB foreign economic
interest and local interest.
In the 1990's St.
Petersburg was known
for organized crime
and corruption.
State institutions
were partnering
with Kremlin organizations
to rip off
as much as they could
as fast as they could.
Putin was a pretty good fixer.
He could make stuff happen.
He knew how to work the system.
Mr. Putin was able as deputy mayor
to be the focal point of all
of these different networks
as they came together.
He was made FSB director.
The FSB is responsible
for internal spying.
These are the guys who
have the most funding,
the most resources.
He learned which served
him in good stead
how to maneuver politically.
That became his primary goal.
Power.
The FSB was simply a ladder.
Almost immediately after the
breakup of the Soviet Union,
these oligarchs were
able to take over
state owned enterprises at
bargain basement prices.
It turned some of these individuals
into multi millionaires
or even billionaires
almost overnight.
Under Yeltsin, the oligarchs
became very powerful
and very independent.
And the power of the
state was crumbling.
The end of the Yeltsin
years he obtained
almost sort of a buffoonish
type of personality.
You know, a drunk.
A little bit out of control.
Yeltsin was nervous and
he chose to go with a guy
that he thought would protect
his family and their assets.
That's, I think, the
sole purpose why Putin
was selected to then
run for president.
Followed by the bombings
of the apartment houses.
There were a series of
terrorist attacks in 1999.
They found evidence of the FSB
having been there
and set that all up.
I know what has been alleged.
I find the evidence
compelling and I know
those terrorist attacks
helped Vladimir Putin
win the election.
I'm not ready to believe yet
and maybe that's just my
idealism getting in the way
of my analytic side that
the Russian government
would kill its own civilians
to elect Putin president.
The apartment bombings
were KGB operations
using a type of explosive
that's only made
in a KGB facility.
Oh, sure.
It was very clever
and the Russian people
began to look for a leader.
It's not the first
time in history.
You can compare
it in some degree
to the 1930's and the
rise of Adolph Hitler.
With respect to democracy,
I think it's pretty clear
from the very get go he
feared independent actors.
Putin started forcing
the independent media
to knuckle under,
putting in state control,
turning it into
propaganda outfits.
Started arresting people who
had different points of view.
Then he starts going after
independent journalists.
They start ending up dead.
Assassinated.
The most prominent
journalist in Russia,
Anna Politkovskaya was
murdered on Putin's birthday.
Putin brought the
oligarchs to heel.
A number of them were
forced to leave the country
Some were killed in
mysterious fashions.
Those who remained are
basically lapdogs of his.
Putin was letting
everyone know
that this period of
everybody getting to do
their own thing
was very much over.
And then he brought
his most trusted friends
and confidantes from the
intelligence services
into the key positions, controlling all
those businesses.
Vladimir Putin and his
oligarchs used money,
essentially stolen from
the Russian people.
If you're one of
these big kleptocrats,
getting your stolen proceeds
into a rule of law system
is one of your
highest priorities.
Once that money is
laundered, they have access
to western banks and they
can do whatever they want.
Semion Mogilevich was the
first big organized crime figure
in Russia who figured out how
to launder massive amounts
out of Russia and the
former Soviet Union.
Semion Mogilevich is worth
about 10 billion dollars
according to FBI reports.
He's considered the
money laundering genius.
He's sometimes
called the brainy don
'cause he has a
economics degree.
The most important of the
Russian crime bosses.
The man who was for years
on the 10 Most Wanted list
in the United States.
He still lives happily in Moscow today.
In Russia he still gets
the VIP treatment
and is rarely without a
bodyguard who chauffeurs him
and his 200,000 pound armor
plated bomb proof limousine.
Why did you suss out companies
in the Channel Islands?
The problem was that I
didn't know any other way.
Well, they taught us
geography at school.
I was sick that day.
The Russian mafia is an adjunct
of the Russian government.
I've described it as
going from organized crime
under the Soviets to
disorganized crime
under Yeltsin to organized
crime again under Putin.
His networks recycle back
to Mr. Putin's inner circle
and they continue to help
maintain Mr. Putin's power.
To the point where
today Putin may well be
the wealthiest man on
the face of the planet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everything I know that's
interesting I can't tell you.
Now let me try to think of
a way to go at 30,000 feet.
Yeah, I know where
you're going with this
'cause I know we're gonna talk
about Trump in a few minutes.
In the 70's Donald
Trump is a scion
of one of the biggest
landowners along the east coast.
He played monopoly.
Yes, indeed.
More than monopoly, he
played with building blocks.
Always with building blocks.
He has huge ambitions,
huge ego as we know.
Because not everybody is
meant to be a business person.
They'll ruin their lives.
I mean they'll go and they'll,
they'll put up their house and
they'll mortgage their cars
and everything else they own.
And he is starting
to move into Manhattan.
Trump Tower was
structured in a way
that made it a money
laundering paradox.
Trump Tower became one of
the first buildings
in New York where Shell companies
could buy and sell condos
without identifying yourself.
If you go back to the 80's,
Senator Henry Scoop Jackson
got a bill through Congress
allowing the immigration
of Soviet Jews into
the United States
at a time when immigration
had been highly restrictive.
We'll honor the right of a person
to leave a country freely
and return freely just as
clear as anything can be.
The Russians saw it as an opportunity
to open their jails.
That's when you see members
of Russian organized crime
come to the United States
for the very, very first time
and end up in Brighton Beach.
There were certain techniques
for money management
and money movement
that were prized above others.
And these involved real estate.
It started off simply as
money laundering pure and simple
and you had in 1984 for
example David Bogatin,
who was a Russian
mobster, met with Trump.
Trump Tower had just opened
the previous year and Bogatin,
who had no legal way
of making that money,
sat down with Trump
and bought five condos
and the state
attorney general ruled
that that was money laundering.
Vyacheslav Ivankov,
who was very close
to the great mastermind
of organized crime,
Semion Mogilevich, and he
was sent to the United States
to oversee the rise of
the Brighton Beach mafia.
And when the feds were looking
for him they looked all over
and they couldn't find
him anywhere in Brooklyn.
Instead, he was
living in Trump Tower.
Donald Trump marries Ivana.
The Czech Secret Police
takes note of this.
The intelligence that they
gathered was that Donald Trump
was being pressured,
not clear by whom,
to run for president
as early as 1988.
They thought that it would
be good for Czechoslovakia
if this husband of a Czech
citizen became president
of the United States.
After his successes
in New York City
he got into the Atlantic
city casino business.
He goes big.
Builds the Trump Taj Majal.
Which will be the largest
hotel casino in the world
and I think it's gonna
be a tremendous success.
That turns out
to be his undoing.
In a town where
for the last 10 years
no casino with
60,000 squared foot
has ever been fully utilized.
On what basis would someone
build one with 120,000 feet?
He was destined to fail.
Trump Casino was
hit hard for having
violated U.S. federal anti money
laundering regulations.
It suggests a culture of
willful disregard of the law.
He basically unravels financially.
He also was unraveling
personally at this same time.
His marriage was falling apart.
By that point he had filed,
I believe it was
six bankruptcies.
He had no way to move
forward professionally.
He couldn't get a
bank loan anywhere.
There is a homeless
person sitting,
sitting right outside
of Trump Tower.
I remember my father pointing
to him and saying, you know,
that guy has eight billion
dollars more than me
because he was in such extreme
debt at that point, you know.
The Russians have a
particular type of mark
whom they go after.
They go after somebody who
has business resources,
perhaps some shady morals
so that they're amenable
to the bribery.
Or perhaps are in a difficult
financial situation.
And either has political
connections or aspirations.
I've just described Donald Trump.
He was the perfect
mark for the Russians.
The Russians saved him.
They rescued him.
He would not have gotten back
in business without them.
I think it's safe to say he
couldn't have run for president
if he had just been a guy
who was four billion
dollars in debt.
When the Russian
mafia does something
it's with Putin's permission
and it's serving his interests.
Have you ever knowingly done business
with what I like to
call organized crime?
Have they ever stopped by and?
Well, I really tried
to stay away from them
as much as possible.
Right.
Although I must say
I have met on occasion
a few of those people.
They happen to be
very nice people.
You just don't want
to owe them money.
Yeah, I understand.
Don't owe them money.
Simeon Mogelivich, he made
a decision to make the move
on Trump after studying Trump's
2004 bankruptcy filings.
Noticing that Trump had
lost his credit lines.
They felt he would not be
in the position to say no.
The Russian real
estate firm Bayrock
started leasing
space in Trump Tower.
Putin needs to keep
track of his oligarchs
and one way of keeping tabs is
knowing where their money is.
Bayrock may well have
been a way of doing that.
To me that's a turning point
because what we have here
is a very serious
intelligence operation
and it is in the
belly of the beast.
It is in the home of the man
who becomes president
of the United States.
And it was operating there
for many, many years.
One of the key people putting
it together, Felix Sater.
A lieutenant in the
Mogilevich crime family.
Very connected into the nexus
between the Russian
criminal organizations
and the Russian national
security organizations.
He became managing
director of Bayrock.
He himself had been
convicted of two felonies.
Slashing a guy's
face at a bar.
Another was a pump
and dump stock scheme.
But he ended up
cooperating with the feds
and he started
providing information
on sales of weapons to Al Qaeda.
Mogilevich, according
to FBI reports,
was selling weapons to Al Qaeda.
That raised very
interesting questions
'cause I don't think Felix
Sater would betray Mogilevich.
He famously threatened an investor
with electrocuting
his testicles.
Trump worked with Sater
for many, many years
after it was revealed
that he was a criminal.
He continued to work
for Trump and in fact
had a business card saying
that he was a senior advisor
to the Trump organization.
There's multiple photographs
of the two of them together.
He had an office in Trump tower.
Trump was the public face of Bayrock.
And yet when he was placed
under oath in a deposition
and confronted about
Sater, he simply says, uh.
If he was sitting in
a the room right now,
I really wouldn't know
what he looked like.
Trump actually personally asks Sater
to escort his two children,
Ivanka and Donald Trump, Jr.,
on a trip to Moscow and
showed them around the town.
He seems to be playing
a consistent role
in assisting the Trump's
and tapping Russians
or let's say post-Soviet money
for developing
condominium units.
No co-op board has to
review whoever is buying.
It's safer than putting
it in the bank.
The Sunny Isles development
is the Florida development
that the Trumps own that
has been heavily populated
by Russians who want
to launder their money.
At least a third of the condos
in Sunny isles, Florida
have been sold to Russia.
Trump's Soho is one of the
promoters of the project.
Alexsandr Mashkevich
has been described
as Mogelivich's banker.
The Trump Tower project
in Baku is located
in the middle of a
post industrial sledge pool.
It's just sort of a joke
that they were building this.
Trump World Tower.
I started looking
at who bought into
and the very first name I
came across that was Russian
was that of Eduard Nektalov.
He had been indicted
for money laundering.
He turned state's
evidence and was going
to cooperate with the feds.
He was murdered the next day.
The Toronto Tower.
The source of funding
was the Vensheconobank,
the two twin cash management
tools of the Kremlin.
They go out and become
involved in projects
usually because one
man, Vladimir Putin,
tells them to do so.
That would link this project
straight back to the Kremlin.
I think this is the
tip of the iceberg.
There's been 1.3 trillion
dollars in flight capital
since Putin's become president.
There are over 30 Trump
Towers all over the world.
That means there are
several thousand units.
So many condos that journalists
like me have been unable
to investigate because they
are in Shell companies.
Shell corporations
where law enforcement
and the public and the
press can go and see
what the name of
the corporation is
but they can't find out
who's really behind it.
What's really going on.
Who's pulling the strings here.
So a 500 million dollar
condo can change hands
three or four times a year
and you've laundered 20
million dollars or so.
We want to follow the money.
It's clear to me that
a huge amount of it
comes from the Ukraine
Russian energy trade.
Vladimir Putin particularly
has a strong feeling about Ukraine.
Ukraine was part of Russia
for many, many years.
He feels that needs to be restored.
Putin has worked to undermine
democracies across the globe.
You had a couple of people
running for president.
Viktor Yanukovich
who appeared to be
more interested in keeping
Ukraine aligned with Russia.
Significant amounts of
money coming from Russia
into the Yanukovich campaign.
His competitor on the
other side, Yuschenko,
was a Ukrainian politician.
A reputation of being clean
and fair and pro western.
Yulia Tymoshenko entered
the Yushenko campaign.
She was a politician.
Tymoshenko, in my experience,
she was by the far the
most effective minister
in the Ukrainian cabinet.
Well, I was working for
Senator McCain in 2004.
And we visited.
We met with Yuschenko.
They just said, I'm afraid
they're gonna try to kill him.
Within a matter of months
he had been poisoned
and almost was killed.
A disfiguring poisoning.
It destroyed his looks.
Scarred his face.
Quite convinced it
was a KGB operation.
He was off the campaign
trail for about four weeks.
It also had a second effect, too,
was it really hardened his resolve.
And not in the Soviet Union republic.
During the election there
was lots of evidence
that something had gone wrong.
At that time Ukrainian
intelligence agencies
detected that there were
hackers who actually tried
to break into the central
election commission.
So they were trying to change
the results of the votes.
And those parts that
had voted for Yanukovich
turned out in excess
of 100% was reported.
The country's election commission
ignored reports of fraud
declaring Kremlin backed
victory Yanukovich the winner.
The election was, in the eyes
of most Ukrainians, stolen.
The Ukrainians had enough.
And the Orange Revolution
consisted of people coming out
to the central Kiev square
and saying, no, we're not
going to accept a bad election.
The Ukrainian Supreme Court
basically ruled a do over.
Russia opposed that idea because they
understood correctly
that if it was done
in a free and fair way
that Mr. Yanukovich
would not win.
And Yuschenko became president.
His prime minister
was Yulia Tymoshenko.
So this week has
a unique feel to it
as we all have the
profound privilege
of welcoming president
Viktor Yuschenko to?
Protection from the
regime of mobsters
is only a matter
that can cause hope.
We faced a very similar choice.
It was not a choice between
the left and the right.
It was the choice between
totalitarian regime and democracy.
It has betrayed
the future at best.
Viktor Yanukovich
predicted more turmoil ahead.
I am ready to lead, he said.
Yuschenko will find out what
opposition really means.
Mr. Manafort came
to Ukraine late 2004.
Yanukovich had been
fairly badly discredited.
The role that I saw
for Mr. Manafort
was somebody tried to
rehabilitate Mr. Yanukovich.
Paul Manafort has been a
Washington political consultant
for a long, long time.
Paul Manafort, a top campaign strategist
for President Bush.
Bob Dole was the last one
who brought him on
as the head of the
convention at that point.
We are ready, not
only to continue to lead
in the Congress but to
take the White House.
He had disappeared.
No one knew what he was doing.
It's impossible that Paul Manafort was not
at least run past the
Russian government
because Manafort was
very close to Yanukovich.
And Yanukovich was so
close to the Kremlin.
The big switch from western,
the western point of view
was the Munich security
conference speech.
The United States has
overstepped its national borders
in every way.
Of course such a policy
stimulates an arms race.
No one feels safe.
Senator Joe Lieberman
and I were sitting
in assigned seats
in the front row.
And he would utter
a phrase in Russian
and after he would say, he'd
look over at the two of us
like that, you know, I said
what is it with this guy?
I very often.
He repeals by our partners.
The effect that
Russia should play
an increasingly active
role in world affairs.
That was 2007.
Two months later they
did the cyber attack
on my country because we really
didn't want a Soviet statue
in the middle of town.
We didn't tear it down.
We moved it.
We figured, okay, this is
important for some people.
But even that was sort
of enough of an offense.
The 9th of May with the
day the Russians celebrate
the end of World War II no one
could get into any websites
including the banks, any
government sites, news media.
I mean, it's clear they did it.
A year later they
invaded Georgia.
After the collapse
of the Soviet Union,
Georgia was controlled by
mafias and criminal gangs
that were known
as thieves-in-law.
Then came the revolution
and Misha Saakashvili
became their president.
And made, really, very
significant changes
and improvement to the country.
After years of
the Georgian economy
being a basket case
suddenly starts to roar.
He had a vision of Georgia
in NATO and the EU.
The Russians hated it.
As long as you
have these blocs,
NATO and the European Union,
they're bigger, richer, stronger,
more powerful than Russia.
But if you reduce them
to their individual parts
each of these countries
is far weaker than Russia.
They kept provoking the
Georgians more and more
and more and more.
They wanted a war.
They started to say the war.
At first he started
to tell it to me.
To some western leaders.
Looked like the west
was the wandering life,
wanted somewhere and Russians
knew where they were going.
Then we had direct
military attacks.
In the middle of the opening
ceremonies of the Olympics,
the Russians invaded Georgia.
Wake up, wake up.
We are attacked because
we wanted to be free.
We are attacked
because we wanted
to build genuine democracy.
If Americans and
Europeans don't stand up
for their own values,
for their own principles,
then those principles and
values will be in danger
to the Georgia,
tomorrow elsewhere.
But the Russians then
spent a lot of time
convincing everyone the
Georgians started the war.
It's Saakashvili's fault.
He was dangerous and a madman.
Russia has criticized
the western media
for what it's called it's
biosphere on the conflict.
Not all journalists blame
Russia for the conflict.
Alex Jones?
I just hope Russia
keeps troops in Georgia
because the dictator,
and we know he was elected
under fraud there in Georgia
has said that he plans,
he said it last week,
to attack again.
Allegation that Georgia
would attack Russia
is so foolish and
outrageous and disgraceful.
But it's typical
of Vladimir Putin.
They did not
achieve the collapse
of the Saakashvili government.
It cost them a lot in respect,
in international relationships.
And their military
was really exposed
as something weaker
than they all thought.
So there was this whole
portfolio of kind of rethinking
what are the political
warfare tools
that we have that we can use.
They began to increase
their funding to far right
nationalistic white
supremacists political parties.
In democracies, public
opinion is your battlefield.
It's finding those
affinity groups.
They don't like globalization.
They're very fearful
of immigration.
They're xenophobic.
And that fear is then used
by Russian disinformation
operations to say
you're not being protected
from migration crisis,
from the social changes
that we see around you.
Gazprom and others, they were
purchasing local affiliates
so it looked like less Russian,
had less of a Russian face.
Gazprom is the world's
largest gas company.
It and its resources
are used to help achieve
the political objectives
of the Russian state.
When the economics
and the politics combine
in fact the, it's state capture.
The national government
cannot take independent action
that does not follow
Russia's policy interests.
It's far better to
expend your energy
on getting a Russia
friendly government elected
than it is to have to
build up your military
to invade the country.
There was the Russian
oligarchy, Ivanishvili,
who was biggest private
shareholder of Russia Gazprom.
Suddenly Ivanishvili announced
that he was entering politics
and he will run against us.
They wanted to believe
that he was this independent
weirdo businessman.
He must be a very
successful man.
Nobody wanted to believe
he was what he is,
a front for Russian
engagement in the country.
The campaign in Georgia
before the 2012 election
had been increasingly dirty
and hostile and violent.
So the narrative
was that no matter
what you will falsify,
rig the elections.
And then they would
take it to the streets.
There was a lot of discussion
about political prosecution.
If they won they would have put
the entire former
government in prison,
that these were all criminal.
Some of it was
really cheap stuff.
Saakashvili is
really an Armenian.
He's not really a Georgian.
That's a technique the
Russians use quite a bit.
The best way to
discredit somebody
is to make them
appear inauthentic.
They're not part of the community
which they say they are.
Then it's picked
up by other media.
It's sort of spread
about social media.
Eventually people sort of say
some of this must be true.
Mafia bosses, from Russia
try to help to organize
mass disturbances.
They listened to our
telephone conversations,
especially when we were
calling from abroad.
For whatever similar situation
would ignite in Georgia
they always had intercepts
for all kind of situations.
No party in Georgia
could have been
in a real popular
way for Russian.
And Ivanishvili knew that.
So you had a new
message on Russia.
It was wouldn't it be nice
if we had a better
relationship with Russia?
About two weeks
before the vote,
there was the
release of the first
of what became known as
the prison abuse tapes.
The images looked very bad.
After initial shock, people
started to look at the image.
In details they explain to us
that the whole thing was fake.
Later we discovered that
this thing was done by guys
with very well known Russian
intelligence connections.
But it was too late.
On Tuesday President Saakashvili
conceded he lost the closely
fought parliamentary vote.
65 or so former officials
have been arrested,
detained, or convicted.
Saakashvili will be arrested
if he goes back to Georgia.
And then you saw the
allowing of Russian money
back into Georgia's
full society.
We are returning Georgia
product to the Russian market.
His wealth and his fortune
are all connected
to the Kremlin.
That means he can never be
independent of what they want.
Putin had told the
National Security Council
that Georgian elections
were the most successful
special operation they ever had.
They learned that
any democratic system
is essentially very vulnerable
to this kind of meddling.
Full corruption,
information campaigns,
character destructions,
and then your adversary's
much more vulnerable.
Then it's nothing about their
economy size or military size.
It's about their state of mind.
In Ukraine Putin
did the same thing.
Ukraine is about 100% dependent on
Russia for natural gas.
Instead of there being
direct sales from Gazprom
there were a whole series
of intermediary companies
which seemed to be controlled
by a man named Dmitry Firtash.
Dmitry Firtash, a
Pro Putin oligarch.
He had worked with
Mogilevich, the crime boss.
They siphon off lots of
money from this Gazprom.
Billions of dollars.
Firtash was very
close to Vladimir Putin.
Manafort was a
business partner of Firtash.
Ukrainian politicians.
It was all just whisper
the name Paul Manafort.
He was the dark prince
in the background,
orchestrating everything.
He was viewed as a man
who was the connection
between the Kremlin and
pro Russian party in Ukraine
to advance Russian
political interests.
Russia was buying
up utilities.
The oligarchs were
doing Putin's bidding.
It cut off Ukraine's
energy supply.
It's really a terrible thing
if someone is killed by a bullet
but isn't it terrible
if you shut down
the power in the winter?
In 2009, after about two weeks
meeting with President Putin,
Prime Minster Tymoshenko
negotiated a deal
that ended the gas cutoff.
The presidential elections
head for a pulsating climax.
In the orange corner
the current poor western prime
minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.
In the blue corner,
pro Moscow opposition
leader Viktor Yanukovich.
Manafort was remaking
Yanukovych's overall
appearance and personality
as a politician to make
him more palatable.
When he said no to a TV debate,
she went ahead with it anyway
facing an empty podium.
Viktor Yanukovich claimed victory
in the Ukraine
presidential election.
Once Viktor Yanukovich
had become president
one of the things
they were trying
to go after Tymoshenko
for was, in fact,
that gas arrangement
she had done.
She compared the case
to a Stalinist show trial.
All this was staged in advance
of the president's
administration
to eliminate the opposition.
It may have been a bad
deal but it certainly wasn't
the criminal action that
the Ukrainian government
under Yanukovich
charged her with.
A seven year prison term and an order
that she pay 200 million
dollars in compensation.
From prison, Tymoshenko staged
a temporary hunger strike
saying she'd been
beaten by guards
and needed immediate
medical attention.
In a lawsuit that was filed
by the former prime
minister of Ukraine,
there were some rather
striking court documents
referring to Manafort's role,
and including his
business relationships,
real estate deals with a Russian
oligarch, Dmitry Firtash.
Paul Manafort was in business
with not one but two
Russian oligarchs.
Dmitry Firtash, who
was under indictment
by the U. S. Justice Department.
Another, Deripaska, who
had been denied entry
into the United States
because of suspected
organized crime ties.
Paul Manafort signed a
contract with Oleg Derispaska
to promote the Kremlin and
the Kremlin's interests.
Quoting Deripaska, Putin
told him Manafort's our man.
Paul Manafort got his home
in Trump Towers in 2006.
You can easily see billions
of dollars being siphoned off
from that Ukraine
Russian energy trade
and going through
Firtash to Paul Manafort
and to Russians or Ukrainians
who were buying condos
in Trump branded properties.
Russia has three main
tactics for engaging
in what we call active measures.
Propaganda, cyber attacks.
Most people don't
focus on a third pillar
of Russian active measures
which is to recruit and enlist
and in some cases run
agents of influence.
The Russians, with their
full time intelligence
operatives.
There's probably way
over 1,000 of those
in the United States.
The FBI does its best to try
to monitor Russian
intelligence officers
here in the United States
but there are so many of them
and frankly the FBI's
resources are so limited.
When I did cases I actually
had to decide on which days
I wanted the FBI surveillance
group to watch my target.
We had no idea.
They just seemed like
a nice, quiet family.
If you look at either as
Russian agents or as Russians
who work on disinformation
there are more of them
than there are Russians
in the armed forces.
So a thousand.
These can be individuals who know
that they are spying for
Russian intelligence.
Know that they are
committing espionage.
Or can refer to some
individuals who just aren't sure
exactly who they're
dealing with.
Maybe it's bankers,
maybe its financiers.
Maybe it's people on the
periphery of government
doing something that the
Russian government wants.
It seems that anybody who was anybody
in Russian organized crime
who came to Manhattan
bought a condo unit
in Trump tower.
There were gambling
operations going on there
and prostitution operations.
These investigations
were leading to Trump
over and over and over again.
Christopher Steele is a
former MI6 specialist in Russia.
The U. S. investigator firm
commissioned Mr. Steele
to look at Mr. Trump and Russia.
It was a very general assignment
and he found an extensive
set of relations with Russia.
He was generally held
in very high regard.
Had a reputation of also
for working with the FBI.
He helped the FBI
make the FIFA cases.
Major corruption crackdown
going down right now.
Arrests made around the world.
This is the result
of a three year long
FBI investigation.
He broke the case.
He gave them access
to the key witnesses
that they used to get the
pretty spectacular results
that they ultimately got.
Alexander Litvinenko,
who's a former FSB agent.
When he sought asylum in London
he started working for MI6.
His handler was
Christopher Steele.
He was trying to expose
that Vladimir Putin
was closely linked
to Semion Mogilevich,
the crime boss of Russia.
Litvinenko was eventually
poisoned by polonium
in a murder that was very
directly linked to Russia.
So when Mr. Steele was
hired to do oppo research
on Donald Trump he was very,
very knowledgeable indeed.
The Steele Dossier
was a set of reports
that Mr. Steele wrote.
All of its allegations fall
into one of three categories.
Not yet proven, proven to
be true, and have an error
that is consistent
with transcription
or transliteration problems.
It was said to
Mr. Steele's sources
that Russia had turned Mr.
Trump for many, many years.
In the course of work
on Russia matters,
I came to know Mr. Steele.
I work with people
who I can trust.
Yes, I trusted Chris Steele.
I still trust Chris Steele.
Look at Putin what
he's doing with,
I mean, you know, what's
going on over there.
I mean, this guy has done,
whether you like him
or don't like him
he's doing a great job in
rebuilding the image of Russia.
And also rebuilding
Russia period.
Putin seeks the veneer
of democratic legitimacy
but there cannot be choice.
In the Russian
constitution you cannot run
for a third term as president.
So what he did was to
find a very close member
of his inner circle to
agree to be president
while he could be prime minster.
He is someone who is obviously
being installed by Putin
and it raises serious
issues about how we're going
to deal with Russia
going forward.
Putin faces what I call
the King Lear problem.
You can't resign to
a comfortable life
because of the things you've
done when you were king.
But the constitutional
forms were observed.
When Putin returned
to the presidency,
by that point I
think it was about
to the least surprising
development that any of us
had seen in Russia
in a long time.
I mean, you can imagine
the conversation with Putin.
Vladimir.
You think you'd like
to be president again?
I think I would.
The election was clearly
unfair and illegitimate.
I said that on behalf
of the United States.
We just witnessed a flawed
duma election in Russia
including efforts to halt
the election monitoring.
And Russian voters deserve
a full investigation
of electoral fraud
and manipulation.
I wasn't the only
person who thought that.
He encountered the largest
public demonstrations
of his tenure.
They shouted Putin is a thief.
Which terrified him because
of the Orange Revolution.
Because of the uprisings
that took place
post collapse of
the Soviet Union
in places that
wanted more than just
a different form of autocracy.
If you look at
the crowds of those
that were in the protest,
I'll bet ya nine out of 10
of them were under age 25.
They don't want that
kind of a government.
They want to be
like the Europeans.
And I think that Vladimir
Putin has not seen
the last of these protests.
And then he attacked
me and accused me
of inciting the demonstrations
that really were grassroots
from the bottom up.
Putin blamed her very publicly.
Privately he did too, by the way.
She set the tone for
some of the activists
inside our country.
Gave them a signal.
They heard this signal
and started active work
in support of the
U. S. State Department.
I suspect that Putin, like Stalin,
read every one else
by his own measure.
And being a cynical person,
understanding only power,
he probably assumed that
we were equally cynical
and our protestations
of support for democracy
were meaningless fluff.
So that he sees our
actions in Russia
as designed to undermine him.
And he looks at all the
democratic activists
as somehow somebody else's puppet.
Hillary Clinton is doing this
or Condi Rice is doing this.
It's not that he
believes everything
but there is a kind of a
grounding in his KGB training
because, remember,
during the Cold War
they would fund some
firebrand in some country
to became allied with
them and we would go in
and try to undercut that
person and visa versa.
But a lot of it is just to
keep people in Russia in line.
My experience with him was
difficult and challenging
because I challenged him.
It's better not
to argue with women.
But Mrs. Clinton has
never been too graceful
in her statements.
When people push boundaries
too far it's not because
they are strong but
because they are weak.
But maybe weakness is not the
right quality for a woman.
In meetings that
I've had with him,
he is in a very calculated
way trying to gain advantage,
looking at you with
disdain and contempt.
The bored kid in school.
When the cameras are on he will
criticize the United States.
When the cameras are gone,
he'll act like he's
willing to talk to you.
He's into man spreading.
You know what that is, right.
Putin never really developed
a working relationship
with secretary Clinton.
He became very upset about
what she said in December, 2011
and was looking for revenge.
If you can use and capture
elite in specific ways
you can accomplish your goals
without needing to
get public support.
The recruiting tool was money.
You see just so much
money flowing to Trump.
It's hard to imagine
there's not more to it
than just simple generosity.
All his American banks
cut their lines of credit.
Stopped doing business with him
and one bank steps into the
breach as his lender of choice.
And that's Deutsche bank.
From the perspective
of most western bankers
that was just seen as insane.
He's had a history
of making misleading
statements to them.
Threatening them.
They call and he sues them.
He fails to pay the loan.
He publicly criticizes
Deutsche Bank about all this.
But Deutsche bank sticks
with him loyally throughout.
Not only that they
also start making loans
to his son-in-law,
Jared Kushner.
Deutsche Bank has
been fined before
for participating in
Russian money laundering.
The German bank says it's willing to pay
over 600 million dollars in
fines for its connections
to alleged Russian
money laundering.
When the scandal erupted
that Deutsche Bank
about these money
laundering operations,
the Deutsche bank CEO was fired.
He became the CEO of
the bank of Cyprus.
One of the financial institutions
through which they
launder money.
Who hired him to be
the CEO of the Bank of Cyprus?
Wilbur Ross, tight
supporter of Donald Trump,
now his Secretary of Commerce.
The practice of overpaying
significantly is something
that falls into the
category of Russian methods.
The man known
as the Russian potash
king, Rybolovlev,
purchases a property
for more than twice
what Trump had paid for it.
That's when our country
was going through
a financial collapse
that largely was caused
by the real estate market.
Did he overpay because Mr. Trump
was such a great negotiator
or was there something
else going on?
Never does anything
with the property.
So the property transaction
appears to be nothing more
than cover for infusing a
cool 100 million dollars
into Trump's bank accounts.
This same Rybolovlev is
also a principal owner
with Wilbur Ross of
the bank of Cyprus.
In 2013 there was a
bust at Trump Tower
of a massive gambling ring.
It was run by a gun
named Taiwanchic.
He has been tied to the Russia
crime boss Simeon Mogilevich.
29 people were indicted but
Taiwanchic fled to Russia.
Taiwanchic appeared again that year,
oddly enough, at the
Miss Universe pageant
that Donald Trump was
doing with Aras Agalarov.
Billionaire oligarch who was known
actually as Putin's builder
because he had done massive
construction projects
for the Kremlin and
gotten a big award
personally delivered by Putin.
Donald Trump chose Moscow
as the place to
have Miss Universe.
I think it would be important
for us to understand
just who he met with
while he was on that trip.
Whether he talked
to Vladimir Putin.
There was a luncheon with
a lot of Russian business
leaders in which Trump spoke
and the birthday party
for Aras Agalarov.
He even appears in the scion
of the Agalarov
family music video.
You're fired.
Compromat.
It's essentially
embarrassing information
that's going to put you
under somebody else's thumb.
Use money, use sex,
use whatever they can
to try to entrap people.
I mean, that's just a fact.
They don't mind blowing
up their own bribery scheme
to blackmail an individual and
now they've got that person.
There's purely rumors
that on his trips to Moscow
that Trump was involved
in various sex escapades
that may have compromised him.
If I can offer you a
check for 10 billion dollars.
Billion.
But the deal is you can't have sex
for the next 10 years.
Would that include my wife?
Sergei Million appears in
connection with Trump's dealings
in Russia and certainly in
connection with his hotel stays
and someone who would know an
awful lot about what went on
during those visits
with meetings
with prostitutes and so forth.
You know, I was in Moscow
a couple of months ago.
I own the Miss Universe pageant.
And they treated me so great.
Putin even sent me a present.
Beautiful present
with a beautiful note.
When you look at Steele's
report information he gives,
one of those sources
could be Million.
We don't know that for sure
but the descriptions match.
He likes Russia because
there's money to be made there.
He likes Russia because he
likes beautiful Russian ladies.
But I hear that golden
showers was not the end of it.
There was much more
extreme sick stuff.
He was only there
two days one night.
He was supposed
to be there longer
but Billy Graham's
95th birthday party
was in Asheville,
North Carolina.
Trump felt the need to go.
Why?
Because he's getting ready
to run for president.
Happy birthday to you
To be honest, the
question was just asked
or was asked many times today
at the Miss Universe contest.
They said would you run, and
it's just too soon to say.
Do you have a relationship
with Vladimir Putin,
a conversational relationship
or anything that you feel
you have sway or influence
over his government?
I do have a relationship
and I can tell you
that he's very interested in
what we're doing here today.
He's probably very interested
in what you and I
are saying today
and I'm sure he's going to
be seeing it in some form.
But I do have a relationship with him.
About Russia.
You were asked yesterday
if you've ever spoken
to Vladimir Putin and you
said I don't want to say.
Yeah, I have no
comment on that.
No comment.
I was in Russia?
Well one of the things
people like about you
is you answer any questions.
Yeah, but.
Let's assume I did.
Perhaps it was personal or,
you know, I don't want to,
I don't want to
hurt his confidence.
He's done a very
brilliant job in terms
of what he represents and
who he's representing.
Viktor Yanukovich
had been in talks
with the European Union about
an association agreement
but then after a visit to
Moscow and getting the message
that this was not going
to be seen favorably,
Yanukovich came back
and decided that
in fact he was not gonna
pursue this agreement.
So this square in downtown Kiev,
protestors went there and
began demanding that, in fact,
this agreement go into force,
instead of some alternative
agreement with Russia.
They protest not just
in favor of an agreement
with the European Union
but a protest against
Viktor Yanukovich
and the way he was running
things at the time.
About a week later
the police went in
and broke up that camp.
In two hours shed more
blood than had been shed
during the entire Orange
Revolution back in 2004.
And at each turn,
Yanukovich became more
and more repressive,
more and more bloodthirsty.
You had people shooting into the crowd.
In some cases directly
shot to the head
where like snipers
were shooting at them.
Probably 100, you know,
odd people killed.
He just infuriated and
enraged his entire country.
Yanukovich defied
calls for his resignation.
I am not going to leave
Ukraine or go anywhere.
Yanukovich packed
up in a car and left.
He fled the country and
turned up in Russia.
And this is while Manafort
is still advising him.
I don't think that Yanukovich
was the pro Putin person
that he's reputed to be
and if you look at what?
Well, he went off.
He ended up in Moscow.
Well, yeah.
The ousted president is wanted
for mass murder and on the run.
So you have the
Ukrainian parliament.
What do we do?
Parliament voted
to free Yanukovych's
arch nemesis,
opposition leader
Yulia Tymoshenko.
Today you have an open
road to build Ukraine
the way you want.
That is why you must stay here
until the person you trust
is elected in an honest way.
My sense is at that point
the Russians panicked.
The Russians had lying
in a safe somewhere
the plan how you take Crimea
and they activated that plan.
Within a couple of
days you saw people
who were very clearly
professional soldiers.
They were wearing Russian
style combat fatigues
but they had no
identifying insignia.
The Ukrainians referred to these
people as little green men.
Which were in fact special
operations forces
and intelligence operatives.
We thought this
could be the beginning
of an outright full scale
invasion of the country.
That's when the separatists
shot down the Malaysian airliner
and killed over 100
Dutch passengers.
Separatists initially boasted on Twitter
that they had taken it down.
The unforgivable sin
was Putin lying about it.
Suggesting Ukrainians shot
it down or CIA shot it down.
Throwing out a bunch of
chafe which was an insult.
The European Union
had had enough.
They joined us with
strong sectoral sanctions.
And that surprised the Russians
and it hit the
Russian economy hard
right at the time oil
prices started to tank.
So they had a double whammy.
How do you respond
to the greatest geo
strategic catastrophe
of the 20th century,
which was the collapse
of the Soviet Union?
You try to preempt the
collapse of the western system
in the 21st century.
If you can't destroy these
structures militarily,
you will destroy
them from within.
By actually creating
fissures and exploiting them
such that it's the
electorate is so divided
that you don't trust
the government anymore.
The foundations of geopolitics
is a guiding
principle for Russia.
It's something that
their militaries
and intelligence
services have relied upon
and applied throughout
their campaigns.
Russia has helped unite an
alternative right movement.
You have certain
voices in the media.
Info Wars, for example,
Breitbart to capitalize
on these divisions.
And then further encourage them
for their own personal gain.
I'd like to punch him
in the face, I'll tell ya.
Knock the crap out of
him, would you, seriously.
That guy looked like
an NFL football player.
Now, they took him out.
And I'll tell you what.
It was really amazing to watch.
Bye.
Go home to mommy.
But if we get a little bit
rough in taking them out,
oh, we're terrible people.
It's one of the many reasons
our country's going to hell.
Certainly this is
all in the interest
of at least one country.
To see this otherwise
rather brazen candidate
turn into such a sycophant
when the name of Putin
ever came up rang a
very discordant bell.
Putin has done an amazing job
of showing leadership whether
it's a noble or cause or not.
Let's not discuss that.
He is now the world leader.
I respect Putin.
He's a strong leader,
I can tell you that.
Unlike what we have.
We have a pathetic leader.
I think in terms of
leadership, he's getting an A.
As far as an individual
who poses a threat to
the world literally.
A person who has
no moral standards
that I've been able to detect.
F is not low enough.
He was certainly very
vocal about Russia,
wanting a better relationship.
Wouldn't it be a
wonderful thing, frankly,
if we actually got
along with Russia?
Who's against getting
along with people
but that's not a policy.
More noticeable perhaps is
the absence of any criticism.
The fact is that, you know,
he hasn't been convicted of anything.
Some of the
things he was saying
was actually talking points
that sounded very similar
to what the Russian
media will put out there.
The fact that Ukraine
has not published radar data
leads us to the
conjecture the missiles,
if it was a buk, was
launched from territory
under the control of
the Ukrainian military.
If it was a Russian made
buk missile that took down
that plane would you hold
Putin and Russia accountable?
Would there be sanctions?
Well, you know, they
say it wasn't them.
It may have been their weapon
but they didn't use it.
They didn't fire it.
They even said the other
side fired it to blame them.
He never provided his
original birth certificate.
What he provided was a
photoshopped computer image
of something that was
issued only in 2007.
A certificate of live birth
is not even signed by anybody.
I saw his.
I read it very carefully.
They're voting for
peace on planet earth
if they vote for Trump.
But if they vote for
Hillary, it's war.
Now Hillary Clinton wants to
confront nuclear armed Russia
that could very well lead
us into World War III.
Mr. McCain was taken
prisoner in Vietnam
and was put not just
in jail but in a pit.
He sat there for several years.
Anyone would go nuts after that.
He's a war hero
'cause he was captured.
I like people that
weren't captured, okay,
I hate to tell you.
Donald Trump delivered a
major foreign policy speech
at the Mayflower Hotel in
Washington on April 27.
The center for the
national interest,
this American Think Tank,
which has very close
ties to the Kremlin.
This Think Tank
played a leading role
in drafting Donald
Trump's speech
and that speech was full
of Russian propaganda.
We can upgrade
NATO's outdated mission
and structure grown
out of the Cold War.
I am skeptical of
international unions.
The U. S. must be prepared
to let these countries
defend themselves.
Some say the Russians
won't be reasonable.
I intend to find out.
When Paul Manafort became
the actual head of the campaign
all of a sudden I
had a pop up window
come on my computer
saying that Yahoo believed
that I was part of an attempt
of state sponsored actors.
So I was being targeted.
That was the first time.
There was a Russian
campaign to interfere
in American elections
through hacking.
That information
appeared in the dossier
before it was publicly reported
anywhere else, anywhere.
You saw active measures
in elections across
eastern Europe.
No one really thought
that that would happen
in the U. S. base until it did.
I was surprised as everyone
was but looking back on it
with benefit of
hindsight, obviously,
we should have probably known
that something like that
was going to happen.
Russia is 1.6% of
the world economy.
They're so small but they
have, they're so centralized.
And when state concentrates
these resources
on wanting something
then it works.
Russia did a wide range of hacks.
Started I would guess around
August, September of 2015,
extended all the way
through the spring
and into the summer of 2016.
We're talking about thousands
of Americans that were hit.
They were going after anybody
and everybody they could.
Their targets include media
personalities, politicians,
government officials,
current and former.
Anybody that they could gain
what is ultimately information
or compromat that
they could use.
That is the nuclear fuel
that powers the influence
operation in '16.
A couple of my
co workers who had access
to my personal email used
to manage the volume.
One of them saw a
phishing attempt
from a Google source through
some mistake of communication.
One of our cyber security experts in
the campaign suggested
to my assistant that they
change their email account.
So she clicked on the link
and my private email cache
was, you know, was exfiltrated.
People were seeing this
dangerous troubling activity
coming from the Russians
that was actually
in our electoral system.
Government officials
learned that they're
actually going into
state voter databases.
There may have been
26 different states
where there were efforts
made to penetrate.
That's disturbing.
The key to flip an election
without leaving a trace
is the voter rolls.
It would only take
a small digital switch
to make that happen.
This really spooked officials
in the White House
and that's the moment I
think that the enormity
of the Russian influence campaign
really started to hit home.
The fact that there was that attack
on the fundamental, the
absolute fundamental
free and fair election should
have alarmed all of us.
The Russians didn't
care if we found out.
This is pretty new.
They stole the data.
Let's be clear about it.
I don't like this word hacking.
This is theft.
If the Russians walked into my
house and took something out,
this is exactly the same thing.
And I think the problem that a
lot of Americans have with it
is they don't see it, they
don't think of it that way.
The goal was plausible deniability.
And you hear that even in
Vladimir Putin's statements.
If they are patriotic,
they contribute in a
way they think is right.
To fight against those who
say bad things about Russia.
If there were people
in the Trump Campaign
who colluded in any of that,
those people are at
serious criminal risk
because there were serious
crimes people committed in 2016
to influence the U. S. elections.
Once it looked like Trump
was gonna be the clear nominee,
the Agalarovs resurfaced
and they said we are
obviously supportive
of the Trump Campaign
but more importantly,
we are doing so with the blessing
of the Russian government
and with the Russian
government involved.
And they promised there
would be the delivery
of information that would damage
Hillary Clinton's campaign.
This is information
the Russian government
has collected.
Donald Trump, Jr. emailed
back, great, I love it.
Here we see what appears to
be evidence of collusion.
Donald Trump, Jr. forwarded the emails
to Paul Manafort, then
the campaign manager,
and Jared Kushner.
They both sat in on the meeting.
Conspiracies are very
easy to enter into.
If indeed there was
just a tacit agreement
furthering that conspiracy,
boy, they're in.
And they're on the
wrong side of the law.
Trump being pressed
early on in the campion
for a list of his
foreign policy advisors.
The second name he mentions
is Carter Page, PhD.
No one had heard
of Carter Page.
He had worked for
Merrill Lynch in Moscow.
He had been an investor in Gazprom
and a quite vocal defender
of the Putin government.
A critic of sanctions.
Carter Page traveled over to Moscow
with permission of
the Trump campaign
as a senior advisor to Donald Trump.
Washington and other western capitals
have impeded potential progress
through their often
hypocritical focus on ideas
such as democratization,
inequality,
corruption, and regime change.
The Steele Dossier
alleges that Carter Page
met with Igor Sechin
who is head of Rozneft,
the enormous Russian oil company.
Sechin happens to be very,
very close to Vladimir Putin.
Sechin was his closest friend
in the intelligence services.
They came up with a scheme
by which sanctions would
be lifted on Russia.
In return, when parts of
Rozneft were sold off,
a huge portion of it, I
believe was 19% of it,
would be diverted.
This could have
been another way
to funnel enormous
cash resources
to Donald Trump or his family.
America's European allies
were picking up things
involving interaction between
the figures associated
with the Trump Campaign and
Russian agents of influence
that they were very
disturbed about.
When the administration asked
for a bipartisan statement
saying that Russians were active
and they were trying to
interfere with the election
they were blocked by
Republican leadership.
When I was working in the
House of Representatives,
especially as the Policy Director
for the House Republicans,
I was part of many discussions.
One of them was on June 15.
One of the leaders
speculated that Trump
had a compromising
relationship with Putin,
a very serious
allegation to make
but it was one that
everyone was thinking.
The leaders were afraid to
stand up to Donald Trump
for fear of being attacked
by his Russian troll army.
By the time of the convention,
it was beginning to look
like there was a really
serious Russian effort.
She is above the law.
Michael Flynn had become
a top national security
advisor to Trump.
Lock her up.
What concerns me again
from a counter
intelligence perspective
is the pattern that
Flynn has established.
Flynn goes to Moscow and
sits next to Vladimir Putin
in a lavish RT s
ponsored event.
Just like in the United States,
you don't get to sit
next to the president
of the United States
without any planning.
He takes money from
the Russians, from RT,
which is nothing more than a
propaganda arm of the Kremlin.
Then says he didn't
take any money.
Were you paid for that amount?
You have to ask my, the
folks that went over there to?
I'm asking you.
You'd know if you were paid.
I didn't take any
money from Russia
if that's what you're asking me.
Well then who paid you?
My Speaker's Bureau.
The Speakers Bureau is
merely the pass through
for the organization that's
paying for the speech.
Flynn had given the same answer
when he was trying to get
his security clearance.
At that convention, the
Republican party did something
that they almost have
never done before
which was take out
of their platform,
language that was
standing up for Ukraine
and standing against Russia.
I was confident
that was gonna be
a part of our party platform.
It was before.
All of a sudden
somewhere it disappeared.
J. D. Gordon, his
account is that it was
at the request of
the Trump Campaign.
And I think that's part
of this whole scandal
that needs to be resolved.
Why would the
Republican party remove
a provision that would help
people who had been invaded
and slaughtered
defend themselves?
Interesting.
When we went into
the convention,
we had to contend with
that first drop of emails.
Just that the DNC employee?
It's Russia.
Adverse.
They were in
communication or in touch
with Julian Assange
at Wikileaks.
And then they published
that data in a way
to help Trump and
hurt Hillary Clinton.
When Wikileaks was
originally founded
I don't think it had the
intention of influencing
the 2016 American election
but was it the goal
after Assange announced that
he wanted to harm Hillary.
You bet.
I mean, he said so.
From that standpoint, it
was a match made in heaven.
They were actively
in the systems of Democratic
and as we now know
Republicans as well.
We'll publish the
embarrassing material
from the hack into the DNC.
We won't publish the embarrassing
material in the RNC.
There were more
damaging ones on Manafort
that they could have dropped.
They didn't.
It really exposed a lot of
personal contact information.
So many staff were getting
harassment calls for weeks.
As we learned more
first about the DNC,
he basically invited them to
try to, you know, hack into me.
He blurts things
out that sound to me
as a prosecutor almost
like an effort to confess.
Russia, if you're
listening, I hope you're able
to find the 30,000
emails that are missing.
If you were in fact
conspiring with Russia
and encouraging them
to help your campaign
and signaling them as to
what you wanted them to do...
I think you will probably
be rewarded mightily
by our press.
There's a pretty good
suggestion right there
but in this case made in
plain view in open daylight
at high noon, it's a little odd.
Campaign was over.
Bernie had lost.
I was assisting in helping with
a number of Facebook
pages here in California.
I started to see strange
people appearing.
Their posts were coming from
American sounding websites
but when I peeled
away the layers,
eastern Europe became
a common theme.
They were propaganda pieces.
Not a single one of them true.
All viciously anti-Hillary.
This isn't just
one Sanders page.
It's Latinos for
Sanders, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, Michigan for Sanders.
It kept on going.
While we were focusing on
the positive of social media
and information technology,
Russia was looking at how
to use that as an instrument
and they have been
incredibly effective.
Cyber with social media,
with things like RT.
They can reach out to
western publics in a way
that they couldn't
do 35, 40 years ago.
Some of their predecessors
would be really envious
of the techniques
that they have now.
How the Russian state does
influence operations online
is pretty complex.
On the one hand you have
real people, trolls.
A bigger part is actually
digital disinformation.
Making user accounts
that are algorithms.
This is the evolution of
artificial intelligence online.
Russians figured out
how you game Google.
If you have enough
bots to drive it
to the top of the
Google suggestion list.
Any wedge that's there,
they're gonna test
that audience out.
And when they find success
then they exploit it.
They double down on it.
You might see them show up
around Black Lives
Matter protests.
And in the counter
protest movement.
Any anti government or
white supremacist group.
Nationalists, non globalists.
Anti? EU, anti? NATO,
anti? immigration.
Promoting the far right,
promoting the far left,
so that our politics
become more polarized,
then Putin can feed
lies to either side
because they hate
each other so much.
If we're divided as Americans
then it's harder for us to
stand up to that influence.
They know that in the
west there's a tendency
towards positivism,
there's a tendency towards,
well, I don't know.
That's a story that's out there.
We just can't discredit it.
We have to.
Maybe the media is right.
The Russians know that we do
this as westerners.
They see it coming and
they take it to the bank
every single time.
The westerners are lazy.
I mean, they don't do research.
Russians have already
done everything for them
and they know how to pack it
and how to feed it to them.
Russia wins the audience first
and then directs them somewhere.
It's very different from
American approaches.
Americans are impatient.
You just create
pictures, you create bios
that look like accounts that
are from these locations
because people are more
likely to take in information
from people that look like
them and talk like them.
Follow everybody that's
in that community.
You retweet what they say.
Lowering the guard
of that audience
so they would accept Russian
information or Russian views.
Over time you can insert
in the content you want.
In this office building
in St. Petersburg,
an army of trolls.
They were even caught on camera
secretly filmed by
a former employee.
The U. S. elections
are the key issue
for the Kremlin and of
course Russia has invested
a lot of effort into them.
It's so sophisticated
and adapted
for the tastes of internet users
that it's almost
impossible to recognize.
You have serious quotas.
So in an hour you have to
produce 20 tweets, 30 comments
on these websites.
So, it's actually like a work
environment for these people.
12 hours a day praising the Kremlin,
berating its enemies.
I myself have a number
of Russian trolls.
I know whenever I refer to the
illegal annexation of Crimea
I get, you know, quite
a bit of criticism.
An interview like this,
once it goes out
on the internet,
I'll receive some
sort of trolling
very specifically around it.
The goal is essentially
to get you to shut up.
And to not be a challenger.
They'll threaten
lawsuits, for example,
because they know nothing
effects an American
like the threat of a lawsuit.
If you're operating in Europe,
the closer you get to Moscow,
the more your physical
life is actually in danger.
They can try and break
into your bank accounts,
attack you financially,
and if they can't
get to you personally
they'll target your family.
They create false stories,
seed it out there to try
and destroy your reputation.
You plant an idea,
a fake story, a lie.
It will take on
a life of its own
and you don't have
to do the propaganda.
The audience will do it for you.
Seth Rich was a campaign
worker for Hillary Clinton.
He turned up dead.
The Seth Rich story
was that he was the one
who stole the Democratic
Committee emails.
There's no evidence
to support that.
Today is, it's an
unsolved murder
but it's propagated both
by the alternative right
but also by groups
like Wikileaks.
Even to the point where
you have Russian ambassador
show up and say I think
there might be something
into this Seth Rich story.
That doubt that's there
really covers your hand
over the longer term.
And sometimes
the most outrageous
are the ones that you think
that you don't want to dignify
with a response to but that
I've subsequently learned
that's a kind of
dangerous proposition.
John Podesta says let's
go over to the pizza place
and all of a sudden it's a story
about child trafficking
ring in the basement
which doesn't exist
in the pizza place.
Resulted in a person who
had been reading this stuff
deciding that he would deputize
himself to come up here
with a gun, firing that
weapon in the pizza parlor.
But it just sort of never ends.
2013 they were starting
to learn the power
of this influence.
In 2014 they were doing
capability development.
'15 was winning
audiences so that in 2016
you could actually go
after the U. S. election.
The primary message
would be one,
Hillary Clinton cannot
become president.
Second one is Trump is the
man to mend fences with Russia
and he's a great leader and a
nationalist much like Putin.
The third one was Bernie
Sanders got a raw deal
that you shouldn't even
come out to the polls.
The Russians in line with
right wing radical media
were creating false
stories to generate fear
and in story after
story after story.
Secretary Clinton
had a serious disease.
Multiple sclerosis.
Hillary's
gonna cause nuclear war.
Murderer of 30 people.
Funding Isis,
smuggling drugs.
Untrustworthy.
Pedophilia.
Crooked.
Hillary Clinton
is the she devil.
Totally creepy falsehood.
Sometimes we found
in the United States
our greatest strength, free
speech, open societies,
a democracy can also be one of
our greatest vulnerabilities.
I don't think we were
fully aware of the impact,
the effects that it was having.
So much of it seemed
surreal, ridiculous.
By utilizing our
openness, they exploited us.
If people that I knew personally
to be thinking
thoughtful people,
if they were sharing the propaganda,
who else was sharing?
Everyone falls for fake news.
I've fallen for fake news.
Over the last 75
days, the top 20
demonstrably fake stories,
got more Facebook
likes and shares
than the top 20 campaign
stories from mainstream media.
It laid the groundwork
for Sanders supporters
to say I've had it.
They actually have
won over a segment
of the U. S. audience like
Russia's never won over before.
A white nationalists rally
in Charlottesville,
Virginia, where they chanted.
Recent polling indicates
that 49% of Republican voters,
I'm sad to say, believe that,
that Putin and that
Russia are either
an ally or a friendly nation.
The question is who
helped guide the decisions
that the Russians were making,
what ads they may have bought.
What kinds of fake news
they thought would
be most effective.
If you know the personality
of the people you're targeting,
you can nuance your messaging
to resonate more effectively
with those key audience groups.
This information is quite
helpful to a campaign manager.
Cambridge Analytica popped up
growing out of an experiment,
behavioral science experiment
at Cambridge University
to see whether they could
analyze large numbers
of people using Facebook
because people are spilling
their feelings to their friends,
hundreds of millions of
people in their pool.
We have somewhere close to
four or five thousand
data points on every adult
in the United States.
We can see where these
people are on the map.
They were able to take
that to micro segment.
You belong to a group
of 12 like minded people
exactly like you
who are interested
in the same things
around the country.
These are people who
are definitely going
to vote but they need
moving from the center
a little bit more
towards the right.
You're not supposed
to go into Facebook
and harvest that
kind of information.
Cambridge Analytica
got its Facebook data
in a sort of quasi legal way.
We can look at what
issue they care about.
Gun rights I've selected.
That narrows the field
slightly more and now we know
that we need a
message on gun rights.
It needs to be a
persuasion message
and it needs to be nuanced
according to the
certain personality
that we're interested in.
They were very involved
in the Brexit vote.
We saw the Russian
bot armies, the trolls,
have a very pro Brexit message.
There have been allegations
that Cambridge Analytica
supported it through a small
office above a pizza shop,
which is not exactly the
kind of place you think
would be the center for
international intrigue
unless it was just a cutout
for somebody much more
consequential behind it.
Cambridge Analytics is owned by SCL.
A larger and much more
sinister global election
tampering operation using
big data and technology.
SCL is in turn owned
by shell companies
that you can trace
back to Dmitry Firtash
who again is tied to Mogilevich.
That would complete
the entire string
and show crime boss
and Mogilevich involved
starting out with pure and
simple money laundering in 1984
with Trump properties going
forward more than 32 years
to the election in which
this data mining firm
Cambridge Analytica is
playing a very, very big role
in the Trump campaign
and helping him win.
Of the two candidates
left in this election,
one of them is using
these technologies
and it's gonna be very
interesting to see
how they impact the
next several weeks.
Thank you.
One of the big investors
in Cambridge Analytica
is Robert Mercer.
He's a hedge fund billionaire.
Cyber scientists on the
outside noticed this server
that was configured
in a very unusual way
that was a direct link
essentially from a Russian bank,
Alfa bank, and Trump Tower.
That would obviously explain
a major path of communications.
Trump Tower.
They seemed to have
premonitions of things
that were gonna happen
that in fact did happen.
Roger Stone in August
saying it would be my turn
at the barrel while
he simultaneously
involved with Wikileaks.
I actually have
communicated with Assange.
I believe the next
crunch of documents
pertain to the
Clinton Foundation
but there's no telling what
the October surprise may be.
October 7, 2016, three
major things happened.
The Department of
Homeland Security
and the Director of
National Intelligence
made a public statement and
said the government hacking
during the 2016
election was none other
than the Russian Federation
and that this decision
could have only been
made by Vladimir Putin.
On the same day the Access
Hollywood tapes were revealed.
Those two things.
A third thing happened.
John Podesta's
emails were released.
Wikileaks posted more
than 2,000 additional emails
from Hillary Clinton's
campaign chair, John Podesta.
I never heard from the FBI
until two days after my emails
started getting released.
They said you may
not be aware of this
but your emails
have been hacked.
I said, yes, I've been
watching it for 48 hours
on every cable story,
you know, in the country.
That was actually the last
time I talked to the FBI.
There was a lot more
that was coming out
that we were aware of that
we couldn't get the press
to pay any attention to.
I tried in my speeches
and then culminating
in the third debate.
Look, from everything I see
has no respect for this person.
Well, that's
because he'd rather
have a puppet as president.
No puppet.
No puppet.
United States and
it's pretty clear.
You're the puppet.
It's pretty clear
you won't admit?
No you won't?
That the Russians have engaged
in cyber attacks against the
United States of America.
That you encouraged
espionage against our people.
That you are willing to
spout the Putin line,
sign up for his wish
list, break up NATO,
do whatever he wants to do.
We went into election
day believing that we had
a lead in the popular vote
which proved to be true.
Michigan, Wisconsin
and Pennsylvania,
we felt like we had a
lead in all those states
and that proved to be not true
so he won by a combined
total in those three states
of 70,000 votes and
gave him the presidency.
Sorry to keep you waiting.
Complicated business.
During the transition,
Jared Kushner met with a
sanctioned Russian bank.
Gorkov, the head of that bank,
got his training not in
the banker's academy.
He's a trained KGB agent.
And its offices all
around the world
are always understood
to be providing cover
for Russian intelligence operations.
What did you really speak
to Jared Kushner about
in New York when you
met him in December?
The Russian bank said they talked business.
White House says they talked
future U. S./Russia relations.
If he was doing this
for business purposes
it would be a
violation of the law.
If he was doing this
for political purposes
there are serious
questions about whether he
or anyone on the campaign
were working with Russians
during the
interference campaign.
The crown jewel for
any intelligence agency
is to recruit an asset inside
your adversary's
intelligence agency
because that person
can of course report
on intelligence operations
against your own country.
For Donald Trump
to put Michael Flynn
in the role of National
Security Advisor
shows that they were
extremely incompetent
in their vetting of an
individual who was working
as an unregistered foreign
agent on behalf of Turkey.
Who had extensive ties to a
foreign adversary in Russia
and wasn't disclosing
those ties or that was one
of his highest qualifications
and Donald Trump liked that.
I was invited to take my
old job as CIA director back.
And I learned that I
would have had to report
to the president
through Mike Flynn.
They pressed me to go
to a particular meeting
where there were
several Turks present
and it was clear they
were thinking seriously
about taking him into custody
Gulan in Western Pennsylvania
which would have been completely
illegal under American law.
I told them that and left.
I decided I did not want
to report through Mike
and so I turned down the offer.
President elect Donald Trump
sent out an email
announcing his pick
for Secretary of State.
Exxon Mobil chairman
and CEO Rex Tillerson,
despite concerns over
his close ties to Russia.
I mean, this is
a guy who was given
a friendship award
by Vladimir Putin.
I have a very close
relationship with him
which dates back
almost 15 years now.
I believe that Rex Tillerson
was chosen by Donald Trump
for primarily one reason.
He would not stand in
the way of Donald Trump's
prevailing policy
interests which is to align
the United States with
Vladimir Putin's regime.
And I think that's
exactly what he's done.
He's facilitated it.
Putin and Rex Tillerson had
been trying to put together
a 500 billion dollar
Arctic Exploration deal.
Exxon Mobil has won a
highly coveted contract
with Russia's Rozneft.
You know, my philosophy
is to make money.
And so if I can
drill and make money
then that's what I want to do.
But it had been put on hold
by the Obama Administration
when the sanctions were imposed.
One of the fascinating
things in that dossier,
Steele sources told
him that Rozneft,
big Russian oil company
owned by the state,
that 19% of it was
gonna be sold off.
And that there'd be money for
people who were able to get.
U.S. sanctions removed.
Well, sure enough in December
that percentage of Rozneft
was sold off in a method by
which involved Shell companies
in the Grand Caymans
which are nontransparent
so which you can't penetrate.
Only someone in the highest echelons
of Rozneft would have
access to that information.
And obviously somebody
talking to Chris Steele
knew a lot about it many
months before it happened.
The Russian hand in
these influence efforts,
ultimately they'll try and hide it
and they do it with two methods,
putting them in jail
or killing people off.
Arrests in which people were dragged out
had black bags put
over their heads.
Charged for treason.
These people may have
been Chris Steele sources
or Russian intelligence may
have suspected that they were.
The day after Christmas,
General Oleg Erovenkin,
who was the Chief of Staff
of Rozneft was assassinated
in the back of a car in
the center of Moscow.
The head of RT English mysterious death
in Washington, D. C.
A Russian diplomat stationed
here in New York City
had actually died
on election day.
You've got obvious interests
on the part of the Russians.
And of course on the
other side of the equation
you have all of these
contacts going back to Russia,
whether it's Roger Stone,
whether it's Flynn.
Whether it's any of these folks,
there is simply
way too much smoke
for there to be absolutely
no fire whatsoever.
That I forget how many
tentacles this has.
It's just sort of anyone of
these is a massive story.
It's unrealistic to think it's
limited to what we know now.
Rather than look at this as
one isolated money laundering
after another or one criminal
appearing after another.
I think it's much more than that
and what you have is probably
the biggest intelligence breach
in the history of the world.
So to be clear Mr. Trump
has no financial relationships
with any Russian oligarchs?
That that's what he said.
I didn't.
That's what I said.
That's obviously
what our position is.
Do you solemnly swear.
The office of President
of the United States.
The president is, I believe,
a puppet of Vladimir Putin.
That is the mere challenge
that we face as Americans.
He has tried to deliver for Russia.
He wanted to take off
sanctions immediately.
I was in the administration
for the first five weeks
of Trump where,
among other things,
I was responsible for
the Russia sanctions.
And I'm one of the
people who was worried
that the Trump
Administration would suddenly
lift the sanctions unilaterally.
And I stand by it now.
You don't have to
have been a lawyer.
You don't have to have
been in a cover up
to see when somebody is acting
like they're covering up.
This man is clearly
inconspicuously doing so.
I don't know how a president
can handle this situation
worse than President
Trump is now.
His actions at the G20,
his talk of maybe getting
a cyber partnership.
You don't go to somebody who
just punched you in the face
and then offer them a favor.
Trump has to have
known he was compromised.
He's got to know the eyes
of the world are on him.
And suddenly all these forces
will be out to expose him.
I cannot imagine living with
that every day, you know.
The Trump campaign's
biggest potential exposure
is gonna be in their
financial dealings.
It's very hard to
cover up money trails.
The other one is
obstruction of justice.
Collusion is a media shorthand
for could be aiding
and abetting.
Conspiracy.
It could be aid and
comfort which is treason.
The Russia story is
a total fabrication.
What the prosecutors
should be looking at
are Hillary Clinton's
33,000 deleted emails.
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
Lock her up!
It is ongoing.
The Russians efforts here
are continuing as we speak.
We've done zero.
Absolutely nothing to protect us
from a future cyber attack
with respect to any election.
Zero.
We haven't done anything.
As long as people can
do things without penalty
they're going to
continue to do them.
We all have a stake
because it may have been
the Democrats and me this time.
It can be the Republicans and
their candidate next time.
Every single national security
official we've talked to
has said they're coming back.
We have to be ready for that.
And if the people
don't demand that.
If they don't demand
that our sovereignty
needs to be defended, our
representatives in Congress
are gonna kind of look
the other way and move on.
What's at stake is truth.
What's at stake is government
that's accountable to us.
And the cause of liberty
at the most profound
level possible.
We owe it to the people
who have fought for
and sacrificed
for this democracy
and to be guardians
of it and make sure
that we always have
free and fair elections.