‘Morning Joe’: DoJ Indictments Prove that We Were Right, ‘It’s Very Clear’ that Russiagate Was Real

BRZEZINSKI: “Top story today. Also with us, Managing Editor at ‘The Bulwark, Sam Stein. It did way too early for us this morning.”
SCARBOROUGH: “And we’ll break trough the lies.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Sam, good to have you with us.”
STEIN: “Speaking of lies.”
BRZEZINSKI: “No!”
SCARBOROUGH: “Hear Sam.” (Laughter)
BRZEZINSKI: “No, no. Speaking of lies.”
STEIN: “Hear Sam Stein.”
BRZEZINSKI: “The Biden Administration is accusing Russia of attempting to interfere in the upcoming presidential election. The Justice Department has charged two employees of a Russian-backed media network, accusing them of illegally funneling millions of dollars to a Tennessee-based company to publish propaganda videos online. The DoJ has also seized 32 Internet domains. It says the Russian government and Russian actors have used to influence the U.S. election. Here’s some of what Attorney General Merrick Garland said yesterday about the actions the U.S. is taking.”
[Clip starts]
Garland: “The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda. (...) The Justice Department’s message is clear: We have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our demographic — our democratic system of government. We will be relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran, as well as China or any other foreign malign actor to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.”
[Clip ends]
SCARBOROUGH: “Yeah. You know, Willie, the thing that is — is so, well, obvious about this, not surprising is we’ve all seen it for several years. There are people who are deliberately or knowingly or unknowingly promoting Russian propaganda, propaganda that comes straight from the Kremlin. People whose TV shows have been pushed by the Kremlin to go on RT because they are spouting Russian propaganda points. There have been people that we’ve seen on Twitter for years, well-known people with big followings, who are clearly, clearly pushing Russian propaganda points. Of course, one of the great ironies about this is — uh, not really an irony, just cynicism and it’s — and it’s just unfortunately un-American, these are the same people that get out, a lot of them, that get out and talk about the Russian hoax. Oh, there’s a Russian — oh, there’s a — there’s no. Come on. What are you talking about? There’s no connection between, you know, this and Russia and Russia’s not trying to — but always apologizing for Russia, always apologizing for Putin, always claiming that Vlad, that Vladimir Putin is not the bad guy, that Zelenskyy is actually the bad guy. Like the historian who said, Oh, Churchill’s, the bad guy in World War II —“
GEIST: “Yeah.”
SCARBOROUGH: “— not Adolf Hitler. Like this, this has been going on for years. The kids call it gaslighting. And now we found out at least a few of these who are just straight on working for the Russian government again, either knowingly or unknowingly.”
GEIST: “Yeah. These are the people online, like you say, Joe, who have condemned what they call the Russia hoax, despite all the information we had in front of us from the Mueller report and now from this indictment, but also who are perceived as truth tellers outside the mainstream media. You’re not getting the real story. You’re not getting the true story. Come to my YouTube channel and I’ll tell you the truth. Well, it turns out some of those prominent among them were complete dupes for the Russian government. RT, which is the state-run media in Russia, was directly feeding and spending a lot of money to American influencers on the conservative side to feed this nonsense, these lies into our political bloodstream. And according to this indictment, one unnamed contributor with 2.4 million YouTube followers on their own channel received $400,000 a month, plus a $100,000 signing bonus along with performance incentives just for making four videos a week for a Tennessee-based company. Another unnamed commentator was paid $100,000 per video. That’s to take the propaganda and put it on their —“
SCARBOROUGH: “Please.”
GEIST: “— outlets for Americans to consume. For more on this, let’s bring in NBC News Justice and Intelligence Correspondent Ken Dilanian and NBC News Chief International correspondent Keir Simmons. Good morning to you both. Ken, I’ll start with you. So lay out if you can what DoJ says happened here and how exactly it worked, how this information got from RT, a Russian state media organization into the hands and onto the channels of these conservative influencers here in the U.S..”
DILANIAN: “Hey, good morning, Willie. Good morning, everyone. Yeah. It’s a remarkable scheme. $10 million is how much the Justice Department says was funneled into this one Tennessee company that’s been identified as tenant media. These guys were making a lot of money. And when I asked on a DoJ background call, what was the impact here? How many Americans did this propaganda reach? They said, look, it’s really hard to gauge, but like this company in a short time amassed 16 million views for its videos on YouTube. So it had an effect. And some experts are saying they only need one or two videos to go viral to have a real impact on American politics. So what’s very clear from the indictment, despite, as you said, people calling this part of the Russia hoax, but you read the indictment, it’s very clear there’s a mountain of evidence that RT and these Russian executives were funneling money secretly to these American conservatives who founded this organization in Tennessee. And then they were then creating videos and taking their cues from RT, particularly on things like the Russian line on the Ukraine war, and pumping it out to the American public without mentioning that this was Russian propaganda. And now the Americans in this scheme are not charged. It’s the two Russians who are in Russia. But the U.S. actually acted more broadly yesterday beyond just this indictment. And they seized 32 Internet domains that have been used by the Russians for propaganda. They also sanctioned other people, including the chief editor of RT, who’s a longtime Putin crony. The good news here, the interesting thing about this, is it shows how much has changed since 2016, when the U.S. government and the FBI essentially watched helplessly as the Russians interfered in that election, both by spouting false narratives on social media and by hacking and leaking and dumping material into the bloodstream. Now, they’re much more proactive. Like this thing started only really less than a year ago. It really launched in November 2023. And it looks like the FBI was on to them almost from the start. And they carefully amassed evidence and now they’re blowing the whistle on it. Likewise, the Iranian attempts to hack into the campaigns, they flagged those right away. And so far, we haven’t seen any great impact from that. But it also shows how much more complicated the media ecosystem is than back in 2016. There are so many people now so prepared to believe what this Russian propaganda is saying. And then when the government flags it, go online now. These same people are saying this is a lie. You can’t believe this Justice Department indictment. This is all part of the Russia hoax. So it’s a tough problem. But the FBI and Justice Department are trying to get out there in front of it.”
GEIST: “You know, Ken, it’s fascinating as you read through the indictment, how the propaganda that the Russian government, that RT was pushing into these conservative channels, echoes and went through to the leadership of the Republican Party, to talking points we heard from members of Congress, even from Donald Trump about what would happen if the United States continued to support Ukraine, that American soldiers were going to die. We heard that from members of Congress talking about white people under attack in America, talking about transgender people, all these wedge issues clearly to help Donald Trump and obviously attacks on Vice President Harris and President Biden as well.”
DILANIAN: “Yeah, it’s remarkable. And this is the thorny issue, right, for the law enforcement community. The First Amendment protects that speech and it protects Americans who want to lie or say whatever they want to say. The issue here, the reason this became a crime is because it was a secret Russian government effort and they violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, allegedly. You know, this old law that never used to be enforced that now the government is breathing new life into because there are these secret efforts by our adversaries to co-opt essentially a huge chunk of the American political stratosphere and sort of inject their narratives into the bloodstream. And, you know, it’s — it’s really, really tough for the government to get a handle on. But yesterday we saw what looks like their best efforts. And they said, look, this investigation is continuing. We’re going to keep at this up and through the November election.”
GEIST: “So, Keir Simmons, you cover Russia very closely. What has been the reaction there? The Justice Department saying clearly that Vladimir Putin in Russia in this indictment favored Donald Trump winning this election. What — what have you heard from Moscow?”
Simmons: “Well, Russia is promising retaliation. They’ve railed about the treatment of RT, this Russian broadcast network for a long time. So we’ll see what that retaliation is. But Joe talked to the top there about — about gaslighting, about trolling. And we’re seeing plenty of that. So RT issuing a statement that literally says, ha, ha, ha, ha. And meanwhile, look, I mean, Margarita Simonyan, who Ken was referring to there, who’s the editor in chief of RT, she’s — her connection to the Russian government — I mean, they’ve been hiding in plain sight. We’re not even hiding. I mean, a Justice Department report just a few years ago was clear about that. When two men were accused of the Salisbury Poisonings, alleged to be GRU officers, they turned up those men on RT interviewed by Margarita Simonyan. And we know about her relationship, her connection to President Putin. So I don’t think any of that is — is really a surprise. We have heard from President Putin today. He wasn’t — he was talking in Russia’s far east in Vladivostok. We haven’t heard from him specifically about these allegations, but he was asked about the U.S. elections. And, you know, you ask about what Russia’s view. And by that, we really mean what President Putin’s view of the American elections are. And I think we have to go back to the trolling and the gaslighting that Joe referred to at the beginning there. Take a listen to what he had to say on this panel in Russia’s far east just today.”
[Clip starts]
Putin (via translator): “It’s been long since I’ve called any leaders of Europe or the U.S., but we’re not against any type of contacts. We’re not limiting them. Yes, sometimes we exchange some kind of information using different channels, first of all through the foreign ministry. It’s not for us to determine. These are elections of the U.S. people. I said that if we can name a favorite candidate, it was — it used to be Joe Biden, but now he’s not participating in the election campaign, and he recommended to all his allies to support Ms. Harris. So that is what we are going to do.”
[Clip ends]
Simmons: “So here’s — and there’s laughter at the end of that, of those comments, and that’s the thing about President Putin. You never know when he’s trolling, when he’s gaslighting, when he’s being serious, when he’s joking. And he kind of — he revels in that, to say that he supports Kamala Harris. But then he goes on in those — in those comments to talk about her laugh and refer to those, you know, the MAGA talking points about Kamala Harris’s laugh. So what does that tell you? I think one of — one of the things it tells you is that actually Putin’s main objective is to try to sow chaos, that he wants to see America struggling. That really is no matter who is president, I think that is his guiding light, if you like. And another aspect is it’s really interesting, isn’t it? He’s paying very, very close attention. For him to talk about Kamala Harris’s laugh in a public forum like that indicates that he’s not just giving a cursory look to the U.S. elections, he is digging in and reading and reading stuff online. And I think that tells you in reality how important the U.S. elections are to Putin and to Russia.”