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Senate Report: Russian Trolls Targeted Mueller on Social Media; Michael Flynn to be Sentenced for Lying to FBI; Donald Trump Wishes Michael Flynn Good Luck at Sentencing Hearing on Twitter; New Information Published on Russian Sourced Social Media Attacks on Robert Mueller. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 18, 2018 - 8:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: -- during the Trump campaign's transition. President Trump just wished him good luck on Twitter. These are curious times.

Overnight, Special Counsel Robert Mueller obeyed a judge's order and released a moment memo with details of the FBI's interview with Flynn from January of 2017. It's a very interesting read. It clearly lays out the lies that Flynn told that day. President Trump has suggested that Flynn was somehow tricked into lying by Mueller, but the memo debunks that claim.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So also overnight we learned that Russian operatives worked to discredit Robert Mueller. How? By using fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. They went after Robert Mueller. "The Washington Post" was the first to report the tactics against Mueller after the Senate Intelligence Committee released two reports detailing startling information campaigns by Russian operatives. It is really notable how similar the language that the Russians used is to language we hear from the president from time to time. We're going to talk to some of the people involved in that research coming up.

First, though, want to bring in Shimon Prokupecz. He's live outside the courthouse where Flynn will be sentenced in Washington, D.C., very shortly. Shimon?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, that's right. And it was a year ago, just over a year ago that Michael Flynn last walked into this courthouse, pleaded guilty, and began cooperating in a stunning move with the special counsel's office, and now today finally after his year-long cooperation with the government he's going to be sentenced. It's expected that he's not going to face any jailtime. Both the special counsel and obviously Michael Flynn's attorneys are arguing to the judge that he should not serve any jailtime because of his substantial cooperation in this investigation.

Now, when Michael Flynn pleaded guilty, he pleaded guilty obviously to lying to the FBI. Some of that information, as you guys just outlined this morning, some of those lies detailed in memos that were released last night by the special counsel's office where they detailed how Michael Flynn lied to them after repeated questions about whether or not he spoke to the Russian ambassador, the former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about any policies, anything that he may have asked the former ambassador not to do in response to Obama administration officials throwing out Russians from the country from the U.S. in response to the 2016 election hacking. And Michael Flynn essentially denied that he had asked the ambassador not to have any kind of reaction to it.

Of course, in those memos released, there were other points of issues that the FBI took with what Michael Flynn had to say. And obviously today the big day for Michael Flynn, it's expected that he will address the court, and we'll see what the judge here decides. The judge also is expected to speak. This judge is known for sort of saying a lot, taking his time in his sentencing. But as you have been saying here this morning, it sets here to begin about 11:00 a.m.

CAMEROTA: All right, Shimon, thank you very much for that scene setter for us.

Joining us now are Jeffrey Toobin, Abby Phillip, and Chris Cillizza. Jeffrey, what are you looking for today three hours from now?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: It's important to remember that Flynn's sentencing guidelines are zero to six months, and he cooperated. In those circumstances, regardless of the defendant, it is almost always the case that the person gets probation, not jailtime, and that's certainly what I would expect.

I would expect Judge Sullivan, to really tell Flynn that what he did was wrong and he was a disgrace and it was a felony. But at the end I don't think he will get jailtime. I don't think Flynn is going to get into too much detail about the underlying investigation. I think he'll probably apologize, talk about his service to the country. So I don't know how much we're going to learn about the Russia investigation. But in terms of the news, I don't think we are going to see any jailtime.

BERMAN: It is interesting you are predicting that the judge will tell Michael Flynn it's wrong, a disgrace, and a felony. The president of the United States this morning is telling Michael Flynn, good luck, pal. Let me read you the statement from the president a short time ago, Abby. "Good luck today in court to General Michael Flynn. It will be interesting what he has to say despite tremendous pressure being put on him about Russian collusion in our great and obviously highly successful political campaign. There was no collusion." It's interesting, when he says it will be interesting to see what he has to say, there could be people who look at that, again, since we're doing mob boss lingo for the last few days, hate for anything to happen to him. Wouldn't want anything to go wrong there. Be interesting to see what he has to say Abby. The president weighing in in an unusual way.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. You do have to wonder why the president is so conciliatory toward Michael Flynn and not so much toward Michael Cohen who found himself in a similar position, but for clearly some more serious allegations relating to his conduct during the campaign. [08:05:03] But Michael Flynn has been treated with kid gloves. And

you have to wonder why. What is it that President Trump is either very confident about that Michael Flynn is not going to do in a way that might harm him, or what is he worried about? What is he trying to signal to Michael Flynn by saying, hey, I'm watching. I'm making sure I'm listening to what you are going later today in court.

But we also should point out that this has been pretty consistent. President Trump has actually been calling Michael Flynn a victim, a kind of martyr of this investigation, since the very beginning. Even after the president fired him for lying to the vice president, President Trump called him a good guy, said he was being unfairly treated by the press and then later by the special counsel. So President Trump is clearly very engaged in what is happening with Michael Flynn. And I think we are left wondering why. I don't have any answers, but maybe we might find out a little bit more today, maybe we might find out more in the coming weeks, but it is curious.

CAMEROTA: I really like the point you are making, and I do want you, Chris Cillizza, to address it, because Michael Cohen he calls a rat. Flynn met with Mueller and other prosecutors 19 times. He's cooperated. Why the different tact?

CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yes. First of all, one other thing to add to Abby's point is the fact that, remember, according to James Comey he testified under oath. Donald Trump asked James Comey if he could see a way to leave Michael Flynn alone from the start. So it's pretty remarkable.

Why? Man, I don't know that Donald Trump understands that Michael Flynn not saying a lot publicly and cooperating and getting a zero to six month sentencing recommendation is not necessarily a good thing for Donald Trump and his aides. I tend to think Flynn may be, I won't say the lynchpin here, but certainly one of the keys here in the Mueller investigation. Remember, he pled guilty more than a year ago. Sentencing has repeatedly been delayed at Mueller's request because he continued to provide useful information.

I don't know why there is this loyalty here. And I wonder if eventually if the Mueller report comes out and Flynn's role in it is revealed if Trump also turns on him. He tends to turn on most people. Remember, he operates, to John's crime boss, he operates on this unstinting loyalty to me. And if you ever break that, you're dead to him. For whatever reason, he doesn't think Michael Flynn has broken that, though I would argue, if you look at when Michael Flynn pled guilty, what we know we believe he has told the special counsel, Flynn has done potentially as much or more damage to him as Cohen.

BERMAN: It interesting, we know a little bit more about Michael Flynn today than we did 24 hours ago. Number one, we know that in this interview in which he lied to the FBI, the FBI agents, in the 302 here if you look at it, they gave him every opportunity to tell the truth, practically begging him, please, help us help you. Are you sure you didn't say this to the Russian ambassador? Are you sure? Don't you remember saying this? And then he would say basically no, no, no, no. That's why he's being charged for a felony and sentenced for a felony today.

The other thing we know, Jeffrey, is that Michael Flynn cooperated on this charge or these charges against these other individuals who were just convicted or charged with lying and other false, bad reports on lobbying too with the Turkish government. Michael Flynn was not charged for that. Those are serious crimes.

TOOBIN: Those are serious crimes, and that may be part of why the Mueller office said he cooperated successfully. Now, it's important to point out that this Turkish case, this case involving people doing illegal lobbying for Turkey is filed in the eastern district of Virginia and is not a Mueller case. It's a Justice Department case, and it does not involve the president at all. But it is an illustration of how Flynn apparently cooperated.

Whether Flynn cooperated in the core Mueller investigation is something we don't know at that point. That part of his -- the letter that Mueller wrote to the judge was blacked out. But I'm sitting here thinking. I don't understand either why Trump has been so vindictive about Cohen and so complimentary towards Flynn. Does Abby know?

PHILLIP: I don't know. But I think we do have to take into consideration here that Michael Cohen presents really an unprecedented risk to President Trump. It's not just about the campaign. It's not just about the transition. It's about his entire business empire. It potentially endangered his children, which is something that President Trump is very sensitive about. So that could very well be why there is a certain level of anonymous toward Michael Cohen who had in his possession not only documents that could imperil Trump's entire empire but also secret recordings.

[08:10:07] He secretly recorded the president and people around him. So that might be one explanation. But again, I don't know whether President Trump knows what Michael Flynn has been talking to investigators about for the last year, or maybe he doesn't know but is hoping for the best and is trying to signal to someone who has been an early supporter of his. But that's a really major unanswered question here that I think we just have to wait and see until we could find out more, perhaps maybe just ask President Trump if he can share his insights on what's going on here.

CILLIZZA: I do think it is worth noting -- I think Abby's point about the personal and the family is important. But I will note Flynn is the one person in this who was, other than family, who was campaign, transition, and, albeit briefly, White House, meaning he worked for the White House for that month.

BERMAN: Like Scaramucci.

CILLIZZA: Right, a double Scaramucci.

(LAUGHTER)

CILLIZZA: So he has a hand in all of those three pies.

CAMEROTA: Right, but if you are President Trump and you don't believe there is any collusion or the people around you did that, you are not worried about Flynn. I think that Abby's theory is right, they are much more worried about Michael Cohen, who knows a lot about your businesses, could disclose.

TOOBIN: Remember, Cohen was the guy who did the Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal.

CILLIZZA: Which, by the way, runs totally counter to -- what Donald Trump says and what is fact is obviously far apart often. But the dismissal of Cohen as a low-level guy -- you don't give the low-level guy the job of paying off women who are alleging affairs with you in the heat of the 2016 campaign. You don't give that to somebody, just give me somebody on the fifth floor. Just grab anybody, it doesn't really matter, and here's the money. That's not how that would work. You don't entrust kind that very personal deal with someone you don't trust and who is a low-level guy.

BERMAN: I'll take your word for that.

CAMEROTA: You seem to know a lot about that.

CILLIZZA: In theory.

BERMAN: I will note we're talking about Michael Flynn's sentencing which happens at 11:00 today. Last week with Michael Cohen's sentencing, the big mystery was what was revealed right after, that AMI had been cooperating. These days that have been going on, we learn things that we don't expect to learn, so there's that. It could happen in a few hours, so stay tuned.

CAMEROTA: OK, I will.

BERMAN: "The Washington Post" had an interesting story overnight. We knew that the Russians used every social media outlet under the sun to attack this campaign in 2016 and to help Donald Trump. We learned overnight much more about how they have been going after Robert Mueller, the special counsel, since the president was elected, and in terms and with language that's not at all dissimilar to that of the president. It's really interesting.

TOOBIN: It just shows that the Russian social media effort, the Russian covert effort, has been aligned with Donald Trump's interests for more than a year. Pro-Trump, anti-Clinton, suppressing the African-American vote, which is of course largely Democratic, helping Jill Stein, who was a spoiler for Hillary Clinton, and now attacking Robert Mueller. All of these separate efforts are completely aligned with Donald Trump's interests, often word for word, and it's what Russia has been doing covertly. It is just extraordinary.

CAMEROTA: And I see the clues planted in conservative media. Where they got their ideas, where the Russian trolls got their ideas, Abby, for exactly the sweet-spot, exactly how they knew what would appeal to people on Twitter, I mean, there are things that I heard years earlier about Robert Mueller on FOX News that they seized on that now we know. Here's one example. This is where they claim that Robert Mueller is Russia special counsel. He worked with radical Islamic groups to purge anti-terrorism training material offensive to Muslims. I remember that being a talking point on "FOX and Friends" in probably 2010. And that's -- I can connect the dots. This is where Russian trolls figured out, oh, this is going to make an impact, and they're still doing it today.

PHILLIP: Yes. There is this feedback loop. These memes originating perhaps on conservative media and being amplified on social media by bots or by accounts that are created specifically for this purpose, and vice versa. Conservative media picking up memes that are generated by bots and amplifying them in that way.

So this is a real problem. Putting aside President Trump just for a second, this is a problem right at this moment and going forward because it is really easy to do this. I think that's what all of this really illustrates, is that it is actually not all that sophisticated to create this loud speaker effect on social media that has a real effect of swaying people's opinions.

[08:15:04] And adding this back into the 2016 campaign, the real question that we remain with is was it just sort of picking up clues from here, picking up clues from there and amplifying it or was there anything deeper than that? Was there any coordination deeper than that? That's really important unanswered question.

But I think what has been lacking in the last two years is everything across the political spectrum saying, you know what, there has to be a bright line about what is acceptable and what's not. We just haven't seen that, particularly on the Republican side.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, in terms of people not paying attention to it, we're about to change that because we will spell out and show people exactly what appeared on their social media feeds that we know was generated by trolls and bots.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. And also, this shows why people are so angry at Facebook and to a certain extent Twitter because they are the vehicle by which this poison is delivered.

CAMEROTA: And it is still happening.

TOOBIN: And it's still happening now. You know, I don't know how to tell Facebook how to stop it, but it sure -- it is sure continuing. And, you know, Facebook has long portrayed itself as this goody, goody company, and we see that it's the delivery system for so much of this that is really bad.

CAMEROTA: Yes. You know, people can quit Twitter. There is not a law that you have to be on Twitter.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: How have we done?

CAMEROTA: I have been liberated. It is so liberating.

TOOBIN: When did you go off?

CAMEROTA: A year and a half ago I publicly broke off with Twitter, and it has been liberating. I'm just recommending it if people feel overwhelmed.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: I thought there was a law you had to be on it.

CAMEROTA: No, there is not a law.

OK, everybody. Thank you very much.

Next, we do have much more on the Russian trolls, exactly how they have tried to permeate your brain. We're going to show you all of the things that probably popped up on your social media feed and what to look out for.

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[08:20:40] CAMEROTA: Russian trolls are still trying to control your thinking and gin up your outrage today. And you need to know exactly what you're seeing on your Facebook feed and on Twitter because it is all still there.

Months after President Trump took office, Russian disinformation trolls also took aim at a new target, special counsel Robert Mueller. All of this according to a new report prepared by the Senate by a social media research firm New Knowledge.

Joining us now is the director of research at New Knowledge. Renee DiResta.

Renee, thank you so much for being here. You have a lot to teach us.

You monitor this information. That is your job at this cyber security firm. I don't know when you sleep because it seems like we are all just overwhelmed by disinformation.

So what is the headline of what you found from poring through all of this research?

RENEE DIRESTA, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AT NEW KNOWLEDGE: I think the focus of our report was on the data that's provided by Facebook, Twitter. And what we were asked to do was some insight into a multi- year operation that was much bigger than the 2016 election. I think the election, of course, gets the most attention. But this was a multi-year effort to develop relationships and build American audiences for the purpose of having them able to propagandize to.

So, they built communities and they turn these communities on, they activated them to feel a certain way about Syria when Russia was conducting operations in Syria. So, there was a little bit a very sustained effort to build audiences so that they would be receptive to messages on a long-term basis.

CAMEROTA: And it still is. I mean, it still is.

DIRESTA: Yes.

CAMEROTA: The sustained messaging is still happening. So, I want to put up on the screen some of the things they should be

on the lookout for. People obviously have to be educated about how to be critical thinking about all of this because we're also deluge from social media at all times.

So let's look at Robert Mueller, OK? So after the 2016 election, they did not quit. This wasn't just about getting Donald Trump elected. It was also about tearing down some of his, you know, so-called adversaries.

So, here is one with Robert Mueller where they claim that Robert Mueller worked with radical Islamic groups to purge anti-terrorism training material offensive to Muslims. Really what happened was this was an FBI handbook, and they took out some language that was outdated and sort of archaic.

But this is what they want people to believe about Robert Mueller. Similarly, they have all of this sort of hyperbolic imagery where they say James Comey is a dirty cop. So what happens? How does it work?

People stumble upon this on Twitter or Facebook and then what?

DIRESTA: So, if they liked the page. You see two logos there, those were two. American Fury was an Instagram account, Back the Badge, I believe, was a Facebook account that had affiliated in Instagram.

So, once you like the page, once you engage with the content initially, you are kind of opting to see it in your feed. And, so, you have indicated that you are receptive to this type of messaging. One of the things that they did very well is build audiences that had very specific kind of almost persona types. So, for younger right wing audiences a lot of the content was meme culture. For their feminist accounts, they were putting out aspirational quotes and feminist content.

So, they really had tailored segmented audiences. So, once you opt in to following one of those accounts or liking one of those pages, you will see more messaging aligned with what they think the audience is interested in. But some percentage of the content will not be just reinforcing the anger dynamics. It's going to be pushing the narrative they want their audience to be open to.

So, it is about establishing norms. It's propaganda.

CAMEROTA: It is propaganda. And, in fact, it targeted, I think you found, African-Americans. That was one of the groups that they decided to go after to -- all of it. I mean, just, you know, gin up the outrage, sow discord.

[08:25:00] One of the things they did, and this involved Hillary Clinton.

They tried to suggest that black college students were not excited about her. So here are some of the things you might have seen on social media. Black college students are not excited about this election. They think Hillary is a liar. Then they used Michael Jackson, before you vote, listen to Michael

Jackson, all I want to say is that they really don't care about us. I mean, you know, these are just -- it is just remarkable to now know the origin of things like this.

DIRESTA: Some of the content is grabbed from other meme sites. So you will notice in this particular operation, they were putting those logos because they were branding the content as theirs. WMK was an account called Williams M. Kelvin, it had a YouTube channel also. Instagram, Facebook and a Twitter account.

And the other one also had, I think, things on all of those platforms. So they built these cross platform media brands. That was how they reached out to black audiences.

They did a lot of integration with authentic black media where they would take their memes and they would amplify them. Sometimes, they would rebrand them of their logo to kind of create a sense of legitimacy, as if they had created that content. But this is the way the meme culture in the Internet works. It is a lot of remixing, it's a lot resharing.

CAMEROTA: So, Renee, from where you sit, how can anybody trust what is on their social media? From where you sit, is it time for people to sort of shut down their social media accounts given that Facebook and Twitter have not been transparent, given that they haven't been helpful, given that the Trump administration doesn't seem to be able to nip this in the bud. What's the advice for people watching right now?

DIRESTA: Well, I still have all of my social media accounts. I find it a valuable experience and I enjoy it. I think it's -- you know, the question of should you or should not delete is a very personal one.

I think that increasing accountability from the tech platforms, we have made a lot of headway since 2016 in terms of getting them to recognize how serious this problem actually is and to work towards a multi-stakeholder approach where the government, researchers and others work together to find these things.

This is not going to go away. It's been successful. It's easy to do and they have increased their budget if we look to some of the recent indictments, they're committed to this. So, it becomes a matter of really thinking critically when you see things in your social media feed, recognizing that when you join a group, not everyone in the internet is who they seem to be.

CAMEROTA: Who they seem they are.

That's really good advice. I think that people do have to think more critically and of course we need to demand accountability from the people that are the delivery systems of all of this.

Renee DiResta, thank you very much for sharing all of your research with us. DIRESTA: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: John?

BERMAN: She is making history in hopes to shake up Washington. How Represent-elect Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American lawmaker in the United States plans to bring change to Congress? Next.

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