[m
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♪ [ violin ]
The Kensington Wine Rooms in London's Mayfair has
a small and accidental part in the story of
Donald Trump's presidency.
It was here that George Papadopoulos,
a young foreign policy advisor to Trump's 2016
presidential campaign, met for drinks with
the Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer..
In a rambling conversation, his tongue loosened by alcohol,
Papadopoulos casually tells Downer something stunning -
that Russia has damaging information on presidential
candidate Hilary Clinton and plans to release it
in the final stage of the election campaign.
Boag: And this is the the first indication that
anybody connected with the campaign has knowledge...
Has knowledge of emails that the Russians may have gathered.
Boag:
a book that brings some order and insight to the many twisted
threads of what we call the Russia investigation.
Papadopoulos has a minor but crucial role in that story.
Isikoff: He's important because
it was the information about Papadopoulos
that did trigger the FBI investigation.
Boag:
But it's an important clue about
whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Berger:
collusion, sort of colloquially,
what we as lawyers would usually call that is conspiracy.
Boag:
who now directs the Centre for Advancement of Public Integrity
at Columbia Law School.
Under the federal law conspiracy is
just an agreement between two people
to do something illegal.
So, it doesn't have to be
something that's in writing.
It doesn't have to be something where both
parties are making money out of this agreement.
It's just the agreement itself.
♪ ♪
Boag:
and whether it constitutes collusion
is one of the central elements in the Russia story.
That day senior members of Trump campaign
Donald Trump Jr., his brother-in-law Jared Kushner
and Paul Manafort met with Russian emissaries
including Kremlin connected lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Trump Jr.'s emails before the meeting show
he hoped to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians.
He's told by his contact that Veselnitskaya
is offering official documents about Clinton that
are high level and sensitive information that is part of
Russia and its government's support of Mr Trump.
Donald Jr. replies, "If it's what you say, I love it."
The meeting is kept secret for more than a year.
but when news of it breaks the first explanation from
President Trump and his son is untruthful.
Eventually both the Russians and the Trump campaign say
the meeting was a bust that led nowhere.
But at the very least
it's strange that it happened at all.
Isikoff:
that they took the meeting in the first place,
given the email trail that clearly said this was about
getting damaging information from Kremlin files
that could be used by the Trump campaign.
And that it was part of a Russian government effort
to help elect Donald Trump.
♪ ♪
Boag:
ex-British spy Christopher Steele enters the story.
He's contracted by the Clinton campaign
to look for dirt on Trump.
His report becomes known as the Steele Dossier
and when it falls into the hands
of reporters they find it red-hot.
Boag:
Uhm...
"Wow, if this is true this is huge."
But you know my first reading of it was as a journalist.
What could I corroborate?
Boag:
based on raw intelligence.
It's main point is that Russia has for years
been cultivating Trump as an asset.
And has compiled compromising information on him.
Steele seems to have quickly found some of what
U.S. intelligence discovered only later.
♪ ♪
Berg:
that makes all sorts of interesting allegations.
In a way it would be foolish not to try to chase down
some of those allegations
to try to figure out if they are true or not true.
Because if they...if many of them are true
they're very significant.
Some elements in broad strokes
do seem to have panned out, certainly the fact that
Trump was trying to do business in Russia
for multiple years and that that was continuing
and that has emerged as a very central part of the story.
Boag:
to build a Trump Tower in Moscow
contradict his public statements.
I have nothing to do with the Russia folks, okay.
I'll give you a written statement,
nothing to do but they tie me into Russia.
Boag:
was representing him in talks
with Russia about the development.
Cohen has been sentenced to three years
in prison for tax evasion, fraud,
and for lying to Congress about the Trump Tower deal.
[audience cheering]
Boag:
have already had numerous contacts with Russians
before their National Convention in Cleveland,
including Trump's future
national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Michael Isikoff asks Flynn about
a speech at a Moscow Gathering
organized by Russian state television
and Flynn gets prickly.
Isikoff: Were you paid for that event?
You'd have to ask the folks that went over there to...
I'm asking you, you'd know if were paid.
Yeah, I went over there as a speaking event.
It was a speaking event.
What difference does that make?
Did somebody go ah, he's paid by the Russians?
Well, Donald Trump has made a lot of the fact that
Hillary Clinton has taken money from Wall Street...
Yeah, I didn't take any money from Russia
if that's what you're asking me.
Well then who paid you?
My-my speakers bureau. Ask them.
Boag:
$45,000 for his speech.
Flynn: And I thought it was a great opportunity.
And we will make America great again!
Boag:
Trump's team has already rewritten
the party's foreign policy platform
to make it more sympathetic to Russia
in its conflict with Ukraine.
The day after Republicans wrap up, the web-based publisher
of other people's secrets WikiLeaks strikes.
[modem dialling up and crackling]
Anchor:
a brand-new little email mess.
Anchor 2:
with the U.S. presidential election.
Boag:
Democrats are outwardly celebrating.
But behind the scenes they are reeling from
the emails that reveal embarrassing and damaging
private information about the candidate Clinton
and how the officially neutral DNC had
secretly backed her nomination
over populist senator Bernie Sanders.
Trump:
Boag:
Clinton's opponent weighed in from his golf club in Florida
encouraging Russia to hack and steal even more
information from Clinton.
Trump:
you're able to find the 30,000 emails
that are missing.
I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.
[modem dialling up and crackling]
♪ ♪
Boag:
and Trump's strange appeal to Russia
prompt the Australian government
to finally contact the FBI about that meeting
at the Kensington Wine Rooms with George Papadopoulos.
Those things together with what they already know of
others in Trump's circle, persuade the FBI
to open an investigation into
the Trump campaign's ties with Russia.
Isikoff:
they knew about Manafort for some time.
Boag:
for ousted Ukrainian President
and Russian ally Victor Yanukovych.
Manafort was also millions of dollars in debt
to a Russian oligarch and friend of
Vladimir Putin, Oleg Deripaska.
They knew about Carter Page for some time,
he was on their radar screen.
Boag:
foreign policy team, also with connections to Russia
through the oil and gas industry.
U.S. intelligence suspected Russia was cultivating Page
and had been watching him since at least 2014.
The FBI investigation into the Trump campaign
is fully underway before
election day but it's kept secret.
Few in the FBI expect Trump will soon become president.
The President of the United States!
[cheering and applause]
Boag:
the Trump/Russia story
is the behaviour of Trump as president.
He casts doubt on U.S. intelligence conclusions
that Russia interfered with the election.
♪ [ dramatic ]
Reporter:
Reporter 2:
the President of the United States.
Boag:
James Comey, the director of the FBI.
And the next day welcomes
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak into the Oval Office.
He brags to them that he's got rid of Comey.
..Trump said, according to
the White House notes on the meeting.
After that the FBI reportedly
broadened its counter-intelligence
investigation to include the President himself
to see whether he was secretly or unwittingly
acting on behalf of Russia.
♪ ♪
And last year in Helsinki after a two-hour private
meeting with Vladimir Putin
and no aides or advisors,
Trump refused to endorse
the conclusion of U.S. intelligence
that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election.
Why? Because Putin denied it.
My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me
and some others.
They said they think it's Russia.
I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia.
I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be.
Boag:
The sentence should have been,
"I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia."
Sort of a double negative.
♪ ♪
Boag:
the Russia investigation a witch hunt.
Those words appear in more
that 150 tweets and still counting.
Isn't he behaving like a guilty person?
In that case yes,
I think that's exactly how the president is acting.
I mean, his tactics of repeatedly criticizing both
the investigation itself and the people involved in it
specifically are sort of textbook of what a defendant
does if you can't challenge the facts.
So, and to that extent, yes, I think that...
you know, strikes me as something
that a guilty person would do.
Why?
I mean...
The most logical explanation
is that the Russians have something
on Trump.
And my only hesitation about endorsing that
is that nothing about Donald Trump's
presidency is logical.
Boag:
and Russia, we know this:
the president, his son, his campaign manager,
his long-time friend and lawyer
and his former national security advisor, among others,
have all been untruthful when asked about
the campaign's contacts with Russia.
And at least some of them have gone to jail for that,
others await sentencing.
More indictments may be coming.
♪ ♪
At the Kensington Wine Rooms a plaque from reminds patrons
they're not just out for an evening,
they're wining and dining on the edge of history.
♪ ♪
Keith Boag,