From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today, the question of collusion seemed to be at the heart of the special council's Russia investigation.

Now, there may be evidence of it, but does it even matter?

And Facebook, Twitter and Google confront their role in Russia's interference in the election.

Plus, the terror attack in Lower Manhattan. It's Wednesday, November 1st.

Mike, from your perspective as someone who covers the intelligence community,

what was the significance of Monday's plea deal from George Poppidopoulos?

What we see here is an emerging pattern where the campaign is willing time and time again to sit down with the Russians.

Mike Schmidt covers national security. They've been told that the Russians have some information on Hillary Clinton.

The campaign is trying to establish relationships with senior officials on the other side.

There's a constant willingness on the campaign to engage with the Russians.

Legal documents, unsealed in federal court, lay out the clearest evidence yet.

The President Trump's campaign was eager to work with Russia to hurt Hillary Clinton.

These are now facts.

In the very first case that special prosecutor Robert Mueller brought in his investigation of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A guilty plea, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Poppidopoulos, unsealed.

He admitted to several interactions with a Russian with significant ties to the Russian government and lying about it to the FBI.

Collusion is cooperation and that's what he was doing with Russians.

At the end of the day, it shows that after Poppidopoulos learned that the Russians were claiming they had dirt in emails,

he tried to build a better and closer relationship with them.

And that looks like evidence of collusion, which feels like a major turning point in this investigation.

Or is the significance of finding collusion not what we thought it might be when the special counsel started this investigation?

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