we are live from washington, d.c. welcome to prime time. we have important breaking news. here's the headline. the russia investigation is far from over. bob mueller said general michael flynn provided such significant cooperation, he should serve no prison time. that is unusual. the special counsel had other people who have given significant cooperation and he has not asked for no jail time in all cases. that tells you something about the scale and the scope of the consideration. there is something else that

tells you a lot more. redactionses. two documents just came out. one is the main memo. i will take you through all of it. then an addendum supposed to provide the particulars. wait until you see what's in that document. let's get after it. >> the special counsel again saying that general michael flynn gave such good cooperation, so substantial, he should serve no time in jail. how did we get here? 2017, michael flynn pled guilty to lying to the fbi to the department of justice about his contacts with russian ambassador, sergei kislyak. flynn has been cooperating ever since. the special counsel answers a very early informative question. did flynn cooperate right away and how much was he into

cooperating? there has been so much specul e speculating that he didn't want to cooperate. the special counsel said none of that speculation was true. he was one of the first. with long range understanding of the campaign and the interactions with russia and other entities to come forward and cooperate. that's a key point. he also said something else and i think we have it made up for you. you may take this as frustrating, but you should not. i will explain why. the special counsel says in the addendum, the main memo that will take you through it. then there is the addendum on what he cooperated on. most of it i would suggest that matters is redacted. i don't know if we have any pages. you know what redacted looks like. like this. black bars. that tells you that this is not over. now we can put meat on the bones that was. the special counsel says not

only has general flynn helped with the special counsel investigation into russian interference, that's the main one, but he is helping with a separate criminal investigation. against who? about what? we don't know. it's all redact. common sense tells you the truth. he's got something else working. there will be more to come. on that basis, you see a lot of suggestive language in the two documents that it's a little bit of a beware. he asked people for respect and not everybody wanted to come up. we learned a lot of things anyway. they should be held to a high standard and this could be the 50 of a number of iterations of moves by the special counsel. let's look at what's here and what they got from flynn and where it leads. we have two perfect guests. we have d.c. and former solicitor general and chief

investigative correspondent and coauthor of russian roulette. haven't gotten anything wrong yet in terms of laying it out. to me the most impressive thing is no time. he has been so helpful, no time. not said out of deference. the second thing, all the bars. >> you always want to see bars and you are trying to figure out whether or not it's over and where it might be headed. >> let's start with the bars. a lot of people have speculated that mueller might be wrapping up his investigation. do you not file a document that looks like this if your investigation is in the final stages. there is a line in the actual filing just a half hour ago that said it can't reveal the details of all flynn's assistance because the investigations in which he provided assistance are ongoing. ongoing.

that is a real clue to strap in because we are in this for a while. >> this takes a close reading of this to tease this out. if you look at that addendum that does have the frustrating redactions, there are three referenced in which flynn provided documentation. is completely redacted. a criminal investigation. the second is the special counsel's investigation into collusion links between the trump campaign and the russians. that is not redacted. then a third 1 that is totally redacted. the way i read this, the ongoing investigations which are not itemized here are what flynn is providing continuing assistance to, but it's not the russia

coordination investigation. that is spelled out and not redacted. there are other matters that mueller has come across. he may be doing it himself or referred it out to other u.s. attorneys offices like he did with michael cohen. we don't know. the fact is that if you look at the language as it refers to the coordination and the russians, i don't see a reference to ongoing. >>. >> i have to disagree. there is the second part of the memo which talks about michael's word, collusion and the contacts between the trump campaign and russia. then right afterwards, there is a long blacked out paragraph. i don't think that's about something else. it could very well be about the same thing. >> i'm not known as a politician, but you can both be right. one, when we are investigating

around cohen, sources suggest there is a compartmentalized nature to the probe. their aspect of looking at the president's role of what he knew and what he didn't. maybe he can end that on the basis of his questions and their hands are tied by the doj. that could end. there could be other parts that continue. when i ask people close to the president's legal team about that, they jumped on the suggestion. michael could be picking that up in his reporting, but at the same time, when you isolate something within the russia investigation that becomes relevant, you can spin it off into ets own deits own deal. it's not that you took a meeting that you were stupid enough to take, but this could be criminal. now i'm coming after you and you are not part of the interference probe. you are your own animal. >> let's go back to the headline

here. no jail time. >> that's unusual. mueller has not done that in every case. >> if you are going to use flynn to make a criminal case against somebody else. you want him not just to plead guilty, but to serve time. he is your witness against somebody else. he is your witness who saw criminal conduct and participated. the question in my mind is, if flynn is not getting any prison time here, who is the target? it may be that it's just the president and mueller is bound by doj guidelines and can't indict the president. >> here could do a set aside indictment for later. >> there is nothing here that hints at the potential targets. >> 100% true. i haven't heard different from you. to answer your own question on page two, the government has thus far obtained from the defendant substantial

assistance. some of that may not be fully realized at the time because the investigation is ongoing, however the defendant and the government agree that sentencing president is none the less appropriate because sufficient information is available to allow the court to determine the defendant of the sentence meaning he has already given us enough help to justify the call for leniency and there are other things he can help us with. >> the $5 million question is what to is to come. the target has to be something big. >> targets. there are at least two open matters. >> think about who flynn was. i served it in high positions and the national security adviser is a step away from god. that's how important that person is. closest adviser to the president and the foreign policy, that person, michael flynn admitteded

to a crime here. mueller's team said because he was cooperating and confessed right away, zero time. you are only going to do that if it's something big. >> we know that because we will see what he does with cohen and we don't expect anything like that with manafort. we will see as a basis of comparison. they have not asked for no time in other cases. as this matter, you drafted a lot of pleadings. >> usually in public. >> a, criminal investigation. b, special counsel's office investigation. okay? there is a subset i, we don't know if there is a subset in a. we are not sure. then this paragraph that is open on page four. a lot of it is bars. i will tell you why i'm making the question. the defendant provided useful information concerning -- it's not broken out as a subset. what does that mean? >> that was my point to michael.

who knows who it means. it might tell us more what we think. >> if it was a big matter, wouldn't it have a letter? >> they track the way the special counsel and mueller's mandate is. he has a criminal and intelligence mandate. b could be seen as intelligence. >> what is the difference? >> sometimes they are going to intersect, but intelligence investigations are just about retrospect of what happened without necessarily anyone going through jail time and we have a deep need to know what happened apart from whether the president should be in jail or anything. >> sorry thereis there a reason? mike flynn got hooked on two things. you lied about talking to kislyak. they didn't think he was lying, but mueller seems to feel differently. also what he did with turkey.

>> absolutely. that's very significant. it makes clear that he was lobbying for the government of turkey without doing a full disclosure on the registration act. he registered on behalf of some dutch business man with ties to the turkish government. mueller makes that clear on election day. on election day promoting erdogan's admission getting the guy rendered back to turkey. he never disclosed that he was being paid by the government of turkey. i suspect that one of those ongoing investigations that have been redacted relates to matters involving his turkey representation. there were reports he may have been involved in discussions about trying to privately render to kidnap the chief in

pennsylvania and send him back to turkey. we don't know if that has been flushed out by mueller or other prosecutors in doj. >> is that something that mueller wants to chase down to the central premises of his introduction into this? >> not necessarily because any criminal investigation when you come across evidence with some of your targets, they have committed something else. you want to chase that lead down because these things have tentacles and interrelationships. >> sorry there an interrelationship and if you are dealing with russian interference and if anyone helped their efforts and the fact that he was trying to double dip working with the government and the lobbyist. >> they could be totally separate and as an investigatoi, you have to chase the leads down to make sure they are separate. >> as you have more time to look at it, i see a lot.

>> on the issue that you were trying to break down, the special counsel office of investigation is on page three and the addendum. there is no two. you get that lengthy blacked out. this may be, i hate to say this about robert mueller's operation, sloppy drafting on their part because you would have expected if you are going to put a one, you would put a two. an english professor or instructor might have helped. >> mueller's team is just about the best lawyers and writers around. i think that two could be on page five. it's right here. >> we are talking about seeing categories of action. >> there could be another category on page five. i would hesitate. >> there could be. i will tell you what.

when you don't have the main thing, you try to find many things. to michael's earlier suggestion, it could be the case when it comes to who was talking to the wrong people at the wrong time, and filling in the blanks with russians and during this campaign before and after the election, maybe he's the only one. i know there is the trump tower meeting and papadopoulos and other people, but in terms of central figures, doing things that motivated coordination, you could give a fair reading that flynn is the guy who did the most outward thing. >> this is only a cooperation document about flynn. all these other people had deep bad things happening. flynn was not cooperating with respect to them. it could be that other people involved in trump tower. >> a non-exhaustive summary. let's give them the benefit of the doubt that they had tons of time to do this. they have an i and ordinarily it

would be a double i. that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. maybe that's the one line above the line. >> for could be, but they have to have the double i and left everything else. >> now we are quibbling. >> all the speculation. the bottom line is mueller delivered. >> how so? >> mueller got the president's national security adviser to agree that he had committed a felony and is cooperating and now we are going to see what the roots of that cooperation is. that's a big deal. >> they're knew they had him lying. why did the fbi not think he was lying. you had a different set of investigators think he was. >> we do know that mueller knew pretty heavy handed tactics and let him know that his son could face criminal jeopardy if he did not agree to cooperate and plead guilty. that could have been a factor. until we see the transcripts of

his conversations with disli acti kislyak. michael flynn has now going to be sentenced. his cooperation looks like is completed. there is no reason why congress can't step up to the plate and do what it should have been doing from the beginning which is calling the crucial witnesses like mike flynn and let him lay out what he can say and what he knows about interaction with the president. the same for michael cohen. we should see him testify in public next month if congress does his job. >> michael cohen is willing to do it if you look at the signals. he said he wants to talk to anybody and looking for something similar to this. how persuasive is this to the judge when he see that is the special counsel said i don't think he should get any jail

time? >> the prosecutors have to tell the cooperator, it's up to the judge. i will make a recommendation. in something like this, the recommendation is going to be followed. there is reasons why that sentence is zero to six. the judge may be privy to more than we even know. >> he is somebody that flynn's team was more comfortable with. he doesn't just go in terms of harshness. he's asking for leniency. not to step on your own reporting, but there is a lot of talk about when does this end. as a student of your reporting, federal investigations can go many years without near the productivity this one had. what is the best reporting you had about where we are? >> i think we will have to wait until friday when we have to

wait a lot more in what is filed with paul manafort's lies. that will tell us a lot. at least according tow my reporting, congressional investigators asked questions of mueller's office about whether they can call certain witnesses related to the obstruction phase and whether they are getting a green light saying they talk to everybody we want to talk to relating to obstruction. the fact that these sentencing memorandums are being filed at all is usually you don't see this. if somebody is cooperating as a government witness, usually they don't get the sentencing put off until all the ancillary cases are at least brought and in many cases finished. you can have sentencing put off for years for key cooperators. the fact that mueller is going forward suggests to me that there are not a lot of targets

relating to the russia coordination matter that he has yet to bring. we don't know that for sure. it's hard to tell from the document, but that seems to be the direction. >> he has more wood to chop. emmet sullivan is the judge. the reckoning of him is the same. >> he may be right that the investigation or at least parts of it are closing. mueller is under intense pressure. this is the most high profile investigation in the country. we don't know who is supervising it. whether it's general whitaker or someone else. mueller feels pressure as all hume annuals would to demonstrate, look, there are fruits of this investigation and flynn is obviously one and cohen is another. >> unquestionable fruits of the investigation. we learned a lot last week in the cohen plea. i thought that was enormously significant. i also think bob mueller doesn't

want to be a ken starr. he doesn't want this to drag on into next year. he knows the political limits. >> fair point and understood. i don't see dove tailing between flynn and cohen. it's different universes. however cohen is an example of all the possibilities of redactions. not that there is dove tailing and coordination between what they are looking at with flynn and cohen, but more wood to chop. cohen can know many, many things that have nothing to do with straight line behavior of the campaign. it can go to the timing of what the president knew and didn't know based on michael cohen's presence in the same room. the trump foundation. fiduciary matters of money. that has nothing to do with russian interference. >> absolutely, but there are a lot of different places it can go. why offer this context?

if you are in trump land tonight and the documents come down, how do you feel? >> i'm wigging out because last week we had cohen who knows about a lot of different things and flynn knows about certain things that are of grave importance to our national security and trump's relationship to them. this is a double whammy that is very, very scary for the president. >> you would say hold on a second. we fired him because he lied. turkey, we didn't know about it. he was a bad guy. we misjudged him. what does it have to do with me. it can't have anything to do with me. i'm the president. i don't know who he is talking about, but it's not me. i have a bunch of liars and bad guys, but my base seems to forgive me. >> remember, one of the big allegation is whether flynn was fired for these reasons or not and who knew what when? with flynn's cooperation, they

didn't have it before and you might have been able to tell yourself that story, but now this document said there is a guy in the room who knew that stuff and he is cooperating with mueller. >> he smacks down my offer of push back. >> nothing tells us the answer to my big question which was the nature between flynn and the president after he got fired during the president of the president telling james comey i hope you can see fit to let him go. even after that, flynn was getting messages from the president. i hoped he might see information about that and we don't have that here. that leads me to think if there is a target here, it is the president, but again, he can't be indicted and that's information that should go toed the congress and how you should feel in trump land, anyone who sees those redactionses and think they might be in it, they

are going to be wigging out. >> language people might be picking up on, even with the redactions. the special counsel said individuals, plural, with the campaign and on the transition team. what does that tell you? it was not just michael flynn dealing with russia. he was helpful in providing information and assistance with individuals. plural. with the campaign and on the transition team. so the suggestion that the reason that the russia probe is not redacted is maybe there is nothing more to do with it. he said there were other people in those universes that are relevant. then he listed a couple of things that were relevant. maybe i was not following it closely enough. it absorbed my life for the last several years. israeli settlements, the

sanctions we heard about and the idea of trying to get kislyak to slow down russian behavior on other issues. let's put those two together. we are sanctioning you for things you don't like. the israeli settlements. how does that settle in? >> that was the closest to being a potential logan act violation. the logan act bars private citizens from being involved in foreign policy. it never has been prosecuted, but the details from flynn's plea from last year were that he and others in the trump transition were calling the ambassadors to the security counsel to get them to overturn president obama's position which would allow this un security counsel condemning israeli settlements to go through. they were actively trying to

interfere with what the sitting president would do. again, the logan act has never been prosecute and it's unlikely you would get the case, but that is what alarmed people at the justice department. that's what sally yates was most concerned about when she talked about the potential logan act matter. even more than the context with disli actio kislyak. >> that's to prevent a private foreign policy and you have obama sanctioning, and dealing by the trump campaign to lift those sanctions with the ambassador. that has to stop. >> i agree, but we don't know what exactly was in the conversation. we know from the plea there were phone calls made by trump transition members to un ambassadors trying to get in. >> that's why i highlight individuals within the campaign and the transition team.

we know who does know in that phone call. mueller and his team. that's what mike flynn has been doing. one other aspect that is relevant to mueller and i want to know why it's impressive to you both. the idea of timeliness. they go out of their way to say there is a paragraph on it about how this was probably just an economy of justice type of thing. page five, home an numeral two. timeliness of the assistance. the usefulness is connected to the timeliness. the defendant began providing information not long after the government first sought his cooperation. by the way, that ends up diff e diffusing a lot of speculation that he was fighting. that wasn't true. he was particularly valuable because he was one of the few people with long-term and firsthand insight regarding

events and issues under investigation. it affected the decisions of related firsthand witnesses to be forth coming and cooperated. >> mueller has three audiences when he writes that paragraph. it's really important. is to flynn to say you made a deal with me and i'm sticking up to the deal. the court, despite the fact that this guy is pleading guilty, he should have third jail time. thirdly is all the other witnesses mueller is interviewing and the like. he knows what trump did yesterday and what he has done time and again to say to approximate potential witnesses, hold firm and don't rat on me and you will get a pardon and if you don't, i will call you weak and say the book should get then at you. you don't need to go through this route.

whose word do you trust more? upon donald trump or robert mueller? >> the president of the united states is compromised because he is affected by the investigation. himself saying if you cooperate with the government even though he's the head of the government, you're a rat. roger stone pleaded the fifth which would make him a mob guy according to the president because he said only mob guys plead the fifth, but you are strong if you resist. mueller said the opposite. in his sentencing, he talks about the history characteristics of the defendant and said mike flynn served 33 years in the military honorably and then he said the record of military and public service distinguish him from every other person charged as part of the investigation. true. however, senior government leaders should be held to the highest standards. >> but going back to the language you were reading before

is early cooperation with the government. what a contrast with paul manafort who didn't cooperate at all. he didn't serve in government either. he was lining his pockets serving foreign interests. serving foreign governments, not the u.s. government. taken to trial and convicted and agrees to cooperate and doesn't and lies to them. you couldn't find a starker contrast than between michael flynn and paul manafort. >> this is one of the beauties of doing my job. someone who is a better lawyer and better reporter than i am. on manafort, what i'm hearing is that don't be ready for michael cohen when you get the memo on manafort. more likely than turns out manafort was lying about all of the other things we were interested in, manafort has been so consistently lying about his revenue streams and what he was doing to make money that that is

much more likely and of course we are always qualifying it and that manafort was not lying about not helping on the stuff that flynn is talking about. or any type of collusion or cooperation. but about himself. what are you hearing? >> that makes perfect sense to me. we won't know until we see it, but the manafort investigation began as an investigation into his finances and his offshore accounts and his tax evasion and the various monies he was getting from foreign governments. i suspect that that will be part of it. but look, what the people are most interested in is not that. paul manafort was in the trump tower meeting. will we get any hint of what he knows if anything more than has been made public about the trump tower meeting and was manafort lying to mueller's team about that? that's obviously a big question on the table. >> i think one other thing will come up on friday.

as we were talking about earlier, mueller has been under a lot of pressure to close the investigation and wrap it up and this and that and the other. friday we will hear a pretty robust defense about why this takes so long. it takes longer to investigate when people lie to you. manafort has been lying and lying. the president denigrates this as a process crime or defenders do. this is central to what investigations are about. intimidation of witnesses and lying and false statements to federal officials. that's what manafort seems to have happened. >> exposure for the president other than on style points and political problems with the tweets he was sending out about michael cohen should get a harsh sentence. >> absolutely. >> but legal exposure? >> absolutely. 15, 12 prevents people with corrupt intent from delaying or enticing someone not to testify.

those tweets yesterday i think were really, really looking very much like that. even if you can't make a criminal case about this, the president takes an oath to uphold the constitution and take care of the laws. no president behaves this way. the only people who behave this way are mob folks. >> they're say he is upholding the constitution and has the right to say whatever he wants even though he's the president. he can say how he feels about the sentence. >> people who conspire say that all the time. i conspired to rob a bank. it was only speech, not a crime. >> i don't think the first amendless ofment amen amendment is a defense not to cooperate with an investigation involving you. you might be expressing your right to say what you can, but you are breaking the law. >> if what we can clean to this point, the same thing that happened last week with cohen,

it seems fair to say that it can't be over any time soon in its entirety. as a matter of fact, these redactions speak to further process. something else needs to end. we don't even know what will be redacted like this when we get the cohen memo. >> i 100% agree. only one way it will bra wrap up quickly and that's if donald trump is removed from office. >> i don't see any way that happens. what you could see is something could trigger the president to say or maybe not at all. maybe it triggers the acting attorney general to say this is crazy. this has gone on far too long and this is silly. this turkey thing they are going off on now, they will spend months and millions. i'm shutting this down. then what happens? >> we don't even know who is the attorney general right now when it comes to supervising the

mueller investigation. >> matthew whitaker is the name you are looking for. >> they haven't said whether he is supervising, because he was on this network and denigrating it and there is an ethics issue about that. they haven't told us who is doing it. >> would having an opinion on the case be a basis of recusal? >> a lot of times they rule if you have taken public positions on something, i recused when i was at the justice department which i had taken public positions on in the past. even though i didn't have any involvement with the cases that were pending. that's a standard thing. the shocking thing is that the justice department went four weeks in. we don't know who is the acting attorney general. is it whitaker or rod rosenstein. >> michael, this can't be over. in terms of what you are looking for, this, the cohen memo coming out and the manafort one, which

do you think is the most interesting? >> i think the cohen and manafort ones could be more interesting than this. i hope there not as many redactionses in those. >> i didn't expect any. i thought it was only dealing with what he said. >> national security. >> cohen had the longest relationship about donald trump. he had the closest relationship with donald trump. he had the most interaction with donald trump. if there were other matters that michael cohen provided information about relating to the president, i would expect to see more on that and neal is right. those are not necessarily national security matters or matters at all. they may not be a reason for as many redactionses. >> michael flynn, 19 interviews. 70 hours of interviews with all the vary investigators.

southern district and new york state. mueller. there is a lot. >> let me say that said, the cohen filing last week, the idea that michael cohen, the representative of donald trump was in communication with vladimir putin's office during the 2016 campaign about getting financing and land for a trump tower. that trumps, so to speak, everything we are seeing here. that was the most significant thing. >> especially because the president was denying it. during the campaign.

more on the breaking news. the flynn sentencing memo has been filed by robert mueller and there is a good chance flynn will serve no prison time because he asked for exactly that. we see other recommendations by the special counsel's office with people who cooperate and they did not ask for no jail time. why in this case? the special counsel explains it partially. he said this man has given us a lot of information in a range of matters. at least three separate matters and uses a lot of plural language. individuals connected to the

campaign and the transition team. it wasn't just about what flynn said and flynn knew about himself. that's all relevant. also really redacted. one, you are not going to get the whole answer tonight and two, there is more wood to chop. the court is in session. how do you see this mattering going forward? >> i think this was incredibly significant for a few reasons. the redactionses. there is a presumption in federal court for transparency. you can't redact things lightly. you have to justify them. the special counsel said there are ongoing investigations and depending on the judge they had, they may have to back that up. it means that there are significant ongoing investigations and that it was critical for them to redact those, otherwise i don't think they would have gone to that point.

>> that are i had ed sullivan on this case. taking a look at his history, he speaks his truth to power whenever he sees fit. in terms of the redactionses and what's in this, what do you make in terms of how much it means? >> i think the context as discussed in the last panel will be better understood on friday when we see the next round, but i don't necessarily with respect to the redactions. judges tend to refer to government requests. it is not something they have to fight for to get these redactionses. the presumption will be as a practical matter in favor of giving the government the redactions they asked for and prosecutors with anything ongoing are notoriously -- and i was this way when i was ag, notoriously private. we want to keep as much of our

cards close to our vest as we can. with this being at the end for mike flynn, as you wrap up these agreements that involved cooperation especially extensive cooperation, but prior to trial testimony, it does suggest, i think, that the other aspects that might have been criminal are wrapping up. others might deal with finance, but this is a sign we are nearing the end. >> as a procedural matter, certain parts can wrap up and others continue. i have to tell you, you are far more savvy than i, i didn't expect a lot of redactionses. we know everything he said. he cooperated with us. this is what we think the recommendation for sentencing. i didn't think there would be an addendum and multiple avenues that michael flynn would take to

pursue. the special counsel makes that clear two ways. one, the redactions of two categories of investigation that he didn't feel comfortable disclosing and in plural damage. he said he helps united states can individuals on the campaign and their communications and individuals on the transition team. that tells you there are more people at play. >> you don't often see redactions in the 5 k. that's the letter on behalf of cooperati cooperating witnesses. one reason you don't see a lot of redactions, they usually come at the end. you wouldn't va have a valuable witness sentenced unless you were for all intents and purposes, done using them. your leverage over that witness is significantly lessened once they know what sentence they will get. >> they have readweird language about the ongoing matters and there is enough at this time to do it.

>> it means they don't need michael flynn to testify against anybody else. they could still call him as a witness. maybe they have an agreement that comes forth that he agreed to continue cooperating with them, but i think if that was the case and they needed him to testify, they wouldn't be having him sentenced now. >> if you were working in trump land, how do you feel about the documents? >> certainly i'm wondering about what's blacked out for certain. i would also add one thing about mike flynn in particular. after he originally pled, series and legitimate questions were raised. you noted that the fbi had decided he was not lying to them and later the special counsel moved ahead with the prosecution and a plea on this. part of the reason you may have an agreement to no jail time is that the prosecution may realize the department of justice as a

whole beyond the special counsel has taken positions on something they would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. that's unique to mike flynn in this whole area, but i don't think we should forget about it in terms of each side calculating what lies ahead for them if there is a fight versus if there is cooperation. >> a separate criminal investigation is something that mike flynn was key on in giving them great help and it's all redacted. what is your guess as to what could qualify as to a separate criminal investigation that mike flynn could have been helpful? >> silence from both. nobody wants to take it. >> i don't think that's easy to answer. that's so open ended and speculative and it could be large or trivial. >> i will tell you why i asked the question. you don't know me well enough to know. they did not redact the special

counsel's investigation into russian interference. that's there. there is a criminal investigation and it's redacted. he respected us with the russian investigation and that's not redacted and something else he respected with that is redacted. it does stand at least common sense that maybe the criminal investigation doesn't extend to russian interference. >> i read that and it made me think that this was something farmed out to perhaps another office. one of the things in the letter -- >> i agree. >> general flynn met not only with the office there, but within the department of justice. it was a criminal investigation that may be handled by the u.s. attorney's office somewhere else, but separate from the special counsel's office. >> i agree with that and that also means it's not russian collusion issues. >> it could mean that. it's criminal so it's not something trivial.

>> the special counsel wouldn't handoff to another u.s. attorney's office at the heart of the referral to the special counsel. >> that are makes sense. worth the wait? these documents? >> i think they were. they painted a really interesting picture of how flynn began to become a cooperating witness and one of the things that jumped out was the contrast between flynn and cohen and manafort. you have the description of flynn as someone who started cooperating early and seemingly without much trouble and no discussion in the letter about him having lied to the special counsel's office once he started cooperating. the letter makes it clear what the office values in the cooperating witnesses. ha is consistency and coming on board early. >> what are is the chance that the president of the united states sees these documents and decides to start tweeting which is our main metric for his level of agitations. >> tweeting is always a

possibility with president trump. predictability in that regard is not very high. i haven't been very good at predicting that. i have one other comment about flynn versus cohen. when you see the origin in the documents today and you look back to cohen's history, simply the credibility of the information provided by flynn is likely higher than the information and the credibility of the information provided by cohen. just from what we have seen and what we do know, setting aside or being called on to speculate about by redactions and so forth. cohen has been all over the map where flynn has been much quieter publicly and you see a close out document like this and it suggests a much cleaner process from mike flynn's perspective than from michael cohen's perspective. >> i agree. >> the unknown has to be frightening.

they don't know what they don't know cannot put them in a comfortable place. >> are we will not see a recommendation like this for potentially joe jail time. we will not see it for manafort. they are taking into account his military service and service to the public balanced with this crime. i don't think we will see a similar sentencing recommendation. >> michael cohen is a beast of a very different form. we just saw from the special counsel, one of the reasons we believe cohen is he can prove it. he said i shouldn't have said that and i still was talking about it and here's the proof. that's why mueller relied on it. he was able to show what michael cohen said he knew. that's a difference also and how it plays intoed the 70 hours of cooperation and meetings that michael cohen gave the special counsel and we will know very

soon. thank you for making us better on the show tonight. appreciate it. we now have the paper from the special counsel. how about the context? our next guest is mare y mccord who oversaw russian meddling before mueller's appointment. great context and great perspective, next. our new, hot, fresh breakfast will get you the readiest.

holiday inn express. book now for at least 20% off during our annual sale.

♪ there's no place likargh!e ♪ i'm trying... ♪ yippiekiyay. ♪ mom. ♪ all right. tonight's breaking news, michael flynn, the man who made clinton lock her up chants famous at trump rallies will likely not get locked up if the special

counsel has anything to say about it because he made a recommendation that the general has been so helpful and did so so early on, on a number of matters involving a number of individuals, that he thinks he should serve no time in jail. i want to bring in somebody who knows a lot more about this than i ever will. her name is mary mccord. she helped oversee the fbi's investigation of russian meddling before mueller's appointment. she was in the meeting with sally yates when they warned white house counsel don mcgahn that flynn had lied to investigators. a true pleasure. i really do appreciate it, and i want you to know, stipulation here at the top. there are things you should not and cannot discuss. i get it. whenever i get there, brush me aside. there's plenty more for me to discuss. first, at the onset, impressive or not what the special counsel put out today? >> so i think it's what i expected in the sense that i've heard other guests talking about they weren'tredactions. i thought there might actually be an addendum under seal. so i was actually somewhat surprised that we have a

document partially public that just has redactions. >> help me understand why because the common sense thought is, well, if this is for his sentencing, that means it's all done. trial's over. he pleaded, so there was no trial. now it's sentencing. you should tell us as much as possible or tell the court at least because you're trying to justify your recommendation. so if it's just about him, why redact anything? >> so it says it's done with respect to general flynn but not necessarily respect to other people who he might have prevented information about. just if you take this out of this context and think about some other investigation -- i mean i was a prosecutor for 20 years before i was at the national security division. if you have an ongoing drug investigation, for example, and you have a cooperator, and the cooperator has provided all the information that you think you need from the cooperator, but you still don't want to refer openly in public to the target, you might have an under-seal addendum. oftentimes you would continue to keep the case open because you might need to use the cooperator to actually testify in court.

so this could mean that the special counsel isn't contemplating that, or it could just mean the special counsel and general flynn felt that the time was such, given that he has already substantially cooperated and perhaps in the course of that cooperation, they felt comfortable that if they need to call upon him again, he'll be there. >> now, without getting into details, you knew a lot about why there was a need to investigate russian interference into the election. >> mm-hmm. >> and a big question has been, why is this taking so long? and even within the context that you guys take a long time on the federal level, no disrespect, this is not long and has been very productive. do you believe that the time and what your understanding is of the different paths that mueller is taking, are they justified by what you understand of the context of the investigation? >> well, i'm not surprised about the amount of time. i mean there were 19 interviews as this document says. and, remember, the special

counsel has a wide-ranging investigation. so it's not as though at any point in time they're looking only at let's talk to michael flynn, and let's see what he has to say. what an investigator is going to do in this case and in other cases is you're going to talk to a witness that's going to give you information that you then need to go do more work on to corroborate, to see where it might lead, and then that might give you information that makes you want to go back to that witness. so these things take time. and so particularly when you see 19 interviews and the amount of time, it's not surprising to me at all because they probably get some information. they go work on it. they see what it leads to. they take it back to general flynn, ask him what he thinks about that, et cetera, et cetera. >> is there a suggestion that if they're letting him get sentenced now, even though they feel confident they could call him back, that whatever other targets they have can't be that high value because you wouldn't want to take any chances. if you're going after somebody who is very close to the president or somebody who is in the sanctum sank for um, really

close, you don't finish anything before you finish that. >> so not necessarily. with 19 interviews, they have got a rapport built between the special counsel and general flynn and probably a relationship of trust has been built up over the course of this many interviews and given the document and given the recommendation for no jail time, that says to me that the prosecutor is satisfied with the cooperation and feels like it's truthful and honest and helpful, or he wouldn't file a document like this. so i don't think it necessarily signals anything about who the targets might be and how high-level or low-level they might be. >> you think there's still a lot of wood chop to be done here in this investigation? >> you know, that's hard to say. i think this could be one piece of it that they feel like they've, you know, gotten what they need, enough to go to sentencing. but there's a lot of other things still going on. >> i mean we know there are redactions, so there's obviously

at least one other criminal investigation going on. and is it possible -- what i have been hearing in my reporting is maybe they'll end one part of the investigation. like, all right. we got the president's answers on these things. we know what he says he knew and what he didn't. i can't charge him anyway with anything, so that's over. but i'm still looking at this. is that possible? >> it's totally possible. we've already seen that as you've seen different charging documents come out, and you've seen pieces of it wrap up. i mean we thought, you know, at some point after manafort pled guilty and it looked like he was going to cooperate, that could have potentially opened up entire new avenues. that seems now to not be the case now that mueller has filed -- >> are you surprised at how productive this has been, the number of indictments, the number of people around the president who have lied about matters concerning russia? >> mueller is very good at what he does. he has an excellent team. i've worked with a number of those people, so, no, i'm not surprised. >> you still have cohen. you it ill have manafort this week. how do these three rank for you

in terms of what you're interested to see? >> you know, it's hard to say until we see a little bit more. i think when we see the filings that are coming up, you might be able to put pieces together and really, i think, what might be interesting to know is what communications there might have been between these three or how much what they were involved with intersects at various points in time. >> as a general notion, there are two schools of thought in this very divided country. one is i can't wait to read this mueller report and see who has to be punished and who doesn't. the other is this is all b.s. this is all made up, tax dollars at work, and prosecutors doing what they do best, tricking people into doing things so they don't lose the rest of their lives. what is your guidance on whether or not this is much ado about nothing or you know from your own experience there was plenty to look at? >> well, i don't want to talk about what i know from my experience while i was still in doj. but what i will say is that you don't see this quantity of indictments, this many people

admitting guilt, this many people making false statements to the fbi if there's nothing there. >> process crimes. is that something that you waive aside as, well, those don't matter? >> process crimes are important. it's important to be truthful to the fbi when they're engaging in an investigation. >> mrs. mccord, thank you so much. i don't want to violate your privacy about what you know and what you can't say, but your perspective on this is important, and i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> all right. be well. thank you for watching. a lot to get through. big breaking news. "cnn tonight" with don lemon will pick up the story right now. what a big headline tonight. it ain't over, don, and the special counsel thinks that michael flynn should not go to jail. >> yeah, and it looks like i don't think it's wrapping up. everyone says, oh, it's wrapping up. it looks like it's just starting. i've got the memorandum right here. you've been going over it. we're going to go over it. actually, chris, it's not a really good day for this president, toer this administration. we'll talk about all of that. nice job on the breaking news, chris. i'll see you tomorrow. this is "cnn tonight." i'm don