majority rule when we have, the minority has rights. >> the question right now, how strongly those institutions hold when you look at other places, turkey and brazil. >> we need to talk about the high schoolers. >> if you missed the beginning of tonight's show, the pod cast will be available. >> that was a fun right. well done. have a great weekend. >> thank you, at home for joining us. the national security advisory to the president of the united states did not get fired today. that counts as both news and a surprise. the white house sparked a thousand headlines last night, in a wrath of competing scoops about theed pt.'s intention to

fire the national security advisor, h.r. mcmaster. i have little -- no appetite at all for kremlinology style coverage and speculation about who is in favor and who is out of favor. who has been able to move the desk closer to the oval office. who is angling for what job. the government is not supposed to be conducted like the gong show. it has been a weird 24 hours in the news because of this word that went out from the white house. about the national security advisor was to be fired. why did the white house put that word out last night? i don't know. neither do you.

but you should know that right before the white house put out that word last night, this is the last public thing that national security advisor h.r. mcmaster did yesterday afternoon. >> russia is also providing political cover for assad's crimes, from february 24th to february 28th, russia conducted 20 bombing missions every day in the eastern guda and damascus areas. syria. thwarting efforts to hold the regime accountable for using chemical weapons. this morning, the united states, france, germany and the united kingdom condemned the nerve

agent attack on sergei and julia y that took place in the united kingdom on march 4th. the statement made clear that we believe that russia was responsible for this attack. if iran and russia do not stop enabling and adhere to u.n. security counsel resolutions, all nations must respond more forcibly than issuing strong statements. it is time to impose serious political and economic consequences on moscow. >> that was h.r. mcmaster national security adviser, making the strongest comments he has made against russia during his full-time as national security advisor. that's the last thing he did publicly yesterday before we got that spade of headlines last night that he was about to be fired. h.r. mcmaster made those remarks yesterday afternoon. veteran national security reporter covered that speech and rushed back to the daily beast to file his report on mcmaster's comments. you see the headline quote, h.r. mcmaster gives the kremlin a

double bird solute by which he means two metaphorical middle fingers. so that was h.r. mcmaster's afternoon yesterday. and then last night there was an explosion of reporting that yeah, he'll be fired. one possibility here is those two events are totally unrelated. total coincidence. another possibility is mcmaster knew he was getting fired, that we were in the ramp up to him being fired and we knew he was on his way out yet we felt this would be a good time to take shots at russia since they are getting rid of him anyway. maybe that's a possibility. another possibility of course is that mcmaster made these strong anti russia remarks yesterday and that somehow precipitated the president's desire to fire him or start telling lots and lots of reporters that in fact, he decided to fire him and it's weird we have to consider that kind of a possibility. but part of the reason we have to consider that possibility is that in the last few days, we

just went through something very similar with the secretary of state rex tillerson. secretary of state rex tillerson was fired by the president on tuesday morning. on monday night reporters traveling with rex tillerson on an overseas trip said they had no sign from him he might be leaving his post. but on monday night speaking to reporters, he did make some remarkably strong comments against russia like h.r. mcmaster, they were the strongest remarks he's made since he's been serving as secretary of state. question, have you been tracking the ex spy's poisoning in the u.k.? answer from rex tillerson, i just got off a phone call with british phone call boris johnson. we'll put out a statement to support what their findings have been. this is a really egregious act.

it does not exist widely. i've become extremely concerned about russia. we invested a lot to solve problems and address differences and quite frankly, after a year we didn't get far. instead what we've seen is a pivot to be more aggressive. this is very concerning to me and others there is an unleashing of activity we don't fully understand what the objective behind that is and if this attack in the u.k. is the work of the russian government, this is a pretty serious action. so tillerson spoke those words. he made those remarks to reporters who were traveling with him on monday night. he then put out a written statement, the final written statement issued under his name as secretary of state. quote, we have full confidence in the u.k.'s assessment russia was responsible for the nerve agent attack. that took place in salisbury last week. there is never a justification for this type of attack.

the attempted murder of a private citizen, we're outraged that russia again appears to have engaged in such behavior from ukraine to syria and now the u.k., russia continues to be an irresponsible force of instability in the world. acting with open disregard for the sovereignty of other states and the life of their citizens. we agree those responsible and those who committed the crime and those who ordered it, must face appropriately serious consequences. those who committed the crime and those who ordered it. that was the last written statement put out by secretary of state rex tillerson in the following morning he was fired. now, as with h.r. mcmaster and his russia criticism in that afternoon speech right before the white house put out word last night he would be fired, like the situation with mcmaster, this could be coincidence. there could be no connection

between the events at all. it could happen the president wants to fire these guys or mulling over firing these guys at the same time this russia crisis is happening with what appears to have been a russian state attack using a nerve agent on a private citizen. on british soil. it could be this is coincidentally happening at the same time. these are public remarks these national security officials would be making regardless whether the president was in the process of firing them or not. but now we have seen this same dynamic play out twice in a week. we saw this play out in very quick secession with the mcmaster news last night and before that with the tillerson firing on monday night into tuesday morning. and because it's now happened twice, it may be worth looking into what is going on here. it's not just palace intrigue. this is not just the president enjoying chaos around him. these are serious men in serious jobs. this is the american secretary of state. this is the top security official in the u.s. government.

both of them having jobs either taken from them or threatened openly. both of them immediately after they made strong comments about russia and the russia leader ship and the reason this is worth looking more closely at because there is a piece of this that the white house is lying about. and i don't say that lightly. i think it's a big deal if the white house lies about something. whether or not you think it's a big deal and care about the white house lying as a general experience, my experience is when covering the news, when high-ranking people go out of their way to concoct a lie about an checkable thing, whether or not you care about them lying, you should look more closely about the thing they are lying about because that will be the juicy part of the story. not the fact they lied but why they had to lie about that thing and in this case, what the white

house has lied about is how rex tillerson was fired. this is how we found out that rex tillerson was fired. it was this tweet from the president on tuesday morning. mike pompeo will become our new secretary of state. he will do a fantastic job exclamation point. thank you to rex tillerson for his service. exclamation point. it was explained how this all came about. >> as far as rex tillerson is concerned, i appreciate his commitment and service and i wish him well. he's a good man. >> mr. president, what did you tell rex tillerson? >> rex and i have been talking about this for a long time. we got along actually quite well but we disagreed on things. >> after the president announced on twitter that the secretary of

state was being fired, you saw him explain to reporters there, rex and i have been talking about this for a long time. rex and i have been talking about this for a long time. that story directly from the president that morphed into a different but related account from anonymous white house officials that told reporters that rex tillerson's firing didn't come up suddenly on tuesday. it was no surprise. there was nothing that suddenly occasioned it tuesday morning. in fact, white house officials told reporters, rex tillerson had been notified on friday that he was fired or maybe he had been notified on saturday that he had been fired. in any case, the white house chief of staff definitely called him days in advance and told him he was fired. turns out that's not true. as best as we can tell, rex tillerson hadn't been told on friday he was fired. he hadn't been told on saturday he was fired.

he had certainly not been talking about it with the president for a long time. the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, number four position in the state department, steven goldstein soon put out a statement that explained tillerson's state of mind when he found out about the timing of all this. quote, the secretary had every intention of staying because of the critical progress made in national security. he will miss his colleagues at the department of state. the secretary did not speak to the president and is unaware of the reason for his firing but he's grateful for the opportunity to serve and believes public service is a noble calling. so when the president said he and rex had been talking about this for a long time, according to rex, they had not been talking about this for a long time. the secretary did not speak to the president. when white house officials then put out word tillerson had been notified days earlier, he had been fired by chief of staff john kelly days before, i should tell you john kelly incidentally is still telling reporters that story tonight.

john kelly reportedly bragging to reporters tonight that rex tillerson was on the toilet coping with the effects of a stomach bug when john kelly placed the call letting him know he would be fired and that's nice in its own right but that story toilet or not, appears not to be true. because you know rex tillerson would know whether or not somebody had called him up and told him he was being fired and what he says is that he hadn't spoken to the president and he didn't know why he was being fired and in case there was any question about it, it was said in fact tillerson found out he was fired from trump's tweet on tuesday morning. and that timing ends up being really important because that means the timeline here is not that rex tillerson was a dead man walking and been told he had been fired when he made the strong anti russia comments and put out the statement on monday night. what this means about the timeline, tillerson made those

strong anti russia comments on monday night and got fired on tuesday morning, surprise. and for some reason the white house has tried to create an alternate timeline of his firing to make it look like he wasn't fired after the strong russia criticism.

and that's why for all the intrigue and who is up, who is down, white house personnel reporting there has been in washington all week long and the president appears to enjoy stoking, what really stands out here that the white house has not really had to answer for at all is that in addition to firing rex tillerson on tuesday morning, later on the day tuesday they went on to fire another senior official from the state department. they fired the guy who put out the statement. the under secretary of state that put out what we believe is the true statement explaining the realtime line when tillerson was fired, the timeline that says he was fired right after the russia remarks and put as freaking spotlight on this question whether his russia criticism could conceivably have been the precipitating event for why he got fired. the statement goldstein put out that tillerson had not spoken to trump, despite the president saying they had, the statement that goldstein saying that tillerson hadn't been fired days before, that he only found out he was being fired on tuesday morning when the president tweeted about it, it was news to him, he had intended to stay, that statement from all reporting appears to be 100% true and they fired him for it. white house officials later explained to nbc news the reason

because of that statement. contradicting what the white house was saying about the firing of rex tillerson. he was fired because of an untrue statement that the white house is trying to put out about this firing. offering an alternate timeline to what really happened. and this wasn't just some low level staffer who they fired. they didn't decide to shoot a he was one of them. they fired him for putting out a true statement about when they fired rex tillerson and how. a true statement that put a spotlight on something uncomfortable that the president isn't having to answer questions for because of the alternate timeline the white house timeline they invented which appears to be false and you know, in a different white house, in a more normal administration, the fact alone that the white house had fired the number four official at the state department, that itself would be huge news. for telling the truth about something the white house is lying about, that would typically be a big scandal. both that they would fire somebody for telling the truth but also because the firing appears to be an effort to cover up their lie. in a normal administration, this

would be a very big deal. and even this administration frankly it is a big deal. steven goldstein firing should probably get more attention than it is getting. if we are going to obsess about people coming and going, that would be something. here is andrea mitchell. thank you for being here. >> good to be here. >> can you talk to me about the steven goldstein firing? as far as i understand, he was not a hugely well-known quantity. inside the state department. he has not been there for a very long time. what do you know about the circumstances of his firing and the reaction to it? >> he was fired for telling the truth for describing at least how tillerson thought or perceived his firing. the fact that he did not know about it until he was called and told there was the tweet. he had arrived at the air force

base at 4:00 a.m. the tweet was at 8:44 a.m. he had the night before on the trip, according to all the people whom i spoke to who were on that plane including abigail williams, gardner harris, josh letterman from josh from the a.p., all of these people. and i just circled back to them yesterday, all reported that in his briefings to them when they were on the trip, refueling in cape verde and came home overnight, he was talking about north korea. he was talking about russia as you read and it was all forward leaning. he did say he had a problem with ethiopian food and he was awakened by a call at 2:30 in the morning. there is a disconnect.

either john kelly didn't say what he says he said or rex tillerson having been threatened before with firing thought he could tough it out and i'm sure he said to kelly, i want to talk to the president. he's going to have to fire me to my face. i'm not going to quit. i want to stay on the job. that is what he said to us publicly for months and months. we have been told that the president never forgave the october 4th nbc report that back in july he had after a pentagon briefing called the president a moron in front of enough witnesses that tillerson to his credit never denied that. just sort of said i'm not going to talk about things like that. he never lied about the fact he had, in fact, said that. obviously, there were disagreements about iran. he was very angry. we were told infuriated that tillerson spoke as you just described about russia after sarah sanders had refused to agree with the british at the

last public statement from the white house on friday. this was his briefing on monday when he very explicitly said i just got off the phone with boris johnson and it was the russians and very few people have this and we think it likely was the russian government and this is agrenlgous and all the rest. so the russian issue did bother them and obviously iran, he was trying to renegotiate with europeans and fix the deal by toughing it up and trying to get the president from blowing it up when the next deadline takes place in may. there were a lot of policy disagreements. the profound part was they were a mismatch. the chemistry was wrong. steve goldstein was confirmed and came on board in december and was certainly perceived as tillerson's man and while the chief of staff, a very controversial person and her deputy were permitted to resign gracefully later in the day and still at the state department,

helping tillerson close up shop by march 31st, goldstein was dismissed. >> and just to under score what you just said about goldstein specifically, from your reporting and from everything we understand about these circumstances, the white house says, admits to nbc news that goldstein was fired for this statement. the statement does contradict what the white house said about tillerson's firing but goldstein's statement was the version that was true as rex tillerson understood it. >> exactly. and when you said there is six under secretaries, he actually was the only confirmed under secretary other than one whose resigned, a veteran tom shannon. who will be leaving. # now there are none. >> wow. andrea mitchell, nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent. i think to some this will feel like intricate reporting with

many buffeting winds in washington but this is strange. thank you for helping us through it. >> let me just say, it certainly reflects the desire to humiliate and that comes from the top. >> thank you, my friend. great to have you here. >> just under scoring what andrea just said there. obviously in terms of why rex tillerson left and we're still waiting to find out if h.r. mcmaster will be pushed out, as well. the president there obviously describing the day that tillerson left having long-standing differences of opinion with tillerson on a number of matters, we know that to be true, differences of opinion. they never have been previously known to have differences of opinions on russia and whatever the long-standing differences were on any number of matters, what andrea describes as the president's furry and anger on russia, those -- the russia

comments happened right before he got fired. and i think this deserves more scrutiny than it's getting. we'll be right back. stay with us.

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we have breaking news, the lawsuit between the adult film actress -- it is a thing you get to say in 2018 t feels weird to be talking about the president and an adult film actress. stormy daniels sued the president to get out of a non-disclosure agreement she entered into with trump before

he won the 2016 election. she agreed she would not talk about the past sexual relationship in exchange him giving $130,000. she says because the president himself never signed his half of the nda, she should be allowed to talk about the relationship. she filed the case in the l.a. county court system. today the lawyers on the president's side of the case tried to move the case which is to federal court. # interesting in terms of trying to change the jurisdiction and venue. when you took a look at the court paperwork, the effort to move this into federal court, you noticed something interesting on the paperwork. the electronic signature on this routine court document lists the attorney of record for defendant donald j trump as charles harder. do you remember who that is? charles harder was the lawyer who won a $140 million judgment

against the news website gawker after gawker posted a sex tape of mr. harder's client, the prowrestler hulk hogan. ultimate lie settled for less, but they still went out of business as the suit was designed to force them to. charles harder is also the attorney who represented first lady melania trump when she filed a defamation lawsuit against a blogger, a guy that said on his blog it was widely known melania trump was not working as a model when she first came to the united states but instead as a high-end escort. the problem for the blogger is that is not widely known because there is no evidence it's true. mrs. trump sued him, sued the daily mail for making a similar claim, the blogger and british tabloid apologized and issued retractions but then melania trump and her attorney didn't let it go. the whole thing didn't get wrapped up until melania trump had been first lady of the united states for several months. she settled with the daily mail

for $3 million in april 2017. so seeing the name charles harder as the president's attorney of record new attorney of record in the stormy daniels case could be a sign the case is not going to go away quietly. the effort to move it into federal court and add a lawyer whose known for suing people into the grave means that this case has just changed materially. also means that the president probably thinks this case is a really big deal and worth spending big legal fees on. watch this space. stay with us. in the middle of the night. hold on dad... liberty did what? yeah, liberty mutual 24-hour roadside assistance helped him to fix his flat so he could get home safely. my dad says our insurance doesn't have that. don't worry - i know what a lug wrench is, dad. is this a lug wrench? maybe?

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maxine waters has a republican opponent for her seat that ran against her in the last navarro. he's a trump supporter, a former car salesman and lost in 2016 by more than 50 points. still giving it another try with backing from high profile trump supporters. from all over the country. # among them, trump advisor roger stone pardoned former arizona sheriff joe arpaio and the info war guys who says the sandy hook massacre didn't happen. as for mr. navarro himself, according to the l.a. times he resigned as a local traffic commissioner after a pepper spray incident. he was accused of pepper spraying a child while he had actually been aiming to shoot pepper spray at ralliers at a

prosanctuary cities event and pled guilty last fall to a misdemeanor that had to do with an electronic tracking device. he attached to his wife's car. # after pleading guilty, he was sentenced to a day in jail and 18 months probation and ordered by the court to take an anger management course. listen to what happened when the local paper tried to ask him about that. quote, he initially said there are a lot of omar navarros. implying that perhaps someone else with the same name was convicted of the same charge on the same day involving the same wife. then he said the incident that led to the criminal charge occurred years ago. it actually happened last year. finally, he acknowledged the conviction but blamed the district attorney's office and media for fake news and then finally he admitted that it was his own doing. and in any case, i can tell you as of this week, omar navarro is apparently no longer on probation.

the daily breeze says he was set to get off probation on monday, four days ago, which is great timing because he has a big campaign fund and picking up the endorsement of mike flynn. seriously, general mike flynn ex trump national security advisor and a newly minted felon having pled guilty to lying to the fbi, general flynn was set to make remarks at this fundraiser tonight and to announce his personal endorsement of mr. navarro. a candidate just off probation on monday is getting a coveted endorsement from the witness in the special counsel investigation while he is awaiting sentencing. whether that endorsement helps a republican in california's 43rd district or anywhere for that matter, who knows but it is a reminder that mike flynn is out on his own recog nisense and

apparently a draw on one specific fundraising circuit. that's more than you can say for trump campaign chairman paul manafort who is confined to his virginia home and wearing two ankle bracelets as he faces nine counts of bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy he committed allegedly during the campaign he was running. today buzz feed sites documentation from inside the treasury department in reporting new details about yet more allegedly suspicious reported bank activity related to paul manafort. relates to paul manafort bank accounts in california. according to the reporting they say this california bank closed manafort's accounts after transactions were flagged due to suspicion about the source of the funds, suspicious wire transfers and use of non-cash monetary instruments and a transaction with no economic business or lawful purpose. according to this report today, manafort got his bank account

shut down in the california bank after these transactions took place and the transactions took place between august 26th and september 6th of 2016. so put that on the timeline. paul manafort left the trump campain august 19th. these reported and suspicious transactions suspicious enough to shut down the bank accounts started within a week of manafort exiting the campaign. that timing tracks with some of the earlier questions about strange financial circumstances surrounding manafort created a shell company called summer breeze and used summer breeze to acquire $20 million in loans for multiple banks around the country from august through the election and then up until around the time of the inauguration and mueller charges

were fraudulent ly obtained. we've always had this question about why trump would pick paul manafort and why paul manafort would share it for free and also what paul manafort was doing that triggered this strange bank activity that led to the bank accounting being shut down in california and led to multiple felony charges from the special counsel's office here on the east coast. open questions, he's not pled guilty but this week he did hire a new white collar lawyer, richard wesley became the third high powered attorney to join paul manafort's attorney this week. the judge in virginia is not inclined to let mr. manafort linger around because he's facing life in prison. so he sits at home waiting for the first of his two trials to start in july and meanwhile, the general who pled guilty in this investigation is giving remarks at the fundraiser for the

longest of long shot candidates. if you thought this investigation and characters in it couldn't get weirder, just hold your breath for a few seconds. surprises at every turn. much more ahead tonight. stay with us. just making some ice in my freezer here. so check back for that follow-up vid. this is my cashew guy bruno. holler at 'em, brun. kicking it live and direct here at the fountain. should i go habanero or maui onion?

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guy. this is a different guy. this second guy is not fighting for his life like sergie and his daughter are. # this second russian guy is already dead. police started putting up blue tents outside the home after he was found dead in his home on monday night. london police first called the death unexplained but launched a murder investigation and not having this murder investigation handled by local police in southwest london. they are having it handled by british counterterrorism police. the death follows the russian rare nerve agent poisoning by only eight days. these two incidents happened eight days and eight miles apart in britain. unlike the case, though, he was not reportedly poisoned.

police say he died as a result of compression of the neck which sounds to me like a way to use forwards instead of one to say strangulation but for whatever reason, the phrase is compression of the neck. british authorities say there is no known link between his death and the attempted murders eight days earlier but you can see why they might be looking into it, right? that makes this new murder inquiry under the particularly fraud. the u.k. is already blaming russian president vladimir putin for the attempted assassination and expelling russian diplomats and all the rest. if there ends up being a second connected attack in britain that gets linked to russia, it's hard to know how the u.k. might further escalate its response. but that story is next. stay with us.

the way vladimir putin became president of russia is he was elevated ready to take the top job. by boris yeltsin. he was president in the 1990s and in august 1999 he promoted this relatively unknown guy vladimir putin to be prime minister and he announced his belief that putin should succeed him as russia's president. in the 1990s, when he was president, the richest man in russia, the most powerful after out oligarchs in russia was this

guy, boris berezovsky was a fixer and financial backer for the family and helped finance political campaigns and as influential as you can imagine. it was believed he was an architect of the ma maneuver but in the snake pit of russian corruption and politics and russian politics and corruption, boris ended up falling out with putin. he ended up fleeing russia for the relative safety of europe. he took billions and decamped to london. he became a fierce critic of putin. he hosted and supported other russian exiles and people who had been chased out of russia. he openly funded opposition movements against the kremlin and fought putin and loyalest for control of his own russian assets and holdings ultimately those were huge legal fights

that he mostly lost. at one point he started talking about the necessity of the violent over throw of the putin government saying that he would fund that.overthrow of the putin government, saying he would fund that. in 2013 boris was found inside his home in england dead in his bathroom with the door locked and a rope around his neck. police said at the time they believe he took his own life but there was no official cause of death listed. in 2006 an officer who had been granted asylum in the u.k. he was poisoned by someone who slipped radioactive polonium into his tea. alexander was an associate and colleague of boris. a british government inquiry later found the likely culprit was most likely the russian government.

and then a year later was found dead in london. and another year later another business partner died in london. possibly of a heart attack, possibly poisoned. he was a georgiaen oligarch. and then there were the two british lawyers, steven moss who died suddenly of a heart attack at age 36 and another who died in a helicopter crash, both suspected of helping russian oligarchs funnel money out of russia. they found a total of might know men in boris' circle including boris himself. those deaths were declared by british police to be nonsuspicious, but quote, mi-6 has asked its u.s. count r parts for information about each one of those deaths, quote in the

context of assassinations. they're all friends or business associates of boris, this former russian oligarch who turned on putin and became his putin. and now another friend has turned up dead in london, nikoli found dead monday night. around the time he fled russia for the u.k. russia charged him back home with money laundering and fraud. they sentenced him to five years in prison. he served that time in prison but when he got out he too fled to the u.k. the u.k. granted him asylum. once there he helped out his old friend. in 2011 he brought another lawsuit against a russian allegoric, another ally of putin. it was a clash of the titans legal battle, it former russian

oligarch versus the current russian oligarch. boris got up and testified, and the judge threw out that case and lost a lot of his wealth. after his body was discovered in his bathroom at his house, nikola said i don't believe it was a suicide. thank you. i know it's very late where you are. >> thank you. >> as of monday night the death of russian political oligarch was being called suspicious. and now they're calling it a murder investigation.

>> britain has a real problem of enemies of the russian state turning up dead on its soil. and this has accumulated gradually. many of these deaths were quite ambiguous looking. they looked perhaps like heart attacks or in some cases like suicides. but the heat is really up now because of this case for the toerts to kind of clump these cases together and address them as a category of crime. so his death happens just at a point where they have to be much more decisive and articulate about what's happening. >> materially this being handled as a matter basically of national concern, the counter terrorism police being involved here, oats being declared a murder despite the few days they hadn't said that about him. these reports that previous deaths of russian expats in the u.k. are going to sort of be

reexamined. do we expect all this new attention will bring actually new investigative power to looking at those previous deaths. do we expect there to be new information or new attribution for those deaths though many are many years old? >> well, i think all the new cases that come up are going to be addressed differently. there's long been a case made within scotland yard that they should be categorized and dealt with by a senior officer who is gist focused on suspicious russian deaths. and i think now, you know, that case has become overwhelming. i mean there's really only two cases that have been sort of very clearly pinned to russia. the first was -- but i think the fact there are now more than a dozen cases on this list has

made the british authorities look quite ineffectual in the way that they're handling them. so amber red said this week they would reopen all the cases that were in the buzzfeed report that you mentioned. whether they're going to find new evidence in those old cases i think that's unlikely. there are very few cases as relatively clear at this case. >> allen berry, i really appreciate your time tonight. thank you for joining us. all right, we'll be right back. stay with us. we took legendary...

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only eggland's best. better taste, better nutrition, better eggs. so we got this sort of unbelievable news tonight about trump national security advisor mike flynn turning upt a fund-raiser in california for a republican congressional hopeful who himself just got off probation this week. general flynn, of course, pled guilty in december to lying to the fbi. he's a cooperating witness to the special counsel investigation. he's personally awaiting sentencing for his felony guilty plea. despite that he's apparently free to travel. and we know that because he just turned up tonight at this southern california fund-raiser. look at that heroes welcome there. >> national security advisor to united states president donald

trump. >> mike flynn tonight awaiting sentencing on his felony guilty plea but being essentially basically ready to crowd surf there at that republican congressional fund-raiser in california. apparently you can do that while you're awaiting sentencing. that does it for us tonight. now it's time for "last word" with lawrence o'donnell. so if you get a standing ovation for pleading guilty, what do you get for not pleading guilty? >> if paul manafort was able to walk into that room i imagine they would have, like, declared -- >> we've got information about stormy daniels trying to move the lawsuit ninety-two federal court. stormy daniels' lawyer actually on an airplane at this moment. we hope to hear from him a