matter said comments made by prosecutor aaron zelinsky during his congressional testimony triggered the inspector general's office to open an investigation." here is some of that testimony aaron zelinsky gave to the house judiciary committee on june 24th. >> what i saw was that roger stone was being treated differently from every other defendant. what i heard repeatedly was that this leniency was happening because of stone's relationship to the president, that the acting u.s. attorney for the district of columbia was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the department of justice and that his instructions to us were based on political considerations. >> joining us now is neal katyal, former acting u.s. solicitor general and an msnbc legal contributor. neal, interpret for us what this means, that the inspector general is investigating basically what aaron zelinsky told congress. >> it's a pretty big deal, lawrence, to have the inspector

but today we learned that aaron zelinsky's testimony was not for nothing. for one thing, it has led to an official inspector general investigation into what happened there and why there was that top-level intervention from the justice department into roger stone's sentencing. nbc's julia ainsley and ken dilanian reporting tonight that aaron zelinsky's allegations sparked the justice department's inspector general to start investigating this matter, which of course raises immediate questions about what attorney general william barr is going to try to do there. i mean if the investigation bears out what aaron zelinsky says happened in that case, attorney general bill barr may himself be in the crosshairs of that investigation as the inspector general develops that case. that should be very interesting. you should also know that the way these things are structured, the inspector general at the end of these things is support to report both to congress and to the public on any wrongdoing they find in an investigation like this. so watch this space. like i said,

you may remember aaron zelinsky. aaron zelinsky testified that robert got special treatment. the case against stolen pointed to him lying to investigators in order to protect the president. hodger stone since had been intensed in and strung anyway, served from having to serve his sentence, way. >> we learned that eric's interview did not lead to nothing. julia ainsley and ken dilanian reports tonight. >> of course it raises the immediate session, what is he going to do this. if the in vers investigators be out, what happened in this case. >> that should be interesting. you shoulz should although that the way it was reported. so watch this space. there is a lot going on tonight. i also want to talk about the news that broke today. i have been working on this all day. i remember everything that come out, it strikes me as too weird to be true. but rather it is true. the fbi came to capitol hill, gave members of congress a warning. a briefing, a warning about this guy. it had come to the fbi attention that members of congress. >> reporter: in touch with this guy, former ukraine o

you saw that that happened with respect to my former colleague aaron zelinsky, who was working on thene thing i want to make sure people understand, rachel, is this is not normal. it is one thing for people like pete and me to express enormous confidence in the integrity of people at the department of justice. but people are not routinely confronted with this. whether it's in republican or democratic administrations, this is really off the chart in terms of what has happened to the department of justice. and particularly on 9/11, which is a time that lots of people in the department of justice are extremely proud of being there and having been able to do some small thing for the country, it is really difficult to watch what the attorney general is doing to the rule of law. >> andrew, along those lines, i would like to ask you about something else that happened today, and it's about the michael flynn prosecution. obviously that has been a long and crazy road at this point. but where it stands now, as you know, is that the justice department under william barr is trying to drop those ch