but that was mike flynn. it was a little weird. then it got weirder.eports in "the wall street journal" that mike flynn had had meetings with officials from the turkish government in late 2016 at which they discussed basically kidnapping that turkish guy, kidnapping him and flying him on a private jet to a turkish prison island. for this scheme mike flynn and his son would purportedly be paid as much as $15 million. that was a little side project he was working on while he was working on the trump campaign before he game national security adviser. flynn's lawyer said those allegations are false. then nbc news further reported that in the weeks following trump's inauguration, after flynn took office as national security adviser, a request was made to the fbi to, hey, let's look into sending that cleric back to turkey, that exiled cleric. he's got a greencard. sea legal permanent resident. he has been a resident for 20 years. he lives in the poconos. the u.s. doesn't generally hand over political exiles who are legal residents of this country who are not

mike flynn is a smart guy, but reasoned and calm he's not. he made some bad decisions that affected the president and he's a felon now a criminal, you can't lie to the fbi, that's against the rules. >> it's funny because all of these pretty huge mistakes have one factor in common with the jim comey firing, with the decision to elevate mike flynn. the decision to cozy up with saudi arabia, jared kushner decisions. >> supposedly. i mean, i don't know. ultimately, listen, it's the president's decisions ultimately so i don't want to get the president off the hook, right? you're the person in charge, you ultimately make these decisions, but i also know as a chief executive of a real big state, you do rely heavily on the advice of those around you because there are so many decisions to make that you can't possibly dig into the details of every decision. and that's just a fact. i mean, there are times when decisions have to be made and the job of the governor or the president is to decide, okay, which one of these do i really have to dig in on? and

mike flynn is a smart guy, but reasoned and calm he's not. he made some bad decisions that hurt the president, and now he's a federal felon. he's a criminal. because these pretty huge mistakes have one factor in common with the jim comey firing, the decision to elevate mike flynn, the decision to cozy up with saudi arabia. christie: it was the president's decisions ultimately, so i don't want to let the president off the hook. you are the president in charge, you ultimately make the decisions, but i also know as the chief executive as a big state, you rely heavily on the advice of those around you because there are so many decisions to make, but you cannot possibly dig into the detail of every decision. that's just a fact. there are times when decisions have to be made and the job of the governor or president is to decide which of these two really dig in on and which ones you can take the advice you are getting and execute on because you trust people, so i think the president for it,responsibility but there's no question that the trump campai

appeals court, this is not an indictment of an individual, you know, like the mike flynn case or the paul manafort case or the maria butina case. this is a case that is designed to go to the supreme court of the united states and very well may. this is a case from somebody who you never heard of, named andrew miller, who received subpoenas from robert mueller. mueller's subpoenas told him he was supposed to testify or hand over information to a grand jury. this guy andrew miller refused to respond to the subpoenas, refused to recognize their validity, and basically, his case got set up as a legal challenge. so, the federal courts would have to rule on whether or not mueller's appointment is constitutional, whether special counsels really can be empowered by the justice department at all to do the kind of investigation that mueller has been doing. so this is an appeals court case that's designed to challenge basically the existence of the special counsel full stop. since these filings were first put on the public docket tonight, there has been some discussion online, there have been s

with, you know, paul manafort's plea agreement now breaking down and sentencing coming forward, mike flynn being, heading for sentencing on december 18th. we appear to be at the end of the road for jerome corsi and roger stone and of course the president has turned in his answers to the questions that he would answer. you know, just right before the thanksgiving. we seem to be at the final road for the -- the enof the road if for the mueller investigation. increasingly it feels to me like a race. can mueller finish what he's doing, either with guilty pleas or indictments or some kind of public report, maybe all the above, before the president somehow interferes with that investigation, either through intervention by the acting attorney general he's put in place a the justice department or by reaching out through a pardon or without a pardon, a promise of a pardon that leaves someone like paul manafort to not answer all the questions in his cooperation truthfully. it leads to someone like jerome corsi backing out from his, you know, the plea agreement that's been in the works. one of the in

when mike flynn's son was ensnared, mike flynn made a deal. a famous father that was entangled with the law. and it's amazing that there are so many families for whom two generations are ensnared in this criminal investigation. >> look, i've seen this work both ways in public corruption cases. i've seen high-ranking officials told that their child is exposed criminally and they need to cut a deal. and i've seen them walk away from it, much to the d disgruntlement of their spouse. i don't know where this will go, but most likely trump will lash out and fire rosenstein before making a deal for one of his kids. >> frank, thank you for being there for us. >>> when we come back, the high five seen around the world. at something old, and saying, "really?" so capital one is building something completely new. capital one cafes. inviting places with people here to help you, not sell you. and savings and checking accounts with no fees or minimums. because that's how it should be. you can open one from right here or anywhere in 5 minutes. seriously, 5 mi

, people who are actually colluded. >> if you are the standards that he applied to general spin mike flynnm not defending. i'm agnostic on general flynn. but he applies those standards to any public figure in washington, who could and you for perjury? >> it's very easy to trip someone up, and any statement you make of that is false on any subject. and i certainly did that here. you look at statements, the flow case is really quite weak if you look just at that false statement. originally the fbi agents were not viewing it as a matter. it they converted it into something they wanted to indict for. there was no indication that when they saw that statement as being false or misleading, they viewed it as a criminal act. are we going to have a figure stepped forward, where we are going to say, i get it? >> >> tucker: yes, tell me what it is, i want to arrest the perpetrators. >> someone like stone, stone himself says he's the performer. he's an annoying character perhaps but you are still wondering, why did you wait all this time to indict roger stone? and all the earlier filing said that they

. >> there were discussions many, many months ago, last year, between dowd and lawyers for mike flynn paul manafort. mike flynn being the former national security adviser who pled guilty to making false statements in this investigation. and obviously manafort. and that is something that mueller has been looking at himself. mueller was looking at the question of why is it that the lawyer was offering a pardon? why was he discussing a pardon? it was among the 49 questions that mueller wanted to ask the president, that had fallen to the obstruction bucket. that was not in the responses the president sent just a few weeks ago. those were related to russia. but sort of a larger looming question over the investigation and that continues to loom now over manafort is would there be a pardon? what would the president do about that? and how would he use that authority? and if he used that authority would that be obstruction? >> phil, your interview dealt with putin and russia. for part of it people have referred to putin and russia as the original sin of the administration. how was the presiden

including specifically their investigation into the national security adviser, mike flynn. some of the most powerful obstruction evidence against nixon from the '70s, some of the evidence that is still the most widely remembered stuff, all these decades later, some of the most widely remembered parts of his obstruction effort is when he tried to block the fbi investigation by using the intelligence agencies, by using the cia, telling the fbi there is stuff they couldn't look into, because those were cia matters, trying to enlist the cia in an effort to cover up what he had done and to stop the fbi investigation that was going to expose him. when it comes to president trump, apparently trying the same thing, not only did he reportedly ask the heads of two intelligence agencies to help him out when it came to public perceptions of the russia investigation, he specifically requested that they should intervene with the fbi, tell the fbi to back off. and according to "the washington post," that request was made while another senior official was in the room and witnessed it. a ma

of that delightful cast of character, mike flynn and maybe michael cohen will learn shortly after the elections what their sentences are going to be. so all of that stuff we've known to -- sort of had on the calendar. we know all that stuff is on tap for once the elections happen for a while. now but there is another thing that we're pretty sure is going to happen as soon as the election takes place next week. and it is something that we just got some important news about tonight. the president himself, and even some senate republicans used to warn him against this, used to tell the president he definitely shouldn't do this. some senate republicans and the white house now all seem in agreement and on the same page and no longer fighting about the fact that once next week's elections are over, president trump is going to fire the attorney general. he is going to fire jeff sessions, or jeff sessions will resign. and as you know, there is so much to say about jeff session. but just focusing in on one particular consequence of the prospect of him getting fired or leaving office as soon as

we haven't heard anything about what paul manafort told him, mike flynn was in the campaign for a long time. we have no idea. the shoe is yet to drop. democrats have tons of stuff. when i was in the bush administration we spent a long time responding to congressional inquiries. that is a problem for many white house counsel's office with the replacement. that is the challenge too. the president thinks he is done he has a long way to go. ed: what is your sense? this started with allegations of collusion with the russians, they don't have that evidence. >> it is coming in the next few weeks. on flynn, his sentencing is december 4th. we will learn a lot then. manafort another 10 days, he cooperated with some of the charges. this is exactly the point. if they do charge joseph corsi, roger stone, that is the piece that has been missing, the domestic side of the russian charges. of stone -- we really might be going to the heart of the matter. ed: last point, 15 seconds. that doesn't prove the president did anything wrong or lead to obstruction of justice as we heard at the beginning, might b

expecting shortly after the elections, we are expecting that president trump national security adviser, mike flynn will learn how much time he's going to get in prison in any. sort of amazing of the big picture. we are headed into the election after president trump was elected and at the time of the first midterm elections, it is less than two years since he was elected. his campaign chair is convicted of multiple felonies and his campaign chair pled guilty. his personal lawyer has pled guilty and awaiting sentences and his national security adviser has pled guilty and waiting for sentencing. >> michael cohen will learn shortly after the election what their sentences are going to be. so all of that stuff we have known to sort of had on the calendar and know all that stuff are on tap once the elections happen for a while now. there is another thing that we are pretty sure is going to happen as soon as the election takes place next week. and it is something that we got some important news about tonight. the president himself and even some senate republicans used to warn him and used to tell the pres

name but we all know when he talks about nobody near me was indicted, he's talking paul manafort, mike flynn. i think he's trying to make himself look better. >> laura: why is offending half the population a good strategy for expanding his influence into 2020? it's the same thing they always do. it's what hillary did with the deplorables. he got away with it with the turk linder there are not many obama. fox, talk radio, they have universities, most of the churches, most media outlets still, most all newspapers. it's still not good enough. that's what is stunning to me. >> barack obama's view of the world is that he still can't believe donald trump won the election. >> laura: he can't believe all people don't love him which is what they accuse trump of. trump gets mad a few slight him, if you criticize him slightly, trump reminds you of it but that's what obama does. >> probably feeling slightly emboldened that the democrats took the house. >> laura: we will see. this is what the president said, speaking of no indictments. he made this comment. >> not only did i not get indicted, nobody in m

he was part of firing of mike flynn, the firing of james comey.ion not to recuse, these other attempts to fire bob mueller and the new report that trump wanted to prosecute clinton and comey. mcgahn is reportedly cooperating exten extensively. over 30 hours of interview. every one agrees mcgahn was in the center of everything. >> the counsel to the president is a appointed position directly answerable to the president. it's the primary legal adviser to the president. >> that vovrs yinvolves you in about everything. >> unfortunately, yes. >> hard for you to say i didn't do it. >> i'm joined my michael conway who wrote part of the report recommending richard nixon's imp peachment. is the attempted investigation of political enemies, clinton and comey, worse than the original comey firing from a legal perspective and do you think don mcgahn has detailed all of that to mueller? >> sure. don mcgahn was at ground zero. he's seen all these things first hand. he's an eyewitness. he will be mueller's most important witness. in this case, there's no privile

after going hard at a high level confidant in the campaign officials, mike flynn, george papadopouloscarter page, paul manafort and now michael cullen. the best they can manage to do is get a single council perjury i do some of them. it shows you that these process crimes are all they have. >> tucker: they are playing at the term russia. by the way, maybe they have videotape of trump and putin and a son not dividing up the world. who knows. as of right now, it seems like there is a lot to russia! there there is lots of deals in russia! once you come down you think, is not a crime? are they telling me this? what does it mean? >> it is not a crime for you are right. michael cohen supposedly lied about was the timing of trump organization's pursuit of this real estate deal in moscow. he said it ended in january 2016 and always has says that ended in june 2016. it doesn't matter whether it was january or june of may 16. it's perfectly legal to do so. it just perfectly legal to do so right now. >> tucker: you are saying he was off by five months. that seems like a five year sentence to me.

he's tweeted about mike flynn. i had to fire general flynn because he lied to the vice president. and obstruction of justice is just a trumpian approach to defending himself. what do you make of the state of the standoff, if you will, between the president and his questions and the mueller probe. >> well, i have been struck over time listening to our friend mike schmidt from "the new york times" talk about the fact these questions have been known. they've not changed for many months and this negotiation has dragged on for so long that the hold-up here is clearly, it's not like the goal posts are moving. there are, obviously, mueller's accumulating new facts all the time. the basic things he's interested in have been the things he's been interested in for a very long time. and it suggests if the president, to your point earlier. he has an easy way out, which is tell the truth. it's true that's the easy way out if all you're trying to do is avoid perjury. he's clearly not trying to avoid perjury. if the facts are incriminating, he has no easy way out. he can either lie and risk perj

in the fall of 2017 when mike flynn was going to flip and cooperate with mueller, john dowd, the president's lawyer at the time said why is he going to the that, the president will pardon him. >> it's new for manafort. >> he was talking to manafort's lawyers at the time as well back in 2017. and then when mueller wanted to tell trump's lawyers the questions he wanted to ask, that was in there, what did you know about pardon offers that john dowd was making? so when you look at the broader obstruction question, this is not a new thing. this has been going on and has been on mueller's radar. >> let's bring in joe will banks, former prosecutor from chicago tonight here's a guy saying to the new york post, not by esteem of "the new york times" in any way, they're going to give the big story, pardon. why is he doing this? >> he just doesn't understand what is right and wrong. he's apparently not a very good lawyer because he's made a big mistake in saying this. the pardon dangling could definitely be obstruction of justice. the cooperation between manafort and the president's trial team is really

. >> and what about mike flynn?> that angle is dope, and s --t angle is done, and we won't see anything more that we with don't know in terms of that investigation, and it shows that angle of the investigation has played itself out. and what everybody is looking for right now is what is the relationship between stone and potentially wikileaks and some of the outlets disclosing -- >> the russian connection. >> and this is where it is going to play to now, and that is the manafort portion of it that we will see coming out next week. >> we will all be staying closely in touch with this. clint and mimi, happy holidays to you, and thank you for being with us. >>> coming up, mississippi blues. can the democrats break a 30-year lock and win a senate seat in the state's upcoming runoff? this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. ♪ ♪ applebee's bigger bolder grill combos are back. now that's eatin good in the neighborhood. not in this house. 'cause that's no so-so family. that's your family. which is why you didn't gra

mike flynn hasn't been sentenced yet for his guilty plea. those are just the things we know about with bob mueller. there's a whole bunch of stuff that you can imagine we don't know about. so the white house, trump in particular, has really been bracing for mueller to come back. and it's that unknown that really unnerves the president. there's so much that he tries to push back on, but again, so much that he doesn't know, and that's really out of his control at this point. >> so if it is out of his control, nia, if the reporting is that he's pissed at everybody, who or what do you venture to guess will get him back on track? back on track in the most immediate sense is he's about to face a democratic majority in the house. there is some stuff he needs to be doing and preparing for. >> that's right. there isn't a lot of good news ahead for this president in terms of what's going to be happening. not only the mueller probe and probably some report released about that, but also democrats are probing into his finances, trying to get his tax retu

both highlight this, which is we know roger stone, corsi and while it is a separate element, look, mike flynn pled guilty and is cooperating. rick gates as pled guilty and is cooperating. paul manafort still pled guilty. he's not cooperating. we know that there is lots of people in this orbit who we strongly suspect in some cases, like the ones who have pled guilty, we know they are either lying about what they knew and what they were doing or we have strong suspicions about what they were doing. what we don't have yet beyond the meeting in june with donald trump jr., jared kushner, manafort and the russians, we don't have anything that says kushner was directing this. donald trump jr. is directing this. donald trump himself knew about it. because, remember, donald trump, he kind of goes all over the place in his rhetoric. but when he is at his finest rhetorical point he says, i didn't collude. there was no collusion. so the danger here is he is walling himself off. and, so, you have to try to keep it away from him anything that gets anywhere near that i think bothers him personally and obvio

. >> mike flynn might have been the guy who delivered it with the most gusto of all, but let's remember lock her up was about emails. that chant was born of emails. now jeremy, here come the democrats. that may hurt every last one of them. >> absolutely. not just because of the hypocrisy of it all, brian, but because donald trump has always believed that he gets to live by one set of standards and rules and set the norms and everybody else just has to do what is right. what's the law? he never really thought that the law or the constraints of history or the office that he now holds as president applied to him. i find it hard to believe that he is going to see that there's much wrong with what his daughter has done here because, you know, we are, after all, talking about his daughter. i think to your point, the fact that democrats are now in charge of congress and have the investigative power to look into this is interesting in that it is just one piece of, i think, what we are going to see in the weeks and months ahead. especially, the issue you alluded to at the top of the program, and

we also have coming up soon, testimony potentially from people like manafort, cohen, mike flynn. coming down the road, so whether the president answers will have to be evaluated in light of the testimony of other witnesses. >> maya, as the one of the legal analysts here, how do you read, why, when does the president get passed the brag doe shouse stage? when does he begin to show he understands the seriousness of revealing here, talking about a foreign government that is adversary y adversarial, interfering with the elections of the united states. i think he understands how important it is or he wouldn't have put matthew whitaker in his u.s. attorney general. the reason for that is because it was very clear to him whitaker remember, made very, very public statements about mueller being out of bounds. he actually made statements about mueller, without knowing any of the evidence that robert mueller had because only robert mueller's team knows what robert mueller has. that robert mueller did not have evidence of a conspiracy to defraud the united states. to make those statements an

the interesting thing for us was that a year ago mike flynn, the former -- the president's national security adviser, pulled out of his joint defense agreement with the president several days before he agreed to cooperate with mueller and since has been in a cooperation agreement with mueller. so he sort of more formally put distance between his legal team and the president's legal team and then essentially went to go work for mueller. we have no indication after that that flynn's lawyers were giving messages back to the president. >> governor, is this still a legal fight or do you believe the president has pivoted this to be all about the court of public opinion? >> that's what he's trying to do. no question about it. he's been brilliant at doing it in the past. but i don't think so. robert mueller has a terrific reputation. and so far he has held this so tightly that you can't say that he's out there leaking things and trying to make things look bad for the president. he is doing his job and he will not -- he's the kind of person that once he is given an assignment and he thinks he's got s

jerome corsi is learning that lesson the hard way just as mike flynn and george papadopoulos learned all three and others have been bankrupted and destroyed for doing something to robert that everyone virtually does every day with impunity, lying. so what is the justification for it? it was supposed to be russia, remember? there were foreign spies a foot, the dark forces sent by vladimir putin to destroy our democracy here in america. that's what they told us again and again on cable news. and that's where we were sold on them mueller investigation in the first place. two years after we learned, it was all fake. no evidence that any of that was real. no plot has ever been uncovered and all we really learned was the independent counsel was a handy way to settlelo political scores and people on the left don't really believe in the tenets of western justice. watch as one of them, just today, one of the resident geniuses on msnbc explains the new legal standard for guilt in this country. >> when mueller indicted those russian military officers, therl was a very big hint in that indictmen

. >> well, we should point out that mike flynn dealing of course with bob mueller, and michael flynnabout doing this in the transition, because michael flynn was working for the turkish government in fact for the regime, and that there is no evidence according to galan's attorney that he had anything to do with the coupe, and we have to leave it there, but thank you for the exclusive reporting, carol. >>> and undaunted, a remarkable story from jonestown 40 years ago. you don't want to miss this ahead. you don't want to miss this ahead. an old friend. a new beginning. some welcome relief... or a cause for celebration. ♪ what's inside? ♪ [laughter] possibilities. what we deliver by delivering. ♪ applebee's bigger, bolder grill combos are back. now that's eatin good in the neighborhood. i couldn't catch my breath. it was the last song of the night. it felt like my heart was skipping beats. they said i had afib. what's afib? i knew that meant i was at a greater risk of stroke. i needed answers. my doctor and i chose xarelto® to help keep me protected from a stroke. once-daily xarelto®, a

mueller is going to sentence or going to move forward with the sentencing hearing on december 4 of mike flynnthere will be more information around that. i think after thanksgiving while there is a lame duck session with her group owing to try to get a two things done, confirm some judges, and the congress. there's going to be activity in the mueller investigation namibia does wrap up by christmas. >> greg: it's disgusting because the story took away from the pardoning of the trick yesterday. >> jesse: that could be more pardons after this wraps up. just a small correction. you said investigation. it's actually pronounced witch hunt. the investigation is silent. [laughter] it's interesting the questions that were not answered, like you said, dana. i feel like the legal team for trump has beaten back the obstruction inquiry which i think it's a positive for him. on the negative side, you don't know who he's interviewed, robert mueller. you don't know what they have. there could be other indictments coming down, small ballplayers probably but you don't know how these things could play out. i do

remember sally yates from the whole mike flynn controversy during the first few days of the trump administration? the reason she was acting attorney for that whole controversy is she had been deputy attorney general under loretta lynch. when loretta lynch left her post, that elevated sally yates from deputy attorney general to be acting attorney general. so that's why she was acting attorney general, she had to do all that crazy stuff once people who appeared to be agents of a form p foreign power started moving into the white house. under normal circumstances, firing jeff sessions for any reason would elevate this hapma deputy attorney general rod rosenstein to be acting attorney general. the president didn't just fire attorney general jeff session and have rod rosenstein step into the to be job to fill the gig until somebody else could be nominated to take the job full time. instead, he fired the attorney general jeff sessions and instantly installed a new guy, who has been described as trump's eyes and ears in the justice department for months now. he installed a new guy to become the acting

it's a story we see time and time again about these people whether it was mike flynn who was the national security adviser, whether it was paul manafort who was the campaign chairman and just another example and another person who since the president took office made false statements about russia to investigators. just another pattern that continues to emerge here. the president had aggressively gone after mueller in past few days. the president's lawyers have done the same and the president sees this as a real attempt to come after him because mueller did, as he was leaving for a trip. the president knows mueller did this before he went to helsinki and this is a distraction. >> is that why he cancelled meeting with vladmir putin. did he feel that mueller was trying force his hand? >> the president doesn't seem to back down to those things even if they will be big negative publicity for him. i'm not sure why he did that. what i do think will happen here in washington even though he's not here, his lawyers will remain on the attack against mueller. they thought that mueller may be laying a

you know, his conversation with jim comey about the mike flynn investigation together with firing oftor comey, those are both well within his power as executive. >> given all the public statements that he's made critical of the whole mueller probe, saying maybe they should starve the budget, end it once and for all, should he recuse himself? he's the acting attorney general now, and he's overseeing this whole mueller probe. >> well, certainly, people will make that point, and there are people within the justice department who may render a judgment on that, but i guarantee you that he wasn't put in this job to recuse himself. that's what got sessions in trouble in the first place. in fact, i would consider that appearance on don lemon as matt whitaker's audition tape for this job, and you know, the president tends to hire off of who he sees on tv. i think he wanted a guy who was going to go in there and limit and stymie this investigation and my guess is that is exactly what he's going to do. >> you know, gloria, he -- nancy pelosi, the presumably, the next speaker of the house tweete

remember sally yates from the whole mike flynn controversy during the transition and the first few days of the trump administration in the reason that sally yates was acting attorney general through that whole controversy is that she had been deputy attorney general under loretta lynch. when loretta lynch left her post, that elevated sally yates from deputy attorney general to be acting attorney general. so, that's why she was acting attorney general when she had to do all that crazy stuff, once people who appeared to be agents of a foreign power started moving into the white house. all right, under normal circumstances, firing jeff sessions, for any reason at all, would elevate this man, deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, to become the acting head of the justice department, to become the acting attorney general. part of the reason you can be sure that something quite abnormal just happened here is that the president didn't just fire attorney general jeff sessions and have rod rosenstein step into the top job in an acting capacity, to fill the gig until somebody else could be nomin

i mean, it started with mike flynn to papadopoulos to manafort and now to cohen, lying to congress ispeople don't do that as a normal course. so it obviously raises the question, why? why would there be all this lying? what's underneath? that's obviously something i suspect we're going to hear from mueller. and as you were just saying, you know, this certainly give us some threads to follow-up on. of course the transcripts of the various witnesses that came before the house intelligence committee before it was abruptly ended now i think are going to be subject to some extra scrutiny. >> in terms of those transcripts, obviously they take on renewed interest now given that we are told that mueller was allowed to review the transcript of cohen's testimony to the senate committee in the presence of cohen's lawyer. there has been ambiguous information from the senate intelligence committee in terms of what kind of criminal referrals they might have made or handed on to mueller. in your committee in the house, as far as i understand it, there was actually a vote that these transcripts shoul

former campaign chairman paul manafort joins trump's former national security adviser mike flynn, deputy, and campaign adviser george papadopoulos as the latest trump accused of lying to federal investigators. he becomes the first, however, to have his cooperation agreement with the mueller team ripped up for lying repeatedly. in it related news, rudy giuliani did not deny that a pardon was a possibility for manafort, telling ns ining nbc is conceivable that he, manafort, and ja roam courem je telling the truth and the special counsel in their zeal to get the president may be going too far." rudy joins the president in laying the rhetorical groundwork for a pardon for manafort. trump tweeted this the day of manafort was convicted of eight charges in mueller's probe. "i feel very badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. justice took a 12-year-old tax case among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him, and unlike michael cohen, he refused to break. make up stories in order to get a deal. such respect for a brave man." convicted felon. and the president's former lawyer in

speaking of driving me nuts, i also have questions about trump national security adviser mike flynn.ast night we reported that we expected a presentencing report about flynn to be filed in court in washington today. flynn of course plead guilty to a felony. he has supposedly been cooperating with mueller's office. he is awaiting sentencing. the judge who will sentence him will factor into flynn's sentence exactly how helpful he has been in his cooperation. we thought as of last night that the report that was going to be filed with the court today would be from mueller's office works be from prosecutors. it would be them spelling out how helpful flynn has been and how much time they think he should get in prison. we got the filing today, or at least we got notice of the filing today, and it turns out that wasn't it. it wasn't a filing from prosecutors. it was a filing from the probation office instead about flynn's eligibility for sentencing and the probation office filing is something that we'll never get to see at all. the juicy stuff we're expecting about how much flynn has been co

in the same way why did mike flynn lie to the fbi about whether the content of the conversation he had with the russian ambassador? he had to know the tapes were out there somewhere. but i guess he was just hoping against hope they wouldn't be found. >> again, i know our viewers know this but i'm going to underscore it again, it is a big if. we don't know if this "guardian" report is true. it's not our sources, it's "the guardian's" sources. we don't know if that surveillance video exists. these are presumptions we're making. >> and it could be just a small part, very small part of a much bigger report. >> we're going to find out sooner or later. barbara mcquade, thank you very much for joining us. ahead, democrats are trying to protect robert mueller with a possible government shutdown looming. stay with us. with my hepatitis c, i felt i couldn't be at my best for my family. in only 8 weeks with mavyret, i was cured and left those doubts behind. i faced reminders of my hep c every day. but in only 8 weeks with mavyret, i was cured. even hanging with friends i worried about my hep c. b

on the papadopoulos guilty plea, to follow on the prosecution ever paul manafort, to fall on the mike flynn guilty plea. they lied about it, why? because having russia, having such leverage over presidential candidate was inappropriate, probably illegal, certainly unpatriotic and shameful. >> and, frank, you come at this from so many different directions given your professional life. let's come at it, borrowing from jeremy on the counter intelligence level. for this to be true, this means the russians knew there was business going on, talk going on while it was being denied at the top of the ticket in the republican party in this country. and i ask that of you because you're always looking for reasons for compromise. >> yeah, this is the definition of the russian word kompromat. you handed your adversary a blackmailable set of facts. you are publicly denying that you have any financial dealings, discussions or interests in russia, and the russian government -- which means the russian intelligence services knows full well that that's not true. and you have staff being briefed, family being b

since then, though, the president's team has had serious ethical questions at some point, mike flynn, rob porter have left the administration, ryan zinke under formal investigation, still in the cabinet though. some of the contradictions are simple as golf. before he was president mr. trump tweeting repeatedly about president obama's golf hobby. so far he's spent more than 160 days in office at not just golf clubs but golf clubs that bear his name. it's interesting, though, david, because we have these conversations occasionally here in the cable news space, but do people, do his supporters, do they really care? >> well, craig, i think that people care in the sense that donald trump isn't really saying any of these things. i don't think he expects to be taken seriously. he's just saying i get to play by my own set of rules. i think charlie's right. it's remarkable the way that everything he accuses other people of doing it turns out he's done. by the end of this i would not be surprised if we actually find out he was born in kenya, and i should make clear that i'm joking about that on

and, obviously, he's won convictions against mike flynn who minimized those ties. he's now going after, again, paul manafort, who has minimized those ties. and now he has a plea deal from michael cohen for minimizing and lying about those from michael cohen for those ties. his point is we know the ties are much deeper, much more significant than people within the trump orbit were willing to say, and he is making clear that not only does he know about the lies but knows about the underlying substance of the ties and ultimately what the president himself knows. >> he is has been wrapped in ties to russia, yet he sort of goes out there with the audacity of his two sons and former campaign chairman, now convicted felon has told the lies so many years. i always wonder why. >> because he has gotten away with it so long. >> but what's the motive. >> he is a performance artist. >> why not perform for the venezuelans, why is it always russia? >> he performs for the north koreans, at times for xi. he performs for whoever is in front of him and he thrives on it. he loves to b

reported on the president's last lawyer, or maybe three lawyers ago, dangling lawyers in front of mike flynn and in front of paul manafort before they were charged. so pardons have been in the water. what other motive would manafort have for lying to mueller? >> i spoke to giuliani as well. and he said to back up the reporting about the pardons. it's not an act of consideration that his legal team are not considering it now but they're not ruling it out down the road. perhaps after this process with the mueller probe wraps up. they understand how problematic a pardon may be this time. >> what makes it better in a month? >> well, i mean, if -- i think the presumption is it's something they'll revisit after the mueller probe is over, not now. manafort would potentially still be facing state charges on some of these tax crimes and financial fraud that even if the president were to grant him a federal pardon, state prosecutors in new york or virginia could then go after him. but to mike's point, it's exactly right. giuliani has clearly -- they are trying to undermine the credibility of whatever

we saw that when mike flynn's lawyers gave the president notice that they were withdrawing from the joint defense agreement. i think that was our first inkling that one existed at all, in fact, was that they withdrew when flynn became a cooperator with the mueller investigation. now we have paul manafort who was apparently cooperating with the government and with the white house. you can't do both of those things. none of those conversations that happened after manafort signed his plea deal are covered by the attorney-client privilege and that the white house as well as manafort and any other cooperators that were talking with the president could be examined by mueller about those conversations. >> so michael schmidt, we're getting new details about what president trump is said to have told special counsel robert mueller in those written answers to questions related to russian interference. two sources close to the matter says the president's statement says he was not told beforehand about the 2016 trump tower meeting. also, he wrote that he was not tipped off about the wikileaks disclosu