president obama said intelligence activities were going on there. russians didn't escalate. in the midst of that, we know that mike flynn made a series of phone calls and had exchanges and i suspect somewhere we have the transcripts of those calls because the russian ambassador is someone who would fall under the national security agency's watch list. i think that will be interesting to find out whether the signals intelligence on that activity produces transcripts that eventually see the light of day. and the big thing was we don't know whether mike pence lied to the american people or mike flynn lied to vice president pence. that's the key thing. the legal part of this is that people keep saying the logan act was never enforced. the logan act basically is a provision that says that if you are a u.s. citizen, you cannot go negotiate private deals with foreign governments particularly ones with whom we have an antagonistic relationship. this looks like a textbook violation of the logan act.