refused to to fire flynn, that lays out a possible obstruction of justice. now, it requires you to believe comey and his testimony will certainly be challenged tomorrow, but we re in very deep waters here. and one critical element could be if there are tapes of those phone conversations and those in-person conversations. it sure would be interesting. yes, indeed. you know, it s now time to settle these issues. we ve been talking about that. these investigations shouldn t go on forever. if there s tapes we should know about them and soon. it was the president himself in that famous tweet, he raised the possibility. exactly. of tapes. he warned comey be careful because there could be tapes. go ahead. i do think though that we need to hear a little bit more, not only from comey but also from dan coats and also from mike roger, the two men who testified today because one of the things that we know already is the fact that the president
kushner and his wife, ivanka pushed to fire flynn. a source close to kushner disputes this account. it is not clear if the fbi plans to talk to kushner, but investigators believe he would provide information to assist in the probe. kushner was unaware of the fbi interest in him and has not been contacted by the bureau. john and alisyn. thank you, joe. let s dig in with the panel. we have jeffrey toobin and ron brownstein and editor a.b. stoddard. great to have all of you. jeffrey, one of the people most closely connected to the president is now being focused on by the federal investigators. to state the obvious, it is not good. i don t think we should overstate how bad it is. it is going to be a tremendous distraction to him. particularly the fact that they
each of these things? yes. when you build an obstruction of justice case, you have to prove the specific intent to obstruct justice and knowledge of the legal affair going on and an intent to obstruct it. you say that s in the person s mind. how do you prove it? you prove it circumstantially. the attempt to fire flynn, the firing of comey, the pushback against the fbi directors, efforts throughout the investigation about fake news allegations, all that becomes consciousness of guilt evidence. he was aware there was something going on and he was endeavoring to put an toned end to it. why can t the white house say, we believed there was nothing the matter and we needed someone to say that was what was going on? this is an on going criminal investigation. the president and senior white house team knew that. they should have known these kinds of conversations were at the very least highly
them. we ll bring those to you live. a lot to discuss. security arrangements, the battle against isis. we ll get back to that meeting as soon as we see the two leaders. heads up. that s how the white house described a visit from sally yates to share information about michael flynn. yates you ll recall told congress it was more serious than a heads up. she said she delivered a stern warning flynn was lying with a russia context and it could open him to kremlin blackmail. the white house waited 18 days to fire flynn. tonight she share more in a conversation with anderson cooper. was the underlying conduct illegal? there s certainly a criminal statute that was implicated by his conduct. sean spicer said on the day after michael flynn resigned that it was a trust issue that led to his resignation, not a legal issue.
we will see the situation like we saw in the wiretapping situation of trump tower. when comey came out to testify on that. he said clearly there is no information from the fbi that indicates that anybody wiretapped trump tower. james comey despite mistakes is an honorable man. he womill be in open testimony coming months. somebody will say did you tell the president of the united states he was not the subject of the investigation during three conversations. i ll lay money on the table. he will say no. a.b., lost in all of that is also the fact that as lester holt rightly pointed out, the president said i didn t have to fire flynn right away becaus this person we don t know came to the white house and told us that maybe we should. that person, the acting attorney general. granted on her way out likely and he fired her for not implementing the travel ban. the significance of that he is so obsessed with loyalty.