guilty to were extracted from him. i ask for quick action on this. thank you and keep up the good work. joseph did tell news weick he tweeted that after he tweeted about the dossier being bogus. of course president trump has brushed off questions of a flynn pardon before as he did on the south lawn on december 15th. would you consider a pardon for michael flynn? i don t want to talk about pardons for michael flynn yet. we ll see what happens. let s see. so the president there not exactly dismissing the idea of a pardon and joseph flynn, michael flynn s brother, he has been fairly vocal about his brother s legal battle. in fact, he s organized a legal defense fund for michael flynn. and of course, flynn did plead guilty to lying to the fbi on december 1st and his conversations during the transition with the russian am
. new tonight, michael flynn s brother urging the president to pardon. responding to the tweet claiming the fbi is tainted by writing quote, about time you pardon general flynn who has taken the biggest fall for you. that was later deleted, but that was not the last we heard from flynn s brother. jessica schneider is here joining us. what else is his brother saying about a possible pardon from the president? well, that first post deleted after about 15 mincutes, but thn joseph flynn took to twitter again with this. say iing mr. president, i personally believe that a pardon is due to general flynn. given the apparent and obvious illegitimacy of the manner of the so-called crimes he pleaded
by the way, yet. he doesn t want to talk about it yet. this could complicate things for any potential flynn pardon even as michael flynn s brother is tweeting to the president, hey, let him off the hook. right, hallie. all of this is unfolding pretty quickly. if you see the white house lawyers, they were saying before christmas, we want to go in and meet with bob mueller s team. they re telling the president we expect you to be exonerated, this to end quickly. that may not be the case. i think you re seeing different strategies unfold as this investigation has developed. at first it was a cooperate, cooperate, cooperate. and now in 2018, there could be a new chapter in this. i think it s going to get dicier. tom, as we talk about the special counsel investigation, there s new reporting out from michael isikoff, from yahoo, he says that robert mueller s team has started questioning rnc staffers. specifically about the digital operation that worked with the trump campaign to target v
one count of lying and had eck poe sure to multiple. he s already likely given up the information, but it would look terrible for the president to do that. if the president wants to give pardons in connection with the russian investigation, the appropriate time to do so is when the investigation is completed and really, the best time is after all the criminal proceedings have been completed. and if he feels that something was not fair, he has that power under the constitution to either reduce the sentence as president bush did in the case of scoot e libby or to issue a complete pardon. but that ought to come later n.. at this point, i think it would be viewed as obstruction of justice and would be a bad idea for the president. john, you look back at the president s rhetoric through all this. he has gone out of his rayway to praise michael flynn, saying he s a good man, he s been
fate of the paris climate accord to war with north korea. it s the first time the president has opened the door to the possibility of pardon, which of course set off a lot of alarm bells, attempting to tamp the whole thing down, the white house attorney said in a statement after the president s remarks. there is no consideration being given to pardoning michael flynn at the white house. that s what we call a walk back, and it s in keeping what sarah sanders said whether a flynn pardon was on the table ten days ago. would he consider pardoning him? i m not aware that has come up, or any process or decision on that front. so you haven t talked to him about it? no, i haven t asked the president whether or not he would do that. i think before we start discussing the pardons for individuals, we should see, you know, what happens in specific cases.