before, and the controversy around general flynn at that point in time was centered on whether he had lied to the vice president about the nature of his conversations with the russians, whether he had been candid with others in the course of that. so that happens on the day before. on the 14th the president makes specific reference to that. so that s why i understood him to be saying that what he wanted me to do was drop any investigation connected to flynn s account of his conversations with the russians. you write that was a key moment. why is that so important to the mueller investigators? well, because that is really the event which is when it s disclosed that event was disclosed in may of 2017 that led rod rosenstein who was overseeing the russia investigation to appoint the special counsel. that event really brings into question the president trying to exert his influence over the fbi. why was it that the president wanted the flynn investigation to be over? did he think i
is no good, this is a lose-lose situation for the president. are you surprised that rudy giuliani so far is coming to the same conclusion that john dowd did, that an interview with bob mueller is no bueno for his client, donald trump? the president has long looked for a silver bullet to try and bring an end to this. there have been some thinking amongst trump s lawyers that if he did an interview, he could bring an end to the investigation and it would be over. now, the question is when the president is told that rudy giuliani doesn t want him to do, does the president go along with it or does he look for other people to go along with his view of the world? would he stay with giuliani and listen to him or would he try and find another lawyer who would encourage him to do the interview? there was only one question about jared kushner. let me read that one. what did you know during the transition about an attempt to
inference is a fair one. it s never a good day for the fbi to be asking questions about what you did and why you did it. so i would not be happy right now to be jared kushner. completely agree with joyce on that. whether or not he actually conspired with russians to interfere in the election or set up a back channel and broke the law in some other way, don t know yet. and i think i hear joyce saying the same thing. but these are the types of questions investigators always ask. you ask questions typically that you know the answer to. but sometimes you also ask questions to which you do not know the answer. also on this list is a question for the president of the united states about whether he was aware of the platform change at the convention. if you ve ever worked for someone who was nominated to represent the republican party, there has never, ever, ever, ever been a change in the platform to make it nicer to vladimir putin. no. and going back to the time when this actually happen
publicly and he certainly hasn t laid out why he did the things he did and what motivated him. that is sort of at the heart of this investigation, is what was really driving the president, what were the motivations. as we were saying before, how did he view this investigation, how did he view law enforcement and loyalty in all of that. what mueller s trying to do is unpack that and understand all of these different events that have piled up over the past 15 months. another question, what was the purpose of your february 2017 meeting with mr. comey and what was said? here s comey s version of that interaction. there s 28 words there are in quotes. it says, quote, i hope this is the president speaking, i hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting flynn go. he is a good guy. i hope you can let this go. as i said in my statement, i could be wrong, but flynn had been forced to resign the day
wing doj friends and my middle of the road doj friends. we re united the world. we do. i mean, it is not the president s personal sword. it s not his personal shield. it s the department of justice. it has to stand for something larger than political goals. something else that s in here, special counsel wants to know a little bit more about another new york times report. john dowd raised the prospect of pardons for flynn and manafort. how does john dowd figure into this? in discussing who might be the source of these questions, of course, we can t pose that question directly to the witness here we have before us, mike schmidt. he d shoot all of us before he d tell us who any of his sources are. john dowd is someone who used to be part of the trump legal team, is now no longer. the new york times reported that this did not come from the