adviser lasted less than a month after he was caught lying to senior members of the trump administration. i talked to general flynn yesterday, and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new u.s. sanctions against russia or the expulsion of diplomats. he didn t tell the vice president of the united states the facts, and then he didn t remember and that just wasn t acceptable to me. reporter: ultimately, flynn lied to federal investigators too about his conversations with then-russian ambassador sergey kislyak regarding russian sanctions. he struck a plea deal and has spent more than a year cooperating with investigators. that early cooperation likely affected the decisions of related firsthand witnesses to be forthcoming with the special counsel s office and cooperate, according to the filing. the document doesn t say who else was inspired to cooperate. flynn s revelations to mueller could involve the president s
states, that certainly gave him more notoriety than he s ever had in the past. i think he was hoping to be able to exploit that after he was defeated. so, political famous is cash in the bank. absolutely. especially on the international front. it s clear he was going after the russian target for many, many years. anyway, michael flynn s legal problems began during the presidential transition when he discussed u.s. sanctions on russia with the russian ambassador in late december. i think december 28th. about two weeks later on january 15th, vice president pence publicly denied sanctions were discussed in flynn s conversations. let s watch the veep here. did mike flynn ever discuss lifting sanctions in any of those conversations, do you know? i talked to general flynn yesterday. and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new u.s. sanctions. well, the problem was that flynn had lied to the vice
did mike flynn ever discuss lifting sanctions in any of the conversation do s you know? i talked to general flynn yesterday. and the conversations that took place at that time, were, were not in any way related. to new u.s. sanctions. against russia or expulsion of diplomats. one of the purposes of the flynn s conversations was to reasure the kremlin that incoming administration was reverse the obama administration sanctions, punishing russia for meddling in the elect tugs help trump win. joined now by frank, the former assistant director of counterintelligence and fbi, and, john lauro, former federal prosecutor and nbc analyst. thank you. what do you think is the damaging information. frank, this guy holds? that, flynn can give to the prosecutor to use as the he
did mike flynn ever discuss lifting sanctions in any of those conversations? do you know? i talked to general flynn yesterday. and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new u.s. sanctions against russia or the expulsion of diplomats. well, then during an interview with the fbi on the 24th, flynn lied about the nature of that call, saying sanctions were not discussed. on january 26th, acting attorney general sally yates then warned white house council don mcgahn, as i said, that flynn was susceptible to russian blackmail because it was clear he had led the vice president and others. here is how she described it. we felt like it was critical that we get this information to the white house because in part because the vice president was unknowingly making false statements to the public, and because we believed that general flynn was compromised with respect to the russians. well, for 18 days after she
about sanctions? i think we ought to get on with our lives. flynn calls k.t. mcfarland at mar-a-lago with other transition officials to discuss russian sanctions. flynn calls kislyak to talk about sanctions. then calls mcfarland back to talk about the kislyak phone call. 16 days later, january 14th, pence calls flynn to personally ask about his calls with kislyak. pence goes on television. i talked to general flynn yesterday, and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new u.s. sanctions against russia or the, expulsion of diplomats. they did not have anything to do with the discussion to expel diplomats. reporter: five days later, trump is sworn in as the 45th