yates, and i was a little surprised because i said it doesn t sound like he did anything wrong there. but he did something wrong with respect to the vice president, and i thought that was not acceptable. as far as the actual making the call. in fact, i ve watched various programs and i ve read various articles where he was just doing his job. back in february, president trump was still defending his fired national security adviser michael flynn. tonight, three days before former acting attorney general sally yates is sedul to testify before the senate a breaking story from the washington post sheds some light about what the trump transition knew about michael flynn and why the trump transition team says it was raising red flags about flynn s contact with the russians. that report and why it could be a very big deal, next. about a medication. .this is humira.
contact with the russian ambassador. that s not good. and they re trying to do things. they re trying to intervene and trying to sort of make him snap out of it. particularly we have to say, michael, in the context of what had just happened in the election of course, which is the growing certainty by all the parts of the intelligence community the russians had just pulled off this sort of audacious intervention in the american election. sure. look, the remarkable thing here is, number one, that there were concerns that flynn didn t realize that all his communications with the russian ambassador would be monitored by u.s. intelligence. this is a guy flynn who had been the director of the defense intelligence agency. he should have known that, and that s been one of the striking aspects of the story all along, that he didn t realize on december 29th that everything he said to kislyak would be picked up by u.s. intelligence. but, yeah, to the larger question is, look, there may
they did do it and we re somewhat speculating although it s informed speculation, but that russia feels that they can do this. i mea it s kind of in the light of the day. like if the clinton caper was sort of a sneaky thing they did at night, everybody has been watching this happen and unfold in slow motion. well, what price did they pay for interfering in the election of the united states? that would seem to be the most reckless, the most dangerous, the most audacious thing you could possibly do. and that story, i think, is bigger than a lot of people understand. they have done things like copy voter rolls, which they have warehoused and are going to use again in the future. we don t know for what neff airous scheme, but they were very successful. they have paid no price. so why not try again? in a funny way for them, although france of course is a less dominant country than the united states, the stakes here may even be higher because here you re playing for the breakup of the ueur
it is not clear that flynn ever read it. joining me now, craig miller, a national security correspondent with the washington post, who helped break this story, and michael isikoff. greg, let me start with you. what really strug me about this was we know about the calls on sanction day. but apparently he was having lots of contact with the russian ambassador right after the election? yeah, in fact kislyak had previously told us that he had been in contact with flynn extensively before the election, and flynn has since acknowledged that he knew kislyak for several years. kislyak was involved in setting up a trip that flynn made to moscow when he was still head of dia. and this is the trump transition officials saying that they got worried about how much flynn was talking to kislyak? yeah. i think that the most interesting thing here to me and the most significant thing is that even within the trump transition or trump team, you had these sort of experienced
basis. this is a serious investigation. it involves the postal service which that office usually uses agents from there and they re really looking at how fox paid these women and whether this was properly disclosed to shareholders, whether the payments were disguised. it s just yet another thing in this fox story that continues to drag the network down. they continue to be hit with lawsuits and even though bill o reilly s gone, it doesn t seem like they ve solved the problem. i want to hang a lantern on bo dietl. the accusation was that ailz had him dig up dirt on accusers, gretchen karlson blue the thing open. it explains why he was on air so much. let me just add one more thing about that investigation. if the southern district of manhattan s office sounds familiar because that s where pa