if there was a discussion with turkish government representatives of something like this, quite apart from the obvious charge of kidnapping, we do in this country try to run one government at a time. and there have been a number of instances associated with michael flynn where there were discussions or alleged discussions with the officials of foreign governments about what might happen next. that s not appropriate. of course, if these discussions happened after donald trump became president, while michael flynn was national security adviser, this sort of takes me back to the days of oliver north, when, you know, people associated with the white house and the national security council and national security adviser were sort of freelansing foreign policy outside of the usual channels, the channels of extradition and the channels of the state department. so this raises a lot of questions. and again, it is a leak, it is an allege by the wall street journal. so an awful lot of people wil
standby as i get a live report with the president s new encounter with vladimir putin and the prospects of them getting together again. let s go to our senior white house correspondent jim acosta traveling with the president in vietnam. the president is at the asia pacific economic summit. jim, we saw president trump and president putin face-to-face today. reporter: that s right, wolf. and the big question of this trip for trump on this day is, will he or won t he have a formal sit-down meeting with russian president vladimir putin. earlier in the week, the president said the white house expected to talk to putin about north korea. now the world may see a little more than a photo op of these two leaders. after raising expectations of a critical meeting between president trump and russian president vladimir putin at the apec economic summit in vietnam, the two men only make time for this, a quick group photo with other world leaders. the white house says both sides are running into tr
jim hines. were you surprised that formally with putin, at least so far, as so widely expected? no, i m not really surprised. remember, wolf, these big public meetings are done for public consumption, right? if we have something that is real, that is problematic, that needs to be negotiated, these don t happen at big formal presentation-oriented meetings with the press there. that happens that you want to send the signal that a negotiation has succeeded. that there is progress being made. i m not sure that at this moment in time coming on the heels of the manafort indictment and the guilty plea by george papadopoulos, i m not sure that it serves the president politically, particularly well to be photographed sitting next to vladimir putin or to be, you know, to have to listen to the shouted questions from the press that undoubtedly would accompany that meeting. so no, i m not surprised that this is not going to happen.
director james woolsy saying he recalled a meeting prior to the election in which this came up. of course, the flynn side has denied that. michael flynn having lost his job for having lied to the vice president amongst others. and james woolsy as a former director of the cia, i certainly know who i would be likely to believe in that situation. michael flynn sr. did meet with turkish representatives both before he was named national security adviser and he had another meeting after he was formally named national security adviser during the transition before he started his role after the president took office. but do you know, congressman, if those are the only two meetings he had with turkish representatives? i don t know. and i m not sure that anybody could know. meaning, you know, it s quite possible there were other meetings out there that aren t reported. so no, i don t know. what i do know is that meetings that which a non before the president became the president,
whose names come up, deripaska is one that seems to be in this nexus with the trump campaign because of his relationship with paul manafort, look, it s quite possible there s no connection, that was not an avenue of collusion. if that is true, it would be wonderful if he would answer those questions. and i would think he would be eager to answer those questions if, in fact, that was true. we ll see if you get a chance to ask him those questions. we ll turn to the russian investigation, the wall street journal reporting that the special counsel robert mueller is investigating an alleged plan from trump s former national security adviser michael flynn and his son michael flynn jr., who one one of his father s advisers, they worked together. the journal reporting they were offering $15 million to forcibly remove a muslim cleric from turkey, gulan, who currently lives in pennsylvania, and return him back to the turkish government. gulan is accused of being