of his filings. he s given almost novelistic detail to the way he paints these scenes. we learned that that day when federal agents, when the fbi agents came to the white house to interview flynn, it was just the fifth day trump had been in office, and flynn seemed relaxed and cordial, gave them a tour of that area around the west wing around the national security council adviser office. they passed trump in the hallway giving directions to movers on where to hang some paintings. it was an incredible moment. flynn didn t introduce the fbi agents to donald trump. they apparently just to do is there awkwardly. the president didn t ask for an introduction. and then they went in and continued their conversation. but just to get a window into moving in day was really fascinating. you can t make this stuff up. our thanks to our front four
payments made just before the 2016 election were wrong. also today, robert mueller s team rejected former national security adviser michael flynn s suggestion that he should have been warned about the consequences of lying to the feds and fbi. in response to flynn s sentencing memo filed tuesday, prosecutors said there was nothing about the way the sbruf was conducted in early 2017 that caused flynn to lie about his meetings with the russian ambassador. in this court filing, they say flynn s decision to make false statements was voluntary and intentional. mueller s team goes on to say, quote, a sitting national security adviser former head of an intelligence agency, retired lieutenant general, and 33-year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents. he does not need to be warned it is a crime to lie to federal agents to know the importance of
which one of his critical witnesses is putting information out on the record. cohen has shown he s not very controllable in that way. brian, you get to be our closer. first of all, is it us or did this week pick up speed and become one of the more consequential weeks of this presidency? the second part of my question has to do with color. tell us about the moment flynn and trump and the fbi guys pass in the hallway of the west wing this we did pick up speed. we know about what mueller knows, particularly it s interesting with cohen. we know more about corroborating evidence from ami, the owner of the national enquirer that mueller believes corroborates cohen s claims about how the payments came about and that it was to influence the election. and then another thing that came out of the mueller filings was the detail. this has been the case in a lot
wasn t a biggie. there are lots of crimes, so what, who cares? the former is a weak legal argument, and the latter a dangerous one. with that, let s bring in our front four, or lead-off panel for a busy friday night. donna edwards representing the great state of maryland. brian bennett, senior white house correspondent for time magazine. deputy assistant attorney general under president clinton, and nelson cunningham, alumni of the clinton administration where he served as general counsel at the white house office of administration. good evening, and welcome to you all. harry, i m just a layperson here, but i was surprised by the mueller filing today. it s as if they wanted to course correct bad reporting that was being told kind of sympathetically toward flynn that this poor man had been duped and set up to lie to the
fbi. yeah. it was a very odd kind of episode. flynn, who s been an exemplary man all of a sudden had this last-minute hiccup and a suggestion which was seconded by many on the right that it wasn t a crime at all and he should have had warnings. it s really a weak argument as mueller lays out. it would have been neither required or customary to give warnings to a guy like this. as mueller says, you know you re not supposed to lie to the fbi. many people when i was in the department of justice had occasion to have some interviews with the fbi. they don t start it out with this sort of miranda warning. you have to tell the truth. here the problem for flynn was he was already committed probably to a false story and he felt he couldn t go back. but the notion that he was entrapped in some way doesn t fly at all nelson, when you were here in