sergey kislyak, the controversial russian ambassador, sat down with a meeting with, who else, jared kushner. flynn has been at kushner s side through the campaign, through the transition and even in the early days of the trump administration before he was ousted as national security adviser. he knows a lot about how the foreign policy of the administration back when it was new was coming together and it s likely that he has information that could cause kushner anxiety. the fact that kushner s role is being marginalized doesn t mean it s caused by the investigation but we certainly can t discount the russia story as a potential driver of his marginalized. nick ackerman, betsy, thank you. senator al franken breaks his silence. will he survive this? our panel weighs in. congress has a lot to do on its to-do list and not a whole lot of time.
liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost. jim comey s tweet was sent out half an hour after trump s twitter attack on cnn. joining me is nick ackerman, betsy woodruff as well, isaac dovore and robert traynham. nick, let me start with you and this tweet i just mentioned. what do you make of jim comey s engagement in this process? what do you make of the way that he s re-engaging here? well, i think he s concerned. he s had a firsthand look at what the president wants to do. he was told by president trump to drop the investigation into flynn, which he considered an incorrect it was basically a request to obstruct justice and stop a valid fbi investigation. so i think he s out there, you
sharing information with president trump s counsel. that is not going to continue. how do you forecast what might be happening here? i think it s pretty clear to me. i ve been doing this for 40 years. i ve been a prosecutor. i m a defense lawyer. i ve done it from both sides. the only reason that you would get out of a joint defense agreement is because you re cooperating. it doesn t just happen that flynn goes walking into the prosecutor s office. there s a two-step process really here. first, the lawyers go in. the government wants to know what is it that you re client can provide, what testimony can they provide, who can they provide it against? and they get a proffer from the lawyers and at that point the government brings in the client and interrogates him under a queen for a day which means that what he says can t be used against him but the leads can be
interference as well. the new york times supporting that you do whatever you want philosophy when reince priebus was the white house chief of staff. what do you make of the favor that he enjoys or doesn t enjoy in this white house today? one thing that s become clear to me is in the course of covering the mueller investigation and ever since it was rolled out months ago is that jared kushner and his legal team are facing a significant amount of anxiety because of these investigations and flynn s potential cooperation is actually an important piece of that. just to take a step back, we know flynn and his attorney have essentially been waving their arms over their head saying we re interested in telling you guys things. we know things. in fact, flynn s attorney all but said that his client had a story to tell back months ago and flynn potentially was going to sit down with congressional investigators. that raises questions as to what exactly flynn knows. here s what we know flynn kno
flynn. what could flynn tell mueller that would aid him in the obstruction case? flynn is potentially a really important witness. remember, he was with trump during the transition and close him them and then there the first 24 days of the administration as all of these conversations were taking place. the investigation already going. he is really somebody, not just somebody who s in the white house. he s somebody potentially in the room during conversations. that s really important. what could he say to mueller that would be a nail in the coffin for trump in the obstruction case? what mueller s team wants to know, were there conversations about sanctions with russia? was there a quid pro quo involving the election? the president publicly stated that he has no knowledge of any communications between his camp and campaign and the russian government. so it s potentially flynn might be able to testify and provide information about that. all of that would be very relevant to the inves