team has given to president trump s lawyers. here s what they re looking, the possible topics they re looking into. asking comey to drop the investigation into flynn. the reaction to comey s testimony in front of congress. and then outreach to intel leaders about the russia investigation. so, carrie, does that point to you they are more interested in obstruction than other things? it does. based on what you just describe, it does sound like special counsel bob mueller s team is focusing their interview portion with the president on obstruction-related issues. remember, so much discussion in the media we have focused on the firing of fbi director comey. but there are a whole host of activities that the president engaged in. you mentioned, for example, calls that the president is reported to have made to members of the intelligence community, senior leaders. remember, it was reported that he called members of congress to
essentially could be blackmailed by the russians. two days after her conversation with mcgahn, yates was fired after publicly defying the president s travel ban. flynn on the other hand lasted another three weeks at the white house, forced to resign only after the sbant substance of his calls with the russian ambassador was revealed in the press. last month flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi and now cooperating with the russia investigation. we know that last year, after yates told the white house counsel about flynn, mcgahn then passed that information on to a small group of senior white house officials. reince priebus, chief strategist steve bannon and the president himself. robert mueller wants to talk to them all. nbc news reported today sally yates spoke extensively with you mueller s investigators last year. priebus was, too. mcgahn sat for two days with the special counsel team. next up is steve bannon. he s expected to be questioned by the end of this month. then, comes
including e-mails in which kt mcfarland saying what did she say. they all knew. you ve got to believe trump knew, too. that is established. let s face it, he s the president. all these people work for the president. where are they? mar-a-lago. he might have been playing golf but i guarantee you at some point, somebody filled him in on what was going on. let s say the president and his people tell flynn yeah, tell them don t worry about the sanctions. we re, whatever he says about the sanctions. and then flynn gets caught by the fbi and he lieses about it. they have the intercepts. the president does everything that we know he did with comey, et cetera. they don t fire flynn. ultimately it becomes public. is that an obstruction case right there. yeah. plus, you ve got the. why? because he s trying to stop the investigation into flynn. he knows that flynn lied. that lie is extremely material because it relates to what occurred during the campaign and the coordination betw
him because elis to the vice president and the fbi. okay. that tweet made some news because if the president knew flynn lied to the fbi when he fired him, that means the president knew flynn lied to the fbi when he met with fbi director james comey the next day. and when he asked him according to comey to drop the investigation of flynn, that moment asking your fbi director to not pursue a criminal infraction you know happened, well, that sounds a lot like obstruction of justice which might explain why soon after that tweet blew up, trump s lawyer rides to the rescue making the somewhat implausible
meeting trump asked comey to end the investigation of flynn according to comey. msnbc legal analyst nick ackerman joins me now. man, oh, man, whatever happened in the underlying russia question, and this all relates, right? because the lies are about that. sure. this set of facts, that he said in the interview with lester holt i fired him over the russia thing, asking andy mccabe on his day how voted for it, looks like you ve got a plausible case for obstruction. beyond a reasonable doubt. that s very confident of you. i m very confident. what you didn t include in that timeline was the december 28th timeline when president obama announced the sanctions on russia for interfering in the election. that same day there was a call between flynn and kislyak, the russian bam bass door. this fine line like a good soldier calls all of his friends at the white house down at mar-a-lago to tell them he got this call and what should i say in return.