joining us now from alabama, former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama, joyce white vance. and in washington law professor at george washington university, jonathan turly. great day to have you both on. thank you very much. joyce vance, can we talk about the is it is it correct to discuss the possibility of mueller being fired given the pattern of this president? and what would the potential consequences of that be? i think we have to discuss it based on the pattern of conduct that we ve seen over time. and other than perhaps some editorial writing being done in one news outlet, i haven t seen anyone who thinks it s a good idea to bring this investigation to a premature end. so one hopes that people are preparing to support bob mueller if this president decides that the time comes to fire him. jonathan turly, do you agree?
who knows? i don t know. but i thought that was a pretty tough stuff. just as a point of fact, paul manafort and donald trump have known each other for 30 years and paul manafort has an apartment in trump tower. to hear donald trump saying hardly knew him, what the heck is a little strange. let s bring in law professor from george washington university, jonathan turly. talk about where we are now with respect to the thread that relates to paul manafort and what jeopardy he s in and how that kind of jeopardy might produce a certain kind of jeopardy for donald trump. he s clearly the person most at risk at this stage in the investigation. largely because he has credible criminal allegations against him that are concrete, specific, things like money laundering, failure to register as a foreign agent. a possible tax and banking issues. many of those are not normally
prosecuted but that doesn t mean they cannot be prosecuted. prosecutors tend to look for people they can get leverage through these types of criminal charges, and paul manafort may be a target rich environment for them. jonathan, what s your instinct as a lawyer and observer of this case that bob mueller and the special prosecutor s office, they are basically going down the al capone trail on manafort. they could hang him on tax charges. i think clearly they wanted to send a message. i actually think people are a little too thrilled to see a trump associate subject of a known warrant. i ve been a critic of no knock warrants for years. it s troubling. i think it was gratuitous and excessive. there are about 20,000 of these a year that occur. it s not the norm to have a no knock warrant in a white collar case. the supreme court has expressed its concern and lower courts.
any crime they find, they can use as leverage. that s why there s been a lot of talk about the tactical use of pardons to pardon them and remove the leverage. but stuff like this is very, very serious. when you have a special counsel in the field, these things can be criminalized. it could be weaponized by a special counsel. all right. thank you so much, jonathan turly, as always. we appreciate you being on. still ahead over the past weekend, president trump first referred to the majority leader as senator mitch mcsen tall. now it s just mitch. is the kentucky man about to earn himself a new nickname like little marco or lying ted? we ll be right back with more morning joe.
manafort s attorney aid this information was never demanded by the fbi before the warrant and they were peeved about that. but i think you re right. clearly it has not been as forthcoming of an exchange of information as it should be. the point of fact is this stuff is going to get released. they re going to get everything they want. and so in my view, they should have turned it over earlier. jonathan, alise here. with all of this news about the raid, the predawn raid on paul manafort s home, another block buster story has been forgotten just that last friday the new york times reported that mike flynn had failed to report about $400,000 that possibly had been funneled through a turkish business but was from the turkish government. how much of a problem is this for mike flynn? i think it s a big problem. flynn and manafort are the obvious targets for the prosecutors. mueller has brought on prosecutors who are known to flip witnesses. you do it by pressuring them.