ways. with to be very close and it would have taken years. but sort of like when you ve done nothing wrong, let s be open and get it over with. because honestly, it is very bad for the country. it is making our country look foolish. meanwhile, republican senators calling for action against the author of the trump dossier. the chairman, charles grassley along with lindsey graham urging the justice department to open a criminal investigation against christopher steele. they believe he lied to the fbi about his contact with reporters. caroline shively has the latest from washington. what law do the senators believe christopher steele might have actually broken? they think lying to federal investigators. it is actually named the martha stewart statute. and it is about lying to a federal agent about an ongoing
that flynn lied, on december 29th when he said he did not refrain from escalating the situation in response to u.s. sanctions. in addition to that, a week prior on december 22nd there was a conversation and apparently charged with lying during that conversation with regard to the russian ambassador as well. catherine herridge watching this out of washington, d.c. we ll see general flynn in court at 10:30 eastern time. catherine. frame it based on what we think we believe this does for the case overall. good morning. the first point is said based on my reporting in the last 72 hours there has been a sense among those close to the general that something was very imminent, likely some kind of plea agreement with the government as a result of the special counsel investigation into russia. when you look closely at this paperwork, what you see here is that the government is saying there was a violation of 18 u.s. 1001, the martha stewart
what did he omit? did he change his answer? all this is something we believe will be coming out today in court. sandra: a live shot of his home in alexandria, virginia. obviously they are waiting for him in court at 10:30, just over an hour from now. we ll watch that. catherine herridge is ready to go on this breaking news. what can you tell us, catherine? three things that jump out at me. first of all over the last few hours i ve been in touch with a number of individuals who are close to mike flynn and they indicated that they thought something was imminent in his case and there was a certain amount of agitation with him. that brings us to today. the key section of this document, as you and bill have been talking about, is really at the bottom of the second page where it talks about what lay people call the martha stewart statute.
section 1001. for a lay person it is referred to as the martha stewart statute. you haven t necessarily done something wrong but in the course of the investigation you lied deliberately and misled federal investigators. every time you do that it s an automatic five-year penalty. it has a lot of there is a lot of negative impact for the individual and that is supposed to be a way to encourage people to tell the truth when they are interviewed by federal investigators. sandra: if i could start with the first line item. i read the beginning of this court document saying that michael flynn did willfully and knowingly make materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements. in the first line item it says flynn did not ask the government russian ambassador to refrain from escalating the situation in regard to sanctions the u.s. imposed against russia that day. flynn did not recall the
administration. false statements to the f.b.i. is a violation of the martha stewart statute. fox news is told there is no indication that flynn misled the f.b.i. in his interview, shannon. shannon: so does the f.b.i. investigation now go beyond flynn, catherine? what we ve learned so far from the government source the f.b.i. investigation did go beyond flynn and included contacts between the trump campaign team and russian officials. based on our reporting there is no substantive allegation that the conversations broke the law. the leadership of the senate intelligence committee, which has an ongoing investigation into the russian election interference said they re reviewing the leaks. we re concerned any time intelligence is publicly talked about. just the mere fact that we might hold intelligence about a certain thing, about a certain issue, leads individuals to look at where we might have gotten it from.