mike flynn in court, the president s first national security adviser set to learn whether he s going to serve time behind bars or not. the former three star general, you saw him arriving at the courthouse earlier this house. it comes as two of flynn s former business associates are charged with covertly and unlawfully trying to influence american politicians on behalf of a foreign government. in just the last few minutes, white house press secretary sarah sanders seemed to cry foul on this whole investigation telling fox news that regular procedures were thrown out because of political bias. watch. a lot of problems here, and we ll see what the judge does later today. are you arguing that he was entrapped? we re arguing that he was certainly ambushed and that the fbi, that we know had clear political bias. we ve seen that time and time again. joining me now nbc news justice correspondent pete williams, former federal prosecutor and msnbc legal
analyst, cynthia and sahil kap r kapur, national political reporter for bloomberg politics. cynthia, this idea that flynn was entrapped or ambushed or cornered by special counsel investigators has become a bit of a talking point in some conservative circles. it s completely ridiculous. let me tell you what, in a big investigation of corruption you know what usually would happen? what usually would happen is the fbi agents would interview everybody at five in the morning. this guy was told in advance they were coming. he was offered an opportunity to get a lawyer. they were ushered into the white house. he had every opportunity. he had been doing this exact same lie for weeks at a time. he had lied to the vice president. he had lied to the press. the idea that he somehow was tricked into this is completely ridiculous. pete, let me go to you. you re outside the courtroom now. you re headed in, i believe, in the next couple of minutes.
simple. he was calling countries and his counterparts. it would have been okay with me. i would have directed him to do it if i thought he wasn t doing it. hillary clinton lied many times to the fbi. nothing happened to her. flynn lied, and they destroyed his life. i feel badly for general flynn. he lost his house. he s lost his life. and some people say he lied and some people say he didn t lie. i mean, really, it turned out maybe he didn t lie. phil, the president s been pretty chatty about mike flynn over the years. you expect we might hear from him today, 2:15 at the pool stra spray? i would think so. if not, we ll at least hear from him in the next 24 hours at some point. president trump has been saying all along he feels badly for michael flynn, but it s really all about donald trump himself. remember how these two men got together. trump was a candidate for president. much of the military establishment, the national security establishment rejected
specific seat, that having someone in that position who reflects at least a little bit of the maverick nature of john mccain and his history, it was important to people in arizona. i think it was important consideration for the governor, and important certainly to the mccain family, to have even that small 140-character blessing from cindy mccain will go a long way to quieting some of the people who were more supportive of john mccain who maybe thought martha mcsally went a little too far in the other direction in the campaign, too close to donald trump and away from john mccain. this could bring those folks back into her corner. garrett, thank you much. let s get those tech issued figured out. see you soon. michael flynn, by the way, back here in washington over at the courthouse, now inside that federal courthouse in washington, waiting to learn if he s going to walk out or go directly to prison. we re live after the break. introducing add on advantage,
please. joining me now is barbara mcquaid, former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan and an msnbc contributor. ben wittis, senior fellow at brookings institution. philip rucker, msnbc analyst. and michael allen, managing director of beacon global strategies and former special assistant to george w. bush. thank you all for being here. phil, let me start with you. based on your reporting, what s happening? the president is now at the white house on a tweet storm about a whole bunch of topics with nothing public on his schedule for another several hours. well, the president this morning has been airing his grievances on a huge range of topics, including calling for this russia investigation to be ended, calling for its end. but i can tell you inside his orbit among his allies on capitol hill and in the white house and outside the white house, there s a lot of uncertainty about what could play out today with michael