the obama administration was obtaining on. the white house said, devote, nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than mr. flynn. however, court documents made clear that flynn was not acting alone. according to prosecutors, palestinian communitied with senior members of the president s transition team about conversations and at least one instance was directed by transition officials to reach out to russia. cnn has learned that the president s son-in-law jared kushner is the very senior member of the presidential transition team identified in court documents. kushner directed michael flynn to contact the russian ambassador in other countries regarding the u.n. security council on israeli settlements. flynn s guilty me belies president trump s denials of any contacts or involvement with this campaign and russia. in your view has the president
that it will pay for itself. and no one has produced a study that would claim that. well, we ve got to see what happens out of this conference committee and to get to the president s desk by christmas. ron brownstein, margaret telev, thank you both. a lot of people wondering where the russia investigation is going as it seems to inch closer to the inner circle. michael flynn s guilty plea and lying to the fbi what he tells investigators. we ll have that legal conversation next.
off there. michael flynn was very loyal to the president. through this whole campaign. through his 24 days in office and even after it, it seems but family is family. michael, is it a possibility, when we look at flynn s intentions, that his intention is to save his son in some regard, or protect him? it would seem so. and can he? well, he can. if mueller agrees that the cooperation that flynn senior is giving is adequate that he doesn t feel that the needs of justice the administration of justice requires that his son plead guilty to something if in fact his son did something. there s no direct allegations against his son in the public domain. it relates mostly to the flynn intel group that he was a member of, that his father ran. and that relates to the nondisclosure of payments from foreign agents. but it s not yet clear what the
got flynn in trouble in the first place. cnn s chuf correspondent victim sciutto has that for us. reporter: the ongoing russia investigation has reempled president trump s innermost circle. trump s former national security adviser michael flynn said he s cooperating with the special council probe into possible cooperation between the trump campaign and the russia government. flynn pled guilty to repeatedly lie to get fbi including makes false statements about this december 2016 controversies with russia s then ambassador to the u.s. sergey kislyak. according to the statement of offense, flynn lied when he told the fbi he did not discuss sanctions with kislyak. on the same day that president obama expelled russian diplomats from the u.s. and boosted sanctions on moscow in retaliation for russia s meddling in the presidential election. flynn also sought russia help during the transition to block a u.n. security council vote that
already have the information that they need to render an indictment. and if there was a pardon, they do still use all of that testimony which they ve gathered in the grand jury. so in legal terms, not 100% sure that a pardon would impact mueller s ability to proceed. in political terms, i think it would be very bad for the president because it would raise the question of whether he s abusing the powers of his office which could be an impeachable offense. i want to get your reaction to that as well, richard? well, i think that a pardon at this point would be perceived as an attempt to bribe general flynn and giving testimony that at least wouldn t implicate the president himself. and i think that would be unacceptable politically. the president would probably be impeached over that. he d alsoen impeached if he tried to fire robert mueller,