a look at retired general michael flynn as he walks into the courthouse. evan perez is standing by outside there. evan, dana brought up a good point about the link between james comey and michael flynn and the investigation there. you point out one of the ironies here is that james comey didn t think there was enough to get michael flynn on the issue of lying to the fbi. explain? right. exactly. that s one of the ironies here of the situation, john. this is something we ve said repeatedly which is a decision that the president made to fire jim comey has backfired in so many ways and this is exactly what we re talking about. the team that was doing the investigation of michael flynn had made a decision earlier this year that there wasn t enough evidence to bring charges against him for lying. they had decided that there wasn t enough evidence to show that there was willful intent in the way he answered these questions falsely. you see four lies that the special counsel is charging mic
speak, republicans are pulling their hair out in the united states senate trying to figure out how they get to that magic number of 50 so that at least they could have the vice president cast a tie vote for 51 to get the tax bill moving through the senate, and they re trying to figure that out. they, obviously, last night thought that they were close to getting there and they had a huge basically blew up on the senate floor because of the deficit issues and senators upset about that and a lot of procedural back and forth. if the senate does actually get that done today, that s a huge win. not the end of the road but a huge win that the president, no doubt sorry i m looking down to see if that is michael flynn and stop me if it is, that the president no doubt will try to tout and will tout and rightly so. can i just say one other thing about michael flynn that i think we should keep in mind? and that is, remember james
analyst jeffrey toobin and analyst michael zeldin who once worked for special counsel robert mueller in a different capacity. jeffrey be tooin , we talk about the developments, the fact that at this moment may be pleading guilty and may be cooperating, this could be the most significant development to dade date? i don t think there s any doubt it s the most significant because the only guilty plea so far has been george papadopolous, who i think everybody agrees is a fairly minor figure. michael flynn is anything but a minor figure. paul manafort is a major figure but he s only been indicted. they haven t proved he has committed anything, any crime, the fact that such a senior figure is pleading guilty is, obviously, of immense significance. historically as well as legally. let me just raise one point that i think is really important.
that is these are the same facts that the team of investigators at the fbi had looked at and had come to an opposite conclusion. what we have is a new team that came in under robert mueller after he was appointed in may and has looked at the same facts and arrived at a different conclusion and this is crystal clear the result of the president s decision to fire james comey. if he had not done that and comey was in charge, i don t think we would be here today and see these charges against michael flynn, and i think it s fair to say that most of what we ve seen the last i think we see someone emerging from the vehicle right now. the expectation is that this court hearing is going to start in the next less than a half hour. michael flynn just stepped out of [ inaudible ]. [ inaudible ].
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