it were to be successful. that s a very significant thing. you re using a lot of words to raise the question of whether he was bribed to change u.s. foreign policy. that s essentially the question. and then i want to bring in the prosecutors, but to get your reporting out. you bring in the context we already know, the former acting attorney general testified under oath that he did something beyond words, sally yates said it was conduct that made her rush to the white house to warn the white house counsel. do you have any linkage there or we don t know? i don t think we know. we know that the special counsel has been looking at michael flynn s conversations with the former russian ambassador to the u.s. and his business dealings. but we can t draw that link. right. let me bring in for analysis in a row, ronoddo and then nick. so what i expect has happened, ari, is typically a prosecutor will, before they bring an indictment, they ll talk to the defense counsel and tell t
his aide rick gates. former trump adviser george papadopoulos pled guilty to lying to federal agents despite numerous connections between the trump administration and russia. the white house argues that the connection to the president is minimal. take a look at the president defending flynn back in february. michael flynn, general flynn, is a wonderful man. i think he s been treated very, very unfairly by the media. i think it was a sad thing he s been treated so badly. today flynn jr. tweeting the sjw that s social justice warriors are out in full this morning. the disappointment on your faces when i don t go to jail will be worth all your harassment. joining me, alan dershowitz, and malcolm nance, msnbc terrorism analyst and author of the plot to hack america. i want to get your reaction to this use that mueller is
was being investigated by the united states attorney s office, and an exchange for giving her leniency, he cooperated against the governor. so the same playbook could be used here where the president may like michael flynn, but will he pardon michael flynn s son? how much is mr. flynn willing to gamble that the son is going to get a pardon? here what could happen is mr. flynn could do what s called vicarious cooperation, where he would cooperate on the son s behalf for leniency for his son. and that s really what i suspect is going on. i suspect this leak is from the defense team. and they have to decide now, do they want to get lesser charges that are brought or do they want to have to basically try to fight this as long as they can in the hope of getting a pardon down the road. nick. yeah, i think this is all consistent with mueller s overall strategy. as shown by the the manafort indictment was the campaign manager, right up at
this, on your knowledge of mueller s portfolio, is this something he can investigate? i think that s a really important question. so we know that there s this pattern now of trump cronies failing to disclose their dealings with russia. paul manafort, michael flynn, trump jr. ryan, kushner, the list goes on. so when special counsel mueller has then interest in failure to disclose, it s been mainly as a means to an end. so when kushner or actually when manafort didn t disclose some of his dealings with the ukraine, at the end of the day, that s not what special counsel mueller is interested in. he s interested in using that as a way to get leverage over manafort to make him cooperate. so if this turns out to be only about the commerce secretary s failure to disclose some of his dealings with the russians but there s no other significance with regard to the collusion investigation, i don t think that mueller will see this as
other side effects include upper. .respiratory tract infection and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take. .and if you re pregnant or planning to be. ask your dermatologist about otezla today. otezla. show more of you. story this sunday. multiple sources telling nbc news special counsel bob mueller and his team have gathered enough evidence to bring some kind of charges in the investigation into michael flynn and his son. the report comes just about a week since the first set of those indictments of two former campaign officials and a guilty plea by another relating to russia. there is at this hour no official reaction from the white house to this very substantial report. i m joined now by nbc s cara lee, part of the team that broke the story, and for analysis, also a candidate for attorney general of illinois, and back with us, former prosecutor nick ackerman. carol, let s be very clear so