thing to say. you know, i mean, wildly inappropriate thing to say to those two interlocutors in the context of that meeting a day after it is a remarkably important point it s not two random russian officials in there, sergey kislyak is the guy whom around all of this stories swirl. there s a very good chance he s at the core of the actual counterintelligence investigation that james comey was overseeing. right? so he is telling someone who is potentially subject of the same investigation, i we re in the clear. c ianned the guy right. that s what it sounds like. to echo one point, this is typically the point in the reporting that we would say, but to be fair, here is how the white house disputes this account. but they don t. that s a really important point. the white house except they. has not disputed the new york times reporting. obviously the implication there is someone has a reporting of a transcript, so they re going to get themselves wound around thei
of the united states. he can make decisions when he wants. but if you want this to not be linked to russia, which kellyanne conway says cnn all you do is talk about russia, well, then you can t do it doing it now without any seeming other trigger or news that would make this happen, how can you not draw the conclusion? remember, again, jeff sessions, the attorney general, recused himself from this investigation, putting james comey in charge of the russian investigation because in his confirmation hearings in the senate he did not properly disclose two meetings he had with sergey kisly kislyak. it s very difficult for me to believe that someone who is as focussed on perception and focussed on how things look that donald trump and his
concerning ties between russia and the trump team and they didn t want to tip off rs by telling the trump team. kristen you have worries of your own about the obama administration in those last days. what are you learning. i talked with a obama official who essentially said they handled the trump transition team cautiously because of some of these concerns as they relate to michael flynn. this official bchld confirmed the account of handing over that profile of sergey kislyak. but that they gave the income trump team a heads up by a matter of hours not days because they didn t want them to in any way tip off the russians. i think that s striking. it underscores the fact not only were there tensions as the transition was underway but there were concerns early in this presidency.
because they were worried about the incoming national security adviser s ongoing and frequency of contacts with the russians? again, nicole, back to jonathan s point. it s about context. there is a lot of discussion between a transition team and the incumbent administration. if i were in the incumbent administration and the trump transition team person called me up and said we want that lp, the leadership profile on kislyak because our boss is going to have a conversation with him i want say that s a red flag. if they went ahead and said because we are concerned that our boss doesn t get it or he is going in the other direction. that s what we need to unpack and go back and ask those people further questions, why were you concerned? what were you concerned about and who did you tell your concerns to. you learned something, lp from jeremy bash. more headlines ahead and a preview of testimony from sally yates on monday when we come back. allergy symptoms distracting you?
they went beyond flynn himself. i mean they mostly focused on trying to impress upon flynn the risks he faced in these conversations with kislyak. of course they didn t know that flynn was going to proceed to speak with kislyak about the sanks and then lie about it. i mean they are just trying to impress upon him that this is an unusual thing to do on many levels, including just politic cleech politically. the trump campaign and trump himself had been criticized because of his praise of putin. how is it going to help him if his security adviser was caught talking with the russian ambassador before they took office? do you have any sense or any instinct on the timing of the release of top s information? this seems it s late on a friday night. yates is testifying on monday.