shelby holladay covers the russia investigation for the wall street journal. matt nadler, msnbc analyst. matt, you look at this situation. why do you think mike flynn played himself so badly in court today? so i think his lawyers had a strategy. i will say i know both his attorneys, they re very smart, very well-accomplished attorneys here in town. and they said that the reason they put that information into the room was they were trying to differentiate him from other people who have been sentenced in this case. george papadopoulos and the dutch lawyer, making false statements. they tried to show there were mitigating circumstances. obviously that was not well received with the judge and it led him to go through this series of questions of both flynn and his attorney, where he basically got them to walk back everything that they had said and kind of obliterate this conspiracy theory. how good can that lawyering be, as you just analyzed for us, if they had to walk it all back?