the russians could blackmail flynn, and now trump with the truth. yeah, just a reminder to folks that sally yates went and warned folks at the white house about flynn because they knew that flynn was telling a public lie about private communications he had with the russians, and that that was the that provided a possibility for blackmail and compromise. what you re saying is that s precisely the same situation with the president of the united states, the commander in chief. in this case trump lied to the american people that there were no business dealings during early 2016 when, in fact, michael cohen was out there doing a deal, or at least trying to do them, and they didn t succeed, but not for lack of trying. and not only donald trump, but his family also potentially are at risk here of legal prosecution. it s also striking that the that the russians were covering up for trump. they were holding his secret and keeping his lie. here s peskov, a sort of
greeting mohammad bin salman, the crown prince of saudi arabia who the cia says ordered the murder of washington post journalist jamal khashoggi. trump has cast doubt on bin salman s role in that murder. we don t know why. we don t know if anything the saudi crown prince might have on president trump. what we do know is this, trump has made clear he is willing to lie to cover up his business interests. last week he insisted he doesn t make any deals with saudi arabia. back in 2015 he was telling a very different story. i like the saudis. they re very nice. i make a lot of money with them. they buy all sorts of my stuff, all kinds of toys from trump. they pay me millions and hundreds of millions. democratic senator richard blumenthal, is the president compromised? he is extremely compromised. the russians have the same leverage over him they had over michael flynn. that s the reason the former attorney general wanted flynn fired, it s the reason that flynn was prosecuted.
tape. my judgment was, i needed to get that in the public square. i asked a friend of mine to share the contend of the memo with a reporter. that friend was a law professor at columbia university. we reached them directly. they confirmed that s what happened, shep. shepard: catherine, he also said there were a number of reasons that the attorney general had to recuse himself from the russia investigation. let s go back to the late january meeting. this was the oval office meeting, this dinner. it had to do about the russia investigation. at that time there were questions about loyalty, there would later be questions about whether he wanted flynn s investigation dropped. the president wanted flynn s investigation dropped. the former director testified today that there were a number of reasons that he just felt he could not go to his boss about what was happening. here s that exchange. our judgment, as i recall, he was very close to and inevitably
to be independent. the reason chris christie isn t in there, it s personal. look it up. the reason general flynn was in there, it s personal. the reason jared and ivanka wanted flynn? personal. the reason jared and iechka are in there, personal. personal is bringing this president down. he needs people around them who can speak for themselves. he doesn t have them. this is the last thing i ll say. the older i get, the more i admire dwight d. eisenhower and consider him a near great or great president. there was nothing flashy about him. but he did an extraordinary job. years of peace and prosperity. dwight eisenhower knew the most powerful people in business, the most powerful generals in the world. he played bridge with them. he spent time around them in augusta. and when dwight d. eisenhower selected his cabinet, he picked people he didn t even know.
forward here and didn t want to get in the way of that. we know from sources inside the white house that we ve reported that, you know, mike pence based that comment that you played earlier with joe on the sunday show based solely on conversations with flynn. they made sure that was out there, because they wanted everyone to know and wanted flynn to know that that was going to be in the public domain for consumption. trump s silence continues on this. it does beg the question of sort of is flynn just sort of in purgatory right now, waiting for some sort of decision? you can t remain indecisive, willing to accept incompetence or insubordination in your white house. john and poppy, you have to remember, we re only 3 1/2 weeks into this administration. a staff shake-up is inevitable in every white house, but not usually 3 1/2 weeks in as you re