you quoted a part of what he said, which was not only that national security interests might be implicated in what flynn would be offering to robert mueller by cooperating, but also there s a quote that he needed a heads-up to protect, quote, all of our interests, not just national security, and the president, and he said, remember what our feelings are about michael flynn. those feelings are still the same after the president on repeated occasions said what a nice guy flynn was, what a good man he was. and that sort of dangling the pardon in the voice that was projected in that tape was deadly serious, even a bit desperate, and will be very, very powerful to americans if they ever see and hear john dowd himself as a witness in a house or senate hearing.
because i can t go at it directly because i really shouldn t be going at it at all. yeah. this is, like, not something i m comfortable with, but i got to do it. and also a sense that dowd is thinking about the president, thinking about what he might not know about what flynn and trump might know and so he s trying to maneuver and find that out as well. anita, how will we ever know, based on the beat that you cover every day, the level of concern inside the west wing, whether, for example, the departure of mr. flynn s counsel is based on the knowledge that this audio was coming out today. well, i mean, i think there is concern. you can see from the president s remarks that he feels concerned or he s feeling that he wants to that he s thinking about things. wants to comment about them. he s clearly still thinking about the mueller report. and how that s going to play out
isn t you know, i ve got to sort of talk my way around this because i can t go at it directly because i really shouldn t be going at it at all. yeah. this is, like, not something i m comfortable with, but i got to do it. and also a sense that dowd is thinking about the president, thinking about what he might not know about what flynn and trump might know and so he s trying to maneuver and find that out as well. anita, how will we ever know, based on the beat that you cover every day, the level of concern inside the west wing, whether, for example, the departure of mr. flynn s counsel is based on the knowledge that this audio was coming out today. well, i mean, i think there is concern. you can see from the president s remarks that he feels concerned or he s feeling that he wants to that he s thinking about things. wants to comment about them. he s clearly still thinking about the mueller report.
because i can t go at it directly because i really shouldn t be going at it at all. yeah. this is, like, not something i m comfortable with, but i got to do it. and also a sense that dowd is thinking about the president, thinking about what he might not know about what flynn and trump might know and so he s trying to maneuver and find that out as well. anita, how will we ever know, based on the beat that you cover every day, the level of concern inside the west wing, whether, for example, the departure of mr. flynn s counsel is based on the knowledge that this audio was coming out today. well, i mean, i think there is concern. you can see from the president s remarks that he feels concerned or he s feeling that he wants to that he s thinking about things. wants to comment about them. he s clearly still thinking about the mueller report. and how that s going to play out in his testimony, if he does
if he knew derogatory information about the president of the united states that would harm u.s. national security. ordinarily they don t have to worry about that. i think it shows how nervous the president was about what flynn might reveal, it goes to personal motivation. the justice department rejected, refusing to hand over the transcript of michael flynn s conversations with russian officials, phone conversations, including the then russian ambassador to the united states, sergei kislyak. what s your reaction? is there a legitimate national security concern here? i don t think there s a legitimate national security concern here. when we talk about national security as relates to the intelligence information being released, what we re talking about is whether or not that information poses a threat to the intelligence sources or methods chl methods. in this case, we don t have that. we know this information was collected under the context of a legitimate, legal