and current cnn legal analyst anne milgram for some perspective. anne, is this a big deal at all? isn t all of this baked into the mueller report? it is in the mueller report. but remember, there were still parts that were redacted on the construction opponent that related to michael flynn. this is giving us more information, and it is showing us. the truth is always in the details. and it s fascinating to see, for example, multiple members of the trump administration and congressional officials reaching out to michael flynn after he was cooperating, for example. that s a significant piece of information that we only had a little bit of insight into before. why would people in the administration be reaching out to michael flynn, even though they know he is cooperating? it makes no sense. they know he is cooperating. they know robert mueller is investigating. they know that the president is being investigated for o obstruction of justice, and they can t stop themselves from reachi
i m yasmin vossoughian alongside jeff bennett. we re starting with a newly unsealed court filing from special counsel bob mueller s office. michael flynn says that people connected to the trump administration and to capitol hill contacted him to influence his cooperation with the russian investigation. the filing says this. the defendant informed the government of multiple instances both before and after his argumenty plea where either he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the administration or congress that could have affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation. the filing says flynn even provide a voice mail recording which a federal judge order to be released in transcript form by may 31st. the judge ordered to release a transcript in what flynn says was a call with the russian ambassador after sanctions were leveled. and all parts of the special
that s not accurate. less than one week he was sworn into office sally yates told the white house that flynn lied to the vice president. a falsehood that could make the national security adviser vulnerable to blackmail. those lies were cited as the reason the president fired flynn. we wanted to tell the white house as quickly as possible. to state the obvious, you don t want your national security adviser compromised with the russians. reporter: the president also knew there were long standing concerns about flynn. former president barack obama warned mr. trump about flynn in the oval office just days after the 2016 election. something the white house conceded to reporters. is it true president obama made it known that he wasn t exactly fan of general flynn s which shouldn t come as a surprise given that general flynn worked for president obama with an outspoken critic of president obama s shortcomings. reporter: the white house denied there were any concerns about what flynn w
at the end of the day, they ought to be investigating this right now. and either making a determination as to whether to proceed with even oversight or not, but again, regardless of whether there was a chargeable criminal offense, the question was it proper conduct? and that is congress sole function and mandate here. i think information like we saw today bears directly on that question. and sara, do we know if this was the extent of flynn s cooperation, or do we expect more evidence like this to surface? because this sort of just came out. i think that s kind of up to the judge at this point. the government has written their sentencing memo. that s where we re getting all of this information from. but as you guys have point out, the judge is very skeptical about flynn s cooperation. i think that s part of the reason that he s asking to see so many of these transcripts, these other sort of organizations of the mueller report that might relate to flynn s cooperation, because before
or the fbi knew at that point that he had lied quite openly about contact with the russians. the second part of this is the dramatics. martha: those are two separate things. he asked about his work. he had lied about it. martha: didn t have any connection to the president having influence over russia. what flynn is going to jail for it is not connected to the underlying issue that he says was prompting that. the question you were asking was about russia, load you think that he was under the influence? in addition to the idea that flint was doing such work and you know there was a problem in terms of having contact with the ambassador and the like, you come to the idea that wait a second, this is dramatic in my mind. he said when he is told about north korea s ability to attack united states on the basis of american intelligence agencies he says, oh, no, vladimir putin said that is not a problem.