the new york times and barbara mcquade is a former federal prosecutor. let s get the news, matt. what do we know now factually in terms of the situation with flynn, his attorneys and their relations with the white house attorneys? sure. it s common practice in these complicated white collar investigations for people involved in the case, whether it s witnesses or subjects to have either formal agreements or informal agreements to share information, kind of keep each other abreast about what s going on in the investigation. last week, michael flynn s lawyers cut off president trump and his lawyers and said we can t play ball anymore. and that s a clear sign that michael flynn is either cooperating with mueller or is negotiating some sort of cooperation agreement with bob mueller. now of course that can change. those deals with fall apart. but that s the state of play. you don t buy this other report that they were meeting today? the white house people with the flynn lawyers?
we all want everything resolved yesterday. this investigation started just in may. white collar investigations can take many months. it may be different from where the investigation lines up. the traditional way to mold the case is to charge lesser players and try to get them to flip on higher-ups. this could be a case against a lesser player. it could be on an unrelated matter. but they are trying to get that person to flip even on other subjects. yes, we will learn a lot once the charges are unsealed. we have this image of two people in trench coats, fedoras on, cold car. i don t want to use the term benign. you talk about low-hanging fruit. this could be failure to disclose on an fs-86.
you talked about the fact it seems like there s a little bit of something that s not normal going on. the way these usually work out in white collar investigations, they ve had lawyers dealing with the special prosecutor all along. they would call up the special prosecutor would say, bring manafort in. manafort would come in. this is being handle like you handle a drug dealer who s on the run and afraid once the indictment is announced, he will flee the jurisdiction or kill the witnesses against him. you seal the indictment and send the police out to surprise him. that s how they re handling apparently this arrest if the cops are out looking to make an arrest. that s very unusual in a white collar criminal case. that s why i say, i don t know. it feels we will be a little surprised by what happens. at this point, is it possible anyone being charged may still
of the white house to say whatever mueller does is no big deal. so i m sure that s what we re going to hear from them when these charges are released. but, you know, one thing that has been established is that mueller is doing a very far flung investigation, including issues of whether certain people affiliated with the trump campaign properly registered as foreign agents, whether they reported accurately what they were doing for foreign companies, what their tax situation was, whether they paid taxes on the money they made. i mean, once you start pulling at threads in white collar investigations, it afternoon leads in directions away from the original subject of the investigation. just ask bill clinton, who was
well, it s a peculiar situation because indictments are rarely announced without knowing who the defendant is or what the charges are. but it is certainly a major landmark in the course of this investigation. the other point to make that two points. one, in white collar investigations usually the first indictments are against individuals that you hope will plead guilty and cooperate against others. you don t indict the big fish first. you indict smaller fishes in hopes of getting the big fish. and the other point to make is that these white collar cases take a long time, and it s very unlikely that this case would even get to trial for six months to a year. so if anybody thinks the mueller investigation is going to be wrapping up in the next couple of months, this decision today pretty much guarantees that the mueller office will be up and