Today. Today you can sense the chant coming from the trump people. Listen closely and you can pick up a slightly different rhythm right now of dont lock me up, dont lock me up yesterday it was reported first by the Wall Street Journal that trumps former National Security adviser Michael Flynn, the guy saw there going after hillary, his lauer is looking to get flynn immunity in order to testify about what he knows. According to his lawyer trumps former National Security adviser certainly has a story to tell. This morning President Trump tweeted that mike flynn should ask for immunity in is that this is a witch hunt an excuse for a big election lost by the democrats and the media of historic proportion. At the meeting today Sean Spicer Conexplained the president was trying to convey his desire to see flynn testify. If you actually stop for a second and realize what the president is doing he is saying do whatever to do to go up and make it clear what happened,
take whatever precaution you want or however your Legal Counsel advises you. General flynns Attorney Says he has a story to tell. Is the white house concerned that the white house has damaging information about the president , his aides, his associates, about what occurred during the campaign with respect to russia . Nope. Nope. Well see. Nbc reported today that the Senate Intelligence committee turned down general flynns request for immunity. His lawyer was told it was wildly preliminary to discuss such a thing. Joining me is the Wall Street Journals carol lee who broke the story of the attempted immunity deal, and howard feynman, an msnbc political analyst. Carol, thank you for joining us. What is the king thinking tonight. What is trump worried about for Michael Flynn . What has he got on him . From the white houses perspective, their posture is he doesnt have anything on him. If we step back, we dont know. This is somebody, mike flynn was with the president almost every day during the campaign. Well he says he has a story to tell. Yes. Whats the thats another question, we dont know what the story is. Michael flynn has his time spent with donald trump and the Trump Campaign and the transition into the white house. Mike flynn has another he has had contacts with russia, not just with the ambassador here in washington, but he has been paid Tens Of Thousands of dollars by entities that are arms of the russian government, and he sat at a dinner in December Of 2015 with vladimir putin. And so he there are a number of stories that he could tell. Howard, look at this. Weve been here before. You see a guy not far down the tree from the president. Right there, National Security adviser. He knows a lot. The more he is afraid, the more he is going to talk. The more he is looking at 20 years for not disclosing money he got from the russia. Not being honest when he was under oath when he was talking to an ambassador about russian
sanctions. He says im damn damn not going to prison for this guy, i want to talk. First of all, he wants to talk at time when he would be most useful. The committee wants to learn everything it can about what flynn has to say from people other than flynn so they dont have to give him much, if anything. So they are saying wait a minute, wait a minute b. But if you are the attorney for flynn you want to get him in there right away so he gets credit for whatever he says from them. And also you have another reason, which is you want to give yourself what they call in the trade here in washington an immunity bath. You want to cover yourself with as much immunity as the committee is willing to give you. Not just use, not just what you say, but anything. Anything. In order the make it more difficult for the feds and the fbi and the Justice Department to try to prosecute you. Those are the twin things going on. First of all he filled out Financial Disclosure forms, what he said to the russians, how much he got what he said to the russians. What else . What he said to the Russian Ambassador. He spoke with the fbi. If you look at his track record, there has been two thing he was not forthcoming on, obviously, his the nature of what the conversations with the Russian Ambassador were. Kislyak. Kislyak, and he did not report being an agent of a Foreign Government with some of his work he had done with turkey. Turkey. Those are two examples. Not only that, but going back to when he was a top intelligence official in the government he would have to report certain contacts that he had, there is a whole array. Lets talk human nature. Your paper has been covering chris christie. The other day we saw Chris Christies top person, deputy in a Government Relations person, bridget kelly, the other guy, whats his name . I know he got two years in the slammer ahead of him. Wait a minute, sometimes the guy who work for the guy get in trouble we u. S. A. See it a lot. With scooter libby, dick cheney getting in trouble. They are the ones that swing and the big guys get away. He doesnt want to swain. To get an old refrain from the watergate days the question is what did the president know and when did he know it . When did Candidate Trump Go and when did he know it. Baroni is the name. Bill baroniy. To me, the most vulnerable thing ises that flynn has is not registering as a foreign agent. Thats a serious crime. The lawyer happens to be an expert in that field. They want to protect him on that. He wants that bath . He wants whatever he can get by way of the battle against the prosecution they have got him on. Donald trump and Michael Flynn addressed the issue of immunity in the past lets listen to then candidate trump last september discussing Hillary Clintons associates. Her aides took the fifth amendment, and her ring leaders were given immunity. And if you are not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity
for . How it all comes around. What Goes Around Comes Around in d. C. Heres that flynn sai on Meet The Press in september. Five people around her have been given immune to include her former chief of staff. When you are given immune that means you have probably committed a crime. He just said he just said if you on the wad immunity you probably committed a crime. There he is talking about Somebody Else. And everybody is hearing him now talking about himself. Now the white houses position as weve seen them do before is well that was then and this is now and this doesnt mean anything now. I have been watching spicer. I think he reached the point of incredibility. Did you watch today . Were you there. Yes. What did you make of it howard. He was just saying things that he was denying all of this. I think hes only performing for an audience of one chris. Hes not performing for glen thrush or carol or any of the reporters in the room. Hes doing his shtick for the
president of the United States. So for sean spicer to get out there and say only only interest is to get to the bottom of this whole thing. Thats why we want him to testify. Thats why we want him to testify. Everybody in the room isnt taking that seriously but donald trump is presumably back there in the oval office watching him and saying the way to give it to them, sean. The better he prosecutes it the more the president likes it. Until the president decides like a kleenex tsh you sean is done, then he will pull out Somebody Else to do it. More like a pez dispenser. Sean spicer is trying to do the bidding of the president. Its tough. Amy klobuchar joins us now. We are chuckling about the irony. Not the tragedy. It is a tragedy. We have a president with people around him who are beginning to rat on him and offering themselves up if they will get protection themselves under the law. A bath of immunity is how he phrased it, he is an attorney,
like yourself, senator. What do you think as a former prosecutor . Whats going on with trump . How dangerous are his waters right now . Okay. I was pretty stunned he did this tweet this morning saying first of all that flynn should get the immunity. Which they themselves said it was an implicati im not saying it is tt a crime was committed. Then saying it was a witch hunt. It is a truth hunt. We have to get to the bottom of what happened here. Now we have a situation where the president s former National Security adviser, literally was just appointed the National Security adviser, lies to the Vice President and then has to step down. We are now talking about immunity. I think as a prosecutor i can tell you you have got to be really careful with this congressional what is called derivative use immunity, what we saw in the case of oliver north who was convicted of three
felony counts but then they were reversed because it was found that during the congressional investigation the witnesses were so tainted that the conviction, the actual conviction didnt stand up. I know that senator warner and the senator burr and the Intelligence Committee in the senate is going to be very careful here. And it is just way too early, as adam schiff said today, to be talking about anything like this. And i i know they wont be doing anything about it without talking to the Justice Department if this is an ongoing investigation, as we believe it is. Senator, lets talk about political irony here. You have not been around here as long as i have, there is an old phrase, what Goes Around Comes Around. Here are the people that were trucking in the business of saying we are going to put people in jail like its south korea or pakistan where if you lose an election we put you away. They were talking like that just a few months ago. Now we are talking immunity. I want to know what you thought of the phrase lock her up when they were throwing that line out
in cleveland. Listen, as a former prosecutor and someone who has had to be very careful before you jump to those conclusions, i cant tell you when i had that job for eight years how many times i would say, we are still looking at the evidence. This is what is out there publicly. This is what is in the complaint. You simply cant jump to conclusions like that as a leader. Sure you can when you are sitting around a bar talking to your friend. Bee when you are a leader and on National Television you have an obligation to be careful with those kinds of words and there is some irony in the fact that they are now coming back to haunt them. What do you make of the long progression of incidences where there was connections between the Trump Campaign, his people, from manafort to carter page, to roger stone, himself, all these people, including flynn, having these regular encounters with russians at the time that we were dealing with the sanctions issue, where the republicans were rewriting their platform, including the plank on how we should deal with ukraine in a
far more lean yen manner than ever before, when money was being passed to flynn and people like that. What do you make of the connection . Does it look like a twoway connection or just a oneway connection . You know, i think this is getting seedier and seedier and seedier. I read that intelligence report, the 17 Intelligence Agencies, the one that was public. And i thought to myself, this is our United StatesIntelligence Agencies saying that this is actually going on and having been in ukraine with john mccain and lindsey graham, having seen the influence of russia and with a theyve done, the invasions, the killings of 10,000 people, this isnt just games and some kind of fun little thing of cloak and dagger. This is actually something happening. When you go from manafort, the campaign chair, to the National Security adviser, to the fact that he talked to the Russian Ambassador on the exact same day that president obama announced expanded sanction. And then you have the Attorney General of the United States having met with that same
ambassador only three days after president obama and putin met and president obama made clear he wasnt taking away the sanctions its just one person in power after another. And thats why not only is this intelligence investigation important. Its why we have to have an independent commission. And thats something that on january 4th i called for with ben cardin and Elijah Cummings and adam schiff. The four of us stood together stood together and said yes go on with your investigation but lets hav an independent commission. You cant have a bipartisan investigation, can you. I called for his recusal. But i do think we want to allow the senate process to continue. Both warner and burr did a good job this week. There is no reason at the same time you can have an independent commission. They would be looking at it from a different angle, thats a
panel of experts just like after 9 11 that would be coming forward with ways to prevent this from happening again. This is not just an assault on one candidate, one election, one country, it is really an assault on all democracys. We have had problems in our history, joe mccarthy back in the 50s, republicans put him away. In watergate it was democrats and republicans putting him away. When we are bipartisan and work together, this country is so much better off. Thank you senator for coming on tonight. There has been a theme by the way in sean spicers briefing today, at least on questions on russia, flynn, and devin nunes. See if you can pick up on it, watch . I dont know what he knows. Do you know if that is the case . I dont, if i start commenting on every one of these stories, i cant thats not our practice. I dont know the answer to that. I dont know the answer to that question. I dont know the answer to that. Some of it i dont know. I dont know. You should im not aware of that. If you could just find out. You can call the fbi. Do you have any new information about how the chairman did get onto the campus . As i said the last two days im not going to discuss that. Will you release any respectfully, the counsels office is working with them. I dont want to get in front of how they go back and forth and make a decision. The White House Counsels Office sent that letter. They are the uns ones its not my decision, major. I dont know what they will or wont do Going Forward and i dont want to prejudge that. Reminds me of hogans heros. I dont know. The lovable sherman. Its his job. I dont know nothing. Nunes goes there the next day, picks up a pile of christmas presents. The next day goes to the president , here are some presents, i dont know where i t the from, he got them from his crowd the night before. It is a mask raid. There are times when sean spicer said he does know, on this very issue, it doesnt make
sense that nunes would come here and go back and then come back here. Doesnt pass the smell test. He keeps getting tripped up on this. It used to be Press Secretaries would say ill take the question and get back to you. He comes the question and said who let him in the door. And then the next day he says i agreed the take the question, i didnt agree to give you an answer. What they are trying is trying to shift the question from what russia did to who leaked what about this. I know, it is a sideshow. And sean spicer today was desperately trying to quote change the narrative. Thats the favorite word in the Briefing Room its narrative. Its not answering questions. Its who can construct the narrative. He can do it. He is trying. Trying to impress the boss but he is not able to do it. The History Books will be written with the word russia in them. Its not going to be nunes, who is going to be forgotten, carol lee great reporting. Congrats. Thank you. Always good to get the scoop on the front page. Howard feynman. Coming up, devin nunes attempted a caper to keep secrets from the white house. His sly attempts to take the heat off President Trump all seem to be unraveling. Dont you think . A member of the house Intelligence Committee is going to join us after the break with more. Apart from College Basketball there is real march madness at the white house. Everything trump warned us about when he warned us about Hillary Clinton becoming president is pretty much what is going on right now. The worst case scenario. Plus joe biden is back. And he has words for donald trump. Heres a hint, its advice on the president s tweeting habits. Let me finish tonight with trump watch. You wont like it. This is hard ball. Flonase Allergy Relief delivers more complete relief. Flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances that cause all your symptoms, including Nasal Co