Special Edition: Flynn Pleads Guilty
Michael Flynn pleaded guilty this morning to lying to the F.B.I., and said he’s cooperating with the Mueller investigation. What does it tell us that prosecutors have a former senior member of the Trump White House on their side? Plus: Republicans race toward a tax vote. Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
- Duration
- 15m
- Broadcast on
- 01 Dec 2017
- Audio Format
- other
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Michael Flynn pleaded guilty this morning to lying to the F.B.I., and said he’s cooperating with the Mueller investigation. What does it tell us that prosecutors have a former senior member of the Trump White House on their side? Plus: Republicans race toward a tax vote. Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
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Brought to you by the Capital One Saver Card. With Saver, you are an unlimited 3% cashback on dining, entertainment, and at grocery stores. That's unlimited cashback on ordering takeout from home. Or unlimited cashback on tickets to concerts and games. So grab a bite, grab a seat, and earn unlimited 3% cashback with the Saver Card. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Burbar. This is a special episode of The Daily News. Today, Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI, saying he's cooperating with the Mueller investigation. What it tells us that prosecutors have a senior member of the Trump White House on their side. It's Friday afternoon, December 1st. We begin with this significant sign that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn could be cooperating with Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading this whole Russia investigation. When his lawyers told White House lawyers, they could no longer discuss defense strategy with them. This guy that Trump was very close to is going to be flipping essentially to talk to the other side about what he knows with Russia. Like when did you hear that Michael Flynn was going to plead guilty to charges of lying to the FBI? Well, this all for us goes back to nine days ago, eight days ago on Thanksgiving, when I was in the car with my family driving to Philadelphia. And I got a call that Flynn had pulled out of this joint defense agreement with the president. Mike Schmidt is an investigative reporter at the times. Flynn's lawyers and the president's lawyers had been sharing information because they were on the same side of things. But Flynn had pulled out of this agreement in a signal that he was cooperating. You can't stay in that agreement if you're going to be on the other side of things. So we're working our way through traffic in Maryland and I get this call. I turned to my dad who's in the passenger seat and said, "Dad, Flynn may have flipped. I need you to drive." And he looks at me with this look like you will literally do anything to get out of driving. So what you just learned at that moment was that Flynn's lawyer had ended a kind of mutual compact with the president's lawyers in which they were cooperating, sharing information. And the minute that you learned that you immediately suspect or into it, that that means that Flynn is going from talking and maybe even working with the White House to working with federal prosecutors. It's a legalese thing, but at the end of the day, it's a signal that Flynn was going to flip and Flynn was going to cooperate. And in the end, it turns out to be a fairly important thing, obviously, now that he has begun cooperating and pled guilty. So give us the scene this morning at the courthouse in Washington as this becomes a reality. At 10.30 this morning, Mike Flynn, who at the beginning of this year was the president's national security advisor, the top national security official in the government, walks in to the federal courthouse in downtown Washington and plead guilty to lying to the FBI about the nature of his calls with the Russian ambassador during the transition. And pleading guilty as Flynn did signifies that he's now cooperating with the government,
Transcription truncated.
Michael Flynn pleaded guilty this morning to lying to the F.B.I., and said he’s cooperating with the Mueller investigation. What does it tell us that prosecutors have a former senior member of the Trump White House on their side? Plus: Republicans race toward a tax vote. Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.