is a term of art and that means something to prosecutors and it is not an easy thing to get. how hard to get that recommendation from the prosecutors, and how as a prosecutor do you need to discuss that? in the eastern district of virginia when i was a prosecutor, it was run through a committee of senior people. you had to go in there and present to them everything that your defendant did, right, in order to cooperate fully. so it was vetted through a senior leadership team, and not given out easily or haphazardly, and it is something that is a considered judgment of the senior leaders in the office. the mueller team is comprised of very senior prosecutors, and they know from years of experience what substantial assistance is and is not. they don t give these things lightly. of course, a judge has final authority, and everyone knows that, but where general flynn laid himself there and cooperated fully, and met 19
right now president trump is touring the storm ravaged carolinas. he is getting a firsthand look at the damage inflicted by hurricane florence. to all those impacted by this terrible storm, our entire american family is with you and ready to help and you will recover. nbc s gadi schwartz is in lumberton, north carolina. gadi, let s start with the conditions on the ground right now. reporter: yeah, craig. as the water levels start to recede here in lumberton, this is the type of scene you start to see. these are cars that are left haphazardly in the roads. a lot of roads flooded. people trying to get out of here in a hurry. you could see the water levels along the houses, those are starting to go down, as well. inside the homes, many of them are a total loss. we re talking about drywall
with sarah sanders? she got on that podium, named the people who the president would like to revoke their security clearance and two of them, as you just mentioned, don t even have clearance. that is absolute sloppy stupid nonsense. has anyone been able to follow up with her on that silly mistake? well, we ve reeached out in n effort to follow up with officials at the white house. no specific answer to those questions. but this is part of a pattern obviously. sometimes when states are made haphazardly, oftentimes in an effort to deliver what s on the president s mind at the moment, mistakes get made. we ve witnessed that. it appears at least on this occasion we re seeing it one more time. repeated sloppiness. all right, peter, thank you. i want to bring my panel in. it s an excellent one. my dear friend and former colleague shannon pettypiece. elise jordan who worked in the george w. bush white house. shannon, what is the point of
korea, we ve accepted 9 invitation to talk, based on them following through with concrete actions, this meeting won t take place without concrete actions. the president will not have the meeting without seeing concrete steps and concrete actions. just a couple hours after that, a white house official clarified that the invitation has been extended and accepted and that stands. doesn t it all show that this was rolled out haphazardly without the inmutt of key people in our government? it does, and this is something we re seeing over and over again. we saw it with the tariffs many he seems to react to certain things and it makes announcements and everybody has to catch up to him. it s governing by chaos, it leads to all sorts of problems, it leads to a lot of ethical problems we re seeing, policy problems, right now, i m not sure anybody really knows whether we re going to meet with
basis, that sanctions against russia need to be intensified, not diminished. and that was the trend that the obama administration was following, however haphazardly. and many of us criticized the lack of more intense sanctions until the obama administration. now that we see the apparent initiative on the part of the trump transition team to send a signal that these sanctions would be lifted, it is a very, very dismaying process. and i think it calls for bipartisan effort. and i m certainly helping to lead it. to increase sanctions through legislation. we have a bill and i hope it will continue on a bipartisan basis. jeremy bash? senator, as a former attorney general, let me ask you a legal question. if the president tries to assert privilege to block comey s