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we ll see. thank to you phillip, zerlina, john. thank you for being with us. all in with chris hayes starts right now. tonight on all in. i don t want to talk about pardons for michael flynn yet. a new york times bombshell. can you say unequivocally no one here has discussed pardons in this case? the president s lawyer reportedly floated pardons for flynn and plfrt before they were charged. i ve always found paul manafort to be a very decent man. tonight it the reporter who broke the story and what this means for the obstruction case against the president. then, did the special counsel just file evidence of trump campaign collusion with russia? that s what he said. that s what i said. that s obviously what our position is. plus, the president announces the firing of the v.a. secretary on twitter. and apple ceo tim cook on mark zuckerberg s current predicament. i wouldn t be in this situation. okay. more from kara swisher and my exclusive intervi ....
For. this mirrored some of the reporting we had done that showed that dowd was telling people close to the investigation that he and the president thought the case against flynn was flimsy and that there was nothing there. so that added up in terms of what dowd was telling us on the record today. so he raises this according to your reporting with both lawyers while they re being investigated by mueller. they re ultimately indicted. what if the president were to pardon you. what happens after that is floated according to your reporting? well, that s the thing. it looks like manafort was not interested in it. manafort has long pain maintained his innocence. he said he s done nothing wrong and thinks this government overreach and says he wants to fight it. flynn went and accepted a plea agreement from mueller. he did not count on a pardon from trump. now, why did he do that? we don t know. it s probably a safer path maybe to go with mueller. maybe flynn s lawyers were concerned that t ....
Intent. it has to be investigated by the special counsel. he has to talk to dowd and under oath. and if the attorney/client privilege is an obstacle, he may be able to pierce it because of the crime fraud exception. and a complete investigation of this aspect of possible obstruction of justice is absolutely necessary by the special counsel. michael schmidt in the times raising the possibility of obstruction, i want to read this. mr. mueller s team could investigate the prospect mr. dowd played offers to thwart the inquiry. the legal experts are divided whether such offers might constitute obstruction of justice. do you have an opinion on that? the conventional wisdom is that the pardon power is very broad. virtually limitless discretion. but it s not so broad it can be used to commit a crime to stymie or thwart ar investigation, that is for a corrupt purpose. and so what we have here is ....
right. that s really crucial thing to keep in mind here. tuck take legal actioning that because of the intent of legal action is actually illegal and obstruction of justice. that s exactly right. that s why using the pardon power to obstruct this investigation it doesn t make any difference if it s the pardon power or any other legal if your intent is to impede. paul, you re nodding your head. yeah. so timing and context is everything here, chris. so remember, flynn is the target of a grand jury investigation. manafort is about to be indicted. their lawyer, trump s lawyer knows that they re going to be pressured to snitch on trump. so trump s lawyer goes to their lawyers and says, let s see if we can work out a little something something. my client happens to have there extraordinary power to pardon anybody. you know what i m saying? the legal term for that is obstruction of justice. the fact that the president does ....
Predicament. i wouldn t be in this situation. okay. more from kara swisher and my exclusive interview when all in starts right now. good evening from new york. i m chris hayes. at every turn, the president has tried to underminor hinder the special counsel russia investigation. now it turns out his legal team explored taking an extraordinary step to shield two of mueller s key targets. a presidential pardon. new york times reporting today the president s personal attorney john dowd raise theed the idea of manafort and flynn as mueller was building cases against those two men. john dowd who resigned just last week reportedly discussed potential pardons with the lawyers last summer. since then, of course, flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and is now crucially cooperating with mueller s probe. while manafort faces two ....