has a very chilling effect on current whistle-blowers and future whistle-blowers. i think it s unacceptable for these attacks to go forward as they have been. evan, quickly, are your sources or anyone telling you that this kind of tone could deter any other potential whistle blowers from coming forward? yeah. that s one of the concerns you hear inside the government. why would you stick your neck out if you know something has gone browrong, if you ve seen wrongdoing, why stick your neck out if this is what you re going to get? that s one of the concerns from the attack from ron johnson that you are playing, fredricka. not only are they attacking the whistle-blower, they re also attacking the fbi and the cia for even taking a look at things that could be a threat to the united states and international security. all right, evan perez, micha michael zeldin, thank you. still ahead as democrats ramp up the impeachment inquiry
foundation has actually been planning to dissolve since trump s election in 2016. the lawyer also said the lawsuit was politically motivated. wolf. mj, thanks very much. let s go back to our analysts. michael zeldin, how significant is this? well, it is significant inasmuch as it says there is a pattern of illegal activity that the trump organization has engaged in. that pattern of illegal activity we see again in the lawsuits that involve the inauguration, domestic and foreign contributions to the inauguration for the trump benefit, and also for the emoluments case where they are saying that they re profiting off of their time in office. so you see a pattern here of lawsuits, some by the government, some private sector, which says this essentially is a corrupt group of people running their operation for their own financial benefit. you know, jeffrey i have a somewhat go ahead. i have a somewhat different view. i think it is significant
company owned by a foreign country must comply with a grand jury subpoena issued in the russia investigation. let s bring in our analysts. michael ze micha michael zeldin, we know this unnamed corporation owned by a foreign government, an entire floor of a federal building was shut off so no one would see lawyers walking in. how does it fit into the puzzle, the enormity of the mystery right now? we have a situation where they re seeking to obtain records from a private corporation owned by a foreign national foreign state that is not subject to an extradition treaty with us or a mutual assistance treaty. that implies russia. it is one of the future countries that doesn t have that, that has touch-pay points with the mueller investigation. also it seems we don t know it is russia? no, i m just also from the reading of it. it also seems as if the nature of the documents being sought are financial records. so one could speculate this is a
you know, some of the stories we cover all the time we actually sometimes downplay because we ve heard them a lot. judge sullivan hasn t heard them a lot and he was pretty outraged. michael zeldin, you have worked in the federal government, you understand the proceedings. it is pretty extraordinary not completely out of the question for a federal judge to react the way he did given the recommendations of the special counsel, the federal prosecutors, that this guy has done substantial cooperation, he has been a great help, he has testified under oath for hours and hours and hours, and he deserves little or no jail time. that s right. and i think what may have set this judge off was that in the flynn sentencing memorandum, he said, while we accept what the federal prosecutors have said, we want to give you some additional information, and then he went into this i was set up by the fbi trope. i think the judge had, you know, saying to him essentially, are
did well, could well have met, you know, donald trump jr. and the other figures from the trump administration and had nothing to do with the kremlin. that underlines what they had been saying time and again, there wasn t collusion on any official capacity on the part of the kremlin to influence the u.s. presidential election or influence donald trump, should he become the u.s. president, because he did. this holds to what the kremlin had been saying all along. matthew chance for us in moscow. micha michael zeldin is here. jackie is here, and bob bear, cnn intelligence. jackie, i want the biggest of big pictures here. this story from the new york times and the statement from