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To him. i think if he was trying to protect something, someone, that's worth protecting, keeping that information out. that would help him get a pardon if it's known that he was trying to protect that. going the pardon route as a hail mary pass at anytime and particularly with this president though he by-passes the normal process, you just don't know what he's going to do. that's not much of a strategy but is something always lurking in the background for him. >> senator blumenthal, do you have a thought on that? >> just one last thought, anderson, on this topic. one of the lies that apparentl...

Counsel's interest in the sanctions. that seems to have become clearer recently and those discussions could have been about that. there's also one other point in the judge's order which is that he lied about an unnamed other justice department criminal investigation. so those two things to me point in the direction that he may have been lying about something that goes to the heart of what they're looking at now which is the discussion of sanctions, and that might be worth lying about to him. i think if he was trying to protect something, someone, that's worth protecting, keeping that informati...

Cooperative. >> mueller has three audiences when he writes that paragraph. it's really important. one is to flynn to say, you made a deal with me and i'm sticking up to the deal. two is to the court. the court, despite the fact that this guy is pleading guilty to a major offense, he should have zero jail time. thirdly is all the other witnesses mueller is dealing with and interviewing and the like. he knows what trump did yesterday and what trump has done time and again to say to potential witnesses, hold firm and don't rat on me and you will get a pardon and if you do rat, i will call you wea...

He's not that kind of person. i think he's hoping for a pardon, and i think the president is hoping to prevent him from cooperating, but he needs cover if he's going to give a pardon. those tweets where the president is saying manafort is being treated unfairly, i think, set a pretext to cover the president if he does decide to go the pardon route. >> you know, on the other -- you know, he faces 30 years. paul manafort is going to spend the rest of his life in jail if he's convicted here. he's also going to have to think about whether or not he's going to cooperate if this verdict gets handed ...

They can't communicate and they each have the ability to destroy the other. they have to decide whether to rat the other out. if he were actually going full on pardon route, i believe he would do what manafort is doing and just live through the process, find out what the indictments are going to show. go to trial. wait all of that out and then get the pardon. if he was still relying on a pardon from trump, then this move, breaking the cooperation, the defense cooperation agreement and signaling to the government that he wants to cooperate, it just seems like that is not the path you take if yo...