is ultimately prosecuted. what do you make of the argument made out by general flynn s lawyers made out in the lengthy letter to congress? we have to respect the first amendment right against self-incrimination, and i suspect his defense counsel, his lawyer is making an argument that given the current environment and the range of allegations of missteps or misbehavior by general flynn that he s at some real legal risks so i think frankly any court would respect the argument being made by his counsel. the fifth amendment, his right against self-incrimination. should flynn be held in contempt? well, i think you ll leave that to the relevant committees, but my hunch at this point, as jeffrey toobin just laid out, that we re very early on. we need to have coordination between bob mueller, the new special counsel who is leading the fbi the fbi investigation which is both counterintelligence and potentially criminal. i don t think he should be held in contempt out of respect for th
having conversations with the russians about this. how does he fire that person without raising very, very troubling questions about what he knew and what he told flynn to do? jeffrey, should flynn be fired? if it turns out he looked the vice president of the united states in the lie and delivered an untruth i don t know how that will be avoided. is that what happened? i don t know what happened. there has to be some perspective. i typed in the name of the last several presidents along with white house turmoil, and it s there for all of them. let me read two lines to be bipartisan. i don t want to give my friend a coronary because i will be deing clinton here. this is the christian science monitor. quote, the picture here is of an incompetent white house. it is no laughable keystone cops incompetence but a bright, yet inexperienced people finding their way in a loose and ineffective organization that clinton appears in these pages as an unsteady president. and of the bush 43 white
of reaching a massive dissention in the white house? i don t know about a massive one. this is a conflict in the intelligence community and the trump administration. keep in mind earlier that flynn has a long-running dispute, feud, with these people. there s a lot of widespread concern among the intelligence community that donald trump is running a weird ship. if there is a deep state here, we re seeing a deep state revolt against mike flynn, against potential relationships between the trump administration and russia. they feel weird about that, and so it remains to be seen especially also in seeing who gets nominated for the number two spot of the state department as well. there s been a lot of fights over elliott abrams and a lot of people that have since been moved aside. knees are the battles that are going to sort of determine what type of washington person is in there. there aren t a lot of trump-ites. there aren t enough bodies. flynn is one of them, and the intelligence com
somebody that doesn t blow back on him. ryan, really quickly, have you gotten a sense that anybody within the administration may be in his sights over this particular issue from your reporting and sources? i mean, at this point michael flynn is the diceiest one. he is still claiming that he has trump s support, and trump is saying that he has his support, but with flynn operating behind the scenes and with so many people out to get him, you know, he may wind up being the first to fall. it s amazing. we re in four weeks, and we re already doing countdowns on people like this. yeah. we re going to be talking a lot about michael flynn and some of the phone calls with the russian ambassador later on in the show. let me bring you back in and ask you about do you think that there s any appetite right now inside the white house to appeal this decision to the supreme court? is that a legal battle they want to undertake right now, or do they think it might be easier to cut their losses an
we know the vice president defended that on cbs. take a listen to this. the subject matter of sanctions or the actions taken by the obama administration did not come up in the conversation. they did not discuss anything having to do with the united states decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against russia. those elements were not part of that discussion. i mean, those guys are not mincing any words there. i mean, they re very clear about the fact that they do not believe that general flynn violated anything or even discussed the issue of sanctions. should flynn be fired for the phone calls or possibly even lying to the vice president about the nature of those phone calls, drew? i think yes, michael flynn should be fired but so should kellyanne conway and betsy devos. the administration is not particularly in competence or honesty. they re interested to people that say yes to the facility and facilitate his extreme agenda.