Flynn in Focus as Mueller Investigation Moves Forward (Audio)

the campaign and representatives of the Russian government. And this weekend, NBC reported that Mueller's office has evident has enough evidence to bring charges against former National Security advisor Michael Flynn and Flynn's son. Here to talk with us about uh, Michael Flynn, the Mueller investigation and where it might be going are William Banks, a professor at Syracuse University Law School,

and Andrew Kent, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. Andrew, what do we know about what the Special counsel is looking at Michael Flynn and his son for Oh, haven't had anything that I've seen come directly from Muller's office, but certainly based on what's been reported in the press, over the last six months. I think we have a

pretty good idea of what it might be. UM. I think probably the most likely thing would be a charge related to his acting as UM an agent of the Turkish Turkish government without registering with the Department of Justice,

as he's required to by federal law. You know, you might recall about six months ago, there's a pretty stunning report in the Wall Street Journal, then corroborated by some other outlets that Flynn in September year, pretty soon before the election, when he was acting as as Trump's main foreign policy advisor, had a meeting with representatives of the Turkish government about it seemingly how to extra legally spirit out of the country out of the United States a

U S. Green card holder who's a person of Turkish descent who opposes the heir to one government. And Flynn only very belatedly registered as a foreign agent UM. And just the seemingly pretty clear failure to register in the in the pretty clear law that says you have to register within ten days of becoming a foreign agent. It's just immediately say, that's pretty low hanging fruit for Mullah and Bill. The fact that Flynn's son is also under investigation.

Is that something that prosecutors might use to try to get him to flip. I've seen it with husbands and wives. Well, that's right. I think it's likely that that's what's going on as we await possible indictments against Flynn and or his son. Flynn could help his son here and return for offering more information to the to the team. UH Flynn Jr. Was at most of the meetings that Flynn was at UH and involved in most of the activities

that that and was just discussing with throughout Flint. So UH Flynn Jr. Is in legal trouble too as well as his father Andrew, based on the what we've now learned in the last week or so about the way the special counsel is bringing charges. I mean, if he had enough, if it's come out now that he has enough evidence to bring charges against Flynn, it can't be that, you know, this just suddenly happened. Um. One would think

he's known that for a while. So it would appears he's making decisions about what order to charge people in and for what. So we have these Manifort and Gates indictments and now we're finding out about Flynn, what what can you discern from all this about the way in which he's trying to play a strategy out in this investigation. Well, a number of people saw the distinction between the Manafort charges and then what happened with Pophidopolis as trying to

send a message to people in Flynn's shoes. And so Manafort had seemingly failed to cooperate with Mueller and he really got slammed in terms of the number of charges filed, and Mueller is seeking a lot of forfeiture from from Manafort engaged as well. Popping Offlas on the other hand, came off with, you know, just one charge and you know, we don't know anything about sentencing exposure, but probably could

end up with very little, if any jail time. Perhaps, So a lot of people saw that as saying, you know, get on the right side of this, cooperate with with Mueller's probe, and we will treat you fairly. And certainly, Michael Flynn is somebody who's been extremely close to Trump going way back on the campaign and then obviously served

as his national security advisor. Seems like somebody who has a large amount of information and so he would probably be precisely the type of person that Mueller would be sending those signals to. UM. You know, cooperate and and you know, get some lesser charges or if not, we're going to really throw the book at you. What do you think of that, Bill, and quickly? Do you agree that that's the way he's going It does look like that.

I agree with Andrew. I think that you know, certainly, in PLNS case, he's been looking at this investigation and stewing about his plight since February so most of the year now, as of course as his son to a vested degree, and he certainly he and his latins understand

the strategy that Mueller's teams following. It's a very methodical, UH strategy, and it is one I think clearly sims the signals that Andrew mentioned, that is, if you cooperate, you're going to be in far better shape personally than if you stonewall Bill. You know this. Now with with Flynn, you've got a report that the Special Council is looking directly at the president's White House staff rather than just

people who worked on the campaign. UM. There was also reports last week that Jared Kushner has turned over a lot of documents to the Special Counsel's office and that the investigation maybe looking at him given what we know about the way that Special Council Mueller is proceeding. You know, does Kushner have vulnerabilities that the Special Council may be

able to exploit here? I think he does. I think he does, as does Trump Junior Donald Jr. Because the evidence of collusion with Russians continues to UH multiply even with the Commerce secretaries stories over the weekend of connections to a company in Russian dealings are just ever more indications that there was involvement between the campaign UH and Russians of all sorts of testimony in Congress that's building up over the Facebook and other social media uses by

Russian influences and Russian financiers. Uh, it's a snowball in the snowball I think is gathering some momentum here, Andrew. In white color cases, people are often charged because they lied to the FBI. That's still a felony, even though people may say, oh, that's not such a big crime. But in this case, do we see Muller using something similar When with the indictment of Man of Fort and Gates, and the information against George Papadopoulos was based online to

the FBI in part. And could he be mulling filing against either Flynn or Jared Kushner about papers that they had to file for security clearance or national foreign agent papers and lying on them. Absolutely, those, uh, those possibilities

you mentioned are live ones. And then I would add to that that you know, it's been reported for a question time now that the FBI talked to Michael Flynn about his conversations during the transition period with the Russian ambassador kiss Leak, and at least according to you know, I think it was the New York Times and Washington Post, Flynn was received by the FBI to have been very misleading about his communications with kiss Leak. And you know, ligne to the FBI is also a felony under the

same statute. So yeah, you're correct that those you know, those kinds of charges are very common in white collar cases, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Flynn get charged with one or more misstatements to the federal government. Bill is um. You know. Another angle on this is

that another form or foreign policy advisor besides Papadopolis. A guy named Carter Page who has been on television a lot and who has um who has also just did six hours testifying before Congress in regard to you know, these matters, and he said that he has He had mentioned too now Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the campaign that he had a trip to Russia, uh planned and was going. Is there now jeopardy to Sessions as well?

As part of this investigation? I think there is. I think ass Andrews suggested that all statements are are violations of federal law, and Sessions I think was selective in his memory when he last testified publicly about these things. And uh, and I think he's the selectivity of his memory maybe further tested here in the in the coming weeks and months, because he was privy to these discussions

as well. There's one other person, of course, is when Andrew's going through the various ways in which Flynn might be vulnerable on on false statements. So there's one other person he apparently lied to, and that was the Vice President Andrew. They're also Carter Page. Though he did answer questions, he invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to produce documents during the interview. Once you once you start speaking, don't

you wave your right to the Fifth Amendment somewhat? You know, it's a it's a complicated area, but you know, once you voluntarily disclosed some information, generally speaking, you've waived your Fifth Amendment right as to the same subject matter. Um. You know, I don't know enough about the particulars of you know, what what carter Page was willing to say and what he was refusing to say, but certainly it

sounds like there might be arguments about waiver. You know, probably, uh, there'll be a judicial decision at some point about the scope of this um. You know, that's relatively common in grand jury investigations for there to be privileged issues that get brief to the court, and you know, you get a judicial decision on what kinds of documents are going to be produced or what kinds of questions can be

asked or not. Well. Our thanks to William Banks of Syracuse University Law School and Andrew kent Afford HM University School of Law for being here to talk with us on Bloomberg Law about the Special Counsel's ongoing investigation, which has seems to have been heating up for some time now, and I'm sure we're gonna be talking about that a lot going forward.