The Daily - Thursday, March 29, 2018

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

As the special counsel built his case against Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort, pressure was mounting for the men to to cooperate with the Russia inquiry. Then a lawyer for President Trump came to them with an idea: What if the president were to pardon his former advisers? Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, who has been covering the Russia investigation for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, as pressure was mounting on two of President Trump's former advisors, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a lawyer for the president came to the men with an idea. What if the president were to pardon them?

It's Thursday, March 29th. Okay. Mike Schmidt. Hey, it's Michael. Bar Bar. How are you? How are you? Not's Michael. How are you? How are you? Not bad.

Where actually are you? I'm in Duck, North Carolina. Is that a vacation destination? It's not a work destination. Let's put it that way. Anyway, I hope you're having a good time. I'm sure it's probably a little consuming to deal with all this, but... I've got a good landline.

That's all that matters. That's all that really matters, yeah. It's like if one of these things makes it, that's what I want to make it. I have the two things I need, a great landline and a refrigerator filled with Coke zeros. Mike Schmidt, where does this story begin? The story begins last fall

when I started hearing different tips about Mike Schmidt, where does this story begin? The story begins last fall when I started hearing different tips about Mike Flynn, the president's former national security advisor. Flynn was under investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller for a wide range of things, including his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition. including his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition. Flynn's lawyers and the president's lawyers had a joint defense agreement, a legal arrangement of sorts that allows them to work together and share information and have it protected by attorney-client privilege in a way that shields it from investigators. So investigators would never be able to get at it. shields it from investigators. So investigators would never be able to get at it. It allows a free flow of information, a sort of protection as they try and work together in the face of what they would have said at the time was an overzealous, overblown investigation by Mueller.

So then it seems like for the special counsel, Robert Mueller and his team, they would want to find a way to divide this team up, kind of separate the White House and separate Flynn like you would in a police investigation where, you know, you want to keep the witnesses in different rooms so they don't coordinate their stories. I think that Mueller was less concerned about that than he was gaining Flynn's cooperation. If Mueller was going to do a thorough look at the contacts between the Russians and the campaign, he had to talk to Flynn. Flynn had been at the center of those contacts. He had discussed with the Russian ambassador how they were going to respond to the Obama administration implementing sanctions. Flynn had lied to the FBI about it. There were all of these questions. And if Mueller was going to truly turn over every rock, he needed to know everything that Flynn knew. But to get to Flynn, it sounds like Mueller needed to kind of break him out of this mutual legal defense arrangement that he has with the White House. Earlier last year, our colleague Matt Apuzzo had said that we should keep an eye

out for defendants or witnesses pulling out of these agreements because he said it would be the first sign that someone was going to cooperate with the government, and they were no longer on the same team. They were becoming essentially adversaries. And I sort of poo-pooed it at the time, but Apuzzo turned out to be right. In what way? On Thanksgiving, I got a call from someone who said that Flynn had pulled out

of his joint defense agreement with the president. And what did that tell you? For us, it was the first and best and greatest sign that Flynn was going to flip, that he was going to cooperate with Mueller and tell him everything that he knew. And lo and behold, within a week, Flynn accepts a plea agreement, flips and becomes a witness. And so what are the tips that you're getting in the midst of all this? Flynn's police set off a lot of new information that was coming into us. And the most interesting and salacious one was something that I didn't even believe at the time that I heard it, which was that John Dowd, the president's lawyer, had offered a pardon

to Flynn's lawyer last year. Why didn't you believe that? Well, the problem is to be a good reporter in the Trump era, I think you sort of have to have an incredible imagination for the impossible, for things that you would never think would happen before. But it just seemed like such a aggressive move that would look at least politically very damaging to the president. It showed the severity that the president and his lawyers were taking the investigation that they would go to such lengths to use one of the president's greatest powers as a way of essentially defending himself.

So what would be the intention of the White House in making that offer when it did? Well, certainly one of the biggest possibilities would be the fact that they were trying to stop Flynn from cooperating with Mueller and telling Mueller everything that he knew. Because what would the assumption be if you're Flynn and you get that offer? The assumption would be, hey, there's no need to cooperate. We'll take care of you. We will literally pardon you. We will make sure that you face no legal consequences for anything you've done. We'll take all of these questions off the table and you will be fine, at least legally.

So what did you do with this tip? I put it in my notebook and I tried to figure out other ways of getting it confirmed, but I ran into dead end after dead end with it. I couldn't find anyone else that had heard about it and it was something that had heard about it. And it was something that was very tightly held. So by early last year, I thought I had taken it as far as I could, and I didn't think I had enough to write it. But then another reporter began to hear

similar things, not only about Flynn, but about Manafort. Paul Manafort. Yes, Paul Manafort, the president's former campaign chairman. And when you begin to hear that there's another example of the behavior, it gives the original tip about Flynn a bit more credibility. You start to think, well, okay, so if this information is coming in from another way about Manafort, then what does that mean about the Flynn information? And it really sort of galvanized our reporting and said, okay, there's something here. We really got to go after it. And what's the context for this offer being made to Paul Manafort? What was going on with him? Manafort was in a very similar situation to Flynn last summer.

Mueller was building an investigation against him, but he had not been charged yet. But as I recall it, Manafort is quite resistant to working with the special counsel. There's been a big distinction between Flynn and Manafort since the beginning of the investigation. Manafort has had the body posture of, I've got nothing to give up. I've done nothing wrong. I'm going to fight this to the end of the earth. Flynn has been very different. His lawyer has been very quiet. They have not made any pronouncements about trying to fight this. And if you were reading between the lines and looking at Flynn, you sort of wondered, maybe he really does have something

to offer. So, Mike, I'm not sure I understand. Why make the pardon offer if it doesn't look like Manafort is at risk of flipping the way that Flynn has? Well, that's a good question. That would sort of lend itself to an argument from the president's side, which is the president simply thought these investigations of Manafort and Flynn were out of control. There was nothing to them. And for the betterment of the country, they should be pardoned and let go. But why would the president offer people pardons before the investigation is even complete, before we know exactly what they've done? Well, I mean, I'm not sure how much we can

read into it in the middle of the investigation. This was a cloud over the White House. This was something that had really derailed the president, distracted him, created headlines that were not certainly about his agenda or what he wanted to do. There was a widespread perception, at least among Democrats, that he had done something wrong and the people around him had done something wrong. And he could simply say, look, I know there was no collusion. I know we did nothing wrong. These guys did nothing wrong. This is completely unfair. They're being swept up in a political fight. And I'm going to pardon them because we need to move on from this.

And how did the lawyers for Manafort and Flynn respond to these offers? Well, obviously, if you look at Flynn's side, they took a plea, a safer path, agreeing to cooperate with Mueller, working with Mueller, realizing that perhaps a path of a pardon would be perilous. They've gone with the prosecutor instead of waiting for the president. On Manafort's side, he's told others that he didn't want to take a plea because he says, look, I did nothing wrong. This would make it look like I did something wrong. And I think the government has abused their power and I want to fight this. So at a certain point, Mike, you feel comfortable, along with your colleagues,

reporting this, understanding that this involves a lot of confidential sources. What happens? It's now six months since you started hearing these tips. We did what I often call diligence on this information. And after talking to lots of different folks on background about what they knew and using a lot of reporters, there's five bylines on this story, which is unusual for one of our pieces. a lot of reporters. There's five bylines on this story, which is unusual for one of our pieces. We got to the point that we felt comfortable with the information and ready to move forward. Good afternoon.

So has the White House acknowledged that this happened, that these offers were made, that Dowd went to the lawyers for Flynn and for Manafort and offered them essentially a pardon. And with that, I will take your questions. Cecilia. Sarah, are pardons on the table for anyone involved in the Russia probe? Well, Sarah Huckabee Sanders stood up in the briefing room on Wednesday and said, Look, I would refer you back to the statement from Ty Cobb in the report that you're asking about, in which he said, I've only been asked about pardons by the press and have routinely responded on the record that no pardons are under discussion or under consideration at the White House. Can you

say unequivocally that no one here has discussed pardons in this case? I can say that Ty Cobb is the person that would be most directly involved in this. And he's got a statement on the record saying that there's no discussion and there's no consideration of those at this time at the White House. There were no discussions about this. And what does that mean? What does that mean? Does that mean there are no discussions about it at this time? Or there have never been any discussions about it? Or this is something that they're planning on doing? The problem with this White House is that you cannot take what they say from the podium too seriously

because they have such a history of providing incorrect information. And just to be clear, no one in the White House has officially denied this reporting. The president's lawyers, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow, said they know nothing about discussions between Dowd and anyone about pardons. And Dowd is no longer in the White House. Dowd's no longer in the White House, but he told me on Wednesday that he had never made such offers. But then he did say, I don't even know what we would pardon Flynn for. I'm not sure what he did wrong, which is an interesting refrain, which sort of gets back at the notion that Dowd and the president thought the case against Flynn was flimsy. And Mike, do we know from your reporting whether the president knew that Dowd was making these

offers or discussing the possibility of these offers to Flynn and Manafort? Well, that's the biggest question. That's where we get into in this stage of the story. What did the president know? And when did he know this? Was Dowd simply out freelancing, running his mouth, talking to lawyers, just trying to do anything to stop these guys from pleading? Or was he directed directly by the president to engage in these discussions and to plant the seed in the lawyers'

minds that this was something that could happen? That's what we don't know. What did the president know? What was his involvement? And if you talk to folks that know Dow, that have worked with Dow, they find it hard to believe that he would go out and do something like this simply on his own. I also get the sense just from watching all the reporting of the past few weeks about the president's legal team that he's deeply involved in managing them and hiring them or firing them. Well, I think it's more that the president thinks he is his best lawyer. He thinks he's his best spokesman, his best strategist, but he thinks that he knows how to navigate this better than the lawyers do. One of the reasons that Dowd left is that the president

wants to sit down with Mueller for an interview because the president believes he can explain to Mueller how he did nothing wrong. Dowd, who knows that the president often doesn't tell the truth, thought this was a terrible idea, that there was a lot of downside to this, and the president could just increase his legal exposure. Does this feel like the essential question to you, the president's role in this? Now that so much of the talk around the Mueller investigation is about the question of obstruction of justice, and this seems like it could fall into that bucket. This is similar to other things the president has been accused of. Was the president trying to obstruct justice when he fired the FBI director? Was the president trying to obstruct the investigation when he asked Comey to end the investigation into Flynn in February of 2017?

Was this pardon some sort of effort to try and stop these defendants from cooperating? The president has the power to pardon. He has the power to fire the FBI director. He has the power to end an investigation. But was he doing that for the betterment of the country because he knew there was nothing here and to simply try and move things along and get this shadow off of him and move the country in a direction that it needed to go into? Or was he doing these things to protect himself? That's the central question of the obstruction investigation.

Was the president doing these things with corrupt intent or simply as a way of being the chief executive of the country and saying, I need to do these things for the betterment of the country and I know there's nothing here? And how would we ever figure out

the answer to that? The kind of core question of motivation and intent? Well, you'd have to get inside the kind of core question of motivation and intent? Well, you'd have to get inside the president's mind. In a sense, this story is almost unsatisfying because it is exactly where we've been all along. It is exactly where we've been all along. Has the president and his lawyers done things because they have something to hide and they need to protect themselves? Or is it that they know that there's nothing here and they're just trying to move it along?

That is the central question of this. And this story, unfortunately, doesn't answer that. And while this is interesting and it's a new piece of information, I still can't tell you what was at the heart of the president's intentions in anything. Which is why Robert Mueller so badly, as you said, wants to talk to the president himself to understand the why. If Mueller could get the president to truthfully tell him what he was thinking, then we would have a much better understanding of these different events. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, the Mueller investigation released a document

revealing that in the final weeks of the 2016 election, a top Trump campaign official, Rick Gates, had frequent contact with a person the FBI believes had active links with Russian spy agencies. The document also shows that Gates was aware that this person had ties to Russian intelligence. He is identified in the document only as Person A, but the Times is reporting that he is Konstantin Kalimnik,

who for years was Manafort's right-hand man in his business dealings with Ukraine. And after weeks of speculation that he would fire his Secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin, the president ousted him on Wednesday and replaced him with his own doctor, Ronny Jackson. In summary, the president's overall health is excellent. His cardiac performance during his physical exam was very good. He continues to enjoy the significant long-term cardiac and overall health benefits

that come from a lifetime of abstinence from tobacco and alcohol. Earlier this year, Jackson performed Trump's annual physical and declared him both mentally and physically fit, saying that Trump, who is 71, has, quote, more energy than just about anybody, is very articulate, and passed a cognitive test with a perfect score. So, you know, the fact that the president got, you know, 30 out of 30 on that exam, I think that, you know, there's no indication whatsoever that he has any cognitive issues. And, you know, on a day-to-day basis, like I said before, it's been my experience that

the president, you know, he's very sharp and, you know, he's very articulate when he speaks to me. And I found no reason whatsoever to think that the president has any issues whatsoever with this thought process. All clinical data indicates that the president is very healthy and that he will remain so for the duration of his presidency. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.