The FRONTLINE Interviews

Karen DeYoung

The Washington Post

Karen DeYoung is a reporter and associate editor at The Washington Post, where she covers national security.

This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk conducted on May 11, 2018. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Trump’s Showdown

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[Then-FBI Director James] Comey goes to his office, opens his file, and at the top of the file is Gen. Michael Flynn, the new national security adviser....Essentially, what you and I are talking about is the two weeks after that or so.What does he know about Flynn, that we know of?

Let me just ask you: Do you want me to go back in terms of how Flynn and Trump got together?

You're free to do that, yeah.Context is everything.What does he know about Flynn?Who is Flynn?How did the two of them get together?We’ll walk ourselves right up to your interview with Flynn and the news story.

Right, right.Michael Flynn was a retired three-star [lieutenant] general from the Army, and he had really distinguished himself in Afghanistan and in Iraq, largely doing intelligence.I think a lot of us knew him who had been to Afghanistan in the war.He was very savvy, very smart, and was a good strategist on the ground there.When Obama appointed him to be head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he came in really wanting to make a lot of changes there, to make defense intelligence, in some ways, a sort of equal of the CIA, and to take the role that he had played, particularly in Afghanistan, and really institutionalize that for the military, so that they could expand their own intelligence presence in a lot of these war zones.

It didn’t work out so well.I think the Obama administration thought he was going too far.He wasn’t considered a good manager.And basically, Obama fired him.Obviously, he wasn’t very happy about that.He retired from the military, and he became a sort of spokesman for a certain point of view.He joined a speaker’s bureau.He was interviewed a lot on television.And, as part of this new role of being a kind of foreign policy intelligence spokesperson, … he appeared on a lot of Russian television stations in this country, and he was invited to go to an anniversary gala for RT, Russia Today, which is the government-sponsored outlet that has an English-language outlet in the United States.He was going to give a speech there.It was arranged by his speaker’s bureau.He was paid for it.And he went there and was seated at the head table.And in his telling, the seat next to him was empty, but eventually President Putin came and sat in it, and they chatted for a little while.Lots of photographs were taken, and President Putin then left.

He felt like he had a sort of expertise in Russia, in Russian affairs, and he shared then-candidate Trump’s views that the United States should have a better relationship with Russia....So these two forces, Trump and Flynn, kind of came together at a time, late 2015, early 2016, when Trump really needed people who were recognized foreign policy experts.In the beginning of 2016, all the other Republican candidates were coming out with their lists of foreign policy experts who were aiding their campaigns, were advising them, and Trump didn’t have anybody.

So early that year, he started trying to recruit people.He had a lot of trouble.Many of the recognized experts—people Trump would now say are part of the “swamp” in Washington—didn’t want to be part of his campaign.They didn’t like what he was saying.They didn’t feel he was qualified.Many of them had signed letters and public statements.There was a Never Trump movement.

But gradually, some people entered the orbit, and Flynn was one of them.In fact, Flynn became a very central figure as 2016 went on, as a recognized foreign policy expert who was advising the campaign. So Trump wins the primary.…

… Trump gets elected in early November.On Dec. 1 , Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, this longtime Russian ambassador in Washington, makes a trip up to Trump Tower and meets with Flynn and meets with [Trump’s son-in-law and adviser] Jared Kushner and some other people.There's some suggestion, we later learn in this meeting, that perhaps Trump—at least in this transition period, and maybe even after he takes office—should have a back channel outside of the State Department, outside of the swamp in Washington, where he can communicate directly to Russia.And they talk about that.

Is that an unusual suggestion, unusual idea, to have a back channel with the Russians?

Very.Well generally, you would think that that’s the job of your State Department.It’s the job, to some extent, of your National Security Council.Different presidents have done it in different ways, but you don’t have a back channel that's not part of your diplomatic security apparatus, because they all work for you, and you would think that you didn’t need to have a back channel that worked around them.

So the fact that they're talking about it, what does that tell you about them?

I think it says that there was a distrust of anyone outside the close Trump orbit, which was the family and people who had kind of been in, from the beginning, and who were considered part of the circle of trust.

Definitely including Flynn.

And definitely, at that point, yeah.Flynn had, in addition to his trip to Moscow in late 2015, when he was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he had also traveled to Moscow to meet with the head of the GRU, the Russian counterpart organization, which was not totally unusual.But it gave him a little more cache, and more importantly, it also introduced him, for the first time, to Ambassador Kislyak.So they had really had two meetings, one to arrange that trip in 2013, and he also met with Ambassador Kislyak in 2015, before he made his trip for the RT speech.

So he brings Kislyak up to Trump Tower in New York, 1st of December.They have this meeting.And he is communicating regularly, we later learn, with Kislyak on the telephone.Not a horribly unusual thing.I think that every presidential transition wants to position itself.It gradually became clear that Flynn was going to have a prominent position in the administration and that part of his job would be to maintain those contacts.

So he was texting, speaking on the telephone intermittently with Kislyak in December, arranging contacts, talking about various issues that were going to be outstanding, when the administration was inaugurated.

It sounds like the inner circle is small enough that it seems almost impossible not to believe that he is also reporting this information up to the president-elect.

It was only much later that some of these conversations we learned had been coordinated with others in this sort of circle.At that time, you remember, the president-elect was spending all of his time either in New York or in Florida, at Mar-a-Lago, and this small group of people who were close to him kind of went back and forth, as the president-elect did, to these places.So there were emails; there were phone calls; there were communications.“I'm going to talk to Kislyak.What do we want to say?What do we want to know?"Even though later, as Flynn got into trouble, many people in the administration said, “Well, we didn’t know anything about this."And it turned out that to some extent—it’s not totally clear at this point to what extent—but people did know.And there were talks back and forth, and there were instructions were given, and reports were made after some conversations took place.… <v MICHAEL KIRK> So he talks to Kislyak.But when he’s talking to Kislyak on the telephone—Gen. Flynn is a former intelligence officer; he must know that Kislyak’s conversations are—there's somebody at the NSA listening to everything.You would think.And in fact, there actually had been a meeting in early December within the top levels of the transition, the people who were working on national security, where they actually had a meeting to discuss this, and said, “Look, you know, all foreign officials in Washington are subject to have their communications intercepted, just so you're aware of that, so you know."So he would have known it anyway.But I think that they did specifically have a meeting where it was discussed.

So then comes this day when Barack Obama, the [intelligence community] has delivered him an awful lot of information, and he decides, finally, to do something about Russia.The sanctions, throws out 35 people, … closes down a couple of safe houses.And on that same day, while America is waiting for a response from Putin, … down in the Dominican Republic, Mike Flynn takes to the airwaves.

Flynn had had, around Christmas, in late December, several conversations with Ambassador Kislyak.They exchanged Christmas greetings.The Russian ambassador to Turkey had been assassinated.Flynn extended commiserations and condolences about that.They were trying to set up a telephone call between Trump and Putin.At some point, they wanted to talk about that.The Russians were about to have a big meeting about Syria, and they had invited the Obama administration to come, and the Obama administration had said no.The Russians wanted Trump to send somebody to this meeting, so there were things to talk about, and they did talk about all these things.

And then comes Dec 29.Obama, as had been widely anticipated in the days before, says that he is going to throw 35 Russian diplomats, whom he identifies as intelligence operatives, out of the country, and close down two houses in Long Island and outside of Washington that the Russians have operated as diplomatic installations, that the Americans say have actually been used as intelligence installations.

Kislyak places a call to Flynn, says, “I want to talk to you."Flynn gets word of this in the Dominican Republic where he’s vacationing with his wife, and eventually, later that day, they talk.The question is, what was said?Did Flynn communicate that the incoming administration didn’t agree with these sanctions?Did he say: “Don’t worry.We’ll take care of it.We’ll have a different policy”?Did he say anything about the sanctions?Nobody knew.Well, at that point, nobody knew that this call had taken place.

… That’s on Dec. 29.

On Dec. 30, as the Obama administration is waiting for the reaction, which they fully expect that Russia will do what it has always done under these circumstances, which is to reciprocate by throwing out some American diplomats, by shutting down some American properties in Russia, Putin makes an announcement and says: “Nope, we’re not going to do anything.We’re going to wait and see what happens."Trump then tweets, “Smart man.He did exactly the right thing.I knew he was smart."Surprise to everyone.

A couple of weeks later, David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post, writes a column on Jan. 12 and says, among other things, that there had been a telephone conversation between Flynn and Kislyak the very day that Obama had announced these measures, and he said, “We don’t know what they talked about, but it would be very interesting to know if they talked about sanctions, if there was any communication from the incoming Trump administration that said, ‘Look, don’t worry; we’ll take care of this,’” or anything.We just didn’t know.

Immediately, the incoming administration, still not inaugurated at this point, is asked questions.… I spoke to people on the national security transition team: Did they talk about sanctions?“Absolutely not.We’ve spoken to Gen. Flynn.This didn’t come up.They talked about the Syria meeting.They talked about the upcoming phone call between Trump and Putin.They talked about all these issues that we all knew that they were involved with.So no, didn’t happen."

Later on, about 10 days later, maybe incoming Vice President Pence is on television, is interviewed, and asked again about this.And he said: “Absolutely not.I’ve spoken to Gen. Flynn myself.He’s assured me that there was nothing untoward, and sanctions were not discussed in this phone call.And then he went through—we had a lot of things to talk about.This is what we talked about."

Why does this idea not just die with the first denials?What is it about it that makes people, you and others, interested in keeping an ear open and paying attention to how Pence answers the question?

Well, I think it was the surprising reaction, public reaction by Russia, with President Putin saying, “OK, we’re not going to do anything for a while."It was the tweets from Trump, which came in a series of complimentary tweets about Putin, and talking about how he wanted to have a good relationship with Russia, but saying: “See?I told you Putin was smart."So I think that it was the question of what the relationship was going to be with Russia, at a time where the relationship with Russia, under the Obama administration, at least, was very bad, … and Trump had indicated that he wanted a new relationship.

Even in light of what had happened over the summer and in the fall?

Trump, remember, was still saying, “I don’t think the Russians interfered with the election,” or then at times, he said, “Well, maybe they did, but maybe it was somebody else."And he did not accept that conclusion.So I think that everyone was waiting to see, “Well, this is interesting."You know, every administration, certainly since the Cold War, and even during the Cold War, the question was: what were they going to do about Russia?And you’ll remember the Obama administration had come in, and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, said, “We’re going to reset the relationship."It didn’t work out so well.It hadn’t worked out very well for anyone.And now Trump was saying, “I'm different; I can have a relationship with this guy."So we were all waiting to see what it was going to be.

And the question was, had he, even before the inauguration, taken some steps to start that relationship in a way that some people would say was questionable, and that arguably was undermining the foreign policy of the administration that actually was in power at the time these conversations took place? …

… The inauguration happens.Flynn has been named President Trump’s national security adviser.The FBI and the Justice Department, which at that point is headed by Sally Yates, who had been the deputy attorney general, had become the acting attorney general while they were waiting for Jeff Sessions to be confirmed [as attorney general]—they have a meeting, really within days of the inauguration, and say, “Look, we need to tell the new administration about this, because really, if Flynn in fact has lied to people in the White House about the nature of this conversation, he could be subject to blackmail, so they need to know."

So Sally Yates sets up a meeting with Don McGahn, who’s the White House counsel in the new administration, and goes in and says, “Look, this is what we know."I believe this was … the last week in January.She has two meetings there and says: “You need to know about this.[It’s] up to you about what you do about it, but we believe, in law enforcement, that this could open him up to some kind of blackmail."

… We know that it’s going to take 18 days before you guys write a story, and he gets fired.

Right, right.

Which, to some people, is a shocking—

Clearly, clearly some people in the White House knew.

Right.

Do you want me to go on?

Yes.

I had, at that time, been sending messages to Gen. Flynn for several weeks, once it was clear he was going to be the national security adviser, and to people around him, people working for him, asking for an interview about how he was going to structure the National Security Council.Every president has done it differently, has set up different directorates to manage different issues.The Obama administration had been under a lot of criticism because the numbers of people in the NSA staff had really—I think even they thought it had gotten out of hand.They were accused of micromanaging the State Department, the Pentagon.Everybody thought the White House was too powerful, and Trump had said, during the campaign, he was going to slim it down.

I wanted to talk to Flynn about what he was going to do.I had written stories in the Clinton administration, the Bush administration and the Obama administration about the structure of the NSA staff as a way of looking at policy formation.I had approached them and said, “I’d like to do this with you as you start out, and look at what your plans are—not so much a policy discussion, although that was part of it, but also to look at how structure in fact affects policy, and what your plans are."

This communication had gone back and forth for a while, and finally they agreed to it during the first week in February.At that time, some of my colleagues at the Post and I had been working on a story about really still going back to David Ignatius’ column, what really happened in these conversations?What accounted for Putin’s really strange behavior in not responding to these expulsions?

As it turned out, the day that the interview was scheduled, which was Feb. 8, happened to be the day that that story was ready.We had found out that, in fact, there were intercepts, and had a variety of sources saying that yes, they had discussed sanctions.And it was not my purpose in doing this interview.They had asked Flynn’s office and the White House to respond.The story was ready to run and had gotten no response.

By coincidence, that happened to be the day that this interview had been arranged to talk to Gen. Flynn.

When did he talk to the FBI?

At some point around the time that Acting Attorney General Yates had spoken to the White House, Flynn had actually been interviewed by the FBI.They asked him what he had discussed with Kislyak.He said: “Syria, conversations between Putin and Trump that they were trying to set up, various other things.Did not talk about sanctions."

… We didn’t know at the time that this [FBI] interview had taken place, obviously.Feb. 8, the day I have this interview scheduled, it was supposed to be, I think, 5:00, was already dark in Washington.I remember that.And as I started to go over there, I spoke to my colleagues.[They] said: “Look, this is our last chance.Can you ask him about this?"So I said, “OK."

What did they want you to ask him?

Well, the question was to talk a little bit [about] how he had developed a relationship with Kislyak, the conversations he had had with Kislyak leading up to the inauguration, and on the day of the Obama announcement about the expulsions, did they talk about sanctions?The vice president had said that Flynn had assured him that they hadn’t, but we hadn’t heard from Flynn himself.

… Are you at all anxious about just personally going in and asking this question and wondering how is it going to go?Because it feels like a big deal for you to ask the question and for him to possibly lie to you as well.

No.The truth is, I was much more concerned with what I was actually working on myself at the time, which was a story about the NSC. But anyway, I went in.We went into the national security adviser’s office, which is on the northwest corner of the West Wing.It’s a nice office.A lot of the offices except the Oval Office in the West Wing are not particularly nice.They're small.A lot of them don’t have windows.A lot of them, they're in the basement.This is a nice office.I've interviewed lots of national security advisers there.When Gen. Flynn was there—

Is he surrounded by memorabilia?What is it like in that office?Because he’s had a storied career, but it’s military.What does he have in there?

You know, I don’t actually know.What I noticed was that he, like everyone else, had changed the furniture around.There's a sort of grouping of a sofa and some armchairs.There's a desk.There's a not-too-large conference table, and that’s pretty much it.Various national security advisers had changed the arrangement of those things, but the actual components of the room hadn’t change.There are windows on two sides, again, very unusual.One looks out from the front of the White House to the driveway, facing Lafayette Square.The other looks to the Old Executive Office Building, where the actual NSA staff have their offices.But this is a nice office, and it’s in a very prominent location.

We went in.We sat at the conference table.Gen. Flynn, and the only other person there was Mike Anton, who was the NSC spokesperson.I started by talking about—oh, we had some discussion about whether I was allowed to record in that room or not, and I said that I had recorded many conversations in that room in the past, with his predecessors, and I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t record this one.So I did, and they didn’t object.

We started talking about the National Security Council structure, how it was organized.Went on for maybe 30 or 40 minutes, and talked about some policy issues, talked about Iran, Syria, North Korea.At that point, one of his assistants knocked on the door and came in and said, “You have a meeting,” which is the traditional way to say, “You wanted me to tell you so that you could get out of this."

Yeah, exactly.

And he said, “Fine, fine."

What's his aspect during this conversation?

He was very direct, very pleasant.I had spoken to him before when he was in Afghanistan on several occasions, very relaxed, engaged.We talked a lot about Iran.He was very insistent that the Trump administration was going to be tougher on Iran, didn’t like the Iran nuclear deal, all the things that we knew about the incoming administration in policy terms.

Not boastful, not bombastic, not in any way.

No, no, no, no.In private, he’s not a bombastic person.He was sitting back in a chair, you know, just completely calm.After it became clear that we were going to have to wind up, I said: “Look, I need to ask you a couple of other things.Some of my colleagues have been working on a story, and they knew I was going to come and talk to you, so I wanted to ask you."

Does he change in any way when you say this?

No.

Still—

Doesn’t respond.Just looks at me.

Back here, keeping his cards.

I said, “It’s about your relationship with Ambassador Kislyak and your conversations with him."I started out saying, “How did you come to know him, and what kind of relationship do you have with him?"And he said, well, you know, he had made this trip as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2013, and Ambassador Kislyak, who was the ambassador then, had helped arrange it.When he went at the end of 2015 to the RT celebration in Russia, he had paid a courtesy call on the ambassador, and they had renewed their acquaintanceship.

Ambassador Kislyak had also attended a speech, Trump’s first big foreign policy speech, which was in March of 2016, as did some other diplomats.But Ambassador Kislyak was there, very prominently.He sat in the front row.He chatted with people not only after the speech, but in a private reception that was held.It was at the Mayflower Hotel, where bigwigs had gathered.So he talked about that and how he knew him, and said that, as he began to move in to prepare for his job as the national security adviser, that they had had several conversations.

Again, he said they talked and exchanged texts with Christmas greetings.They spoke about Syria.They spoke about all the things that we knew they had spoken about.And I said, “Well, so you had conversations,” and I listed off the dates that we knew.And I said, “And on Dec. 29, right after President Obama announced the sanctions against Russia for election interference, you spoke to him again."And he said, “Yes."He said: “You know, I was in the Dominican Republic, in fact.I was on vacation, and I got word that he wanted to talk to me, so we had a telephone call."And I said, “Did you talk about the sanctions?"And he said, “No."

Aspect change at all?

No.And he just said no.Nothing else.And I said: “Not in any way, shape or form?The subject never came up?"And he said, “No."And I said, “Well, did you, in any way, talk about what the relationship was going to be between Russia and the United States under the Trump administration, that perhaps it would be different than it was with Obama, and that perhaps they should wait and see what was going to happen in terms of the sanctions before they retaliated?"And he said, “No, never."

I asked the question every way I could think of to ask it.And the whole interview was on background, which meant that I could quote him as a senior administration official, but not by name.Shortly after that, the interview was over, and I walked out with Mike Anton.And as we were walking out of the West Wing, I said: “Look, I would like to have the stuff about Kislyak on the record.I need to have him on the record saying that."And he said: “Well, I'm going to have to check with him.I’ll let you know."And I left, and I was walking—it was very cold; I remember that—I was walking across Lafayette Park and my cell phone rang, and it was Mike Anton, and he said: “OK, I've spoken to him.You can put that on the record."I said, “All the Kislyak stuff?"He said, “Yes, it’s on the record."I said, “OK."

Did you know he was lying?

I knew that we had already prepared a story saying that the conversations were intercepted and that they did discuss sanctions, which is why I asked him several times and in several different ways, and I think gave him every opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say about that.I got back to the office.By that time it was maybe 6:30.I quickly transcribed that portion of the tape.We had a meeting.I said, “This is what he said."They said, “Well, we’re going to have to go back to sources on this”—because we were prepared to put the story out online that night—and said: “Well, we’re going to have to wait.We’re going to have to wait and go back to sources and see what they say."That was it for that night.

The next morning, I woke up, and I had an email on my cell phone from Mike Anton saying, “I need to talk to you."And I called.And he said, “Gen. Flynn would like to give you another statement that would supersede what he told you last night."And I said, “Well, I don’t—what is it?"And he said basically that he didn’t recall any conversation about sanctions during this telephone call with Ambassador Kislyak.It was possible, but he didn’t recall it.And I said, “Well, he can certainly say both things, but he can't supersede what he said last night on the record."And I said, “I’d like for you to speak to the main authors of the story."I called Greg Miller, who was the principal author of the story, and I said, “You need to talk to Michael Anton."

So they basically had the same conversation, where he gave a statement saying that Mike Flynn did not recall; that it was possible, but he didn’t recall.We basically put both statements in the story, that when he was first asked, he said no several times, and then he—the next morning—said that it was possible, but he didn’t recall it.And we published the story that morning.

In my memory of it, this is one of the first bombshells in the ensuing battle.What was the response?

This was a Thursday, I believe.The questions asked—the White House just kind of stonewalled.You know, I'm trying to remember what they said between Thursday and Monday, and I can't.

… And the weekend, a lot of other things are happening over the weekend, and it becomes overshadowed by North Korean missile launches.I believe the Japanese prime minister was visiting that weekend?

[Shinzo] Abe is there, yes.

Yes.Was visiting.And that kind of occupied attention until Monday, when the White House moves back to Washington.Kellyanne Conway is asked on camera that morning, “Does the president still have confidence in Michael Flynn?"She says, “Absolutely, yes, he does."There is a White House briefing.[Press Secretary] Sean Spicer.“Does the president have confidence in Mike Flynn?"“Yes, he does.Everything’s fine."And it’s not until late in that afternoon that, all of a sudden, it’s announced that Gen. Flynn has resigned.

Do you know what happened?

… I think that that afternoon it became clear that many in the new White House, in fact, had known that there were intercepts of these conversations; had known that Gen. Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI.Mike Pence, I think, was the angriest of all, because he was the one who had gone out in public and said, “I personally have talked to Gen. Flynn and been assured that there was no discussion of sanctions, that this didn’t happen."

Gradually, over the day, it became clear that this was not tenable, and President Trump, who I think was determined at that point to stand by Mike Flynn, made one of his very fast decisions that he’s become known for, and said, at the end of the day, “That’s it; he’s out,” and it was then announced that Gen. Flynn had resigned.

… One wonders if the Post, if you hadn’t asked those questions and the Post hadn’t run that story, if Flynn would have survived.

It certainly would have taken more time, because obviously, eventually, Mike Flynn was indicted for lying to the FBI, and the FBI knew.I don’t think, as someone who was indicted, that he could have remained in his job.But it certainly would have taken a long time.The question then becomes, why did the White House wait so long?President Trump’s explanation for why Flynn had to go was because he had misled the vice president, but many, many people knew, at least several weeks before our story ran, that Mike Flynn had misled the vice president.

The president takes this as an opportunity essentially to say: “The press fired Mike Flynn. This wouldn’t have had to happen.…”

Well, I think we didn’t know, and we still really don’t know for sure, what Trump knew and when he knew it.Again, many people in the White House knew.Did the president know?I don’t know whether he did or not.He chose to play it as the press ganging up against Mike Flynn.But there were certainly people in his White House and in his transition team that were very concerned about this.Others who knew about it perhaps were not so concerned, who sort of agreed with what had happened, with these communications, and who knew to some degree about them at the time.It’s not clear.

You know, there have been emails released and leaked since then about communications between Flynn and national security transition team members and advisers who were at Mar-a-Lago at the time this conversation took place over the Christmas holidays, who spoke to Flynn, who communicated with Flynn, both before and after his conversation with Ambassador Kislyak.It’s not totally clear from those communications—they're almost kind of written in a code, you know.“Are you going to talk about this or that?"“Yes, we spoke about this or that."But it’s not completely clear.

So again, the question arises, were they telling the president all of this, or the president-elect, and the president after the inauguration?It’s just, we don’t know.But certainly President Trump, as he has often done since then, chose to say that it was the media that had ganged up on a member of his administration, made a big deal out of nothing, and forced him to let that person go.…

… Let’s just do the Lavrov-Kislyak meeting. So Comey is fired.

… On May 2, President Trump and President Putin had a telephone conversation.Among the things they discussed was a visit that [then-Secretary of State] Rex Tillerson had made to Russia in March, to meet with the foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.He also had a meeting with President Putin.In this May 2 conversation between Putin and Trump, Putin reminded Trump of that.There was a kind of reciprocal relationship of long standing that meetings on both sides would be reciprocated.In other words, Putin had received Tillerson when he was there, and by coincidence, [Putin] said: “My foreign minister, Lavrov, is going to be in the United States later this month, in May.Will you see him?"And Trump said, “Sure."

… As it turned out, Lavrov was going to be in Alaska.That was the part of the United States he was visiting.There was a meeting of the Arctic Council, which is a group of countries that have territory above the Arctic Circle.Tillerson was going.Lavrov was going.And once Trump said he would meet with Lavrov, Lavrov completely changed his plans and came to Washington first, which is not on the way to Alaska if you're coming from Moscow.

But anyway, it was not put on the president’s public schedule until very shortly before the meeting took place, and there was no pool spray.What usually happens with meetings with foreign dignitaries in the Oval Office is, immediately before or immediately after the meeting, the press pool, which is a small group of reporters and cameramen, are ushered into the office, and this is where you see the two of them sitting in the armchairs in front of the fireplace, and they chat, and everybody takes pictures.Sometimes reporters shout out questions, and sometimes they answer, and sometimes they don’t.Then the reporters and the cameras are quickly all hustled out, and they have their meeting, or if they’ve already had their meeting, they leave.

There was no pool spray for this.It was Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak; President Trump; Secretary Tillerson; H. R. McMaster, who was the national security adviser who replaced Gen. Flynn; Dina Powell, who was his deputy; and two Russia experts.I'm not quite sure—I assume they were from the NSC; maybe they were from the State Department.And two photographers were allowed in, just to record this meeting.

It was understood by the White House that they were official government photographers.That was certainly the case in the White House, and they assumed it was the case with the photographer traveling with Lavrov.After the meeting was over, however, all of a sudden the Russian foreign ministry tweets pictures of the meeting, which actually were taken by a photographer for TASS, the Russian news agency, and TASS publishes the photographs.And they are pictures not of them sitting in the armchairs in front of the fireplace, looking serious and about to have a serious conversation, but standing up, Kislyak, Lavrov and Trump, laughing, shaking hands, patting each other on the back, and seeming to have a sort of very pleasant social visit.

The White House is kind of taken aback by this and quickly releases its own pictures, which are very serious and of a serious meeting.Afterward, as reporters start to say, “Well, what happened in this meeting?What’d you talk about?,” it becomes clear that Trump had said—remember, this was the day after he fired Jim Comey as head of the FBI—Trump says: “We’re going to have a great relationship.You know, there's this investigation.It’s just become a total irritant for me."And he says, according to accounts of some people who were in the meeting, he says, [Jim Comey’s] departure, his firing, “has lifted a great weight from me.The guy was a nut job."

… If you're Trump’s lawyer, the fact pattern, the attitude, if there's an obstruction once in an office where you’ve shooed everybody out of the way, there's a firing that certainly might look like obstruction.And now there's joyous rapture after the fact, and name calling of the person you’ve just let go.

Who was investigating your relationship with these people.

Right.

You know, I'm sure that we don’t know what goes on in private diplomatic meetings or meetings between heads of government or foreign ministers and secretaries of state.I'm sure there was a level of serious discussion.The real problem was that what came out of it was a very different view.It was a view of back-slapping guys sharing a joke or a funny comment.It was of the president sharing with them his pleasure at having fired the head of the FBI, who was investigating interference in the U.S. election, and possible obstruction of justice by the Trump administration in regard to that possible interference.That’s who he was meeting with.

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