The words were as startling and as ominous as any defendant in a courtroom would ever want to hear.

I cannot hide my disgust, my disdain, for this criminal offense.

So spoke US Judge Emmett Sullivan this week, as he excoriated President Trump's former National Security Advisor, retired three-star General Michael Flynn.

When he entered the courtroom that day to hear the judge pronounce his sentence, Flynn had every reason to believe he would get off with no jail time for his admitted crime of lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December 2016.

But Sullivan, a judge with no patience for government misconduct, would have none of it.

Flynn had lied to two FBI agents while serving as a top US official and he had done so on the physical premises of the White House in an office in the West Wing. Sullivan repeated that point twice.

He signaled that, notwithstanding that the prosecutors for Special Counsel Robert Mueller had recommended no incarceration in exchange for Flynn's cooperation in the Russia probe, he was prepared to send the defendant to prison after all.

Flynn was really prepared to go through with this. Flynn and his lawyers were clearly startled.

They decided to take the judge up on a last minute offer to delay the sentencing so Flynn can show his true value to the government by testifying in another case involving two former business associates charged with illegally lobbying for the Turkish government.

It was a cruel and humiliating setback for a man who once memorably shouted, lock her up about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Republican Convention.

But what did this extraordinary moment tell us about the state of Mueller's investigation? We'll discuss that and take stock more broadly of what we learned about the Mueller probe in 2018 and other investigations into the president and where they're headed now in the New Year,

with two former Justice Department veterans on this special Christmas edition of Skull Buggering.

There is absolutely no collusion. I didn't make a phone call to Russia. I am nothing to do with Russia. Everybody knows it.

People have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.

I told the American people I did not trade arms for cost. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

The British government has learned Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

How many times I have to answer this question?

Russia is a ruse.

I'm Michael Isgov, Chief Investigator of Correspondent for Yahoo News.

And I'm Dan Clyde, Minister of the Chief of Yahoo News.

You know, I've been to a lot of sentencing hearings, as I'm sure you have. Sometimes they can get quite emotional. The defendants give some tearful plea about urging leniency, asking for forgiveness from the judge. But I've never seen anything like this.

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