From the New York Times, I'm Michael Burbaro. This is a special episode of The Daily.

Today, Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI, saying he's cooperating with the

Mueller investigation. What it tells us that prosecutors have a senior member of the Trump

White House on their side. It's Friday afternoon, December 1st.

We begin with the significant sign that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn

could be cooperating with Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel leading this whole Russia

investigation. Plains lawyers told White House lawyers they could no longer discuss defense

strategy with them. This guy that Trump was very close to is going to be flipping essentially

to talk to the other side about what he knows with Russia.

Michael, when did you hear that Michael Flynn was going to plead guilty to charges of lying

to the FBI?

Well, this all for us goes back to nine days ago, eight days ago on Thanksgiving when I was

in the car with my family driving to Philadelphia. And I got a call that Flynn had pulled out

of this joint defense agreement with the president.

Mike Schmidt is an investigative reporter at the Times.

Flynn's lawyers and the president's lawyers had been sharing information because they

were on the same side of things. But Flynn had pulled out of this agreement in a signal

that he was cooperating. You can't stay in that agreement if you're going to be on the

other side of things. So we're working our way through traffic in Maryland. And I get

this call. I turned to my dad who's in the passenger seat. I said, dad Flynn may have

flipped. I need you to drive. And he looks at me with this look like you will literally

do anything to get out of drive.

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