Former FBI Agent Josh Campbell on National Security

CAMPBELL: You have Mueller’s team telling the court, this person who’s helping us, we’re not recommending that he serve time which is a very big deal. Because if you look at the charges that Michael Flynn faces, he lied to the FBI. He sat in front of FBI agents and told them a material lie about a counterintelligence investigation. And this was the person who was the president’s national security adviser, very serious crimes. And I think one important aspect that we have to look at is, you know, you showed earlier the documents with all of these redactions, there is still a lot of work to be done here. People who are hoping that this thing will be wrapped up soon I think are going to have to wait a little bit longer. Because if you look at what is actually detailed there and what’s not laid out, it [13:45:00] shows that there are still things to be done. There are still pieces that haven’t been put together and dots that haven’t been, you know, we don’t see these lines being drawn yet. A lot of work to be done by prosecutors.

AMANPOUR: So, you know, it’s apparently being counted 22 lines of redactions right after that assertion of substantial help and cooperation with the investigation. And kind of implying, as you point out, that there may be multiple investigations that we don’t even know about. Not just the, you know, the obvious one that’s sort of the tip of the iceberg. What — you were there. I mean you worked for Mueller. You worked for Comey. Give us a sense of, I guess, how extraordinary it is that he’s recommended no jail time and that potentially Flynn sort of was the biggest cooperator corralling maybe all the other cooperators.

CAMPBELL: Exactly. And that was the key point as I read through the document. Again, there’s a lot that we don’t know. We’re trying to read the tea leaves and parse the un-redacted version. But one thing that Mueller clearly laid out was that Flynn’s utility largely stemmed from his role in Trump orbit, he was a high-level person during the transition team. And it’s not only that that’s important but it’s important that he was one of the few people, in fact, I think the only person of high stature in that orbit that is now cooperating with investigators. Mueller actually says that in his report. And what that signal is that if you’re inside the White House right now, if you’re in President Trump’s orbit, if you’re in this family, you should be worried because any investigator, I know this as being a former FBI agent, you look at people that are involved in a case and constantly run the calculus. Is this person a witness? Is this person a subject? Is this person going to help me? Is this someone who I’m going to have to send to jail? And the fact that they listed Michael Flynn as the only one in that circle, in that world that is cooperating tells us that potentially they’re looking at others, not as witnesses, but people that were possibly complicit in whatever it is that Mueller is actually investigating here. So I think it was a very bad day for the president of the United States yesterday. And again, the longer we see these redactions, I’m sure the anxiety level there is off the charts right now.