Transcript for White House denies Trump attorney discussed pardons

Thank you. Let's bring in Cecilia Vega for more on this and, Cecilia, the president had been signaling this for an awful long time. The question now is, is the white house shake-up done? Reporter: Well, George, you know in this administration you sort of seem to be safe one day and out the next and the president really seems to enjoy seeing some in his cabinet twist in the wind as that's exactly what happened with shulkin as he took days to make up his mind. Shulkin's firing comes after the ouster of the secretary of state, the national security adviser. We have heard the chief of staff John Kelly had potentially been on this list of possible departures. He seems safe for now so is Ben Carson but we're more than a year this and the president says he's close to having the cabinet he wants. The top lawyer in the Mueller investigation for president trump, John dowd is also out. He resigned last week but he's at the center of the new report discussing the idea of pardons for Michael Flynn and Paul manafort as the special counsel was closing in on both of them. Reporter: Yeah, "The times" said this happened last summer just as the special counsel probe into Russia was heating up. John dowd, the former lawyer, just resigned last week and floated this idea of pardon to lawyers for Flynn and manafort. The white house says there are no discussions and there haven't been discussions about the consideration of pardons. Take a listen. We pushed them on this in the briefing room yesterday. Is the white house worried about what Michael Flynn or Paul manafort might tell special counsel Robert Mueller? There was no collusion and we're very confident in that and look forward to this process wrapping up. Reporter: So that's the line here right how. But the president was on the record back in December after Flynn pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI not ruling out the possibility of a pardon for him, George. Flynn's brother has been pushing for one. Thanks very much. Let's bring in Dan Abrams for more on this. So dowd is denying he talked pardons. How big a problem if he did. First question is what has broached the subject, raised the issue mean? We don't know exactly. The president has enormous power when it comes to pardons. Absolute pretty much. You can pretty much pardon someone for whatever reason you want. The only potential issue could be not the pardons itself, but the conversations about pardons, meaning you could make an argument if the right thing were said or in this case the wrong thing -- Keep quiet on what I did in return for a pardon. Ha could be seen as witness tampering is the question and the possibility. But on the whole, the president has enormous power. The question would also be on whether it fit into a broader pattern of activity. That's the only way it would come up as part of a larger narrative. We also learned from Mueller's filings that one of the cooperating witnesses Rick Gates had several contacts during the campaign with someone he knew had ties to Russian intelligence. This is the most direct evidence yet of a connection between the campaign and Russian intelligence. This came up in the context of a sentencing report for a lawyer who had worked for both Gates and manafort. He has admitted to making a false statement. They're basically laying out the things that he did wrong and one of them was that he wasn't forthcoming enough about conversations that Gates was having and they point out in this report that this was pertinent to the investigation. In essence we should have known about this, this lawyer knew about certain conversations and e-mails that he didn't disclose to us and that was relevant to our investigation. That's all we know, though. Could put more pressure on Paul manafort. Sure, it could put more pressure on manafort. Manafort already knows Gates is the issue. Now that Gates has turned is the big problem for manafort. Thanks very much.

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