new york times," and "the washington post." it goes much further than that. cnn's paula reid is joining me now with more on this. paula, tell us what the attorney general said. >> reporter: kate, in his statement, the attorney general says that there are important questions that need to be explored about how the trump justice department went about obtaining these records. now just to underscore how extraordinary it is, it's highly unusual to obtain lawmakers' records like this outside of an investigation into corruption. in the course of the justice department does frequently investigate leaks. the biggest question we have right now is what exactly happened. why were these records seized? who oversaw this? who knew what when? former attorneys general and the deputy attorney general, they've denied being involved in many of these record requests. going forward, according to the statement, the deputy attorney general, lisa monaco, she is going to be reviewing the justice department's procedure for obtaining records from lawmakers like this in the future. now suggesting that the current