conference call with reporters to answer questions about the situation at the plant. we tried to reach the company today hoping the ceo could join us tonight to help us explain and understand what s going on there. we left several messages with him. but we never heard back. i m not complaining, it s understandable. but he did make this public call. today the ceo said arkema has removed all its staff from that plant and the area around it. he said there is now, quote, no way to prevent a possible explosion there. because they can t get back into that plant. they can t do anything to start cooling off those chemicals again until conditions relent. one reporter on this call today, matt dempsey, of the hughes chronicle, he standard what seems like a pretty straightforward question in a crisis like this. i mean, given that people have been evacuated from a mile and a half around this plant, given that they said there s no way we can prevent an explosion, that they can t keep these chemicals
isn t one, but we just don t know about it. this is the purported place that we ve seen, and others have seen, where the special counsel is doing that. josh, do you know, were you able to uncover how long this teamwork has been happening? how long these two teams have been working on this together? and do we know which side initiated this? we don t know which side initiated it. in our reporting today, it happened over the summer. we know there were subpoenas issued by attorney general schneiderman in this case, this summer. and we also know the special counsel was impaneled this summer. my sources told me today the cooperation has been ongoing for at least a month. so my sense is that probably mid, late summer, could have been early summer. but about two or three months or so. josh, one last question for you. the way this fits into my understanding of what s going on with the mueller inquiry is paul
possibility of president trump pardoning people involved in the scandal. this is a very, very provocative move by bob mueller, if this bears out. the politico reporter who broke this big story, josh gazee, is going to be joining us live on that in a moment. that story just went live a short while ago at politico.com. that s all coming up. we ve got a big show ahead. this is like a ten-pound show in a five-pound bag, as they say. lots of breaking news tonight on lots of different stories. but i want to start tonight with a little city in texas that s called west. and despite the name, it s not even really in west texas. the name of the town is between waco and dallas-ft. worth. in 2013 they had a disaster in that town. this tape is about 30 seconds total, 25, 30 seconds. it s shot by a man named derrick hurt. and what s going on in the footage i m about to show you is