considered a modern authority on the subject. so thank you for joining me today. thank you. i saw in may of 17 you wrote an op-ed, considering impeachment, question mark, slow down. and but today we see the president explicitly ask a foreign government to help in investigating a political rival. the question to you is, is that an impeachable abuse of powner your opinion? it could well be. the point of that earlier article and i appreciate you looking at it was that i thought calls for impeaching president trump was too soon. impeachment is depending on fact-finding and that is what the speaker is asking for, fact-finding and investigations on the recent instance, the talk with the president of ukraine but that talk as we ve read about it so far seems to be very disturbing. doesn t matter whether there is a quid pro quo, he s asking a
-i know. i m supposed to be in ceramics. do you know -room 303. -oh. thank you. -yeah. -good luck, everybody. . welcome back. no word from president trump on mexican tariffs as he walked into the white house just now. you are looking at those pictures from just a few moments ago. the president has already made up his mind on attacking democrats over the issue of the border from air force i coming back from europe this afternoon, he sent out this tweet, quote, democrats are incapable of doing a good and solid immigration bill. joining me now is former hud secretary and 2020 presidential candidate julian castro. thank you for joining me, sir. let me start with the issue at the border. two years ago, may of 17, there were apprehensions along the
his appointment in may of 17 over the last two years in terms of preparing a comprehensive, thorough report based on that investigation to say, yes, was there collusion, was there obstruction, and was there were there attempts by anybody outside of the russia efforts, anybody in the u.s. government or coming into the government that tried to influence the campaign? and so all those moving parts came to a head today, as we saw, where bob mueller summarized his findings in a way that said, look, here s the report. read it for yourself as you ve been encouraging viewers to do since it was provided to the attorney general and to the public then, and to say it s up to you to make your own determination. don t rely on what people like me or you or anybody else says, read the report and see what
i want to bring in now a man who knows mueller well, and that is john pistol, who served as a deputy to mueller during his tenure as the fbi director. john, i appreciate you so much joining us. you were mueller s deputy director for nearly six years, so i need you to be the mueller translator for us. if he had concerns, which we know that he did with how this work was being represented, why wait until today to speak out, nearly two months after he finished the report? i think there is a lot of moving parts, obviously, from his appointment in may of 17 over the last two years in terms of preparing a comprehensive, thorough report based on that investigation to say, yes, was there collusion, was there obstruction, and was there were there attempts by anybody outside of the russia efforts, anybody in the u.s. government or coming into the government
i did not talk about my views of the mueller investigation with anyone at the white house in this time period, essentially may of 2017 until i joined the department of justice in october of 2017. and when you throughout that process, did you ever communicate with any here s the question. by my count, you made six comments critical of the special counsel between the time you interviewed in june 2017 and the time you were hired as chief of staff to the attorney general. did you ever use any intermediaries, did you have anyone, since the president didn t know, did you have anyone communicate with the white house or anyone at the white house, either staff members, friends, or others, to let them know exactly where you stood as expressed in at least those six public statements? congressman, i had at the time you describe, may of 17 until i joined the department on october 4th of 2017, i didn t have a relationship with the white house. did you talk to any white