he wants to engage on. reporter: well, a lot of people who are somehow involved in investigations feel the fbi is unfairly targeting them, but the president normally has a different role we know for a fact that the fbiin gaug iengaged in an outra amount of political bias, particularly under james comey s leadership is frankly laughable. reporter: using terms like rat, who are cooperating witnesses or reporter: doesn t he have a responsibility to preserve confidence in the rule of law? certainly. that s why he s appointed new people to do that, whether it director wray, a new attorney general, somebody that can come in and be very transparent throughout this process. one last question. reporter: i just wanted to go back to the shutdown. you keep saying you ve asked agencies to look for more money.
on this issue of reprogramming specifically, is your red line in these negotiations that you need congress to reprogram money explic explicitly so the defense department or whoever it might be, the congress say you can spend this money that we didn t spend on something else on wall construction no. reporter: or are you saying you have the legal authority because nancy pelosi said today doesn t exist. i would never use nancy pelosi as my source on anything but i would use attorneys that work here at the white house and agencies that s their entire job is determining whether or not something is legal and we re looking to those individuals to find out those specific pots of money that can be used for that. reporter: so a bonus amount of money reprogrammed by congress won t be necessary for the president s signature on this budget bill?
determination whether we re going to sign that. the president has asked every one of his cabinet secretaries to look for funding that can be used to protect our borders and give the president the ability to fulfill his constitutional obligation to protect the american people by having a security border. so we re looking at the other options. in the meantime we ll see what the senate does and let you know when we have an announcement. reporter: following up on that, there are other sources that could potentially pay for the wall, what sources are you looking at? the president has asked every agency to look and see if they had money to be used for that purpose. if they could find that money, does that mean the president would accept a proposal that does not include funding? we ll see what the senate will pass. we re disappointed in the process and their inability to
money from to make sure the president can protect our border and protect american citizens. with the deficit ballooning to over a trillion dollars under this president, where are the additional monies on this wall going to come from and why is he asking the american taxpayer for them when he promised mexico was going to pay? we re not asking taxpayers for that. we re looking at existing funding through other agencies that we can draw on to do that immediately. the president has been clear that the usmca deal would provide additional revenue that would show mexico was paying for the wall. the trade been fnefits, if t are any, don t go to the treasury. he s saying we could pay for the wall four times over and by doing the new trade deal reporter: but trade benefits go to private citizens.
for $5 billion. democrats are saying not so fast. we learned the president has been making phone calls and asking every single agency to see if they have money that could be used to fund his border wall. let s go straight to our senior congressional correspondent manu raju. he s up on capitol hill. what do you know about this? reporter: what the white house came to congress with earlier today was a proposal to approve $1.6 billion in funding for border security that had already been agreed to by republicans and democrats on the senate side, and an additional $1 billion of what is being described as unspent money. that appears to come from various accounts from various agencies and perhaps that s what the white house is also referring to is where the president himself could find money through his agency heads. the problem is that democrats say that is just not going to fly. already democrats pushing back, nancy pelosi, chuck schumer, calling it a slush fund, saying