Youll be all over it for us as always, thank you so much. Monu raju in washington. Thank you for being with us on this tuesday afternoon. Getting word from the police chief there in houston, texas, the first Police Officer fatality in the storm, sergeant perez, 34 years with houston pd. Im brooke baldwin. The lead starts now. Welcome to the lead. Im Brianna Keeler in for jake tapper. Were going to begin with Breaking News in the national lead. President trump arriving in texas. He is about to get a tour of the Operations Center there after stopping in Corpus Christi today. Today there are new warnings to residents. Get out now as a levee is pushed to its limit in houston and harvey continues to relentlessly pour down on the gulf coast. Just moments ago we learned that a houston Police Officer,
sergeant steve perez, was killed in this storm drowning on his way to work on sunday. His police chief overcome with emotion as he was explaining the decision to not go in after him. It was too t
investigation that the ag refused to give them. jillian: the president sent a tweet saying she said i can do it in writing even though i did nothing wrong and don t like giving credibility to this now due process hoax. i like the idea and will to get congress focused again strongly consider it. what do you think of the president s tweet? the president mentioned earlier he might meet with the mueller investigators and give a deposition in person. he did it in writing. lawyers will give the same advice going forward. given what we know about the impeachment process going forward it looks like the president is not based on what we know now. for him to testify creates more exposure than it benefits him but the president has his own mind on these issues and may very well want to make his case to the american public directly and if he chooses to do so it could change the game
we don t know when it was made. it is notable it s being announced now when the president has had a few bad press days. i think important to keep in mind about this news is that in practice it means the mueller investigators and bob mueller were part of some sort of criminal conspiracy targeting president trump. they will say that, well, we re not talking about the mueller probe, we re talking about the origins of the probe. but what s really important to remember is that bob mueller and his investigators in the nature of things had to look at every little you know, every little part of this investigation. and if there was criminal conduct they would have seen it. and since they didn t mention it, that must mean they re part of it. so it s really important to take stock of and understand and to absorb just how broad a conspiracy they are alleging against president trump. and, you know, as you ve said in
trying to essentially investigate the mueller investigators of sorts and rudy giuliani seems to be sort of hovering around that as well the point is what kind of interactions have bill barr and rudy giuliani had, especially during this period regarding ukraine? the point is this. while i think the barr part of this episode is going to be a sidebar, no pun tended, as far as congress is concerned, it s still going to be of interest to find out what exactly was the president trying to use with his attorney general. all right let me turn to andrea. the president uses the term treason to describe the whistle-blower complaint what s the impact of that? it could have a chilling affect on future whistle-blowers who will be afraid to report wrongdoing and it ends a week where the president s diplomatic goals at the u.n. were overshadowed by his attacks on joe biden and also his anger at nancy pelosi over impeachment. he seemed to have a different, a higher level of nervousness than
about what the intention was. it s clear the mueller investigators decided they couldn t go to a place here. there s attorney-client impressiprivilege issues that t couldn t bring any charges. how will they try to figure out the name of the individual or individuals from the trump administration or congress trying to influence michael flynn. the beauty is in the three co-equal branches of government there s another branch that can weigh in. we ll see some of this stuff that s come out including the transcript and some of the other information. what this does and i think everybody brings up a good point is it s one thing to read something off a transcript but it s another to hear the tone of the voice to hear if there s december desperation or anger or kindness. that s the color that will give you the sense of what exactly the lawyer was thinking at that