document. so the white house could selectively try to control the spin on stuff, as they did with the special counsel s report, when as you recall mr. barr lied about what was in that report. and i ll tell you all all i can tell you is they are doing the very same thing here. let s let this report get out and let congress continue this investigation. i only ask that middle america to watch this. if you don t have a necessarily have a belief on this, let the truth come out. this is extraordinarily important. well, on that point, congressman, if it does come out, if it is released based on what you just read in that secure room on capitol hill, do you believe it would have an impact on the american public as far as impeachment of the president is concerned? look, the american people have about 3% read the special counsel report. millions more watched the special counsel testify. millions more will be able to
gaud, el salvador and honduras and with them instead of with our congress. but we re doing it. we get it done. the wall is being built by the way. that got little coverage. i went to the border. it is going up in new mexico. it is going up in arizona. it s going up in california. believe it or not. they wanted that wall in california in san diego. as soon as it was completed they said we don t want a wall. they were begging me for a wall. i should take it out and move it to another location. we were with the governor, spoke to him a lot but the governor of texas, lieutenant governor of texas, attorney general of texas, the senators of texas. cornyn, ted cruz and we re building an incredible wall. that s going to number one it will look great. it s going to be virtually impossible to cross unless you re one hell of a mountain climber.
acting chief of staff. it was held up by trump. so that is the context of this. trump personally overrides the relevant agencies ever his own administration to hold up the aid and the president of ukraine knows the been held up and the president said hey, do me a favor. and we know from the mueller report that trump and the team around him are willing to accept information about a political opponent from a foreign government. so that is he told that to george stephanopoulos in june. he doesn t see anything wrong with it. it is knowable. so i think anyone any member of congress, any of white house are looking at this, that is the back drop. there is a willingness to in this case he didn t just be willing to receive it. he asked for it. and the context of that i think kind of can lead us to conclusions. and in a makes all of the difference in the world. the solicitation alone could be criminal activity. imagine if you were in different scenario of a hitman status and if i a
politically-speaking congress has the ability to say this is definable as that. you also have the idea of whether you re asking for somebody to essentially have abuse of power and corruption and using taxpayer dollars to finance your campaign and incentive and you have a whole host of things happening here but this happened the day after robert mueller poorly performed in his hearing and thought maybe he was emboldened and maybe the bright shiny objects over time he thought blinded him in his own intellect. is there a risk here for democrats? impeachment is a drastic step. we ve only seen it happen a few times in our nation s history. it is. we don t know where this will head. we have not seen confirmation of a floor vote or what the process will look like. but because of the strategic patience i ll call it what happened for speaker pelosi is this was led by seven democrats freshman from red and purple states who have national security credentials who are not seen as political, not
it really makes little sense. pamela brown is over at the white house for us. and just remind us, pamela, because you ve been doing a lot of reporting on this, why did the white house and the president think it was in the president and the white house s best interest to release this rough transcript? reporter: well that is the key question here, wolf. because remember initial lir our reporting was that the white house had been advising dna to not turn over the information such as the transcript, the whistleblower complaint to congress and then of course this was a big change do to release this conversation with the head of state and sources say in is initially the president thought this would take heat off of him and undercut the democrats argument that he had something to hide. that may have backfired given the fallout over this conversation that the president had with president zelensky back in july and what is interesting as the fallout continues an talking to sources they a