the matter said. cnn political analyst and "washington post" white house reporter josh dawsey shares a byline and joins us by phone. tell us more about what you've learned, what the president asked the attorney general to do. >> in the immediate aftermath of a transcript being released on september 25th, anderson, the president was looking for key defenders to go out and say the president did nothing wrong, the president broke no law, the president behaved properly. as you've seen repeatedly, he said this was a, quote, unquote, perfect phone call. one of the things he wanted was the attorney general to have an appearance where he essentially said the president had done nothing wrong there. -- thought that he was a very good defender, thought barr was a credible voice and wanted him to do that again. this time bill barr declined. as you saw at the time, the justice department put out a