department did look at that call. in fact, the spokesman issued a statement investigating possible campaign finance violations, but this statement would have been a little broader and more importantly it would have been bill barr who's been a pretty forceful advocate for the president and sort of a big public speaker going before the tv camera and saying exactly what the president wanted. >> and how is this communicated, do we know? >> we don't know precisely. we know it sort of flowed from trump to another white house official and over to the justice department. we have not been able to substantiate trump talked about this directly with bill barr. that's a question we're still working and we're sort of working the exact people involved in the path, to determine was this a formal request in the press office -- the press office was just trump mentioning to somebody and