if you happened to join us in the middle of the hearing you can find the whole thing again online shortly at c-span.org. type in steve mnuchin in the search bar. a headline in politico today, trump weighs downsizing spicer's public role citing administration officials. they say that president donald trump is considering scaling back white house press secretary sean spicer's public role. the president tweeted as much in a stream of tweets late last week. this one as a very active president with lots of things happening, it's not possible for my surrogates to stand at a podium with perfect accuracy. another tweet may be the best thing to do would be to cancel all future press briefings and hand out written responses for

the sake of accuracy. the politico article continues the briefings have become one of the most dreaded parts of the presidents' day and trump has told allies and aides he doesn't want spicer who has developed a belligerent persona from behind the podium defending and explaining the message anymore. there is no briefing on the schedule today because the president is scheduled to hold joint news conference with colombian president santos . we'll have that live for you at 3:45 p.m. eastern time today. house minority leader nancy pelosi is set to brief reporters anytime now. and we'll have that live for you on c-span3 as soon as it gets started. till it does, a portion of today's "washington journal." >> joining us now representative brad sherman from democrat from california a member of the foreign affairs committee and serves the 30th district of california. good morning. >> good to be with you.

>> before we go on, your thoughts on the appointment of the special counsel, roberter mueller to head up what's going on at the justice department. >> we obviously need this. i was pressing for a special counsel even before trump took office. and loretta, i formally made the request to loretta lynch. she went on television and said i'm not going to do it. better late than never. we need an independent counsel to tell us whether there's evidence of collusion between the kremlin and trump. and i'm hoping that mueller will interpret his writ to also include whether there's been obstruction of justice on either that investigation or the related investigation of general flynn and russia and failure to accurately disclose his finances. >> and the obstruction of justice concerns, is this from the memo came out reported the last couple days? >> there are at least two

elements. one efforts to try to press comey to stop the investigation. whether that investigation be into possible collusion with the trump campaign or flynn's failure to disclose, et cetera. and then the second would be firing comey if you can't persuade him, get rid of him is another way to obstruct justice. so we've got to look at collusion during the campaign and obstruction of justice that may have occurred during the presidency. mueller has a lot of work. >> you have a law degree from harvard. what's the standards in proving those either obstruction of justice or collusion? what do you have to find as far as looking at evidence is concerned? >> frankly, this will be -- this is not going to be determined in a court of law. it's going to be determined over there in the united states capitol. at this point, there's no serious effort to impeach the president. but the constitution does say high crimes and misdemeanors. and we'll be applying a criminal

law standard or at least the definition of has a crime occurred. if you collude with russia to cyber burglarize the dnc, that's a crime. if obstruction of justice is a much more complicated crime 0 define. you have to be aware that there's an investigation and then try to block that investigation. so -- but if there were solid facts of either of those crimes, then i think people would be talking about high crimes and misdemeanors. right now, i'm just chagrinned by the jaw-dropping incompetent of this administration which may be less profound. it's not an impeachable offense, but my god, when it comes to the conduct of foreign policy, it's scary. >> as this investigation goes forward at the justice department, do you think it

diminishes or at least changes the scope and shape of what's going on in the house and senate when it comes to its own investigations and are those still necessary? >> we need to investigate and from a policy perspective rather than a prosecutorial perspective. and we may see a need to have better systems for not only -- even if there's no -- fire there's clearly smoke. i don't know there's fire. there's smoke. where there's smoke, there's smoke damage. we need to protect our democracy by having prophylactic devices that prevent presidents from firing the head of an fbi who is investigating their administration. we need a special counsel system whereby congress can compel a special counsel.

we need a number of things to protect our democracy in the future. this is not the last time it's going to be a challenge. >> we invite your questions and comments for representative bradsher man. 202-748,000 one for republicans. independents 202-748-8,02. tweet us your thoughts at c-span wj. you brought up the idea of impeachment. representative al green on the house floor calling for it yesterday. is that something au line yourself as far as what is representative green is calling for? >> i don't think the facts are there to support impeachment nor do i think the votes are there to -- i don't know of a single republican who would vote for it. i believe that the next step is to investigate and i'm glad to see that we finally get a special counsel to do that from a prosecutorial standpoint. >> first call for you comes from robert. and he is in illinois on our line for republicans. you're on with representative

bradsher man. go ahead. >> i voted republican. i was a 40 year democrat i switched to the republican party. i do believe putin was trying to tamper with our election but it was more like against hillary rather than for trump because i don't even think donald trump believed he was going to win that election. i think all the collusion, all the conspiracy goes back to obama didn't do nothing for seven years and eight months before he took action against russia. thank you. well, i think putin was very surprised that trump was elected president. >> we breakaway from this recorded portion of washington journal to take you live now to the capitol and a briefing with house minority leader nancy pelosi. >> last night i was at my granddaughter's graduationing from high school. so it's morning to me. good day. sp