robert: just h far will president trump go to address surge?rant i'm robert costa. welcome to "washington week." president trump conrms reports that his administration may transfer immigrant detainees to sanctuary cities. >> i think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. it's a big deal. robert: andy the attorne general under fire from democrats. after claiming u.s. intelligence agencies spied on the trum campaign. >> he is the attorney general of the united states of america.t nothe attorney general of donald trump. robert: all as the nation waits for the mueller report. ut exe power. next. announcer: this is "washington week."

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moderator robert costa. robert:en good g. president trump underscored his hard-line on immigration t week. on friday, he confirmed reports that he is considering transferring migrants from the southern borr to so-called sanctuary cities. according to "the washington post," the white house believes it could punh democrats including speaker nancy pelosi by busing detaineeso their districts. the saker fired back. she said the administration is using human beings, including little children, as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants. and said the move may be crim homeland security secretary kir stan d nilsson steppinn after clash with the president on many policy issues. joining me nancy cordes china congress correspondent for cbs news. jake sherman, senior writer at

politico and co-ed tore of playbook. andrea mitchell, chief foreign affairs corresponde for nbc news and anchor of andrea mitchell report and seung min kim, white house reporter for "the washington post."n you've b tracking these immigrations all week. i know we all need a littl coffee, these ups and downs. ret this is a serious threat it appears from psident trump. how serious is it in terms of becoming policy? >> well, let's look at kind of step back and see how the president's announcement -- surprise announcementer ear today actually materialized. we reported last night that this had been proposedt at le twice, first back in november when there was theovement of caravans toward the u.s.-mexico border that reallythnfuriated president and prompted a lot of ideas from within the administrati on what to do crack down on the increased migration. it was proposed again internally again in february when we were eroiled in the shutdown fight and democrats and republicans were clashing over how many migrants to

detain in the country -- in the couno were apprehended at the border. news broke out.r ot outlets matched our reporting. but what the -- and while the ff white houseials indicated last night that this was an idea that was quickly underra consion, it is no longer on the table. the president surprises all during your show.be : what changed? >> well, our reporting, our latest reporting is thatt part of is that after seeing the media coverage of the plan all e morning, thedent decided that it was -- decided to so a lot of it is kind of a self-perpetuating news cycle. robert: let's stick with that. he's watching the television based on seung's m reporting and reacting to it, andrea. te he watching conservative media and frust about this migrant surge and trying to signal something to them? >> signaling to his base, lou dobbs' case, the conservative o media but a think in reading your stories, he resents being told wel i

can't do that. and law doesn't seem to matter if something i illegal. he's seeing what clearly is something favorable to kirsten nilsson and they pushed back against it. i think that gets his -- whatever it isis it gets anger up. and he says he can do that. and he has bn defia about believing that he can violate courtulings right and left. he views them as impediments and not as -- restrictions that are legally arrived at. robert: on capitol hill, what's the response among democrats as the president moves forward at least potentily with this idea? >> outrage. they say that it's beneath thee office of presidency and unlawful. reblicans sort of -- their attitude seems to be at this point, well, let wait 24 to 48 hours and see if it sticks. because just in the past week, you've h the president say that he's going to shut down the border altogether. and then he walked that back and no, i'm going to use that

to pressure mexico and i might do it ifik i don't the negotiation that we -- that we -- that weeach. and republicans have a wait-and-see attitude at this point. they know that the psident is frustrated on the issue of immigration. and they don't necbesarily eve that anything he says one day is going to materialize the next. they thiwill be on to something else. robert: and one of those republicans, senator chuck grassley of iowa, spoke with seung-min and said the president is pulling out the rug from the very people that are trying to help him accomplish his goal by doing this purge at the department of homeland security. but back to andrea's point, jake, about lou dobbs and theti conser media pressuring the president, to take these kind of stances, so is the freedom caucus. so are other conservatives on capitol hill. steven miller inside white house. how influential have those hard-liners been in shaping the president's decision? >> they dtated his monthlycy for two years. i mean, important to take stock of this. number one, if he does this, gt's going to shut down any

chance of anythver the next two years period, hard stop. doocrats are not going t do business with somebody who's busing people into thei districts as political retribution. robert: doesn't this demand a bipartisan solution at some level to address the migrant surge? >> yes, it does. but the president has stumbled over and over again on cy immigration poo a point where you wonder who's paying htention to -- is anyone minding the shoe? that's number one. and number two, what happened to the white house that said they were working on bipartisan immigration plan? ian:, the white house on these -- on this issue specifically is an ideological black hthe an same president who by the way told diane fine stein last year that he wanted to do a deal with her. so it' ttougho follow the logic at all here. >> and i was talking to a prinent republican who was just two days ago talking about, well, he could do a deal. he do a deal with dick durbin. we could revive all of that. and the if the house democrats reject it, fine. he tried. so the senate -- there was an

appetite in the senate among republicans to actually begin and resume negotiations. but exactly as you say, if he does this, i gse over. >> there was one interesting development, i will point out this week, and jakee knows m than anyone i'm very except tal of the prospectsat of immin reform on the hill but white house and administration officials reached out to about six moderate senate democrats and met privately on capitol hill wednesday afternoon. so it was mick mulvaney, the cting chief of staff and kev -- who had been sworn in as the acting d.h.s. secretary. you had a group of those two officials plus people like dianne feinsteea,e shaheen, jon tester, dick durbin and not the type of democrats runningnt for presi but more the democrats who do want to get things done and democrats tell me this was a meeting that the white house precipitated. robert: don't thera dem have concerns, even if they are given by outreach d the family separation policy, an

idea? >>ol aely. joe manchin called one -- one of those moderates called his it relationship the president -- not the weirdest relationships that he has ever had. because there is no through line. and democrats,hey -- you don't hear them talking that much right now about dreamers when you eally -- bring up immigration, that's the issue that democrats talk about the most is legal protections for people who are brought to this countr illegally as children. they just don't think they can get a deal done with this president. so he may talk about it. there may be outreach. but they've seen that rug get pulled out from under them before. and i just don't think that they believe that -- a change. >> i do think that the revelation a week or so ago in court when the administration acknowledged that they had started the separation policy monthsefore, that there were now thousands of children and they could not prome to reunite these families for two years or longer. i th a shocking -- a

shocking fact. and the feeling among people o you talk t on the hill and among other people around the country,ctive democrats, is you cannot let this stand. they have to do something. robert: does the administration then, if they can't get a deal th congress, is this all about executive power? nbc has reported the pentagon is considering so-called tent cities at the border to housef some these migrants, these detainees. simore executive action pe on the horizon. >> which is a violation of posse comatatis. >> and a move that's goin to again prevent anything from happening on the hell number one. and number two, we know -- the outlines of a deal on immigration no matter what the deal is, we all kat it's going to look like at the end of the day. and the white house has don things that just prevent that deal from coming together time and time again. this is not a complicated deal to put together. it just requires political courage and the white house has not put itself in position to do that. robert: is it all president ow

trump right is there a short list for d. hers s. secretary to come -- d.h.s. secretary to come in and get a nomineeo t capitol hill? >> we have seen how the president relies on acting and gives him more flexibility and shown no hurry to fill niece vacancies. r. n at the pentagon with shanahan still there months after jim mattis left. some people who have been talked about for d.h.s., ken cuccinelli, crisco batch, clearly not -- critics kobach, clearly not confirmable and trying to send thaback signal to the white house, whether they want to receive it or not, that these gs will notet the votes even with those 53 vote majority. robert: icc leadernell planning any kind of guidance here for the president? >> yeah. robert: as he moves ahead? >> he said point blank to reporters that he's not fond of ken cuccinelli and doesn't think very highly of cuccinelli as a possible replacement which is really - you know, interesting that the republican leader of the senate, rather

than pickip the phone and telling the president, felt hat it would be more effective to deliver that message via reporters instead, because aswe e just been talking about, the president's tweets today, at's often -- you know, where he gets a lot of these ideas. robert: before we go on, i want to pause on that point. because it's a challenge for reporters in this trump era to have on a thursday the white house saying one thing, then on a friday the president appears to h undercut own officials by changing his position. how when u're dealing with officials telling you one thing on a thursday and the president says another on a friday, how do you deal with that as a reporter? >> i think the one thing -- and we all get asked the sameti qu a lot how has washington changed under trump? i think one of the chief ways is no one speaks for the reesident beside thedent himself. it's not worth in a lot of cases talking to other people. >> you can't have other sources. but the other thing is the president will say one thing he one dayer it was on health care or some of these other issues and say i never said that. four or five days later.

and that wasn't my position. so he h reversed himself on -- some of these things that the republicans in th senate have managed to, you know, get him to back down on. robert: let's turn to the other political and legal battle ts week, attorney general bull barr, he set off a firestormes when hefied that he believes u.s. intelligence agencies spied on the president's 2016 campaign. sparking sharp criticism from democrats for using that charged term. >> i think spying did occur, yes. i think spying did occur. praiident trump: what he was absolutely true. there was solutely spying into my campaign and i'll go a step further and in my opinion it was illegal spying, unprecedented spying. robert: barr also testified th he planso release an edited version of special counsel robert mueller's report on russia in president trump's conduct within days. manynd democrats some republicans say the a.g. must share the full report with

congress. and the ae.rican peo and worry that he has too much say over the report. >> i am concerned by recent media reports that those working on the special quoun's team believe your summary to g congressed over the severity of the damaging actions of those in the wncte houseding the president. the american people should be allowed to see the report in its entirety. so they can make their own judgments about its content. robert: senator shaheen reflected the view of many democrats, nancy, when she seemed to be taken aback by the attorney general's position. hisrd use of the "spying." what has the attorney general's mark meant for the credibility of the department of justice as we wait for this mueller report? >> well,he speaker of the house point blank said she does not trust the attory general ich in and of itself is pretty remarkable. that you have the leader of the house saying that she doesn't trust the top law enforcement officer of this country.w you k, this is very new

relationship. he has only been in this position for a short te. and his efforts and his aides' efforts to sort of cle up or clarify what he meant have only left things moreonsing and left some wondering whether he intended for there to be a lot of confusion and a lot of murkiness er whether or not he thinks that his own departmentpied on a presidential campaign. first he said yes, i do believe spyi occurred. then he said, well, i don't know if any spying obuurred. i just want to -- i just want to be clear on that. and it's not likeg i'm creat a team to look into it. but i am going to create a team to look into it.ne so no on capitol hill really understands what it is that he believes. robert: there is -- snedge inside of the department ofus -- inspector general inside of theof justice looking at the fisa and surveillance from the 2016 campaign, why did the attorney general get ahead of his own i.g., any reporting on that? >> that's a great question and wene asked mitch mcc when

we sat down with him about those spying comments and asking him, don't you think this is a loaded term? what was your reaction to it? and he said i'm going to defer to the inspector general report and let tt play out. there is no doubt those comments made -- what was already this very partisan atmosphere that much more divisive. andhink that -- going back to the trust issue that you mentioned with pelosi, it something that mcconnell has said several times this week is that you either trust ou bill barr or don't. and he's absolutely right. now he's in the camp where he does trust bill barr. but he was also telling u that i anticipate -- without having seen what the mueller report ise going to be, said i anticipate being completely satisfied with what the atrney general does. i believe -- yeah. i'm anticipating being satisfied with the level of disclosure that he mak. and he' like -- basically like you'll see my point next week. td he hasn't seen report, either. so, i mean, no matter when the repops dyou kind of already know where democrats will be. you know where republicans will be. and it's not going to be any more cser to th same

conclusion. >> and what hasd happe is because of the attorney general's initial four-page memo and because of the president's reaction, you know, cleared ated and i'm and it's all over, they've controlled the narrative. and they havehi branded as a complete exoneration. and if there are -- a lot of redcations in this report, and if it's not conclusive, it's going to be very hard, i think, for the democrats in protracted legal argument going get e courts trying to this out. they really are going to be on the defensive. on't know how they can get ahead of it. they really need to start talking about health care and other tngs as important as this is, i don't know how they can g on top of it. robert: that term spying, jake, it echoes what many congressional republicans, house republicans, like congressman meadows of north carolina, jim jordan of ohio, they've been saying this for over a year that the origins of the russia investigation and -- in their view had many

problems. now ty have the attorney general of the united states backing up a line, a view they've been stating for months. >> they've been very frustrated over the last twoau years b they've taken out this frustration on me primarily. [laughter] reporters have not dug into the spying narrative. and some people have explained to them that they'veeen all over the place and the stories that they've weaved about the 2016 campaign and the dossier and the investigation have been very complicated and difficult to follow. and that's kind of prevented a lot of reporters from writing about it. and it's also not rooted in e kind of fact-based arguments that reporters are interested in. robert: that's their partisan republican view. >> correct. robert: you've done a lot of interviews, andrea, with former intelligence officials about how fisa courts work and how the f.b.i. believes it did the right thing in how it was looking at russia interference and seeking f ta warrants try to look at different aspects of the 2016 campaign. >> the intelligence committees

used to be very different. they used to be bipartisan. and that really changed wneh devin when the house -- he went up to -- rm robert: white house intelligence -- >> and he was back channel bei thehite house -- he was back channeling the white house. ynamic changed the and both sides went to their camps. bottom line there was a lot of veious alarms. there were, you know, alarms going off in 2016. they had to do a counterintelligence investigation. there were so many meetings that w not acknowledged by mike flynn and others,nd lied about which they've established. they got guilty pleas to that point. so any way you lookt it they had a credible witness in christopher steele who had been working with them. and they to check out that dossier and they had to begin looking at russian investigation. robert: what is the battle to come, nancy, on the redcations? as democrats and republicans some of them calling for a full release of the mueller report, raif the attorney ge gives a

400-page document with 200 pages redacted what doe that mean for congress? >> well, i dhink it was interesting that in the senate earing, barr said that he is deferring, completely, to mueller's team of investigators about what to redact and what not toac r and he was asked, have you overruled them? he said no. and i don't intend to overrule them. if that's the case, that will, you know,ive democrats some comfort that he's not putting his thumb on the scale oneor wa the other. eegardless, the chair of the judiciary commi in the house, gerald nadler, is really nlevating this fight. his original positas look, if we get a document and a whole bunch of it is redacted, i'm going to take the subpoena fight. e going to and we're going to fight this out in the courts to get a hold of the full document. now he's saying if there's even one line redacted, if there are any changes whatsoever, we are going to issue this subpoena and we're going to have a fight. robert: andrea jus mentioned how some democrats want to talk about other issues like health care. is speaker pelosi prepared for chairman nadler to move forward

in that direction to maybe pursue a subpoena and maybe this becomes a iajor fightn the federal courts? >> i think this is one of those fights that they think is worth fighting. not only because, y know, they believe that this is a very important investigation. and congress has the right to look at the fruits of that investigation. but also because they're conducting their own investigations in several different house committees. and they need that material. they need to be able to look at the underlying material to aid in their own ongoing investigations. and that's why there's a fight not just over getting the report itself but also getting the grand jury material urand making that barr and mueller and others come up to testify once they've got that material. >> yeah. and i think you saw kind of in the -- particularly in the hearing before house -- before the house onsd t, how -- how democrats were kind of starting to lay their groundwork in -- formallyth isat subpoena for that report. e remember, theylready voted to authorize it.

they justaven't sent it yet. when they questioned bill barr and would you be willing to go to court to allow congress tseo this grand jury material and he declined. he basically said well, you can go to court. i'm not so inclined to do that. i thinkou democrats look and say well, you're not willing to do everything possible to accommodatean us. i think another important thing from that hearing that we should remember, and what's causing democrats a lot of heartburn is that barrt would answer if he had briefed the white house after his four-page summary had been released. he had said not before but in between that time, that was something that he d on and said i said all i want to for the day. and in the second day of the testimony, senate democrats couldn't nail him down on that, either. >> and also three times was askere whether he s the mueller report with the white house. and refused to answer every rttime. ro we don't know what's going to be in the mueller report. reporter in very town can't wait to get their hand on it. even if it has redcations to figure out what wve been reporting on these past few years. and we're going to find out ore about intelligence

activity. from 2016 about russian interference in the elections and what we're going toea, part -- is part about what these players are doing. and one of those players from 2016 who was in the headlines this week was wikileaks founder julian assndge. he was ited in london on a single charge of conspiring to steal u.smilitary secrets. he has not been clarged in on to wikileaks publishing stolen democratic emails from 2016. but he's back in the news, ddrea. and wh his arrest in london reveal about him and about the broader story of u.s. intelligence and whahappened 2016? >> it doesn't reveal anything about 2016 to the frustra aon ofot of people. it was based on what chelsea nning who in the -- at the time was a private in the army. the allegation is that he conspired to get a password tot m to break up the password and to get documents that were from a secret government computer. that is a very narrow single

charge. and it's deliberately s because otherwise the ecuadorans and the brits would not be as willing to g along with an extradition. he couldn't have been arrested. they will n t send himthe u.s. or agree to an extradition if there is -- going to be anyn f capital sentence, if there's any kind of espionage or higher charge. that said, what they claim in their defense is that they were doing journalively. wikileaks is doing journalism. and they still said that today. and doing an interview with an editor from wikileaks. but when you look on the face of it, t muell indictments make it very clear that organization one is wikileaks. d they say that the russian g.r.u. were working hand in glove with wikileaks. with the data dumps that theyh anded over to wikileaks, wikileaks won't acknowledge that was their source but the russians gave the demratic hacks, the podestas, emails and all the rest and that was dumped in v strategic ways by wikileaks at times such as right after the access hollywood. rort: not directly relat to president trump but what are

your sources on the hill say when they see the headline, when they say julian assange back in the news? >> i think tha there's bipartisan aeement that this is a good thing. and that you know, there are a lot of democrats and republicans who see assange as an enemy of the united states. certainly that's something that the satretary of feels as well. and so i think that there are a lot of people that are that this is moving forward. robert: we'll keep an eye on it. being everybody, for here. up next, on the week extra we talke to j -- "washington week" extra we talk to jake on the wild relhip between president trump and congress. watch it, starting at 8:30 p.m. eastern every fday night on our website, facebook or youtube. i'm robert costa. rave a great weekend. announcer: corpo funding is provided by --

>> babbel, a language program that teaches real life conversations in a new language such as spanish, french, german, italian and more. babbel's lessons are available as an app or online. more information on babbel.com. announcer: financial services firm, raymond james. additional funding is provided by -- ia koo and patruen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for pu broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs ie station fromrs like you. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accura

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