kaitlan collins and evan perez join me from washington. good evening to you.is whistle blower story. take us through the latest reporting, please. >> don, the biggest new information comes from "the washington post," which is reporting that whatever it was that really raised concerns for this alleged whistle-blower to come forward to the inspector general had to do with some communication, some events that had to do with ukraine. and part appeared to be communication involving the president. at this point we don't know a lot of great detail about exactly the details of what exactly raised these concerns. what did the president say. what were these communications that were going on with this foreign leader. we now know that at least it had to do with ukraine. we simply also know -- we know that the trump administration has been holding up until recently about $250 million

now over to evan perez. you are live at the justice department with another significant development? >> that's right, poppy. we learned for the first time just a few minutes ago that the justice department had received a criminal referral from the inspector general for the intelligence community to investigate whether or not this -- the contents of this phone call constituted a violation of campaign finance law. if you know, if you remember, this is something that has been looked at before, the idea that asking for a thing of value from a foreigner could be a violation of campaign finance law. so the justice department received this referral back at the end of august. the justice department criminal division has been looking at this issue, the fbi also got a separate referral. they've been looking at this issue for the last few weeks, and just in the past week the justice department determined that they did not have enough evidence here to go forward with a full investigation. they determined that they did n

cnn's evan perez with us as well. shane, your reporting says the whistle-blower complaint involves ukraine. what can you tell us? >> right now what we know is building on our reporting from yesterday, that there is an allegation of some kind of promise that the president made to a foreign leader. it would appear that does involve the country of ukraine. we don't know precisely the allegation that the whistle-blower is making in terms of what it was that he saw with regards to the president's contacts or interactions with people in that country that led him to file this complaint with the inspector general. but we do know some interesting things about the timing. this complaint was filed about 2 1/2 weeks, so not very long after the president had a phone call with the president of ukraine. and there was a lot of activity going on in that period as well that eventually came to light about the administration's efforts to slow roll funding to ukraine as part of a military aid package then the issue around the biden invest

who is also the politics and white house editor for axios and cnn's senior justice correspondent evan perez. good to see you both. all right. so, evan, you first. your sources are telling you that the u.s. justice department is coming under heavy criticism for how it handled the whistle-blower complaint. specifically what kind of new complaints? and criticism? >> well, fred, part of the issue here is that the justice department looked at the criminal complaint and the referral from the inspector general for the intelligence community and did a very narrow review. they essentially looked at whether or not this represented a violation of campaign finance law and, look. that is what the inspector general did refer. but we've never known the justice department to limit itself to what people are asking them to investigate. they have the full panoply of u.s. law to look at and see whether or not there are any legal violations, any other legal violations. and so that is where the criticism is coming. the issue here is that the inspector general and the complaint, itself, from the whistle-blower, l

our senior justice correspondent evan perez is working the story for us. evan, the acting director said this complaint doesn't involve anyone in the intelligence community but rather someone in the trump administration. what are you learning? >> reporter: that is right, wolf. look, there is a lot of fights like this over information that congress is demanding of the trump administration. what is different about this one is that even members of congress don't seem to know exactly what the nature is of this whistleblower complaint that the office of the director of national intelligence and apparently the white house are trying very hard to not let them know about. we know -- here is what we know. back on august 12th the inspector general for the intelligence community received a complaint and vested and determined -- they investigated and determined it was urgent and credible and that is why they told members of congress that it existed. now the dni, joseph maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, said that he is complying with the letter of th

a source telling our evan perez the president wanted the australians to help with the justice department probe into the origins of the mueller investigation. and evan, you are joining us now. we talk about the ukraine call. that is about a future election. this is about discrediting the origins of the mueller report which looked into the past election. >> right. exactly. and this is why the justice department now is openly acknowledging this happened. they say this has to do with the attorney general's investigation that is being done to look at what happened in 2016. and they look at it as certainly looking at what may have been foreign election interference in the 2016 election and that includes intelligence that may have come from ukraine and from other countries that was used essentially against candidate trump and that became the mueller investigation. and so we're told that the attorney general has asked the president to help essentially prod with this investigation and it is not just australia but a number of other countries that we know of that provided intelligence to what becam

i want to go to evan perez at the justice department. the trump appointed inspector general for the intelligence community sent a refeerrral askg was this a campaign finance violation when the president reached out for help against a potential democratic opponent joe biden? what do we know about that? >> we know that the justice department determined that it did not conditions constitute a crime. that decision was made just in the past week, but it began, as you mentioned, in late august. that's when the inspector general for the intelligence community first sent this over to this building, to lawyers here from the national security division, the criminal division, some of the public corruption prosecutors all took a look at this over the last few weeks. they also sent a separate referral to the fbi, which then deferred to the analysis that was being done here by the criminal division. in the end what they determined was this did not reach to the level to merit a full-blown investigation. they determined that there wasn't enough evidence

but cnn's evan perez joins me now with more of his reporting.g more about this call and also about the apparently -- the prompting that was done by the attorney general to get the president to make that call. >> that is right, erica. and it goes beyond australia. the attorney general is closely managing this investigation of the origins of the mueller investigation. the 2016 election interference. so one of the things they're doing according to official we talked to just a little while ago is that they are asking the justice department -- justice department asking the president to intervene and ask other foreign countries to help with the investigation which is being managed by john durham, a prosecutor out of connecticut. so it goes beyond australia. there are other countries that provided intelligence that ended up being part of the mueller investigation that now the justice department and the trump administration say they need help of the foreign countries with. so stay tuned. we'll see if he has talked to other countries with the same thing

cnn's senior justice correspondent evan perez is joining me now. what more can you tell me about the abrupt resignation. and the terms around it? >> we don't know a lot about the terms he may have resigned under. i think this raises the stakes. we know the senate foreign relations committee, the house foreign relations committee, rather, has him scheduled to come in and provide him. they are in the middle of all of this saying that he was one of the people that he was communicating with before he went to the ukraine. and the members of the ukrainian government. so the big question will be what did you tell giuliani? what was it about? was he acting as an emissary for the state department. as you played in the last hour, he is a private citizen, he is acting as a lawyer, and he does not speak for the president of the united states. i think that is clouded by the whistle-blower complaint, by some of the conversations that the president giuliani has made it so clear that he is sort of the fall guy essentially. >> by tweeting out are texts coming from

evan perez, also joining me, patrick heely, the politics editor for the cnn times. good to see all of you. all right, let me gip with you, secretary of state pompeo now missed two deadlines. what if he misses the subpoenas? >> that is a good question, we have seen them ignore subpoenas in the past, right? but they're asking for documents related to president trump and his conversations with the ukrainians that are political in nature. they want to hear from the state department what they have with regard to those conversations. now if he does ignore this subpoena, there are consequences. that are impactful for the white house if will become part of the impeachment inquiry. there are real ramifications if the state department does not comply. we have not heard yet about if they're going to or if they aren't, they have not replied to any requests for comment on this matter. >> and now that, you know, the special envoy to ukraine has abruptly resigned has he now only added fuel to interest for what he could testify too. it really makes what is going to happen a lot mor

. >> and now let's bring in evan perez and also phil mudd. evan, you have more reporting thousand about when the whistleblower first raised concerns and where that went, fill us in. >> right. and look, just in the last day, we've gotten a few more items for this time line that jessica just laid out. we know that five days after the july 25th phone call between the president and the ukranian president the whistleblower went through an anonymous process to file an informal complaint so to speak with the agency with which they are employed. and so we know that five days after the call, there is some record inside that intelligence agency that there is some concern about this ukranian phone call. and so then the lawyers for that agency go to the white house and start raising some issues and saying what is this about and so on. so we know that after that on august 14th, that is, the intelligence agency discusses on a phone call with the white house lawyer, john eisenberg, they have a phone call in which this issue comes up. and then it becomes a li

evan perez joins us with that. >> it appears the administration was grappling with what to do about this complaint. we know the complaint first came in on august 12. it appears on august 14th is when the general counsel for one of the intelligence agencies reaches out as required to the justice department to alert them that there is been this complaint from an employee from this agency and that it has to do with this phone call that involved the president, the ukrainian president back in july. so that sets on the course that we see has now come forward, because we know according to the "new york times" which first reported the story that they also were notified at the white house that this complaint had come in. >> the justice department? notified the white house? >> the intelligence agency notified the white house. this is all happening much more quickly than we thought because it's not for another week or so that the inspector general for the intelligence agencies begins the formal notification saying that we have a referral. we want you to investigate. >> do we know how much the intel

let's go straight to our senior justice correspondent evan perez with these new details. know, evan, investigators have been looking at the home of the man they believe sold the gun. what did they find? >> they did a search of the home belonging to the seller, brooke, and one of the things they found is they believe they found evidence that indicates that this person was manufacturing firearms and reselling them. now, that could potentially be against the law because you're not allowed to make and sell firearms like a firearms dealer without a license. and so that's where investigators now are looking and are working to see whether or not they can bring charges against this individual. but, you know, this really points to a gaping hole in the background check system in this country. because, as you pointed out, this is a private sale so there was no background check done. and law enforcement has been asking for a universal background check law for years and years. and i think this is an example of where you have a loophole, you know, gray market, so to speak, people buy t

. >> evan perez is out front tonight. evan, this has been developing through the day. chairman schiff was very quiet and now suddenly there's going to be this briefing and what's really going to happen at the briefing tomorrow? >> well, we don't know exactly what the inspector general is going to be able to tell the committee. this is now obviously going to be a briefing that they'll have tomorrow and next week on thursday the acting director of national intelligence joseph maguire will appear before the committee in open session to describe a little bit about the handling of this whistle-blower complaint and there are no promises being made that they'll learn exactly what the nature of this complaint is and why it is that the director of national intelligence and perhaps the white house is trying to assert what they say might be privilege with regard to this information. so we know that this began in august 12th when someone came forward with this concern. we know that the inspector general looked at it and viewed it as credible, of concern and of urgent concern and t

evan perez is with me now. what exactly does the whistle-blower say about president trump's conduct? >> jake, this is the bombshell really in the complaint. it has to do with what exactly the president was up to when they was making these conversations, saying these things to the president of ukraine. part of the complaint says in part, i have received information from multiple u.s. government officials that the president of the united states is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country the 2020 u.s. election. obviously jake that is the center of this controversy. now that the white house has released the phone call everyone can make a judgment to determine whether or not they believe this is what the president was doing. asking the ukrainians to investigate his likely rival in the 2020 election. >> and evan what does this whistle-blower say in the letter about how the white house handled the aftermath of the phone call? >> right. what the whistle-blower says, an attempt to a

lets bring in our senior justice correspondent evan perez. what are you learning?is is a common trade in the gun business for people to buy what's known as lower receivers and other accessories and essentially assemble a fully assembled ar-15-style rifle, and that's what investigators believe happened here. they believe the alleged seller of this firearm that was used in the odessa midland shootings, that that's what he was doing, he was manufacturing these things in his home. so earlier this week, there was a search that was done and the authorities found evidence that they believe indicates that he was doing this as part of a business. now, what this does is it means that they can possibly bring charges against him for acting as an unlicensed manufacturer and unlicensed gun dealer, and so that's what investigators are focusing on right now. >> very, very serious development indeed. all right, evan, thank you. >>> coming up, there's more news we're following, including an airline mechanic goes to court accused of sabotaging a jet that nearly took off with 150 peop

. >> i need to go to evan perez with more on this. >> one of the things i think will jump out to people, after they read the complaint and the letter from the inspector general, is the fact that the justice department did not do any interviews with these witnesses, these people that the whistle-blower says would have been able to corroborate what the whistle-blower is reporting, the concerns that are being raised, multiple white house officials allegedly are saying these things, raising these concerns about the actions, not only of the president but the lawyers inside the white house who are trying to conceal some of this, trying to con ttain so of the damage. why weren't those interviews today? we were told by senior justice officials that this was an assessment being done of this whistle-blower's complaint. whether or not it merited opening a full-blown formal investigation, a decision was made after several weeks of being looked at inside the justice department by career lawyers that it did not meet that standard. the question is going to be, why wasn't it done? why wasn't more done

let me bring in evan perez. this has been your reporting, that the ig also reached out to doj over this. what are you learning? >> that's right, kait. the referral from the inspector general for the intelligence community came over to this building, to the justice department at the end of august. both the criminal division here at the justice department and the fbi received these referrals. now, they looked at this and they determined that there was not a crime here. i will read you just a part of a statement from the justice department spokeswoman, carey cooper, actually says the criminal division reviewed the official record of the call -- the call between the presidents -- and determined based on the facts and applicable law that there was no campaign finance violation and no further action was warranted. this is a closed matter as far as the justice department is concerned. they looked at whether or not because the inspector general sent it over seeking an opinion whether it was a campaign finance violation.