and karoun demirjian of "the t ahington post" reports t top u.s. officialto texted, aree now saying that security assistance and white house meetings are conditioned onig inveions and i think it'snd i crazy to withhold security assistance fh help w a political campaign. these textge mes underscored that the president is facing challenges, not only about the whistlebl complaint but about his use of power in amarican diplocy. joiningjo me tonight, karoun demirjian, with "the washingtons postan page with "u.s.a. today," tim alberta with" "politicd peter baker withd the and peork times." peter, take us under the hood ot what thet messages reveal about president trump and how he's using his power onkraine? peter: a couple of things. one, you get a picture of how much he had o.s.u. -- outsourced foreign policy in this area to rudy giuliani. the people charg wit leading foreign policy in thi t area, stateepartmentep diplomats were deferring, ino effect, this non-official, the lawyer for the president, in their dealings with ukraine as he w trying to press

karoun demirjian, amnenawaz for bs newshour and jonathan swan, national political reporter for 25 axios. karoun, you've been following in peachment inquiry all week but now for the d.o.j. to be opening a criminal invesgation, what's the significance of that development? >> tg tim has to be pleasinas the president because it presents a counter narrative for what's been going on. tough impeachment, investigati which we know going onight nono looking at thank you crane nnections and tough investigations into theher jenks of the russia probe, which russia and ukraineai areot that separable, giving thehe perspective something to focus on, something he can now double down on as the focus is heating up o impeachment. durham has been a criminal prosecutor who's been in charge of this investigation for a while. in a way he's always had, because of the role the ability to imp iel a grand juryy or isse indiets against individuals. we don't k kw that he's actually taken those steps y. so the actually significance -- does this actually ends up pulling in career investigators fr the f.b.i. or somewhe

let's bring in michael warren and karoun demirjian. we have shimon prokupecz outside of new york. what can you tell us there? >> there are a lot of players in trump world. john dowd wrote a letter to the committee investigating the impeachment issues last week in which he objected to the document requests from the committee on behalf of these guys. so his role actually is quite interesting, as is the role of rudy giuliani. >> now, shimon, to you. the southern district of new york is handling this case, not the u.s. attorney in virginia. we know those federal prosecutors in new york are set to make an announcement in the next hour or so. what does it mean to you that they're handling this case and what questions are still unanswered out there? >> reporter: certainly there are still a lot of questions unanswered, and one of those things is how deep do these men's connections into ukraine, into foreign nationals, how deep does it run? and i think that is going to be one of the biggest questions that need to be answered here. who was helping them? what foreign nationals? we know that