joining me now is "the new york times" washington correspondent michael schmitt. michael, good to see you. thanks for being here. let's talk about the volunteer request. for you reporting were you able to determine why the request was voluntary rather than a subpoena? >> this is very early on in the information. it's kind of like the second inning. and early on the government will go to one side that it's trying to learn information from and ask for the documents voluntarily. a lot of times lawyers are able to work out that and hand over the documents. and when they're not, then you see things like subpoenas and then in the most extreme cases search warrants. this is the initial thing saying hey look, we're interested in looking at these issues, we're interested in this stuff, can you produce this stuff to us voluntarily. that's what we've seen here. >> were you able to determine the scope of the kinds of documents they're looking for? >> are with talking about a broader request related to certain business dealings that were going on at the time he worked with the

that's according to michael schmitt, this story that just posted tonight. reporters apparently called john dowd for comment after they got his pro-secessionist statement. you've got your nose in my personal e-mail? people send me things. i forward them. he then hung up. end quote. now, to be fair, we do not know why the president picked john dowd to run his legal team on the russia investigation. but from our perspective as americans, just watching the scandal unfold and wondering about the president's legal representation here, from our perspective, knowing he picked john dowd to lead that team, no matter what the president sees in him, we probably should have seen this coming. >> cnbc caught up with mr. dowd just a short time ago. >> [ bleep ]. that's what i've got for cnbc. >> that was mr. dowd's previous, most high-profile case. when his client was not only convicted, but given the longest sentence ever in an insider trading case. he's now leading the president's legal team and he's now sending secessionist e-mails to reporters. so that happened. we're

suffering and going through looking at how laws are made now, one of the interesting things and michael schmitt talks about this. while there is a plur verse, not through treaty making or state opinion of jurists but the interpretation is that say thtan an official role have stepped back. you have very few state discussions of what it is. so the question of how central lawyers are and what they can or cannot do seems to have changed over time, and i think it's important to pay attention to how the discourse and the institutionalization may or may not be influenced by that. >> so thank you so much. as, rosa, as you were talking about pushing lawyers further down the operational to the operational level, it just reminded me of, you know, you know, a couple of things. one is, you know, the whole question of law fare in the way charlie dun happlap talks about. the weapon of war, part of the technology of war as you go further down the operational, to the operational level, you know, the someone making a decision about whether to use force in a particular context, basically has to call up the lawyer