ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>KEILAR: We have breaking news now. "The New York Times" reporting that President Trump spoke to his acting -- then Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker shortly after he came on board at the Department of Justice and proposed this idea on getting the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, an ally of Trump's, to unrecuse himself from the Michael Cohen investigation. Joining me now to talk about this is Mark Mazzetti from "The New York Times," who broke this news, along with his colleagues. Mark, this is a pretty stunning reveal here. Tell us about -- tell us about your reporting and what you found.</s>MARK MAZZETTI, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: What we -- we found was that back in November, Trump called Matt Whitaker and he broached the subject of having a new person put in charge of the Southern District of New York investigation. Now, recall that's the investigation going on in Manhattan that is investigating the Trump Organization and the role that the president played in hush money payments to women before the 2016 election. And what Trump did was he asked whether the U.S. attorney, who had to recuse himself in that investigation, could be put in charge. The real implication being that he needed an ally put in charge of this investigation because it was, from the president's point of view, spiraling out of control.</s>KEILAR: So this is important because Mark Whitaker just testified before Congress, and he said that he had not been pressured by the president when it came to various investigations.</s>MAZZETTI: That's right. A lot of his questioning was about conversations he had with the president about the different investigations going on. One of them being the Mueller investigation and, of course, there is the Southern District investigation. Whitaker said he had not been pressured. And as we say in the story, House investigators are now examining Whitaker's comments and investigating whether he might have committed perjury.
Trump Asked Whitaker about Cohen Case.