number of witnesses, pages, evidence, stacked up against barr and durham saying we disagree but we won t provide a page to explain how that s supported? when pete williams asked the attorney general, do you plan on issuing a public report on the durham case, i don t know yet, i haven t talked about it. it s going tok to be lingering over everybody s head as a tool, political tool. the goal posts have moved as you said. now we re all supposed to be focused on durham. we learned something today in the hearing that we didn t previously know. much of horowitz s testimony was a rehash of his report. we learned something about durham and horowitz. he said that the objection that durham had with predication. remember, john durham in violation of doj policy issued a statement to the policy saying i disagree on the issue of predication. today horowitz says that was durham saying the fbi should have opened a preliminary inquiry, not a full investigation. and ig found the fbi didn t even
conversation for experts and lay viewers alike. i m wondering if you can walk us through as what you saw as important bottom line coming out of the first part of this hearing. well, bottom line, michael horowitz who is a highly respected inspector general, neutral arbiter, if you will, defending his report and conclusions. those conclusions include something for everyone, which is what lindsey graham is seizing on, very clear mistakes made by the fbi in the first approval and subsequent reapprovals, submissions for authorization by the fisa court, that special security judge who approves surveillance. a particular point, something that is egregious, the altering of a document to not inform the court and to not inform others that carter page who was a former associate trump campaign associate of the president s was actually also at times a confidential source of the cia. to not share that information is
long time, this is very, very difficult to watch because the politicalization that has gone on here is unprecedented. criminal investigations for no good reasons or purpose, this is unprecedented. i am old enough to remember when people are critical of public safety and publications. that s the rule. maya, i want you to broaden out for us. we gotten expert analysis on the details. we watched this hearing. the hearing really battles this out. again it comes against the backdrop of another check on potential of abusive power which is the congress using the ultimate most serious authority. most congress in american history have never used even if they strongly disagree and oppose the president, that s the impeachment tonight. for people watching all of this
his power. against that backdrop there s more interest in this notably at times obscure hearings. this is what we re dealing with. it is 400 pages, this thick. this is the report, supposed to guide the facts today. as a prosecutor watching the hearing, putting as much politics aside as you can, how much of what you saw in congress was following these facts versus just trying to layer right over them with other views? as a prosecutor, criminal prosecutor, i worked for all moefrt two decades with the fbi on many, many sfrp warrants and many, many wiretap applications. i think what gets lost in all of this, and i know frank will back me up on this, is when you are working on an investigation like this, and you re beginning the initial investigative steps, you don t know if you re looking at pretty much the whole picture or
do a number of other instances to your point did not pull a trigger on other instances. now we have the defense of the president from that we are hearing right now in this hearing in the senate being abuse of power. what william barr is doing as an agent of the president is using the powers to direct the public s attention to debunk conspiracy theories that the independent non partisan public servants have said, no, there was no political bias here. that s really what we should be concerned about. we don t want any abusing power, we don t want the fbi abusing power. we should correct any procedures that do not protect us from fbi abusive power but we absolutely can t allow a sitting president