And legal experts. And were on the road for the midterms. Hello, pennsylvania. This is a race with national implications. Our first look at the crucial battlegrounds. All the weeks politics on our power house round table. Well break down the politics, smoke out the spin. The facts that matter this week. Well break down the politics, smoke out the spin. The facts that matter this good morning. President trump ramped up his war on the fbi this week signaling hell do whatever it takes to discredit the russia probe. Hes already fired one fbi director. Forced out a deputy. He publicly attacked his attorney general and threatened other officials behind closed doors. It all broke open friday when the president declassified the infamous memo from republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. The president claims it shows if fbi wrongly convinced a judge to approve a wire tap against carter page by relying on a dossier paid for by the Clinton Campaign and failing to disclose that funding. Democrats say its simply not true. Theyre backed by a host of independent experts and this statement from the fbi. We have grave concerns about material omissionings of fact that fundamentally impact the memos accuracy. That drew a fierce response from President Trump. The top leadership and investigators at the fbi and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of the democrats. I want to start with pierre thomas. Youve been covering the fbi and d. O. J. For 20 years. Weve never seen anything like this, an open battle between the president and Law Enforcement. George, good morning. This is an extraordinary moment with tension between the white house and fbi growing day to day and sometimes minute by minute. This is what im hearing from inside the fbi. Theyre willing to acknowledge that agents and officials sometimes make mistakes. Many believe the president s and his allies are engaged in an assault on the integrity of their institution. Were seeing rare moves by the fbi to push back. On friday the Fbi Agents Association put out a statement which basically accused House Republicans of playing politics in releasing that controversial memo. The association saying the fbi will not yield to partisan politics and chris wray after getting nowhere with pleading with the white house not releasing the memo, drawing a line in the sand, which he said was full of inaccuracies. We dont know how the president is going to react to director wrays push back. How the relationship unfolds is critical to me george. The director also spoke by video to all the fbi employees as well. There has been some nervousness in some corners of the white house that he might resign. Well, im hearing that wray and Deputy Attorney general rosenstein love the institutions they work for. They dont plan to resign immediately. Both plan to put their heads down and keep working. The president is the wild card. He publicly criticized jeff sessions. He tweeted negative things about rosenstein. He said the fbis reputation is in tatters. The president clearly believes hes been abused by the Justice Department and believes the russia investigation is unnecessary. His aggressive style is different than his predecessors. His supporters say its right. Make no mistake his constant pressure on the Justice Department is not the norm. Critics say it creates the impression hes trying to create the institutions that are supposed to have a level of independent to investigate National Security matters without political interference. You know rod rosenstein. If the president ordered him to fire mueller would he obey . He said he will not fire mueller without cause. The one person weve not heard from at all this week, not one peep, not one word, is the special counsel. By all accounts hes digging and hes digging hard, george. Thanks. Were joined by adam schiff. Congressman, thanks for joining us. I want to begin with President Trumps tweet. He said the memo totally vindicates trump in probe but the russia witch hunt goes on and on. There was no obstruction or collusion. The word now used because after one year of looking endlessly oond finding nothing, collusion is dead. This is an american disgrace. The memo vindicates trump . Of course not at all. The memo indicates the investigation didnt begin with carter page. It began with george papadopoulos, someone who was a Foreign Policy advisor for candidate trump and someone who was meeting secretly with the russians and talking about the stolen clinton emails. So quite to the contrary even this very flawed memo demonstrates the origin of the investigation. That involved the issue of collusion. Thats one of the problems you pointed out. I want to dig in some of the other ones that have been raised. The fisa court should have been told the dossier was funded by democrats and Hillary Clintons campaign. Thats relevant information, isnt it . It is relevant. Was there a political motivation . The court was notified there was a political actor involved. Thats part of the misleading nature of the fisa application. In terms of the identity of the political actor. The most Important Information is what did Christopher Steele know. Glenn simpson testified kris fear steel was not told the identity of the lawyer or the party behind the lawyer. Thats the most Important Information is judging christopher steels bias. Youre saying the court was told that the dossier was funded by a political actor . Yes, there was a political actor behind it. Thats part of the misleading nature of this document. I want to comment on this is oversight and asking why wasnt this included. If this was oversight, the Committee Members would want to read the underlying documents. I made a motion for them to read the documents. They voted it down. I made a motion for them to bring the fbi in. And ask the fbi these questions why was this included, why was that not included. Thats what oversight looks like. You read the underlying documents . I have. They voted that down. They voted against hearing from the fbi. When you do oversight, you haul them in and ask them under oath why was this included, why wasnt that included. The interest was a political hit job on the fbi in the service of the president. They point out in the memo that Andrew Mccabe who they said no warrant would have been sought by the Court Without steele dossier information. I know you said mccabe cant say that. Heres how chairman nunes responded on fox. That is definitely what he said. Not to mention we have other witnesses who said very similar things. Is it true the fbi led the fisa application with the dossier . Yeah. Most of the the largest percentage of the entire application has to do with the dossier and using the news story to corroborate the dossier. Your response to the chairman . The chairman is wrong. The chairman also hasnt read the underlying materials. The argument that the yahoo news article was circular reporting, thats not what the article is cited for. If you read the application, you would know thats not what the article was cited for. The whole point here is not to be accurate. The point is to be misleading. The democrats didnt read the memo until minutes before it was voted out to the house. If they were interested in getting to the truth thats not the process they would use. Instead they used a vehicle that has never been used before in the history of the house to release this onesided memorandum. In terms of andy mccabe, like the memorandum itself, they cherry pick what he said. While i cant go into the specifics of his testimony, i can tell you you have to look as a fisa application as a cohesive whole. All the parts are important. The suggestion the chairman makes there and others on the committee have made is that the entire dossier was included in this is just plain false. Youre responsible for oversight as well. Did the fbi make any mistakes here . We dont know. We havent had the opportunity to bring the fbi in before the committee and ask them questions. In a normal oversight process we would have the opportunity to do that. The goal isnt to find out the answers from the fbi. The goal here is to undermine the fbi, discredit the fbi, discredit the Mueller Investigation, do the president s bidding from the midnight run the chairman made to the white house to present documents he got from the white house to today, its all part of the same. The chairman wouldnt answer whether his staff was working with the white house on this memorandum. Inside the committee. He answered on fox saying there was no working with the white house. Theres a reason i think he wouldnt answer in committee. The reality is you believe his staff worked with the white house . I think its very possible his staff worked with the white house and coordinated the whole effort with the white house. It looks so much like this earlier which we know was coordinated with the white house who said he would recuse himself as chairman but hasnt. Do you think the memo can be part of an obstruction case . I dont know if members of congress can be part of an obstruction case. The president s use of this, the president s decision im going to release the memo even though the fbi says its inaccurate or the department of justice says its reckless even though i want read it. You said the goal here is to undermine the fbi, discredit the fbi, discredit the Mueller Investigation, do the president s bidding from the midnight run the chairman made to the white house to present documents he got from the white house its all part of the same. I dont think its working. It is impeaching the fbi. The problem with this and i think this is at the heart of the departments concern is if you have a neighbor thats buying lots of fertilizer but has no yard and you have concerns about it and you want to call the fbi youre going to wonder is that fbi going to hold my name in confidence or this information in confidence. Sources are going to dry up because of what the republicans are doing. Theres a compact between our community and the Intelligence Community. You give us your deepest held secrets, we hold them in good confidence. We wont abuse them. Theyre going to share a lot less with us and others are going to decide not to share with the fbi because they cant rely on our committee not to be partisan in the handling of that information. Thats a deep disservice dissere make it is country less safe. Thanks for your time. Were joined by congressman will hurd. You heard congressman schiff saying this is going to cause a loss of confidence in the Intelligence Community your response . I dont believe so. I think we have to hold the Intelligence Community, the federal Law Enforcement to high standards. I spent a decade as an undercover officer in the cia collecting intelligence. We know that we are supposed to be held to a higher standard. When political leaders of an organization we should make sure theyre crossing ts and dotting is. Its not just democrats you criticize in this memo. James comey came out with this tweet. He said thats it. Diss and misleading memo destroyed the House Intelligence Committee. What . D. O. J. And fbi must keep doing their jobs. Whats your response to james comey . I would say they should continue doing the job. I dont believe this is an attack on bob mueller. I dont believe its an attack on the men and women in the fbi. Ive served shoulder to shoulder with them. Theyre hard working folks that keep us safe. This is about a couple things, should unverified information be able to be used to spy on an american. Should circular reporting you heard congressman schiff say it wasnt circular reporting. If you had read the underlying intelligence. A newspaper article should be able to used to spy on an american. The article was based on information they already had access to. Whats interesting is nobody is questioning whether some of the information was unverified. Nobody is questioning that there was rumors that were involved in this. For me this is about making sure that were protecting the Civil Liberties of the americans. The congressman said thats only one part of a very large file that was presented to the judge. When you introduced me today. You didnt say i was from san antonio or spent my life in texas. That doesnt change the fact im a republican member of congress. The information that were talking about is unverified. Nobody questions that. The gentleman from california which information is unverified . Most of the information in the steele dossier. What information there is verified . You dont know because you didnt read the underlying documents. You dont have to read them. The gentleman from california said we havent interviewed the fbi or d. O. J. On this. Ive spent countless hearings with the d. O. J. And fbi asking questions. Ive had the opportunity to ask the people that created the underlying document about this. Thats what came to the conclusions and why i voted to release the memo. You voted against releasing the democratic memo. Why . There was information that i believe led to the erosion of National Security. There was some references to ongoing intelligence operations. I believe theyre working through that and its going to why not wait until that was scrubbed the same way the republican one was scrubbed . Then they could both be put out statement. The information wasnt ready to go. We decided to release ours. People can criticize our decision. Providing oversight and shining a light on the issues is important. Ultimately i believe were letting the russians win. The russians got involved in our election to erode trust in our democratic institutions. When the press is criticizing congress for shedding light on issues, when theres a perceived friction between the executive branch and legislative branch and federal Law Enforcement and people think there shouldnt be oversight, civil january over oversight why not call the fbi director in a closed session and ask him those questions . We did. There have been dozens of hours of conversations around this. The reason we found this is because of the broader russia investigation. To me this discuss not i want to stress bob mueller should be allowed to turn over every rock, pursue every lead so we can have trust knowing what russia did or didnt do. So you dont believe President Trump when he says it vindicates him . I dont. Im not shocked elected officials are using hyperbole and exaggerations. This is about for me what kind of information should be used in a title iii court in order to spy on american citizens. Civil liberties are important. Most people i was just back in my hometown of san antonio. I didnt get asked a lot of questions about this. Most people are worried how do they pay their rent, how do they make sure they have enough money for their kids to go to college. The fact we have to protect our Civil Liberties, this is one of the things that has made our country great. We should be focussed on this. Congress should do its oversight role even in a crazy environment. Carter page the man at the center of this we heard from congressman schiff that it began with george papadopoulos. The intelligence he gave to the australian intelligence official. Lets talk about carter page for a second. Hes been on the radar of the fbi as possibly working the russians in 2013. In order to get a fisa warrant you have to show probable cause this person is a foreign agent. That has to be approved by a judge. This was approved and renewed three separate times by judges appointed by republican president s. Right. Which i think is a probable that information that was unverified was renewed in that application. You think it would have been done on flimsy information . Thats at the heard of this. You havent read the underlying documents. No, but weve talked to the people that have created this. James comey himself said that the dossier was salacious and unverified. He was talking about the one part dealing with President Trump in russia. That was one small part, not the dossier of the whole. What parts of dossier have been verified . The underlying documents would show for that. Thats why im asking you havent read them. We asked the folks at fbi and d. O. J. Theyve not been able to prove through other reporting that that information was correct. Thats unverified information. At the time that information was included into this first fisa application they knew it wasnt verified. Want to show a quote from your republican colleague from arizona. He said this illegal misconduct and abuse of fisa by james comey, sally yates and rod rosenstein. Is not just criminal but constitute treason. Im be sending a let tore the attorney general seeking prosecution against these traders of our nation. Will you sign that letter . No. Why . Is it a problem . Yes. The d. O. J. Has a report coming out. Well look at that. That goes a little far. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Lets get to martha raddatz, dave abrams and i want to begin with matt. Youre the man of the moment. Three years under president bush you over saw the fisa application process. Your reaction to the memo . Just on the four corners of the memo its politically motivated. Its am chu amaturish. Its short and leads to more questions than answers. The central claim in the memo we now know thats not true. Thats my experience overseeing the lawyers in the Justice Department. You heard congressman hurd saying the information is unverified. Walk us through what it would take too get a judge to approve this kind of warrant. Thats an important point. These applications takes weeks, months to prepare. There are agents in the fbi, overseen by lawyers in the fbi. Theyre 50 pages or more. Theyre this thick. They are every fact is vetted and scrutinized by lawyers. They sit down with the agents. Starts with agents and moves up. Multip