That if he was acting corruptly, wrongfully, that it was unlikely he was going to confess to president zelensky that he was asking for the investigations explicitly to help his prospects . In my experience, you almost never have a defendant or someone who is engaging in misconduct who would ever explicitly say in this case, president zelensky, im going to bribe you now or im going to ask for a bribe for i am now going to extort you. That is not the way these things work. Thank you. And going back to you, you said hunter biden had been on the board going back to 2014, correct . Yes. President trump supported ukraine with aid and otherwise in both 2017 and 2018, correct . President trump has done a lot for the ukraine. Taking a break from the
hearing for breaking the news on the doj watchdog report. Has just out, Inspector GeneralMichael Horowitz as anticipated, his longawaited report on the russia investigation. We are just getting it now, live at the Justice Department with what we are learning. This investigation began in march 2018 so you could say this is definitely a long time coming, no question at all, this is a 434 page report if you can imagine, a very long one. Is now posted on the Inspector Generals web site here at the department of justice. Let me go through the highlights and put up a quote right now that is pretty stern and shows up pretty early on the report. Says we did not find documentary or Testimonial Evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the fbis decision to seek fisa authority on carter page. Carter page was a Trump Campaign official in 2016. There was a fisa warrant issued with three renewals on
carter page that he was never charged. Also, the report shows, and we have some graphics made, top fbi officials james comey and Andrew Mccabe who were at the fbi at the time did not act with political bias. The investigation was properly predicated but there are several of missions and inaccuracies in the phis application. There are 17 significant errors of omission in the carter page phis application. There was an audit today and this is significant, by the department of justice Inspector General to look into the future fisa processes to prevent future errors that we have seen today and there are some errors. The fbi did rely on that steele dossier with Salacious Information About NowPresident Trump for the Carter Page Application but did not press Christopher Steele the man behind the dossier for his funding source. A low level fbi attorney took part of an email from another Government Official and put it into an email used for the page
application and that did not affect the overall validity of the application. Basically, what we can tell from this document, there are parts that democrats will celebrate, there are parts that republicans will celebrate. While there were problems with the fbis handling of this warrant, the report today says there was no political bias nor motivation when seeking this warrant and specifically i want to point out the words because this is important, no documentary or Testimonial Evidence. We are not talking about circumstantial evidence, specifically documentary or Testimonial Evidence. This began in march 2018. The Inspector General adam was two years to look over this. The initial investigation into carter pages called cross fire hurricane that began in july of 2016. A lot of dates here, dont want to get too many people confused. This was posted on foxnews. Com, those are the Key Highlights from this report just released a few moments ago. 476 pages will take some time to go through. Mark meadows the republican congressman had a chance to go through that report, to our briefing he walked out of on the ig report, his response is deeply disturbing. They are about to have some serious explaining to do. More details to come shortly so reaction starting to come in, thank you. A lot to get you now, Andy Mccarthy on the story from the very beginning in your reaction is what based on what we are hearing . Starting with what we just heard means they didnt have a witness who came out and said there was political bias, they didnt have a paper trail that says or indicates there was political bias. That doesnt mean that they are saying of course, none of us has been able to read the report yet but this doesnt mean they are concluding that it was prudent or proper to go ahead and get the fisa warrant particularly if it was rife with errors, we will have to see what that is all about. Seems to me that this tracks what we heard from Attorney General Barr in congressional testimony some
months back, he made a point of saying that he Wasnt Leaping to the conclusion that agents of the fbi or upper officials in the Justice Department had acted on political bias or improper political motivation but that perhaps they had acted out of overzealousness and what he seemed to mean by that was they had breached our norm against having investigations interfering with our political process without an adequate amount of predication. Again as we discussed before doesnt necessarily mean that they would have had insufficient predication under the fbis regulations or what you need the level of suspicion to open any investigation. The question is, when you are dealing with our Political Campaigns, you should have a higher level of suspicion before you take the risk that
investigative activities by the fbi and the Justice Department could affect the outcome or influence the outcome. We are rifling through a lot of these headlines, trump tower meeting in 2017 was james comey before the president was sworn in was referred to as investigation. The fbi attorney who authored the email with regard to the investigation has been a criminally referred to the department of justice. Dip bret baier in washington for more of what youre picking up there. The Attorney General is that with a statement, and this obviously will hearken back for critics of the administration to the Mueller Report where he gave his assessment, but he is out with a very scathing statement about this ig report and it reads in part the Inspector Generals report now makes clear that the fbi launched an intrusive investigation of a u. S. President ial campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that in my view were insufficient to
justify the steps taken and it is also clear that from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and into President Trumps administration and a rush to obtain and maintain surveillance of Trump Campaign associates as officials misled the Court Omitting Critical Exculpatory facts from their filings and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source. My point being is that listening to that, how the Attorney General characterizes this report is a lot different than just the headlines of it and we are going to dig into what is 434 pages of this report and something tells me at the end of it, both sides are going to be pointing and holding up different parts. We did not find political
bias, before a Senate Hearing at 10 00 a. M. On wednesday of this week and certainly we will that life. We are all getting a chance to dig through this and see the highlights from it, brett read a portion of the Attorney Generals response or statement after the release of the ig report, and then at the end said no report was made about these applications, i have full confidence in director ray and his team at the fbi and thousands of dedicated agents who work tirelessly to protect our country so that is the latest from the Attorney General that we have heard, your thoughts so far. There are times in the past when the Attorney General respectfully and firmly disagrees with the Inspector General. Just happens. So one key point is that bill barr may know things that Michael Horowitz is professional as he is does not know and why is that . John durham, United States attorney has the benefit of a criminal investigation including access to a grand jerry. Michael horowitz does not have that so i think we need to wait and see what the basis is for this disagreement but it is very fundamental and obviously very important. Everyone has agreed that the fbi did not handle the fisa application well especially with omissions so what are those omissions . What should the court remember . We are talking about representations to a court. What is it the court was not made aware of that now the Inspector General is saying in effect it shouldve been made aware of . Thank you. Also, one more headline. The cia expressed concerns about the lack of vetting with the Christopher Steele dossier and the information that he had handed over. Bill barr coming to this conversation now. Back in may with regard to the
steele dossier on its face had a number of clear mistakes. So horwitz will be there on wednesday and perhaps the point is theres a little bit of everybody at the moment that i think one clear distinction must be made with regard to horwitz in this investigation with john durham is doing on the criminal side. Horwitz was allowed by the government, durham has the authority to go much broader than that for current employees or former employees. That is absolutely true, and also the Inspector General is issuing a report potentially was brought in to handle this case launching a criminal investigation so the stakes are a lot higher but lets bring it back to what the Inspector General horowitz says about the watching of the entire investigation back in july of
2016 and he says there that there was legitimate reason, a variable threshold, obviously thinks that they didnt put the threshold high enough, but according to the Inspector General, they met the standard for launching the investigation of members of the Trump Campaign back in july of 2016, and we also know not in this report but in a number of reports that one of the questions was the steel report really comes on the scene only in the fall of 2016. We are several months before in the summer of 2016 and this was all based on George Papadopoulos who supposedly said he had heard that the russians had dirt and information, hacked emails from the democrats and based on that, what he specifically supposedln that basis, they decided to launch the investigation of the Trump Campaign in the first place. According to a report of the Washington Post, horowitz went to durham and said do you have any information that would argue against the legitimacy of them launching the entire investigation in the first place, and then said no. And there had some talk about the person that supposedly had told papadopoulos. Gets a little complicated, a professor named joseph massoud, was he really a representative of the russians or was he fed up by u. S. Intelligence agencies to entrap or embroil donald trump and supposedly told him i had no information to that regard so at this point, it appears the launching of the investigation in the first place was legitimate, there seem to have been more questions about that than getting the fisa warrant to surveilled carter page but remember when that happen, that was in October Of 2016 and carter page was no longer a member of the Trump Campaign. Horowitz apparently we reported in fox news and foxnews. Com, forwarded evidence at this fbi lawyer manipulated key investigative documents related to the secret of surveillance of carter page. Why is that important . The question then goes to the attorneys who was been referred to as a criminal matter, who told the attorney to change the language and that in itself is a critical question to figure out what is next. What have you had a chance to look at . It just goes back to the words that are used here, the word predicated is used in the report as we just heard, that is a word that bill barr used, said he wanted to know if this investigation was adequately predicated and in this sense, he is claiming that it is, so there was clearly a dispute between these two individuals in terms of how this is being read. We are obvious they going to get more from bill barr but he has made clear in his initial statement that he doesnt agree with everything here. They also want to make two quick points here. It finds that the Justice Department did not know who his patron was. This goes to the question of the funding of the steele dossier going back to the Hillary Clinton campaign and it reminds me of the question that bret baier asked of jim comey and that excellent interview when he responded that he didnt actually know who had paid for the dossier which i think all of us kind of made our jobs drop that that question was never asked. So that is significant, also that the fbi didnt tell the fisa court about the flaws that they knew were in the steele dossier and the concerns that they had about Christopher Steele so i think there are a lot more questions here that need to be asked and hopefully well get to the bottom of some of them as we move forward and in the durham report. Looking at a few notes here, the 400 plus page report, said
that the reports that he generated were mostly Single Source reporting and were uncorroborated in until just up to a point. We will see where that leads us. What do you have . I am actually looking at the report on my phone right now and there is an interesting part right here because there were questions on if the fbi ever brief the Trump Campaign about this investigation, some would say why would they ever do that but sometimes they do, it is called a defensive briefing in this case specifically shows that the fbi never briefed the Trump Campaign to let them know about any potential connection between carter page and russia, so there was no defensive briefing by the fbi to the Trump Campaign so the Trump Campaign was left out of the loop on that and ended up eventually finding it out later. Feel free to jump back in at any point while trying to dig through a 500 page report, to dana and juan standing by now, your thoughts so far . I worked on the Justice Department for a brief period of
time and i think one of the things that you see Attorney Generals Department doing is announcing along with this report and audit for ongoing, so i do think that under the trump administration, you will see some Policy Changes to the fisa application process, it has been controversial for many years, always does get reapproved, the president wherever he is, obama reauthorized it, President Trump has reauthorized it once but you will see some changes to that process and whether that alleviates any concern, we will see. The other thing ive been thinking about us for a couple of years now, President Trump has tease the idea of releasing an unclassifying as is his power to do the underlying document that would provide a lot more clarity on all of this and answer some of the questions that martha was just talking about. He has not done that and there could be reasons for that but i think the other thing is the reason that he looked to the report is that the fbi in this report i imagine that chris wray
would say was vindicated and starting this fisa warrant that it was finding to do what was appropriate but thats because they are saying there are other information, so what was that . I dont know if that includes something President Trump could release, but it mustve come from the Intel Community or something, might not be what you are pointing out. The steele dossier he admits is based on Single Source info so there mustve been Something Else for this report and for the fbi for many years now saying that it was warranted, they had a reason to come i had to come from somewhere else and we dont know where that is. Here is something that is intriguing, he was asked whether or not he was biased against President Trump and the trump family. Apparently, he called that ridiculous. He stated that if anything, he was favorably disposed for the
trump family be