tv Anderson Cooper 360 CNN December 9, 2019 9:00pm-10:00pm PST
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big day here in washington. much more to come. tomorrow with house democrats expected to lay out articles of impeachment against the president. coverage of it ahead as the news continues here on cnn. hi, i'm chris cuomo and welcome to "prime time". the articles of impeachment are coming tomorrow, we are told. we're going to check in with a player on what to expect. and two years' worth of deep-state digs from this president were found by his own doj to be wrong. and if he doesn't believe it, he can ask his daughter. turns out she is reportedly friends with the foreign former intel agent who compiled the dossier and has been demonized by her daddy. you cannot make this stuff up. so what do you say? let's get after it.
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make no mistake. what the president has been telling you about the russia probe being a hoax and a witch hunt is dead wrong. that's not from me. that's according to the inspector general at the trump department of justice. years of ugly conspiracies up in smoke. no spying on the trump campaign. the investigation was lawfully started. no political bias. there were some errors made along the way and a new fbi head has a slew of changes to make. but none of the mistakes were judged by the inspector general as adversely affecting any outcomes. the only arguable deep-state activity today was by this president's attorney general, attacking the findings of his own agency and having a handpicked prosecutor to justify his feelings about spying, doing
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his own probe, and his prosecutor pulled a comey, broke protocol, bad-mouthed the inspector general's findings while talking about his own ongoing investigation. so will those accused of treason and worse get an apology? the two men i rely on most about these matters are in fact in the news tonight. andrew mccabe, former deputy director of the fbi, and former fbi general counsel jim baker. gentlemen, good to have you as always. >> thanks, chris. >> good to be here, chris. >> andrew, what does it mean to new. >> you know, it means a lot, chris. it's not a happy day quite honestly because this is something that we have expected and been waiting for for two years. i knew that we had not ever done anything wrong, so to see the i.g. embrace the unavoidable facts of no bias in the investigation, an investigation that was adequately predicated for an authorized purpose and in fact one that we thought we would be guilty of dereliction
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of duty had we not begun it, it is satisfying to finally see those words in print. >> jim, did you anticipate this a.g. coming out and raining on his own agency's parade? >> no, i didn't. i probably should have given the statements he made about the mueller investigation. but i did not see that one coming quite frankly, and it was disappointing given, as andy was saying, the conclusions are quite clear that the president's statements over these past several years were all wrong, that there was no hoax. there was no conspiracy to overthrow anybody. there was no sedition. there was no treason. there's no evidence of any of that. and as you suggested quite bluntly, i think the president should apologize to us. i respectfully asked him to -- i would ask him to apologize to me, to my colleagues, because the things he said are just wrong. and i think he should step up and do that at a minimum. it's just wrong. anyway, i didn't see the a.g.'s thing coming, and that i found -- i found it really quite
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surprising and just not appropriate under these circumstances given what he said and given what the i.g. had found. >> now, you guys on tv especially are 100% g-men. you guys are always stone cold sober. but i have been with you both and talked to you personally. andrew, how hard has it been for you after all the years of service -- not asking you to get mushy but just to be honest about it -- and have this stink on you, that you were part of this cabal, this deep-state effort to take a president down because of your own politics? >> chris, i can tell you, and i feel confident speaking on behalf of all of the colleagues that i worked with on this investigation and many others. to spend your life dedicated to protecting america and upholding the constitution and then to be accused by the president of treason and have him further put the suggestion out that the proper penalty for us would be
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death, i can't describe to you how revolting that is. and quite honestly terrifying. it is just the exact opposite of what we are as government servants. it dishonors the commitments and the work that we did to try to investigate what we now know is a completely valid investigation. and it's just a disgusting level of disrespect for the people who serve this country every day. >> you know, jim, some of the places that you've spoken since you've been out, i've talked to people who have been there. and you, at least in the episodes that i've heard about, you miss every opportunity to say anything about this president and anything about what's going on. and we are all living this perverse reality where we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the president of the united states. but, you know, what andrew's talking about, you know, the penalty should be death. that's not something that's going to affect you hard.
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it's your family. the idea that your life of service is somehow a function of perfidy, it's not just about you. it's your family. it's your friends. how have you handled that? >> yeah, it's been very hard. i mean i use the word trauma to describe it, and i don't use that loosely. it's been traumatic. it's had a negative effect on me and my family and my colleagues, my former colleagues and friends. it's been extremely difficult. but i had just resolved that i refuse to get down in the mud with anybody. i just refuse. it's not what's in the best interest of the country. so as i've written about, you know, i've tried to deal with the hatred that's come my way and turn that around and deal with it by trying to love other people, by actually trying to love the president and love his supporters. that's what i've been about. i've written about that on lawfare, and that's what i think. it's more honorable, and it's more likely to help the country because i love the country so much, and i want to do what's
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right for it. and dragging us down into the mud is not the right thing to do. that's what i've been about, chris, but it's been really hard, and it negatively affected my career. it's affected my friends. it's just been very, very difficult. >> and you know it wasn't done out of heartfelt belief. you know it was done out of political animus. we see it time and time again. here's the problem now. sorry, fellas, but you know this. it ain't over. you know this durham report. he doesn't come out today after all we learned about comey and not going out early during an investigation, and what this inspector general, horowitz, wrote about that. he comes out with an ongoing investigation and says, i disagree. we have our own probe going. you know it is not going to be friendly to this i.g. report's findings. so how do you deal with that, andrew? on one level, i'm saying to you, hey, good for you. you just got an attaboy. you're not the bad guy the president says you are. but you know what's coming next. >> of course we do. we know that because this false narrative that we've been
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dealing with and living under for the last two years is very important to the president politically. and this attorney general has shown time and time again that that's his priority, holding up the president's political narrative, not protecting the institution or trying to make the fbi better or acknowledging the good work that people in the fbi do, but rather perpetuating the president's falsehoods. so i have no doubt that that will continue. both barr and durham made clear today that they have, to some degree, pre-judged the result in barr's investigation, and so now we will continue the waiting game to see where that comes out. >> hey, jim, the president sometimes watches this show, is certainly told about it on a regular basis. makes my life a bowl of cherries. what would you like to say to him? what would you like him to know? >> he should know that we were trying to do our jobs for the country. we were trying to protect the country from russia. this was always all about
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russia. and as shown by the mueller report and the indictments, the russians are trying to hurt the country, and i call upon the president to step up to the russians and insist that they cease and desist from any efforts to interfere in our elections. and he needs to put the interests of the country ahead of his own political interests at every turn. he should come forward with respect to the impeachment. he should let everybody cooperate with that inquiry and get to the bottom of it. let the secretary of state, mr. bolton, and every else cooperate. always put the interests of the country first. put your personal political interests second. >> as you guys know, we always play it straight here with you guys. there were things that came out in this report about mistakes. there's a list i think of three dozen or maybe 40 changes that the fbi director, mr. wray, wants to make. i want to ask you about the findings and the fixes, and i want to ask you about the likelihood and the impact of this information that came out about that dossier author,
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christopher steele, the british agent being friends with ivanka trump, and we never heard about it, and they're saying he's out to get the president, and they're saying if anything, i was predisposed to like him. every time you think it can't get more wacky, it does. stay with me. we'll be back in a second. stay with cnn. man: sneezes
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i like what you're seeing. it's beautiful, isn't it? yeah. td ameritrade now offers zero commissions on online trades. ♪ all right. let's just be very clear about this inspector general report. it matters. we're going to get to what the articles of impeachment look like. i have one of the players coming on, congressman jamie raskin. but this matters. we've had two years, okay, of our president and his defenders saying, it was all bogus, this russia investigation. the way it was done was dirty. it was political bias. the only ugly politics being played are by him and now
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arguably his attorney general. i'm going to save that argument for the argument. but there are these two things that came out of this report that we have to deal with, okay? one, totally wacky, would have never believed it if it didn't come out. christopher steele is that former british agent that did the dossier, worked for that outfit that in part was paid by the dnc to do this investigation on trump with his sources, right? the president has bashed this guy as pro-clinton again and again and again. we learned today he's friends with his daughter. the man is friends with ivanka trump. abc news reported it first. we followed it up. we have it now. how do you make it up? let's bring back andrew mccabe and jim baker. i would have bet 50 pairs of glasses like you guys match up with every day that you would never, ever get any kind of tie-inli like it, but here we a,
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andrew. the guy is supposedly out to get you. he's friends with your daughter and gave her a kilt, or whatever you call it. something with a "t." give me it so i don't disrespect -- >> a tartan. >> what do you make of that? >> all you can say, chris, is that now christopher steele has to be added to the long, long list of people who have been unfairly and inaccurately vilified by the president has being supposed political enemies. the simple fact is he has had a long -- i read in one piece of reporting, seven-year relationship, friendly relationship with ivanka trump. that is not the stuff that leads to someone out there plotting to overthrow the president or to try to drum up bad information for that purpose. >> look, even jim baker almost smiled there. do you have teeth? there they are. how about that? so, jim, this is the interesting part about this, is that how did
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it not come up? you know, your father is out there beating this man like a pinata on a daily basis, and it doesn't come up that, hey, by the way, dad, i know him. he's a pretty solid guy. you know, he's been good to me. he's a friend. actually we're going to do some business with him at one time. how does it not come up? >> because the facts that don't fit the narrative are discarded and ignored. that's what we've been dealing with for several years now, that the president has a narrative about what happened, and he's pushing that for political reasons and facts that don't fit it, he discards. that was his reaction today, i think, to the i.g. report. he's still making these statements about how there was this attempted overthrow of the government and so on. there wasn't. there is no evidence of that. there are no facts to support that, and yet he keeps repeating it. so with ivanka's supposed relationship with christopher steele, it does not fit the narrative, so it was not brought forward. >> right. look, i'm not making any suggestions about the type of the relationship. i mean it's just, you know, if
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you know somebody and you kind of trust them and you're thinking of doing business with them, certainly, if anything, as he admitted -- steele -- if i had any disposition it was to be friendly with the trump family. i wasn't looking to come after them. i like her. the other thing that came out in this, the exact kinds of concerns about investigators using what they like and leaving out what they don't like. there are about a dozen to 17 instances in this report, not of making things up but basically sins of omission. andrew, the one that grabs the headline is that a staff lawyer altered a document in a fisa application -- yes, a fisa application is a gazillion pages. they're very thick. they go through all these different levels of review. but faking a document? he's now under criminal investigation. do you acknowledge and own the mistakes? >> absolutely. absolutely. that particular mistake you've referred to, that's a very, very serious allegation, changing a document to alter the substance of what's communicated is
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something that no fbi personnel should ever be involved in. so i'm not going to pre-judge the young man. i know that it is currently under investigation. we'll see where that goes. with respect to the other inaccuracies in the fisa -- >> and omissions. omissions. >> yeah, look, that is not what the fbi should be doing. we should be perfect in the facts that we represent to the dort and t court and the way we present facts in a transparent and fulsome way. it seems in this case we didn't do that. those mistakes should be rectified and people should be held accountable as appropriate. but let's remember even the i.g. determined that none of those mistakes -- he didn't find any indicators that those mistakes were intentional misrepresentations or omissions to the court. it was rather a matter of sloppiness or mistakes or what have you. >> right. i don't buy it because i'm an investigative journalist and i'm the guy who is usually fighting with you people. i'm not usually in the business of having to defend democratic
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institutions. usual lly it's politicians beatg me over the head with that. james baker, this is the idea of restoring people's faith in the institution. the argument will be, so they left out what they didn't like and then the i.g. says it didn't affect the outcomes. how did it not affect the outcomes if they left things out? what do you understand about the process that sheds light on that? >> the process needs to have the highest degree of integrity and the lawyers and the agents need to have the highest -- they need to adhere to the highest duty of candor to the tribunal, to the court, and they need to hold themselves to high standards. the stuff we've been talking about is just completely unacceptable. it should not happen, and obviously we need to fix the process. i've been involved in this battle to make sure that pleadings in front of the fisa court are accurate. i've been working on this for 20 years or so, and it's been a problem for lots of reasons, and you need good processes. you need good procedures. but you need to make sure that you have the right people in
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place and, you know, i share part of this responsibility in terms of management. i didn't know about the facts that are articulated in the i.g. report, but i was part of the management structure there as well andy, as was jim comey, and i think collectively we all take responsibility for that. and i support the efforts by director wray to fix this. i agree and support that and would be happy to help in any way i possibly could. >> we're going to put out an invite to him. he says he has about 40 changes he wants to make to make the process better. i invite him on the show. we're going to do it formally to come on and talk about the changes and why it makes the agency better. we're all about testing what our agencies do, our institutions do. andrew mccabe, jim baker, thank you very much for being with me tonight. it's not over for you guys because you're stuck in a political vortex, but i'm sure it's a little validating to get some of the facts out tonight and clear away a little bit of the fog that this president has put over the agency and over you both personally. thank you for being with me
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tonight. it is always an honor for me to have those gentlemen on my show. they are good men. they did a good job, and now you had an inspector general vouch for that. now, another main fbi trump target has something to say tonight. the name peter strzok, right? killed by those text messages with lisa page. look, hey, they had an indiscretion. they made a choice, no question about it. but it became a metaphor for this deep state nonsense. his lawyer is here next. what is strzok's take? what does the report mean? what is the reality? next.
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the i.g. report, the inspector general, clears a lot of the fog of the farce that was the president's conspiracy theories about that probe. now, that includes the one salacious detail that donald trump -- forget about the hypocrisy -- he just never tires of this hype. >> peter strzok and his lover, lisa page. strzok or his lover, lisa page, the two great lovers. look at peter strzok and what he said about me. how about that fbi agent? how about that guy? did you read what he said? . it was a disgrace to the fbi. it was a disgrace to our country. >> that was a disgrace to the country. i replay these clips because it was so wrong to make their personal problems into something political, and that's what was done. and now the i.g. report confirms it. and that last clip, imagine if you ever thought you'd see a
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president of the united states standing next to vladimir putin and watching our president go bad on his own. is that being patriotic? aitan goelman is an attorney for peter strzok. it's good to see you here, counselor. it's been going to be in touch with you through this process. let your client know he is come. i think it was meaningful for the american people to see lisa page. what does this report mean to your client? >> complete vindication, chris. i mean we've heard that said by the president about the mueller report a number of times. it was always false. this time it's actually true. you had the i.g. take 18 months, talk to more than 100 witnesses, review more than a million documents and found that there was no evidence that pete's political opinions had any impact on his work. there was no coup. there was no treason. there was no wiretapping of trump. there was no attempt to infiltrate the trump campaign. all of those allegations, false, false, and false.
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>> and of course i'm not here to talk about what decisions he made in his life with lisa page. that's his own choices and, i understand why the fbi would take action based on their use of corporate texts and all that stuff. that's their rules, and he has to own that. but for the people who hold out and say, why all that talk about how they had an insurance plan and how they would stop trump from being president? what's your client's explanation? >> chris, if you look, and for better or worse, the record of texts between pete and lisa page is kind of a realtime commentary of their consciousness. if you look at them, they talk about all kinds of stuff. they never, ever say that they're going to commit a coup. they never say they're going to undermine democracy. the insurance policy text has been completely taken out of context. pete provided a lengthy explanation, and i think that was in the first inspector general's report. and, you know, the one thing that if you're looking for someone's state of mind that you can kind of look to, it's all
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the surrounding evidence. and here you have proof positive that they never actually did anything. and pete in particular never did anything that was motivated by his personal political opinions. >> right. i mean, look, obviously there was a play made here to exploit those conversations and use them as political fodder, and it worked. now, now what for peter strzok? he testified. this comes out. there was no perfidy in terms of professionalism. what does this mean for his life, though? >> well, i mean i think we are looking at kind of a game of whack-a-mole here. every time there's one particular conspiracy theory debunked, another one comes up. so for months and months and months we've been hearing about how this i.g. report is going to be devastating and how pete and mccabe and comey are going to be frog marched away in handcuffs. now we're seeing the swivel. just wait, u.s. attorney durham, that's where all the real action
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is. >> durham pulled a comey today. they're not supposed to talk about ongoing investigations. lawyers like you and journalists like me are constantly frustrated by that rule. you can never get any information about what's happening with your clients when they're the subject of an fbi investigation. they never want to tell us anything. and comey wasn't supposed to speak and now durham came out, amazing timing, the day of the i.g. report, when his benefactor bill barr wants a counternarrative put out, and he said, we don't agree with the underpinnings of what started this and how the probe got going. is that foreboding for you? >> it's not forebodes because pete didn't break any law. what it is is incredibly disappointing. here's a golden opportunity for the attorney general to say to the american people, this should be deeply reassuring. this was your fbi doing its job. it wasn't politically motivated. chris, can you imagine what an i.g. report would say if the fbi didn't open an investigation based on the information from the australians?
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can you imagine how damning that would be if they just sat on this? enste instead, you have an attempt by the attorney general to minimize what the i.g. has found and his conclusions and to call into doubt and basically throw his own department under the bus. it's incredibly disappointing, and i say that as somebody who got his offer letter from the department of justice signed by bill barr in 1992. >> that's an interesting coincidence. counselor, thank you for joining us tonight. it's an important time to get the perspective of your client, mr. strzok. send our best. he's always welcome here. thank you for coming as well. you're welcome as well. >> thank you, chris. >> all right. now, we have breaking news. reports of what could be in the articles of impeachment against president trump. we're hearing you may learn this information in full tomorrow, but we want to bring in a top house investigator who just got out of a meeting with the speaker, next.
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♪ all we need is somebody to lean on ♪ ♪ ♪ sweden's greetings. enjoy your first payment on us when you lease a new volvo. now through january 2nd. all right. we have breaking news. house democrats are set to announce articles of impeachment tomorrow morning, and the reports tonight are they're going to be at least two, maybe
quote
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only two. abuse of power and obstruction of congress. that second one holds a distinction that we have to discuss, and we have the perfect guest. house judiciary member jamie raskin. congressman, thank you for joining us tonight. >> i'm delighted to be with you, chris. >> so we understand that there are discussions ongoing, that this reporting is accurate at this point but there may be an expansion thereof. is that your understanding, sir? >> yeah, i think there may have been a little bit of fake news in there before. i was not in a meeting with speaker pelosi. >> i never said you were. >> i was meeting with the judiciary committee. >> not you, okay. i just wanted to be clear about that. but, look, the judiciary committee was pleased with our proceedings today because the evidence that came out was just overwhelming and unrefuted and
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uncontradicted of the president's scheme to shake down the government of ukraine. and our gop colleagues wanted to talk about anything but the facts of the case. so they were, you know, upset about how long we've been working on this or how fast it's going or this or that complaint. but they never laid a glove on the factual case or the legal case for impeachment. >> lomy major concern is that w have certain patterns of conduct that are identified as we move forward. one pattern of conduct is exploiting the public office for personal gain. a second is inviting in foreign powers and welcoming in foreign powers to interfere in our elections. and then the final pattern i'm interested in is the obstruction of congress as it tries to move forward to investigate all of these things. >> okay. forgive me but i got to push,
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congressman, on two things. one, something you said. and, one, something that isn't said in the reporting. first what you said. a pattern of conduct. pattern of conduct, as you just said about whether it's self-enrichment or behavior vis-a-vis investigations, that dovetails into additional articles of impeachment that i think abuse of power here would have to be at some point articulated as bribery or extortion by you guys. i don't see the extortion, but that's up for you. the idea of bringing in the mueller probe and the obstruction there, you say the reporting is obstruction of congress, not obstruction of justice, which is what mueller was talking about. is mueller going to be left out of this? >> well, i don't know the answer to that, and i mean -- >> and it's coming out tomorrow? >> i can't tell because i don't know. well, i'm not quite sure exactly what's coming out tomorrow. it may just be a statement of what the schedule for the rest of the week is. i just -- i'm not quite sure
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exactly what's on the agenda there. but let me just refer back to the hearing that we had with the constitutional law scholars. this ukraine episode embodies all three of these patterns of conduct. it is the elevation of the president's personal political agenda above the national security, above the constitution. it is the enticement of foreign powers in to corrupt our elections and then a total scramble to obstruct any efforts to figure out what happened by blockading witnesses, withholding evidence, and preventing congress from doing its job. >> so let's see. if tomorrow they don't put out the articles of impeachment, you had a lot of people feeding us information that they shouldn't have. now, does that speak to how much division is there? >> well, i don't think there's very much division at all. the devil is in the details always in terms of the draftsmanship in terms of what's finally reduced to paper.
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>> but it's include moueller or don't include mueller. you've got to make a choice. >> the word mueller means different things to different people. there's a lot that's in the mueller report. speaker pelosi has herself said that all roads lead to russia, and russia's fingerprints are all over so much of what's in the -- >> but it's the obstruction. it's what mueller seemed to suggest in his testimony and in his report he was leaving to you guys. >> yes. and i believe that this is a president who is engaged in a pattern of obstructing any investigation into his criminal misconduct and the corruption of his administration. in terms of, you know, what specifically is cited, it really does come down to a question of drafting of the articles, and i'm not involved in the, you know, final stages of that process. lots of us have tried to have input along the way, but we are
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waiting to see what, you know, comes back from the people who are doing the drafting. >> give me a quick yes-no on this and then i want to ask you about today. the idea that the moderates are really worried about this and they want to keep it very tight -- ukraine, what we have here, don't be expansive. >> well, i mean obviously there's always a diversity of views about how expansive to go. and, you know, to my mind, a lot of the issue is what do we have a sufficient quantum of evidence to go on right now as opposed to continuing to conduct oversight in other areas. so undoubtedly, you know, this president is a one-man crime wave, and we're not going to be able to get all of his crimes into the high crimes and misdemeanors that are identified for the purposes of these articles. you know, i have not -- you
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know, i've been so caught up in with the judiciary committee itself is doing that i've not had the chance to canvass colleagues about where they are on different issues. i would say if i had to guess about where the center of gravity is in our caucus, it's that we should be as conservative comprehensive as possible in describing the criminality that pervades the trump administration at the same time we are very precise and focused in the identification of particular criminal acts in the articles themselves. >> the division on display in one set of sound bites from today. here it is. >> we will now hear presentations -- >> mr. chairman -- >> the gentleman is not recognized. we will now hear presentations -- >> i have a parliamentary inquiry. is this when we just hear staff ask questions of other staff and the members get dealt out of this whole hearing? for the next four hours you're going to try to overturn the results -- >> the gentleman will suspend. >> ugly early. what is the state of play?
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>> well, there are obviously two different narratives out there. ours is based on a 300-page report that is chock-full with facts of witnesses who went under oath and actually testified as to the president's shakedown of president zelensky, and it is filled with factual detail documenting every phase of this scheme. on the other side, you've got president trump and the people he's ordered not to testify, like secretary pompeo and secretary perry and so on, and they're basically, you know, throwing stones from the side, saying this is a hoax and this is b.s. and this is a fraud and so on. come under oath. take the oath like all of these witnesses did, people who worked for president trump, and tell us why it's a hoax. tell us why it's a fraud. tell us where the lies are because this story is perfectly coherent. it makes sense, and it's been totally uncontradicted and
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non-refuted. all that we're seeing on the other side, chris, is a bunch of conspiracy theories. it's really scary because they're conspiracy theories that gel completely with all of the propaganda and disinformation coming out of moscow from vladimir putin. >> look, i keep telling people, you ain't seen nothing yet because when there's a trial in the senate, the republicans are in control. they're going to control what comes in, and it could be a very different set of circumstance that are put out there. congressman jamie raskin, thank you for keeping us in the loop. i appreciate it. >> and thanks for having me, chris. >> always a pleasure. all right. the president loves to argue that the deck is stacked against him. our argument is that i have never seen somebody be dealt the hands that he continues to be dealt by a dealer that is clearly working for him. all on the facts. we'll lay it out next. when we were looking for a roommate,
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the inspector general report today was good for us american citizens, and it was validating for the fbi on one level, but it exposed some issues that they need to fix as well. here are the big takeaways. one, the fbi properly opened its investigation into russian elections interference. no more hoax. no more witch hunt. that's not what it was. two, the origins of the investigation were not politically motivated. three, this president and his attorney general have been trashing our government without cause. and, yes, as i said at the top, there were problems, including on several of the fisa applications made on carter page. but here's the key point. they're not perfect. they've never been perfect. journalists go after them all the time. the i.g. says it didn't affect the legitimacy of the surveillance on page nor the probe itself. so the deep state they spied on
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us riff from trump and co, the toxic hoax hiecype, it should b dead but it isn't. trump and co are actually acting like he put out a statement about his own agency's i.g. report sounding more trump attorney than attorney general. the report now makes clear the fbi launched an inintrusive investigation of a u.s. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions in my view were insufficient to justify the steps taken. >> the russian government confirmed that they sponsored effort. they did not find that they clueded in those efforts.
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the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient to establish the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. >> same stuff although barr is the same trump defender. it is overshadowed by canned talking points. mueller did not exonerate the president. that means he said, the president is innocent. he said he could not find enough to sustain charges. not that he found nothing. big difference. first, collusion is not a crime so it would never be charged here. but mueller did cite several examples of trumpers doing things they should not do another caught seven guilty verdicts. on an obstruction, mueller's team laid down a dozen acts but didn't make a judgment. a legal letter that sitting presidents shouldn't be indicted. so barr spun his own agency's
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findings in a way that flatters this president and then launched his own investigation with his own hand picked employee to chase down his own suspicions of lying. and lo and behold, his guy pulled a comey today. that means that john durham addressed an ongoing investigation which they say they never do, right? it's a no-no as we learned with comey. he didn't do it to reveal facts. just to rain on the i.g. report. the statement. we advise the inspector general that we do not agree with the conclusions, how the fbi case was open. you know what that means. more stink is coming. that's very deep state. as for barr's thinnest of suspicions crack about the basis to start the probe, he's once again going bad on his own agency. the investigation found investigators were following fbi guidelines. but who made them?
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i'm glad you asked. this guy. now, barr could change the standards. they were put in place after 9/11. why would you take tools from your own people who were trying to keep them safe? his goal is to put stink on his agency, undermine the institution openly and an obvious political fashion just to advance a political preference. very deep state. so one thing is now hundo p, 100% clear. this potus is better represented in these proceedings than any other president ever in an impeachment. it's a big statement, and it's 100% true. clinton's a.g., janet reno, picked ken starr to do the investigating. she initiated that independent counsel statute. trump's a.g. is acting more like his personal attorney. clinton had democrats go bad on
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him -- that's not fair. they did their duty, and they voted against him twice, to initiate the proceeding and on articles of impeachment. he had 31 say, yeah, let's do this, and 5 say, yeah, he should be impeached on these. this president has his whole party in congress ignoring their oath and arguing his side, not once, but twice. clinton had them go bad on him twice. he's had them go bad on their oath twice. deep state. people put in place to effect their own political agenda. how do they not meet the definition? our attorney general bill barr and this cabal of former conservatives in congress, boy, do they seem to qualify. that's the argument. let me know what you think about it, but it's just a take on the facts. all right. bolo. be on the lookout is next. this doj inspector general report is not going to quash the russia probe conspiracy theories, not by itself.
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bolo. i know everybody's looking at the i.g. report as an end, but it isn't. reports, forget it, republicans are going to keep going. the i.g. report doesn't fit the narrative. they need deep state. they need that as part of the sell. so they're going to pin their hopes on the man handpicked by a.g. barr to lead a separate investigation into what barr believes happened with the russia probe known as spying. u.s. attorney john durham, a man of good reputation. listen to doug collins. >> bottom line, the report shows the page fisa should have never been obtained. if you don't have the page fisa, you don't have a russia investigation. if you don't have a russia investigation, you can't knock out the president as a candidate at the time in the 2016 election, and you can't hamstring the president's first two years with a special counsel
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