self-taught, and fighting in the revolutionary war as a kid. he became a wonderful general. have a great night, everyone. here on "fox news tonight," keep in mind that tucker is coming up next. his hair is gray. >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight" ." we are beginning tonight with a story we just learned a few hours ago, a story that amazed us. last night on the show we told you about how the john podesta group, a lobbying firm cofounded by hillary clinton's campaign -- have been sucked into the investigation of alleged russian interference in american politics. before last night's show was even over, we got an email from a man with direct personal knowledge of that story. the man, whose name we can reveal for the time being, is a former senior employee of the group. he worked there for years. he said he was motivated to

contact us by the disgust he felt watching media coverage of the russia story. not only were most reporters getting it wrong, they were getting it backward. the russians were in fact deeply involved in american politics, but the real story had almost nothing to do with the 2016 presidential campaign. intrigued, we agreed to meet with at source today. he just left our offices here in washington a couple of hours ago. the story he told us is astonishing. we will be following up on it, confirming more of it and bringing you details about it this week and after. at first, here's an overview of what he told us. media reports describe paul manafort as a central figure in the russia investigation due to the several months he spent as donald trump's campaign chairman. according to our source, that's only half true. he is indeed at the center of this investigation, but not because of his ties to trump. in fact, paul manafort spent years working with the podesta group on behalf of russian government interests. that relationship extends back

to at least 20111 oh source claims manafort had dinner with both podesta for less. he saw him in the offices all the time. at least once a month. manafort was not there to socialize, he was representing russian business and political interests, who sought to influence capitol hill, hillary clinton state department and the obama administration. our source describes manafort bringing what he called a parade of russian oligarchs after the congress where they met with members and their staffs. but the central effort to extend russian influence was focused on the executive branch, the obama administration. the vehicle through which paul manafort worked for the russians was a shell group called the european center for a modern ukraine. the group supposedly was based in belgium, but it had no actual offices there. it had in fact only two employees, both of them based in ukraine. their telephone number in brussels rang, it was a sham. it did have a presence in

washington. european center for a modern ukraine was a major client of the podesta group. why did the russians choose the podesta group? well, because both podestas for close to the clintons. she could get things done to the clients. it was influence peddling, the most obvious kind. for example, our source says that at john podesta's recommendation, his brother tony hired a man named david adams. before joining the podesta grou group, adams worked at the state department as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs. he was also chief legislative advisor to hillary clinton. as part of his job, he personally briefed hillary clinton every day. he aided in the confirmation of at least 122 political nominees at state. by hiring him in 2013, our source says, at the podesta group got a direct liaison between their offices and by extension their russian clients, and hillary's state department. sometimes, our source said, ties between the podesta group and the clintons were explicit.

tony podesta spoke regularly to hillary clinton while she ran the state department. secretary clinton is on the line. at one point in either 2013 or maybe early 2014 our source says a meeting was held that included both 20 podesta and a representative of the clinton foundation. explicit subject of that meetin meeting? how to assist uranium one, that's the russian owned company that owns 20% of american uranium production, and whose board members gave more than $100 million to the clinton foundation. as our source put it, "tony podesta was basically part of the clinton foundation. apparently there was not a lot of pretending about this internally at the podesta group. according to our source, manafort was clear, crystal clear that russia wanted to cultivate ties to hillary clinton in the belief she was likely to become president. these links to hillary were apparently quite valuable to the russians. our source believes that the russian money manafort funnel to

the podesta group greatly exceeds the roughly 1 millionth they were officially paid. that's what he said. some of these payments he indicated could be hidden kickbacks that would be hard for investigators to trace. our source described the groups books as "a treasure trove, and highly secret." he told us the group had no board overseeing it and that all financial decisions internally or made by tony podesta personally. the group's he said, included a person whose only official job was managing tony podesta's art collection. it would be obviously pretty easy for an organization like that to conceal financial transactions. the source we spoke to has been interviewed extensively by robert mueller's independent investigators. the investigation is still framed for a hunt for collusion between donald trump's presidential campaign and the government of russia. our source says investigators are very interested in manafort's behavior while he went from campaign, but otherwise that description is mostly focused. the investigation has broadened now to determine which people

and which organization in washington have spent years working secretly as de facto operatives on behalf of russian government and business interests. the podesta group is chief among these. "they are more focused on facilitators of russian influence in this country, says our source, then they are on election collusion. "the podesta group he says is in their cross hairs. we should note the obvious, many of the lobbying efforts are source described are not yet illegal necessarily and i told you a lot about modern american politics. but if true, the story we heard overturns much of what we think we know about russian attempts to influence american policy. we believe our source is telling the truth. we don't think he has reason to lie to us. the fact we've been able to check have turned out to be accurate. if we believe our source has exposed behavior that undermines this country, but that unfortunately is common here in washington. we plan to proceed carefully as we report this out, but we will proceed bringing you everything

went fine. if we suspect there's a lot there. brit hume joins us tonight. the fact, or the idea from our source that paul manafort was working for the podesta group on behalf of russian interests before running the trump campaign changes this story completely, it seems to me. >> it does to change completely. it suggests that what collusion there have been was between paul manafort and the podesta group on behalf of russian interests. the podesta group -- these two guys, tony and john, they lie at the heart of the democratic party and certainly of the clintons and their political endeavors. this changes the whole character and focus and it does raise also the question. you're coming around to getting at this now, that's remarkable on your part to have gotten this source to come and talk to you, how could it be that all these

journalists working for other news organizations have been chasing the story, these many months, and never run across any of this? remarkable indeed. >> tucker: that's exactly the point. you've been in journalism longer than i've been alive, how could the central front group that manafort was representing, the money goes through the podesta group and nobody notices? 75 employees in washington, no one has mentioned this to a journalist in the last 11 months? i find that not believable. >> it's pretty striking, and it suggests that the work has been done on the story has not been of the best quality or this would have turned out and i would also suggest that you have a pack of journalists who are so determined to follow one story line that they completely missed this. but this is a big deal on a lot of levels. it is particularly noteworthy

that we hear that robert mueller is on this and suggested that his investigation, which might have been initially about russian efforts to influence the election, is now much more broad gazed effort to determine the extent and depth of russian efforts to influence american policy going back several years. if that's the case, and if all we hear about the podestas is true, seems to be the democrats have been complaining about this and making all kinds of allegations about this all this time are going to be very disappointed in the outcome. >> tucker: considering for the last year we heard that america faces no greater for, has never faced a greater foe then putin's russia and seeking to undermine our democracy and destroy our country, and now it turns out the two of the people closest to hillary clinton were working for them. i don't really know how democrats will respond to that. >> was also the case, if we look at this uranium one matter that

is coming more and more to light, it appears that we have the obama administration in its effort to seek a closer relationship with russian acquiescing a sale of materials that are strategic and that could certainly be argued place american security interests at some risk and all of this going on of course while -- unlike what you've just reported, this has been known for some time, but it seems to be coming into sharper focus at the moment and will be the subject of investigations going forward. democrats can scream a lot and they no doubt will that all of that is a diversion, but i'm beginning to think that those claims and accusations are going to ring a little hollow in light of what your reporting and in light of what else is coming out even as we speak tonight. >> tucker: we can't get democrat on the show tonight, we can get a member of congress. of course we reach out immediately to the podesta group for comment, we didn't hear back from them. as if there isn't enough news

today, there's late-breaking news that apparently the information that comprise the now-famous dossier that busby printed, that information was paid for by the dnc and hillary clinton presidential campaign. i'm not even sure how to respond to this. >> it striking, that dossier, even as it appeared at the time, was pretty widely recognized even among media unsympathetic to donald trump as curlers and a lot of it was demonstrably false. this is a pretty shabby piece of business here and if it turns out that, as we now believe, that it was paid for in considerable measure by the clinton campaign and the democratic party -- this contained within it, allegations about from collusion with the russians. that tends to soil that whole allegation even further. the tide may be no turning in all this in political terms, and

one might also open journalistic terms. >> tucker: kind of brazen though. one of your chief fund-raisers and the guy who's running your campaign is in effect working with paul manafort, it's a little brazen for you to run around claiming that paul manafort when he worked for donald trump was working with the russians, no? what does it take to clean something like that? >> brazen might be the right word. one hardly knows what to say about that, but it certainly reveals another side of the story that may be bigger and more important than these allegations, which have so far remained virtually without evidence. the allegations of collusion between the trump campaign itself and the president, the man who is now president, and the russians, is virtually nonexistent. after all these months. now we hear about all this other stuff. as i suggest tucker, the tide

may now be turning on all of this and not in a way the democrats are going to enjoy. >> tucker: i would be concerned if i were the podestas. thank you very much for that. appreciate it. >> you bet. >> tucker: up next, for the reaction to the allegations which is brought you from a form to my former member of president obama's campaign team. that's next. ♪

♪ >> tucker: we have ample reason to believe the uranium one story is actual news related to a wide ranging effort by russia to affect american

policy. according to hillary clinton it's just old news. >> it's the same baloney they've been peddling for years and there's been no credible evidence that anyone, in fact it has been debunked repeatedly. and it will continue to be debunked. trump and his allies, including fox news, are really experts at distraction and diversion. >> tucker: former obama regional campaign direction, thanks for coming on. >> thank you, anytime. >> tucker: we now have a sourcing, we spoke to a couple hours ago, saying that a representative from the clinton foundation had a meeting at the podesta group founded, as you know, by john and tony podesta here in washington. sort of locus of democratic politics. if the clinton foundation person said we need to do what we can to help the uranium one. and that's the group was board members gave over $100 million to the clinton family foundation. that's not fake news, that's real. what's the innocent explanation for that? >> that we were seeking to reset

our relationship with russia and get the kremlin on board with the iran nuclear deal. i do want to say, you said earlier that you couldn't get a democrat on the show, but here i am! >> tucker: a member of congress, but you are nice to come. that's a real explanation, and i think that's probably the real explanation, they were very focused on the nuclear deal and they wanted brush on board. in exchange we give up control of 20% of our strategic uranium reserves and i don't think anybody in retrospect i think that's a wise idea, do you? >> honestly i actually see this as a win. for so long this was just thrown off as a myth, it was dismissed, the president told us that this was fake news, but i'm glad to see that republicans are now beginning to take this seriously, that russian is seeking to destabilize our democracy. i don't see this as a partisan issue, whatever it takes to the stable side of our democracy. >> tucker: it turns out to be a democratic issue because paul

manafort was working on behalf of russian interests with the podesta group. paul manafort, the former chairman of trump's campaign was working with the podesta group founded by the chairman of hillary's campaign to influence the obama administration and hillary clinton's state department. the kind of changes the story line a little bit, wouldn't you say? >> i think robert mueller will leave no stone unturned. >> tucker: i want to know what you say about that. >> americans want to know exactly what's going on. they don't care about the policy partakes. they want to know what russia is doing to destabilize our democracy. >> tucker: let me agree with you and say, however, that what we have just discovered contravenes everything that democrats have been saying for the last 11 months, it turns out -- the only information that i verified is that the russians were attempting to influence the obama administration and the hillary clinton's state department and they got pretty far in that effort with the help of paul manafort. that's not shocking to you?

>> nothing shocks me when it comes to russia. i want to say that one thing with this recent story about the podesta group is that we have got to make some gains here, some improvements to the foreign agents registration act, because it's very lax. it was that with general flynn and i really think -- i would not be surprised if there's a problem here. i'm glad that mueller -- it's not just a partisan investigation. he's leaving no stone unturned. i think her name will be cleared. >> tucker: why would you be confident that when we just discovered that one of her eighth at the state department was hired by tony podesta, one of her biggest fund-raisers to lobby her on behalf of russian, apparently. that's what our source told us. how does that exculpate or? that seems to incriminate her to me. >> i think that's a stretch.

$145, i know that that was debunked. i saw that when you boil it down it was more like $4 million. i want to say that one thing that is being left out of this narrative, one thing that is being left out of this narrative is that russia can't export this uranium outside of the united states. it's not like they can do just whatever they want with it, they were not licensed to. it's going to stay here, but what we need -- >> tucker: i don't know why i'm the only one reading "the new york times" as someone who despises the paper, but they have already reported that a great deal of that uranium has been exported without an export license, against u.s. law. it has left our country to places unknown. we can be certain where it went. we know that and so there's no defending that. i may ask really quickly, why are you so certain that hillary will be exonerated when it seems very clear to me that the russians were directly influencing her behavior as secretary of state?

>> because, this wasn't just her decision. this was approved by the cfr u.s., there were nine agencies that approved this deal. the state department, the attorney general, the secretary of the treasury, the defense secretary, i could go on and on. >> tucker: what is it about hillary that makes art people to find her at all costs? you said donald trump has been caught on camera committing cannibalism, i would say i'm not going to defend him. what is it about her that she exercises such deep loyalty and people? it strange. anyway, good job. thanks for being the only one who would come on tonight. appreciate it. >> thank you, anytime. >> tucker: mark cuban says he's thinking about running against donald trump in the next presidential election as a republican. what would he do differently? what does he even believed? we will him live next. we will him live next. ♪

you won't see these folks at the post office. we will him live next. ♪ they have businesses to run.

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>> tucker: mark cuban is a famous billionaire, he owns the dallas mavericks. he also very popular tv show. now he may want to be president. he recently said he is considering a run in 2020. if he does he said he will run as a republican potentially mounting a primary challenge to president trump. what kind of president would he be? that we would ask him, mark cuban joins us tonight. thanks a lot for coming on. >> thanks for having me. >> tucker: rather than ask you all the boring political questions, how you would do it, all that stuff, i want to ask what you believe because i think you are really direct.

there are about i think it's 560 billionaires in the united states right now. in 2009 when obama took office there were 200 fewer. there's been a massive increase in wealth at the top end. meanwhile the middle class has remained stagnant. is that a problem and what would you do about it? >> yes is a problem. the first thing i would do rather than the tracks of form looking at right now, i would decrease payroll taxes significantly so that money, instead of having every dollar taxed as it is now, that money would go right to the hands of the people who need it most. we have 77,000 people who get paid by the hour we are ignoring them. >> tucker: that would definitely put money in people's pockets, how would you pay for the entitlements we use? >> the entitlement in terms of which entitlements? >> medicare, medicaid, social security, all that with less tax revenue, how would you fund that stuff? >> obviously that's a challenge right now and we need to find ways to reduce the cost of those entitlements while maintaining the same level of care.

the reality is i was focused on creating technology solutions. i have investments that i see myself having an impact. i think there's a way we can reduce the size of government, the size of bureaucracy that deals with health care, but it's going to take some buddy who understands technology that can introduce technology to find the solutions. it can happen relatively quickly. >> tucker: you definitely understand technology enter your credit you've been one of the people sounding the great alarm about automation's effect on unemployment. robots will kill a lot of jobs. given that, is allowing about 1 million low-wage, low skilled workers into the country here illegally, is not a good idea? is that the right level? >> you can argue both sides of that. i don't have all the data to make the final decision, but on one hand you can say that it takes jobs away from people who need them the most. on the other hand because of the demographics range you can say we need people to fill certain jobs. if you look at agriculture, there are jobs that are going unfilled. there's arguments for both

sides. i'm not ready to come to a conclusion. >> tucker: if you find out tomorrow that iran had a usable nuclear weapon, without justifying a military strike by the united states? >> not immediately, no. it would just append what else we can do. at that point obviously diplomacy has failed and -- again, i'm a tech guy. you can't launch -- you can't control a lot of these things just in the blind. at some point we were going to have to have access to it. cyber military, if you want to call it that, and aggressive or proactive version of cybersecurity, i think that has to have a real impact and it has to be a focus and we are not focusing enough on it yet. i think there's a greater risk in our cybersecurity efforts than there are for bombing. if somebody can hack into our military, we are at far greater risk. >> tucker: last question, the numbers show that a little over 40% of all kids born in america last year were born to women who were not married, born out of

wedlock. does that bother you, that number? >> that number is declining, first of all. i will say this very clearly, you can't legislate morality. when government comes in and tries to legislate how people think about any topic, that's when we start having more problems. we can try to educate, we can try to support families, we can try to support church groups. we can support schools, we can support synagogues, mosques, and that's how we can teach a lot of things. but we try to legislate what happens in those areas, it's a slippery slope. >> tucker: my question is, do think it's bad, that's it, not even suggesting a solution, does it bother you? >> in a lot of respects, yes. but i think culture changes. things that we saw is that 50 years ago, we don't see bad today. i'm not going to be a social justice warrior and try to tell people what is right or wrong. i just think it would educate people, we try to do the right thing, we support our kids and we focus on educating them, these things tend to work out

the way they should. >> tucker: mark cuban, thanks a lot for coming on, hope we see you again. >> thanks for the direct questions, i appreciate them. >> tucker: an immigrant woman in california was recently able to obtain american citizenship despite having, by her own description, no ability to read or write english. that shouldn't be a surprise according to the census bureau. nearly 45% -- 45%, ophthalmic apollo, california households speak a language other than english at home. director of research for the center of immigration studies, he joins us now. i have a couple questions, stephen. first, i thought in order to become a citizen you had to have some mastery of english. >> basically the way it works is if you've been here for 20 years and you are over 50 they can give you a waiver. in addition, the actual english language question is only like one sentence -- -- >> tucker: the intent of the law, when lawmakers tested, they wanted people speaking english. correct? >> that was the idea, but it's not really enforced. there's two there's tremendous

discretion discretion on the part of the examiner. basically it looks like maybe a third, a quarter of all people who have naturalized citizens are functionally illiterate in english. that's partly because of this waiver system, but partly because even if you pass the test it doesn't mean very much. it's basically one or two sentences and you have to be able to read it, that kind of thing. >> tucker: we are not really trying to assimilate, we're kind of lying about that. what happens if you have the biggest state in the united states, california, and nearly half of the families there don't speak english at home, language is culture. they are not part of the larger american culture, or am i overstating it? >> you might be. it doesn't mean that they don't know any english, doesn't mean that they are completely isolated, but you raise a profound point. one of the ways assimilation works is immigrants and their kids basically are submerged in an ocean of natives and their kids to speak english, but in a place like california and actually throughout, all over the united states, we have a situation where the level of immigration has been so high for so long we now have about 66 million people who don't

speak english at home. about half of them say that they don't speak english well, even though the rest say they do. we don't know how well they actually speak, but research suggests that most of them don't speak english very well even when they say they do. when the numbers are so big it kind of overwhelms, if you will, the assimilation process. it creates all kind of political pressure to do things like this, create waivers and so forth. >> tucker: so the people who are born here wind up assimilating to the culture of the immigrants brought here. >> about half those people who don't speak english at home or are you was born, they are not foreign-born. >> tucker: ominous i think, because it's hard to have a united country with multiple linkages. >> english is one of the glue that holds this country together. it's not clear if the country can withstand this level of immigration. thanks for >> tucker: thanks fog us. individually targeted by antifa.

>> tucker: conservative students at columbia university apparently are being targeted by the left after college republicans there invited mike to speak on campus. wires have shown up all around campus. they feature the names and photographs of collagen publicans and encourage harassments of them. one of them is the head of the republicans. thanks for coming on. did i misstate the facts of the case? you invited this guy on and now you are on flyers around campus. >> recently, the last few days, antifa has placed fires all around our campus indicating who we are and our board members. the disgusting thing is the university hasn't put out a statement condemning these actions. we are living targets right now on this campus. it's like the wild west at this point. >> tucker: tell us what the flyer say, there they are.

we just flashed home with your picture on it. >> the fires indicate for these people to come up and say something to us. the scary thing is we don't know what these people will do to us. if i walk outside on campus i could get attacked by any person. the university needs to stop these people from doing these actions because any student that is questioning ideas is a target on this campus. >> tucker: have you gone to the at about this? >> i filled out harassment complaints. he recently sent me an email, but they haven't offered any protection or public safety. i've reached out to them, but their response has been slow. i wish they would say or condemn these actions as they we will protect all students on this campus. this is a place where academic -- curiosity. >> tucker: are the flyer still around campus? >> yes. we found a few others today. we are trying to take them down. that people look at us intimidating us as we take them down. antifa is labeled with the department of homeland security

as a domestic terrorist organization. if columbia needs to take action against these people because they have committed acts at berkeley, buffalo and other schools. as you see throughout these videos showing right now. >> tucker: with coveted extensively. if you were my son i would be legitimately worried about your safety. hardier how do your parents feet this? >> they want me to take off my second semester. i will do that. we will make sure we support freedom of speech on this campu campus. college is a place for people to discuss ideas and to be challenged in question. a lot of these different antifa members are not willing to have these conversations. >> tucker: increasingly as a joke, especially the kind of collagen go to, you are smart and you were brave and i think if you dropped out tomorrow you would do pretty well. your classmates will find out

end up being robots. you are a brave man. up next, hillary clinton says the new focus on uranium one is just a distraction from what she wants to talk about, which is a core sexism. all the evidence we have, is it worth talking about? we wil

>> tucker: president trump was attacked by a protester at the capitol today. he threw russian flags of the present and then shrieked about treason. [indistinct] >> treason! >> tucker: at this hour we don't know much about the protester. he certainly looks demented, maybe he is. on the other hand, maybe he's not, maybe he believes everything he sees on cable news

when the entire ruling class spends the better part of your pushing ludicrous conspiracy theories about treason in russian can interference in the election, you have to expect some people will take them seriously. ab he's been watching hillary clinton in fact. >> russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign to influence voters in the election. the russians, and my opinion, and based on the intel encounter intel people i talked to, could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they have been guided. >> tucker: amazingly, the russians have just been lobbying her. takes a lot of chutzpah to say that. she knows vladimir putin didn't steal that election from her. she says it anyway because it's easier than apologizing for her own mistakes. there is a cost of telling lies like that. you've just sought on the video we played. democrats have been hyping up

the collusion story of course, but they've also been downplaying everything every don't like having to do with uranium one story. it's been carried on no major networks except for one exception. there is no -- it is a fake story. a contributor to get national review online joins us tonight. i don't think i'm making that up, this story has basically not appeared in any other channels. with one exception. i haven't seen it on the front page of "the new york times" of "the washington post." how can that story be ignored? >> it's amazing. according to the media research center, i think between over the last ten or 11 months, the networks have spent something like 3 minutes and one second on the story. what's amazing about it, whether you think it's got legs or not, he got bribery, kickbacks, extortion, you've got russians, you got uranium, the main ingredient for atomic bombs. this is interesting stuff, the things of which spy novels are made and yet the networks ignore this and still talking about

russia, prussia, russia, the collusion. it appears if we had collusion on the part of not the republicans, but on the part of the democrats, hillary clinton and now the podesta group. if all designed around bringing in millions of dollars to the clinton foundation. in exchange the russians now control 20% of the united states uranium supply and apparently some of that uranium is leaving this country. something worth covering to me. >> tucker: i think it is and russia is at the very center of it. as you just said, board members of this company, which is controlled by the russians, donated $145 million to the clinton family foundation. >> absolutely. >> tucker: at around the same time that hillary clinton's department okayed the deal. look, i'm not alleging criminality here, but i'm noting the obvious, which is, what? how can that not be a legitimate line of inquiry for journalists? >> maybe after looking into it it turns it's really more innocent than this, i don't think so, but at least look into it. i'm glad to see that the house and house intelligence committee

and i believe the senate judiciary committee are now going to look into this. they have not held a hearing on uranium one yet and these are republicans who control congress. i find that astonishing, so i'm glad that they finally look like they are going to hold hearings on this. i believe they are flying to my trying the gag order lifted on this confidential witness, this business man was actually cooperating with the fbi. he was put under a gag order by the obama administration so we actually wouldn't talk to congress. imagine that. they're trying to get that gag order lifted, it should be lifted. eric holder and loretta lynch are no longer running the department of justice, that is now the job both jeff sessions and the donald trump of administration. at that gag order should be lifted right now and that person ought to be able to come forward and tell us what he knows. >> tucker: really quickly, is there any legitimate reason for keeping someone like that under a gag order, and is not constitutional in the first place? how can the executive branch say to the congress we don't want this guy to talk, therefore he can't talk? is not allowed in a democracy? >> no. if the congress is a totally separate and equal branch. they have every right to bring him in and learn from and what

they can so they can do their jobs. i don't think they know about this guy. the thing is, it's not like they wanted to get him and they gagged him. i think they had them so under wraps that they didn't even know this guy existed until probably last week, which is extraordinary. all this was going on in a congressional oversight that should've taken place while russia gained control of 20% of the united states supply of uranium in the obama administration kept the congress and the dark on this. i think is extraordinary. what were they hiding? >> tucker: a solid 20% of our national supply of string cheese. it's uranium! is inherently -- -- >> or cashews or bacon. bacon, we would be concerned about that. this is what some people used to create nuclear weapons. this is serious stuff and it appears to be leaving the country. this is deadly stuff, potentially life and death and i really wish the media would be awake about this, rather than continue to snore up on channels other than this one. >> tucker: congress certainly is, and we will get to that right now. thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> tucker: as you just heard,

two house committees have launched a joint inquiry into the uranium on the old following revelations that the justice department discovered a mash massive bribery ring reporting the deal but did not reported. he serves on the house oversight committee, one of the two involved in that investigation, he joins us. thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> tucker: first things first, how could congress not have known about this? >> just first, with the string cheese, i think if donald trump sold string cheese to the russians, the democrats would be upset about that. it's really mind-boggling. we have this informant that we want to bring in. i think we will get him in either through subpoena or by them lifting the gag order. he started working as a confidential informant in 2009. he was in the middle of this racketeering, russian racketeering ring. 2009-2010. then the uranium one deals approved at the end of 2010. the fbi knew that underneath this uranium one deals -- forget about all the money the clintons, which is serious. underneath that is all this criminality.

nobody informed congress of that, and there was opposition of the steel in congress anyway. just based on the merit. but imagine something propped up by repeated criminality. i think that probably would have been enough, had congress known, to put political pressure on the administration to kill the deal. >> tucker: how can the former administration, or any administration, tell the congress of the united states - that they can't interview somebody? >> some times are used -- a valid subpoena, you have to go into pure, they can't prevent you from doing it. at a minimum we can send a subpoena. and i think we will do that, but i think that the attorney general wants this guy to talk and i think that they are working to kind of clear whatever brush they need tools to produce them. >> tucker: sweep away the politics on all this. why would it ever be a good idea for any administration to give a fifth of our strategic uranium reserves to the russian government? >> i don't think it would be. you notice the democrats say the worst thing that happens in the world is russia spending $100,000 on facebook ads.

>> tucker: half of which ran after the election. >> for them to think that's the big deal, but then not think the uranium is a big deal, i just don't understand how you can hold that position. >> tucker: have you heard anybody defended on the merits? i hear a lot of people say hillary clinton obviously had nothing to do with this. >> they don't. they say it's been debunked, don't worry, but there's not a sub, substantive defense boards. when you mention all the money going into the foundation and the 500,000 for bill personally for a 20 minute speech. here's my question, they were sending hundreds of millions of dollars during this deal, how much money have they sent since the election to the foundation? are they raking in money? now, no one sending them. >> tucker: i don't know the answer, but it's worth finding out. we reported at the top of the show that paul manafort, the former chairman to briefly lift from campaign, before that was working with the podesta group, one of his jobs was to lobby the obama administration on behalf of russia. our source says he routinely took russian business figures up to the hill to meet with members.

are you aware of that, did you see that? >> i never saw that, no i didn't. it's pretty clear manafort was involved in eastern european politics, russian politics. that i think is why all the smokers come out about tron. i don't think it has anything to do with drum. i think a lot of this predates the campaign and i think that's what the special counsel -- >> tucker: were you aware that paul manafort was working with the podestas on behalf of russia? >> no. >> tucker: amazing, amazing story. congressman, thank you. >> thank you. >> tucker: kathy griffin is at it again, this time she's targeting hollywood super attorney and ersatz feminist lisa bloom. strange turn of events. we've got it for you next. ♪

>> tucker: former cnn star kathy griffin has passed the mic picked a new site. last summer, griffin was fired after she posed with a silver donald trump head. at the time, her attorney was lisa bloom.

that name rings a bell. she has represented countless people charging sexual harassment and she also represented harvey weinstein and lots of other people in trouble. in a recent facebook post, griffin says she practices "fake found in feminism" and is an " "same whore." turns out lisa bloom is exactly what you thought she has. amoral cover for hire. a feminist al sharpton. a scam artist. even kathy griffin knows that. that's about it for us tonight. tomorrow we will continue our investigation into the russian scandal. the podesta's, paul manafort. amazing. and the uranium one deal. the connection of all of those to the clintons and the obama administration. we will identify every detail.

every week night, at 8:00. the sworn enemy of lying come lying, pomposity, and groupthink. dvr it. sean hannity is taking it away from new york city. >> sean: what an amazing show. this is a fox news alert. welcome to "hannity." we are following four companies are breaking news stories. before we even start, tonight is the night of vindication. even "the washington post" is being forced to admit what we have been telling you for over a year. also tonight, john solomon reporting the obama administration gave a visa to a russian nuclear official ee showed he was involved in bribery and kickbacks, extortion and money laundering. all these schemes to advance vladimir putin's radium interest in america. wait until you hear this report. john solomon and sara carter will all be here with the very latest. also, victoria toensing.