will be there at 1:00. most-watched, most trusted, most grateful you spent the evening with us, good night from los angeles. ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight," at 11:00 a.m. eastern time this morning former special counsel robert mueller made a rare public appearance reading from a prepared statement at a podium from the department of justice. he explained he won't testify before congress because he's got nothing more to say, it's all in that 300 page report which you can read online if you feel like it. why bother giving a speech in the first place? robert mueller had a message he wanted to deliver, not a message for you or me or the rest of the audience at home but a message aimed at a very small group of elected officials in washington. years of investigations could

not produce a charge against donald trump but mueller congress could still step in. >> the opinion says the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justicey system. to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. >> tucker: a process other than the terminal justice system, that's how 74-year-old anglophile might describe impeachment, it didn't take d democrats along to decode that message, some have been calling for impeachment and had been for quite some time, those who hadn't been got on board immediately. kamala harris who was running for president tweeted "what robert mueller did was return and impeachment referral, now ia is up to congress to hold this president accountable. we need to start impeachment proceedings, it is our constitutional obligation. beto o'rourke took a break from skateboarding to agree, there must be consequences, accountability and justice. onthe only way to ensure that it

to begin impeachment proceedings and from their seats on cable news sets across new york city, america's opinion generating class applauded heartily. >> this was vintage bob mueller, no questions. >> he speaks in measured but clear tones and style. >> that is the man he is, he is precise, factual, he is accurat accurate. the man doesn't know the definition of hyperbole. >> this is a serious man making a serious point that the framers gave us a way to address a lawless president. >> a lot us have been very supportive of mueller, >> tucker: can they suck up when they wants to? a man never extends so tall then when he stooped to kiss some butt. democrats are demanding impeachment but what with a

crime to be exactly, what with the charges be in an impeachment proceeding. as mueller conceded, there was no evidence that ever happened. >> the first volume of the report details numerous efforts to influence the election. this volume includes a discussion of the trump campaign's response to this activity as well as our conclusion that there wasy. insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. >> tucker: insufficient evidence, in other words there was no cry about -- that's how it works. by mueller's own admission, he and his subordinates were unable to find a criminal act. >> tucker: the report describes results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president. if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. we did not make a determination as to whether the president did

commit a crime. under long-standing department policy a president cannot beha charged with a federal crime while he is in office. that is unconstitutional -- the special counsel's office as part of the department of justice and by regulation it was bound by that department policy. charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we couldn consider. >> tucker: we knew that, and just to be clear prosecutors and civilize countries don't prove people are innocent, that is the standing presumption that all of us have by virtue of our citizenship. instead prosecutors look for evidence of guilt and that there is no evidence of guilt, the person is declared not guilty, that is how our system works. when mueller he couldn't prove the president didn't commit a crime, it was an odd and striking and kind of a bizarre thing to say. bottom line is the evidence

mueller gathered did not support charges of collusion or obstruction of justice yethe mueller would clearly see the president impeach anyway. we are going to assess his remarks from a number of different angles tonight but we want to begin with the question of impeachment because that was the point of what he said. mollie hemingway is a senior editor at the federalist, she has covered this saga enjoyed this tonight. it did seem if you stripped away everything in mueller's remarks down to the essence, what he's saying is please impeach, why would he do that? >> the whole idea behind this special counsel was an insurance policy, a way to put forth impeachment reports and that's why we were told for years that there was treasonous collusion with russia. bad news for people who wanted to impeach trump for the crime of winning the 2016 election that there was no collusion with russia to steal the 2016 election. that's when they b went 2 to plan b which was to come up with

this elaborate theory of obstruction and even on that they were unable to come up with any indictments for obstruction. that was the idea and in fact the failure of the russia hoax means the media are particularly invested as are democrats who participated in this conspiracy theory of coming up with something that enables them to avoid accountability for perpetuating that hoax. this is a perfect idea to go on to impeachment even though there was no crime we were told there was ample evidence of, treasonous collusion with russia to steal the 2016 election. >> tucker: not to be a stickler for detail or anything but before we get to impeachment, do you have any idea what the charge would be? >> the underlying crime is irrelevant because the idea is that this president needs to be removed from office. it will be whatever they think they can come up with. the idea that you would convince the american people that someone

who complained about an investigation that turned out to be based on a false smear oftr treason, complaining about that means you obstructed or you greally didn't like this investigation, that's going to be a difficult thing to convince the american people of. for people who think that guilt is already apparent because of what happened in 2016, it doesn't matter. as i mentioned there is an effort by people in the media and others who perpetuated the russia hoax to not be held accountable for what they did. taking these leaks from people, not asking difficult questions of why they were getting these leaks or what they meant. this enables them to avoid being held accountable, they are all for it. >> tucker: if you didn't like the president's program what he was elected on a 2016, if you thought the united states should continue involvement in various middle eastern wars, should hcome closer to russia, all the things that he ran on. if you wanted to prevent that agenda from being enacted you would create a distraction like the one we have just seen.

do you think this is a continuation of a distraction? >> i think the people who perpetuated this smear of treasonous collusion with russia to steal the 2016 election understands that if there is investigation into how that narrative was set, how it was weaponized by our federal t government, who engaged in criminal wrongdoing such as the criminal leaks of classified information to undo a democratic election, they understand this is a threat and it might also be an effort to make sure there is some leverage there so people will not be held accountable. you are free to disk like donald trump or dislike that he won the election but there is a limit to what you should be able to do in terms of using the levers of law enforcement orat intelligence agencies to throw a fit over what the american people decided to. >> tucker: the whole system falls apart when you do that. ian pryor is a former doj spokesman, he joins us.

what was the purpose of today's press conference? >> he hit the nail on the head but what is really unfortunate is this reminds me exactly of what james comey did in july of 2016. they talked about someone they weren't going to charge with a crime but continued to say all kinds of information derogatory to hillary clinton. fast-forward to the doj when i was there and that was a big thing, we aren't going to talk about people that we don't chargege.ep that's exactly what we did, all this evidence and all these theories on why the president possibly committed obstruction but they didn't charge him. what have we learned from this process? apparently nothing. >> tucker: it is interesting, he comes out and basically makes a series of contradictory claims, i'm not going to testify before congress because i've said everything i have to say.

i will repeat what my report found. if you've got nothing else toth say, why are you doing this months after you concluded the investigation, why now? >> the two pieces of news, he's not going to testify and the attorney general acted in good faith with how he handled the report. everything he said was in his report. for democrats on the campaign trail saying now we have a case for impeachment or they are too dumb to understand theer report. >> tucker: did mueller add anything that wasn't in the report? >> the only thing he added is him going up there and making the statement. you had a lot of people on the left saying mueller left and criticized what barr said. just before the show, doj put

out a joint statement between attorney general barr -- doj and special counsel's office saying there is no daylight between anything barr said about what mueller told him. >> tucker: the left lives in this airless world sustained by the two cable channels w and thy aren't aware what reality is at this point at all. >> i have my theory here, it's that if you look at part two of the mueller report there are two types of acts that they looked at, it seems to me when reading it, they didn't think before special counsel it came anywhere near obstruction of>> justice. afterwards they seemed like they were leaning that way and maybe that's enough in their minds for probable cause which is the low bar you need for indictment but there was no way they're going to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. i think they use this olc opinion as an exit ramp so they don't have to conclusively say there's not enough evidence to

prove the president committed a crime and they left for congress to continue. >> tucker: f congress can do anything, we've known this formp quite some time. congress was not going to impeach the president i don't believe before this morning, now i think they will. that was not good enough for robert mueller and he had to push the country toward impeachment. >> that's what it is. >> tucker:se robert mueller is a patriotic character, by all accounts he is a decent man. he believes it's good for america on the eve of another presidential election for the president to be impeached. >> i guess the proof is in the pudding but one thing i want to go back to is the russia investigation, it concluded in july of 2018 when they delivered indictments for the russian hackers. why wasn't that an ounce before

the election, why wasn't it amounts before the midtermt election.e >> tucker: all the people you admire from afar and the more you learn it turns out they are sleazy and dishonest. i hate to say robert mueller winds up in that category and it pains me to say that. >> today was disappointing. >> tucker: house judiciary committee chairman jerry nadler could barely suppress his excitement or something, he was shaking after the statement today, here is part of it. >> all options are on the table, nothing should be ruled out. speciald counsel mueller said president trump is lying when he says no collusion, nod. obstruction and that he was exonerated. >> tucker: it looks likely that democrats will move forward with impeachment proceedings.

dana perino considers both of these questions carefully, we could go on, she joins us tonight. >> we must get to the topic. >> tucker: am i right in interpreting it this way? i don't understand how the democrats don't impeach. >> there were cracks in the impeachment dam last week when chuck schumer and nancy pelosi went to the white house ostensibly for a meeting about infrastructure and president trump basically walks out and says no, i'm not going to do this while you have this investigation going on but that was when you saw nancy pelosi under pressure from democrats because there is a drumbeat. elizabeth warren until this morning was one of the only 2020 democrats who said the president must be impeached. after the mueller statementad today you had kamala harris, booker, mayor pete, i could go ybon, everyone jumping on the

train who didn't however, joe biden. he is an established person in washington, d.c., we don't have to go over that. he and pelosi are still locked together and i think you will see them try to remain so, they are skeptical of impeachment. i don't know how long they will be able to hold off all of the others. i think it's very different to think about impeachment as a democrat if you are a 2020 democratic hopeful of what your chances are very slim to none of becoming the nominee or if you're a house democrat, there are 31 of them that won and purple districts where they flipped a seat. a republican seat in a democrat won it in 2018. in some of those districts, president trump won by plus ten. impeachment is not very attractive to them toth say the least. >> tucker: not at all. i haven't talked to anybody who has looked at the poll numbers and suggested that impeachment would help democrats, there's az

presidential election looming right over the horizon. >> that's what i would say. >> tucker: i think we both agree this should be a lunatic move on the part of democrats. >> i think so and history tells us that. there's just one thing that's bothering me. biden and pelosi long-established characters. they are thinking back to history and looking at bill clinton. i think new democrats are looking at this with fresh eyes and say how could you not, what are you even therefore?de you said in order to hold president trump accountable, we had to win the majority, we won the majority and now you are saying we can't hold him accountable because we might lose thean majority? and i think in some ways the democrats are sick of establishment politics as well. they are thinking why not go for this, this is the right thing to do. i don't know how it's going to end upo but i believe this: wate biden and pelosi, they are the leaders of the party right now.

he is 22 points ahead of hisoi competitors, he is the one that's going to call the shots here. >> tucker: how long do you think he has to make that decision? >> chairman nadler is chomping at the bit, he's going to want to do this. the first democratic debate is at the end of the month. biden didn't speak himself today, he put out a statement by aa spokesperson emma got to love the spokespeople but there's nothing like here hearing it ff the principal. he hasn't done many one-on-one offense where he would be able to shout a question at him because he's been keeping h himself away so he can keep that 22-point lead. i would say it might be within the next two weeks to 4 weeks that he's going to have to say something more. >> tucker: can't play it safet forever. >> the illusion of safety. >> tucker: that's exactly right, great to see you tonight. during this morning's statement, robert mueller repeated the

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made an unprecedented assault on the integrity of america's emdemocratic system. >> russian intelligence officers who were part of the russian military launched ays concerted attack on our political system. the indictment alleges the use of sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the clinton campaign. they stole private information and released that information f through fake online and identities and through the organization wikileaks. the releases were designed andnd timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate. there were multiple systematic efforts to interfere in our election. that allegation deserves the attention of every american. >> tucker: that sounds compelling and terrifying. but as it actually true, have we

really proved that after two years of investigations, what does the evidence tell us? is a contributing writer at the nation magazine and he joins us tonight, erin, thank you for coming on. simple question, does the evidence back up the claim that the russian government substantially interfered in the 2016 presidential election? >> the evidence that exists might but we haven't seen it yet, that's the key point. it's possible that with mueller is a saying is true, we haven't seen evidence to establish that. take the theft of stolen emails, mueller has laid out in july of 2018 a detailed indictment of russian military intelligence officers as he mentioned today. we don't know the source of the information he is basing the indictment on. what i can say definitively, it doesn't come from the u.s. agency that would know best what the russian military

intelligence, for information publicly released, it would have to be declassified by the president and it didn't happen here. we don't know who mueller his sighting when he contends in a detailed indictment that i the russians military intelligence officers did this. roger stone's attorneys contend it is crowd strike which is a dnc firm that prosecuted the dnc hack and he is trying to compel crowd strikes evidence through discovery, it should be interesting. the bottom line here is we don't know and mueller acknowledges in his report he doesn't know because when he talks about the theft of dnc emails, he talks about the russians appear to have stolen the emails, he doesn't say the russians stole the emails. he uses that qualifier. he also doesn't rule out the fact that -- >> tucker: can i stop you right there? that went right over my head.

in the mueller report, he doesn't unequivocally claim that they did it, he says they only appear to have done it? >> he's laying out a comprehensive timeline of what he says is the russian effort to hack into the dnc and to steal information, information can mean different things because it's not just emails we are talking about, we are talking about research that was stolen, names of employees and so forth. what we are concerned about is emails and when mueller is talking about dnc emails he's using a qualifier. he says the glu appears to have stolen emails. if mueller knew for sure that they stole the emails he would say they stole them and he also doesn't rule out they were o physically transferred to wikileaks in the summer of 2016 which means he also does not know for sure how those emails made their way to wikileaks. >> tucker:r: wow. that's a lot of uncertainty at the center of a story the rest of us have been told for years is absentlyy settled, this is earth is round kind of stuff, i

anyone who doubts it is a nutcase. why are they pretending to know things they don't know. >> we have a political culture in this country where we are supposed to believe what u.s. intelligence officials say on faith no matter how many times it blows up in our face. we all know what happened with the iraq war, intelligencead officials including robert mueller because he was the head of the fbi he testified before congress that saddam had weapons of mass destruction. he was concerned he was going to transfer that to terrorists. john brennan played a key role in russia gate, he was there during the iraqra war. he didn't raise any objections, james clapper was a u.s. intelligence official during the iraq war, he claims that there was intelligence showing saddama had moved his weapons of mass destruction into syria. acspite this record, we are supposed to believe everything they say on faith and we are supposed to take seriously for

example when robert mueller says this russian social media campaign was a part of a sweeping systematic effort to sow discord. when you look at what the russian social media actually was, it was juvenile click debate, they spend about $46,000 in facebook ads on the election and supposed to take seriously this juvenile click debate that nobody saw.we we are supposed to believe that that influenced malleable american voters. >> tucker: it's ridiculous.uc your average chevyvy dealership spends more on facebook ads, it's's insane. a man of the left and an honest man, a skeptical journalist, happy to have you on tonight. we've heard from many years about russia'sac interference in our democracy, countries do interfere in our democracy, russia doesn't happen to be one of them, but mexico happens to be one of them, we'll tell you how. then mark morgan will rejoin us

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>> tucker: if you watched robert mueller speak this morning and you heard him echo the view of official washington that russia had a major effect on the 2016 election -- as we've known before that is an absurd claim, there is zero evidence that is true. none that robert mueller himself has presented. if you're looking for countries that do influence american politics there are quite a few. anyone who lives in d.c. can tell you that, russia does not make the list, mexico definitely does. at the beginning of the past presidential election cycle, mexico began with "bloomberg news" described as an unprecedented effort to get american citizenship for its ntpermanent residents living in the u.s. the point was obvious to makee them voters so they could vote to defeat donald trump. russia never considered election hacking that bold, mexico did.or

mexico's current foreign minister, he was the mayor of mexico city. between his two jobs he was here in the u.s., he was working on the half of l the democratic pa democratic party. he urged latino voters to turn out to vote for hillary clinton he then compared donald trump to adolf hitler. imagine if the russians did something like that, put a friend of vladimir putin the former mayor of moscow in the u.s. to spend an entire election cycle recording pro trump ads. it's unthinkable, he would be arresteded and get a top mexican politician did that and nobody cared, why it? because it helped hillary clinton. this kind of thing has gone on for years and anyone who lives in d.c. can tell you, it goes on today. juan hernandez has appeared on a guest on this show, how did he

described his job? this way. i want to get the third generation, the seventh generation in the u.s. i want them all to think mexico first. he argued mexican immigrants are always going to keep 1 foot in mexico and will never fully assimilated. this isn't just an idle hope on mexico's part they are working to make it come true.ov the mexican government understands it immigrants to the u.s. start speaking english they will assimilate much moree quickly into american culture and they don't want that. the mexican government says it will spend $150 million on a campaign to help convince mexicans living here in our country to keep speaking spanish. haven't heard about that on cnn? there's more. mexicans is helping their citizens break our federal laws, they published a pamphlet advising migrants on how to sneak into our country. the consulate in san francisco distributed its ten golden rules for the immigrants in the u.s.,

that paper instructed illegal aliens on how to avoid arrest and deportation. the government has paid lawyers to clog our courts in deportation cases, we could go on and on. that's what it looks like when a hostile foreign power interferes in your democracy. they don't buy facebook ads that nobody sees, why would they? they try to change the demographics of your country, that works. if washington finally decides to fix the country's immigration problem, mark morgan will be at the heart of b that. he's been a a frequent guest, we are happy to have him every time he's on and he's now the president's new pick to run ice. thank you very much,ng congratulations on the new job and thanks for joining us. what are your priorities? >> i think anyone inpo this position knows i'm going to be a relentless advocate for the men and women of ice to get the tools necessary to do their job. part of what that means is getting out here and doing what

i'm doing right now to educate the american people exactly what the hardworking men and women oy ice do every day to safeguard the security of this country and enforce the rule of law. also working with congress, here is the problem with that. congress has showed its inability to do what they know they need to do to fix this crisis, they could do several things in a legal framework and could fix this in 15 minutes. although i'm going to continue to work tirelessly with congress to try to get them to do their job, but i don't have hope that they are goingo to. we need to come up with ideas to stop this problem. >> tucker: they have completely politicized or agency, we are moving into the heat of an election season. a number of candidates have called for getting rid of ice completely, comparing it to the, over the top stuff. given your expectation they aren't going to help at all, what can you do?

>> ice has three major components, a lot of congress realize they have the e.r. ort side, that's were enforcement and removal operations that the ports people, they have an incredible team of lawyers thato is an integral part of the immigration process that is needed in the last part of ice is homeland security investigations and i will give you an example. those three major components make up ice. we've taken about 150 highly trained experienced agents and we push them towards the border. what they are doing is looking at child exploitation, looking at those individuals who are grabbing, renting a kid -- we called this, we knew it was going to happen and it is, they are renting kids, they are paying to rent somebody's kid and then fake themselves as family. we've infuse the dna testing we've talked about in the past, right now the pilot program they

are finding 25% of the so-called families come across, fake and fraudulent. just the other day, they caught a 51-year-old man from honduras, guessing we had with him? a 6-month-old and because of the work of hsi they found that to be completely false. it's a kind of stuff we are doing g. >> tucker: what would happen if we got rid of ice? >> the first quarter, 66,000 individuals have been reported, of the arrest they made, 65% of those arrests were people with additional criminal convictions. 90% of those either had a criminal conviction or pending charge. an incredible amount of people b who are doing bad things that are going to remain in the. united states. on the hsi component last year alone 34,000 arrests. 34,000 criminal arrests, 4,500

gangs, human trafficking cases, child exportation cases, 1.2 billion in currency they seized on the list goes on and. ons. when you have somebody who puts out the reckless and irresponsible rhetoric about ice being abolished, this country will be less safe. >> tucker: quickly if congress in a dream world was willing to helplp you, democrats were on te same page, what is the first thing you would ask him for? >> there are two major things, you can't hold a family more than 20 days, that is the child trafficking and protection act. if you are from mexico or canada we get to send you back but if you are from the northern triangle countries we can't. those two things equal catch and

release, congress could fix those things in 15 minutes. specifically on the detention bed space, it's common sense. >> tucker: they don't care. but you do care, i don't know a single person who disagrees you are the right man for this job, thank you for joining us tonigh tonight. joe biden has changed his position on basicallyy everythig in the past 30 years but one senator has gotten no attention whatsoever and it should, will tell you after the break.

>> tucker: well for decades joe biden had pretty clear >> tucker: for decades joe biden had clear views on illegal drugs, he repeatedly introduced legislation tong

increase penalties including were people who dealt marijuana, it's a harmful drug and he insisted it should remain illegal, watch. >> the punishment should fit the crime but i think legalization is a mistake. i still believe it's a gateway drug, i've spent a lot of my life as chairman of the judiciary committee dealing with this, i think it would be a mistake to legalize. >> tucker: that was in 20 twin, now he wants to be president and his party has changed completely, barely recognizable. you pick a topic, joe biden has a brand-new position on marijuana, he said nobody should be in jail for marijuanahe offenses and prior offenders should have their recordse expunged. what is interesting he apparently came to this conclusion after donors profiting from illegal marijuan marijuana. does this make you pause a little bit?

legalized marijuana, i'm in a small minority of people on television who are against legalizing marijuana, all the cool kids are for it but it's presented as a question of personal liberation but it's also a major business interests. there are people who are profiting from cannabis and they have now convinced a presidential candidate, the leading one to support their efforts, shouldn't we be skeptical? >> i think one thing you are right about is that when you have candidates who are donor driven as a joe biden -- and the one thing he has always been, the one thing is never changed his mind about is his donors are always right. the thing that is interesting about that as new industries and merge can expect that new things they want to do to make money, they are going to be able to buy lobbyists too and if they can buy a lobbyist, they can buy joe biden. i would be more surprised if i didn't know this is how he operates, what do you expect? >> tucker: when a credit card company pays off a politician and he's hardly the only one --

tons of republicans take money from creepy big companies too -- it's a straightforward thing. you understand why someone isec for ethanol because the soybean growers, the corn growers are giving money, i get it. but the marijuana issue specifically is cloaked in the language of freedom and coolness so we don't think of it as a quid pro quo, as a payoff but that's what it is. >> i think to a large extent there is a real issue with the justice of people sitting in jail for these nonviolent drug offenses, that is right. when what you want to do is go to full scale nationwide legalization and permit businesses from getting into that arena, you have to answer -- if you are as i am a critic of capitalism, you have to answer the question what are we going to do with the deficiencies of capitalism are replicated in drug sales? one of those deficiencies is

that capitalists by politicians and there are other deficiencies too that we need to be taking jriously even if you don't think people should be rotting in jail for marijuana offenses. >> tucker: i agree with you completely, of course people should be rottingng in jail for marijuana possession, i agree with you completely. the question is when politicians start pushing on their people and their populations they are supposed to be representing things that don't elevate them but instead degrade them and make them dumber or more passiv passive, let's say he does a b fund-raiser in miami and says cocaine should be illegal, why don't we decriminalize it -- i'm serious! for the rest of us be like joe biden is cool? or should we acknowledge he's paid to say this. >> one way of thinking about this, one analogy you might think about is what is the structure of the alcohol industry in the united states? we can probably expect similar patterns because these two drugs aren't all that different.

about 30% of americans don't drink at all, another 30% hardly ever put the top 10% of americans consume -- and this is true -- on average more than 70 drinks perri week. that represents an majority of alcohol sales in the united states. booze companies -- i'm not saying you can't enjoy wine responsibly, but they make money on addicts in the and everyone believes marijuana companies are going to do the same thing and joe biden is going to be happy to take that meeting. >> tucker: bless you for saying that. what you said is true, i don't agree with your politics on most things but you are absolutely right to say that in the rest of us have been so bullied by corporate propaganda into pretending that's not true when it clearly is true. the truth is worth telling the matter how unpopular it is no matter who tells it, thank you so much for saying that.hi >> i appreciate it and all of this is not to say that there aren't substantial issues of justice here. racial disparities in all of these things. at some level you might say any

stick can feed a dog, if this is what it takes to make sure we don't all have these young men to sit around in jail may be have to swallow that because i live in a capitalistta world and you can't fix every thing at once but i want us to go into it with our eyes open because when coolers opens up its leafy green sub branch and starts making money the same way it makes money on alcohol, i don't want anyone to think they weren't 'twarned. >> tucker:r: it makes teenage boys dumber and more passive, i'm opposed to it. one woman says an fbi informant and the press teamed up to defame her all in an effort to bring down michael flynn ande donald trump. now she is suing come of that story is after the break. just one free hearing test at

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♪ >> tucker: we are covering robert mueller's statement, the one he gave this morning. we will have more on that in just a minute with michael caputo. but first a woman is suing anwe fbi informant and four news

outlets claiming they defamed her by tying her to russian collusion efforts. catherine herridge has the story. >> after the fox investigation the russian born academic filed this lawsuit in virginia and several major news outlets for defamation. she claims false information alleging inappropriate contact between le cova and michael flynn at a cambridge university dinner five years ago. she said she was never alonetw with flynn who at the time ran military intelligence for president obama. fast-forward to to 2017, she says multiple media outlets contacted her in what appeared to be a coordinated effort alleging suspicious contact with flynn at the cambridge dinner. according to the lawsuit, she believes that there were allegations to further support the russian collision story line.

this is a very colorful lawsuit in one section, she alleges stefan halper it misrepresented the plaintiff was a russian spy and the traitor to her country and the plaintiff had an affair with general plan on the orders of russian intelligence. british citizen broke her silence in march. >> i have never worked for the russian government. i believe that general plan was targeted and i was used to do that. >> stefan halper has not responded to fox's questions in the past but if that changes, we are better reporting, >> tucker: wouldn't that be great. catherine herridge, you are always on these stories. we appreciate that. for more reaction to robert mueller statement today we are joined by someone who is being watch very closely. former trump advisor michael caputo. thanks so much for coming on. >> tucker, how are you doing? >> tucker: i can imagine you

watched that live and had a strong reaction to it. what was your take away? >> to me, it was surreal. it wasas kind of like, so long, robert mueller. i guess you want to ride off into the sunset now. i thought, obviously he didn't say anything that wasn't in the report except that he didn'tt want to testify publicly. i don't think we will let him right into the sunset. i don't think we should. there are some things that i would like republican congressman to ask him in the private session off-camera. when did you know there was no russian collusion? why didn't you end it right then? you got to believe they knew there was no russian collusion, let's say, as soon as robert mueller -- i'm sorry, as soon as general flynn was cooperating. any prosecutor would figure outd then, if there is going to be some collusion, it was going to be something general plan would know about. if he didn't know about her and he was cooperating, it was all

over. >> tucker: as a legal matter, on one hand, also as an ethical matter. could you continue? >> no doubt. i think obviously, we also sought, first of all, i love the fact that he slammed the door, slammed the fingers of all these russia collusion conspiracy theories who are still hanging on by their fingernails. he slammed it on their fingers. i love watching that. but the same time, he gave the resistance crowd a pivot point from which to turn off -- away from his investigation and off into a house impeachment. i think he left them the breadcrumbs intentionally for this. i think today, he shined a light on those breadcrumbs in case they were getting lost. now i think they got the pivot point they are looking forward to dive deeply into impeachment. >> tucker: he's pushing them to impeachment. we have about 30 seconds left. i was interested, you are an old clinical guide, of course. analyze this as objectively as

you can. is this mart for the democrats to impeach the president, do you think? >> i think it's a terrible idea for the democrats, it's a suicide mission but i think they are drawn to it like moths to a flame. absolutely they are committed to it. i don't even believe any of these people wringing their hands over it. like nancy pelosi. i think it's been part of the plan since election day 2016. they are on target, and mueller has given them the path they need, they are off to impeachment even if it kills them. >> tucker: if you are part of a party that has called for eliminating i.c.e. and banning passenger cars, maybe this doesn't seem insane to you. [laughs] i guess that all that matters. it's great to see you. >> great to great to see you. >> sean: we are out of time tonight. sadly. we will be back tomorrow night though and you can be certain of this, at 8:00 p.m. the so that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink, all of which are in abundant supply here in washington in case you didn't notice.

by the way, you can dvr this show. we encourage you every night to do that so you can figure out how, please dvr. good night from washington. from new york city right now, ladies and gentlemen, sean hannity. >> sean: the great tucker carlson, thank you, sir. buckle up, welcome to "hannity." so much breaking news that i promise you won't get anywhere else.do i want to start tonight, though, with a thank you, to h you, the viewers of of the show and his network. you continue to make the a show not only possible, but number one in all of cable news. now going on our third year, we do not ever take it for granted. one of the things we promise you, unlike the heat trump media mob, we are working hard every single day with a great ensemble cast year to bring you truth