i go back to mr. himes on this. i'll start with you, mr. himes.t seems to me if there is a russian involvement in our 2016 election which is pretty much manifestly true and was true last year, that there needed to be an investigation by our fbi because they go into a counter intelligence. they're trying to find anybody trying to do something like this. they're our only weapon to people who obviously try to subvert our country. if they hadn't gone after carter page, he's all over the place, almost cartoonishly bragging about his role in the russian interplay between trump and the russians, they would have been not doing their duty. is that your view, mr. himes? you had to look what he was up to if you were looking into what trump was up to and the russians i should say are up to. >> of course, chris. there's a fact even more important than that which is -- by the way, this is taken right out of the announce memo. the memo points out that the investigation into the russian hack of our election was well under way months before the fisa application ma

but i would like to comment on some things that mr. himes just said.tween saying it's politically motivated and revealing who paid for it. i think that is a huge difference. as far as the democrat memo, when we were in our meeting i think we saved the democrats from some hypocrisy here because adam schiff was making the case that we should not release our memo unless it was vetted. it had been vetted. then they wanted to immediately release theirs without it being vetted. that's why i voted against it. if they want to vet it, i'm in all in favor of -- i would to shed light on all of this, jake, i really do. i think the american people deserve that. that is our job. >> go ahead. >> i would take minor issue of that. if there was a vetting process on the nunes memo, that's news to me. if the vetting process did occur, we know what the fbi and the department of justice said about the release of this memo, they said do not do it, it would be extraordinarily reckless. if there was a vetting process, that was the conclusion. secondarily, adam schiff, when he