in that on page 219 of that transcript, glen simpson explains his and chris steels state of mind about donald trump given all the information that steel had just collected about him, which caused them to take their information to the fbi and the justice department. basically out of fear because they were so alarmed by what this research project had turned up about trump. so this is from the transcript. quote, so after the election obviously we were as surprised as everyone else and chris and i were mutually concerned about whether or not the united states elected someone that was compromised by a hostile foreign power. we were, you know, unsure what to do initially we didn't do anything other than to discuss concerns but we were gravely concerned. okay? then we get a second transcript talking to the house intelligence committee and he explains the state of mind that christopher steele had at the time, explains it in more details, page 78. did the fbi ever reach out to you or fusion gps in relation to the matters that mr. steele informed them upon? i was asked to provide information to

republican devin nunes has released his classified memo that he now admits misstates how the fbi used chris steele's information in court to get a surveillance warrant. that's what's happening in the house against christopher steele. in the senate it's republican senator chuck grassley along with republican senator lindsey graham. they are literally trying to get the justice department to bring criminal charges against christopher steele and in the middle of this scrum with the president reportedly meeting in person today at the white house with deputy attorney general rod rosenstein to discuss the democrats' classified memo on this matter with the white house actively engaged in making its decision about releasing the democratic information or not, letting the republican attacks on the fbi and chris steele stand unanswered or not as they have a five-day clock ticking and today is day two, now in the middle of that the "washington post" has published a whole bunch of new reporting we have never seen before about what actually happened between this guy christopher steele and the fbi. quoting from the

his credibility the so-called trump dossier was compiled by former british intelligence officer chris steele and claims to establish strong links between russia and trump during the twenty sixteen election now the steel dossier was criticized for containing flaws and being on verified but it was still allegedly used to secure surveillance on team try and become an important part of the investigation. however it was revealed that the dossier could have been funded by the campaign of his rival hillary clinton and if the latest claims that clinton affiliates also fed information to its author chris steele turned out to be true it could potentially undermine the entire collusion probe oh but did we catch them in the act or what you know and i'm just did we catch them in the act they are very embarrassed they never thought through it to get caught we caught them basically you have a opposition research which proves to be propaganda not even factual information that led to the appointment of bob mahler to investigate trump for russian collusion that appears not only not to have happened but to hav

the first glen simpson memo was released, he explains his and chris steele's statement of mind about donald trump. given all the information that steele had just collected about him which caused them to take their information to the fbi and the justice department. basically out of fear because they were so alarmed by what this research project had turned up about trum. this is from the transcript. quote, after the election obviously we were as surprised as everyone else and chris and i were mutually concerned about whether the united states had just elected someone who was compromised by a hostile foreign power. we were, you know, unsure what to do. initially we didn't do anything other than to discuss our concerns, but we were gravely concerned. okay. then we get a second transcript from glen simpson talking to the house committee and he explains in more detail. page 78. did the fbi ever reach out to you or fusion gps in relation to the matters that mr. steele informed them on? >> i was asked to provide was in by the justice department. >> by whom and when? >> a prosecutor by the nam

the source that we revealed, chris steele, was about the least well kept secret in america. generally i err on the side of transparency and disclosure. on the other hand there's a reason that this process is usually confidential and i don't want to set the precedent of all fisa application being publicly seen. >> brennan: that's the concern in doing this memo that you have set a new precedent. >> i would argue, it's also somewhat unprecedented to rely on position research to instruct and inform an application, and it's really bad precedent and unprecedented to not tell a court that a source has this level of bias. look at just the disclosure of who paid for it. they could have easily said it was the dnc and hillary clinton. that would have been really ea easy. i would have a footnote, i know what the footnote says, it took longer to explain it the way they did than if they just come right out hillary clinton for america and dnc paid for it but they didn't do that. >> brennan: short of that disclosure, you still would have believed this fisa surveillance warrant was justified

except that somehow chris steele stuff got into a fisa warrant and they didn't mention that there was -- the democratic money and that was bad. >> would the president have been better off if they kept delaying the release of the memo? and let the mystery continue. let the methodology -- it was growing and it may have grown out of hand but growing in ways that were probably helpful. >> and he could have come up with a defense, see i'm so responsible and taking care of national security. i won't let this get out there. so a little mystery is preferable to the dud -- >> he love the mystery. >> he can't help himself. he wouldn't do that. >> you are sticking around. but up ahead, how republicans are responding to today's big memo drop. we'll talk to two top members of house freedom caucus. mark meadows and jim jordan together on set. i think they'll have a response to what the panel said. stay tuned for that. ♪ ♪ ♪ you know what's not awesome? gig-speed internet. when only certain people can get it. let's fix that. let's give this guy gig- really? and these kids, and these guys, him, ah. o

the references to chris steele.ferred to in the republican memo as long-time fbi asset. so we have an agreement with great britain, canada, australia, new zealand, we are the 50 called. five eyes: we freely exchange intelligence information. in return for that exchange, we agree not to recruit someone from one of the other countries. the fbi recruited chris steele contrary to that agreement. if they recruited him at the same time he was still an mi-6 agent. that means he was spying for great britain and spying for the united states, which would violate british law. he could be subject to prosecution. the fbi did not want that known and congressman nunes decided. steve: now they know. brian: okay. now move onto the other story front page of the "new york times" today it says it's a division among the legal team of president trump. ty cobb says talk to robert mueller. jay sekulow and john dowd say do not talk to him. governor i didn't say city says he should not talk to him. >> let me tell you how it will work. the re

david: chris steele, the man behind the trump dossier.t was one of the main sources of information that led to the fisa warrant and the ability to spy. and it talked in great detail about the state department's involvement in some of this. and how sid blumenthal who worked with the clinton war machine was one of the sources for chris steele. gregg: this is so ugly inner way. this latest document by grassley and graham shows the department justice actively concealed vital information from the fisa court and deliberately deceived the judge. they knew the dossier was a phoney document politically motivated. they knew steele was untrustworthy and he had lied. none of this was conveyed to the judge. nunes sent a letter to the presiding judge of the fisa court asking for all of the transcripts of the fisa warrant applications and hearings. that's four different hearings, to find out exactly what was misrepresented in court. david: mr. nunes is also gramming with the notion of going to the chief justice of the supreme court because the supreme c

it's the rolling reference to chris steele as a long-time fbi asset. all right, the fbi has all kinds of assets. he is a former british intelligence agent. we won't cherry pick each other's agents. he was apparently was cherry picked by the fbi. if this happened, while he was an mi-6 agent he could be prosecuted for espionage by the british government. >> martha: we know he was working for them. they were interested in his work. there is a discrepancy whether they paid him. they also say they released him. they have some kind of relationship whether it was monetary or not. >> i think they had a monetary relationship and decided it was not credible or we can't trust you because you have become a leaker. leaking classified material is a line that can't be crossed, mr. steele. he left mi-6 in 2009. this is serious stuff. the justice department and the fbi is which not run by the same people running it then. we are talking about eric holder and james comey, has an enormous problem on his hand. >> martha: 2009 is a long time ago. you can prove there was an

but it may have been that chris steele was more important than the dnc. there was a third party feeding information to mr. steele. mr. steele was just sort of the hollywood extra. he looks like james bond, he has a history but he hadn't been spying for seven years. he was sitting at home in london making phone calls. with just the phone calls he comes up with this extraordinary story that was missed by all of the intelligence agencies of the world, including the cia and the fbi maybe it was -- and as we see these democratic operatives working with him, he was the conduit for the dnc's dirt on donald trump. >> let's get to the hart of heaf this, david. you outlined it well. was this about the fact that the democrats believed that donald trump was such a hideous person, a trader, crooked and dirty that they just needed to give the fbi the ability to start spying on people around donald trump and they would uncover this monster. and what ended up happening is that there is serious allegations about how this dossier, this phony dossier was put together and th

i think chris, it was someone that chris steele knows. chris told me that he had been talking to brous and that he told now incidentally that's about this article published on october 31st right before the election. investigating donald trump, they see no clear link to russia. the substantiative claims in that article have all basically been disproven. there's a debate over why "the new york times" hasn't corrected that article. it existed at the time. so that led to this. from the transcript, we had also by this time given this information to the fbi, and they had indicated to chris that they were investigating it and apparently they told the "new york times" that they weren't. so it was not clear to us whether anyone at a high level of government was aware of the information that chris had gathered and provided to the fbi. so you know, we were frankly very scared for the country. and for ourselves. e we telt that if we could give it to someone else higher up, we should. so chris suggested i give some information to bruce and give him the

it did start with the dossier from chris steele. they feel it was compiled by somebody with bias against the president. if that moment led to the investigation, that would somehow undercut the premise of the investigation. unfortunately it did not prove true in devin nunes' memo. going forward, as the president continues to talk about the russia investigation and the contents of the memo mean for him. the big thing to look for is if he takes action against rod rosenstein who he learned renewed the fisa warrants. that could be an important step. it could severely impact republicans and party in the mid term year and create a huge crisis in politics if the president is taking action. >> i guess we know there is a rift with the gop about all of this and reaction to the memo. for the democrats, i assume they are pushing to release their own rebut rebuttal? >> they are. the white house says they are willing to cooperate and they want to see the republican and democratic memos released. the question is if they ask for redactions or portio

did it come from the state department or character cody shearer is more chris steele than chris steele is in terms of feeding information from the democrats to law enforcement and to intel. there's a lot more here to be found. but senator graham and his colleagues are to be commended for having found this and gone directly to susan rice and to her lawyers. i saw the letter. to her and to her lawyers earlier today. >> martha: we will see where it goes. judge, thank you very much. >> you're welcome. >> martha: joining me is tammy bruce and a former advisor to hillary clinton. thank you both for being here tonight. >> hi there. >> martha: felipe, let me go to you first on this. what do you make of it? >> well, i think senator graham was being at best disingenuous and your previous guest worse than that let's be very clear about something. during the transition when you say something by the book maybe it means by the book. second of all, we are awful forgetting that mike flynn was under investigation. the obama white house during transition warned the trump incoming administration multiple

chris steele comes out of this looking more credible, based on the fact that we now know he was a reliable source for the justice department for years. the trump campaign looks more culpable. we know multiple people were under investigation by the fbi during the campaign. we didn't know that before these memos were released. and the fbi looks more responsible, because we now know officially, not just from news reports, but officially that they began their investigation, not because of chris steele and his dossier, but because of information that came to him about george pop daupless. >> i don't know if you ever, when you were a kid, matt, if you ever read "the little engine that could", do you remember that one? >> i did, and i read it to my toddler now. >> i didn't know it was still in vogue, but this is the memo, and the night he released it he was telling fox news, oh, don't worry, there will be other memos. there's one other memo, the rebuttal to him. it's the little engine who couldn't hat trick, because he's embarrassed himself a third time this weekend. thank you for your eagle eyes

. >> judge napolitano: of the was prepared by chris steele, former british mic. and he had russian sources. if you read the dossier, put a side of the salacious moscow hotel room part. the rest of it accuses then mr. donald trump of very, very, very serious money laundering involving russian mobsters in the kremlin officials. it's never been verified, it's never been vouched for by the fbi, even though chris steele was an fbi asset who is being paid by the fbi at the time he was preparing this. >> melissa: so they may not be guilty of colluding with the russians because you may have been lying about the whole entire thing? >> judge napolitano: that's what i'm saying. >> marie: i think the difference is whether or not anything comes from it, trump campaign officials work with the russian government officials or officials went to the russian government in their attempts to meddle in our election. there's a difference in the intelligence world between having a sub source that may be a russian citizen and in terms of the collusion or conspiracy to collude, that may b

they didn't find chris steele.ort is to find out what they believe are abuses of the surveillance program. it didn't start and end with the memo. >> yeah. devin knew niece knnu nunes kno donald trump is still liked by his base. doesn't hurt him in his district. doesn't hurt him anywhere to be on the president's side. that makes sense. the idea of him wanting to run for senator at some point in the state of california is probably not going to happen. but i do like this idea that if president trump likes you and he doesn't like somebody else, like, i don't know, christopher wray, maybe you're setting yourselves up for something like that. >> i appreciate you all joining us on set to talk through all of this on what is going to be a newsworthy day. we'll be right back, as always, with today's big picture. so that's the idea. what do you think? i don't like it. oh. nuh uh. yeah. ahhhhh. mm-mm. oh. yeah. ah. agh. d-d-d... no. hmmm. uh... huh. yeah. uh... huh. in business, there are a lot of ways to say no. thank you so

i will tell you that during the cries in 2014-15 chris steele had a number of commercial clients who were asking him for reports on what was going on in russia, what was going on in ukraine and between them. chris had a prepared at the state department and he offered us that reporting free so that we could also benefit from it. it was one of hundred of sources that we were using to try to understand what was going on. then in the middle of july when he was doing this other work and became concerned -- >> brennan: the dossier. >> the dossier, he passed to the four pages of short points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. this need to go to the fbi if there's any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the russian federation, that's something for the fbi to investigate. that was our reaction when we saw this. it's not -- we can't evaluate this. frankly, if every member of the campaign who the russians tried to approach and tried to influence had gone to the fbi as well, might not be in the m

hillary clinton and if the latest claims that clinton affiliates also fed information to its author chris steele turned out to be true it could potentially undermine the entire collusion probe. no but did we catch them in the act or what you know what i'm talking did we catch them in the act they are very embarrassed they never thought through to get caught we caught them basically you have a opposition research which proves to be propaganda and not even factual information that led to the appointment of bob mahler to investigate trump for russian collusion that appears not only not to have happened but to have been invented by the democrats paid for by the democrat national committee and the clinton campaign and now they're investigating trump i still think the funniest part about this is they want to say trump well we couldn't find any collusion so it must be obstruction of justice that he fired the former f.b.i. director what was he obstructing if there was no justice to be served because what they were investigating wasn't even true i think that's laughable the republican party earlier relea

if the latest claims that clinton affiliates also fed information to its author are true well chris steele says it could potentially undermine the entire collusion probe oh but did we catch them in the act or what you know and i'm sure did we catch them in the act they are very embarrassed they never thought they were really get caught we caught them the republican party earlier released a memo outlining a potential f.b.i. and the department of justice bios in their trump russia probe the document faced criticism from the democrats but republicans say their investigation will now proceed to encompass even more branches of government. yes so let me get to that so phase one of our investigation was just getting to getting at the pfizer. what we're looking at now is the state department and some of the irregularities there political talk show host brian crabtree believes the democrats have fabricated the trump dossier. you have a opposition research which proves to be propaganda and not even factual information that led to the appointment of bob mahler to investigate trumped for russian collu

the so-called trumpet dossier was compiled by former british intelligence officer chris steele it claims to establish strong links between russia and donald trump during the twenty sixteen election campaign now the steel dossier was criticised for containing flaws being verified but it was reportedly still used as the basis to secure surveillance on trump's team it also became an important part of the investigation you know earlier it was revealed that documents could have been funded by the campaign of his rival hillary clinton if the latest claims that clinton affiliates also fed information to steal turned out to be true this could undermine the coal collusion probe oh but did we catch them in the act or what you know and i'm just did we catch them in the act they are very embarrassed they never thought they really get caught we caught them basically you have a opposition research which proves to be propaganda and not even factual information that led to the appointment of bob mahler to investigate trump for russian collusion that appears not only not to have happened but to have been

they must have known this guy was not a straight shooter, chris steele. and they hid that information from the judge. that implicates him. >> they were signing off on the fruits of the poisonous tree. the fact that we can have high-level judges on the fisa courts being left in the dark when they are making grave decisions. jesse: shouldn't the judges, more aggressive in poking holes in it. or are they blindly signing off? >> these are great questions that need to be laid bare in congressional investigations. i am not going to make an assumption either way. jesse: this is determined through the memo hillary paid for spying on the trump campaign and was in cahoots with the. was it based on a lie, is it poisoned from the core? what does it tell us about the larger russia investigation? >> i think a cancer has metastasized. the twin corruption between our foreign intelligence agencies and the mainstream media to cover it. they are supposed to be investigative watchdogs when they are in fact acting like lap dogs in shopping around this faulty information. a fu

didn't tell him about who paid for it and they didn't tell him about bruce ohr's relationship with chris steeleidn't tell him his wife was work for fusion. david: where do we go from here? the justice department cannot investigate itself. that's clear. at least not now, until jeff sessions if he's successful in cleaning it up? >> i don't like special counsels, but we need a second one. congressman me deens myself called for a special counsel. i don't know how else you clean this up. mueller is inherently compromise. jeff sessions recused himself. don't pick someone from the swamp. pick someone from some retired federal judge from iowa or oklahoma. so when they complete their swres nation the american people can say there is a conclusion we understand and can help restore confidence in this agency. david: a lot of people say to restore confidence a couple other people have to go, and that's rod rosenstein. >> we'll see. jim comey is gone, andrew mccabe is scheduled to leave. jim barrack has been reassigned. peter strzok has been reassigned. lisa page has been reassigned and bruce ohr has been de

money laundering which was alleged by chris steele or obstruction of justice. this is the standard operating procedure of federal prosecutors. you indict, you charge, you punish at the bottom of the totem poll. we all know who is at the top. kennedy: we do. it's a matter of whether these loosely connected figures and points create a ladder to the white house. if it doesn't, what a phenomenal waste of time. >> manafort would say -- but the down side is, an unaccountable special counsel materially interfering with the president's ability to govern. when will this end? i don't think this will end this year. i think more indictments will come. if they try manafort, the country will be captivated on it. kennedy: pressure continues to you build on politicians to strengthen gun laws. will any of that make schools safer? are pretty much the same. but while some push high commission investment products, fisher investments avoids them. some advisers have hidden and layered fees. fisher investments never does. and while some advisers are happy to earn commissions from you

chris steele wrote the dossier. and devin nunes has said that much in it. >> let's talk about christopher steele at for a little bit because the importance of the memo today is that it provides proof and information that mr. steele went to the fbi and a supposedly he was so worried about the country and donald trump. he broke fbi cardinal rules. he undermined at the fbi, they had admonished him not to speak to anyone and yet he went running out to sit down with glenn simpson, an opposition research firm and brief all of their bodies in the press in september in order to create negative headlines against donald trump. he blew the operation, put it out there in public. then they hillary clinton campaign capitalized on it in the days following. tell me how we view this man as a stand-up mi6 agent that can be trusted. if he understood the rules of the game, he will not have broken all of the fbi rules. he strikes me as a political operator who is on the record as saying he is opposed to donald trump ever becoming preside

the three words were after chris steele's name,ing a long time source. what's wrong with that.e have an agreement with the british not to use each other's spies. spies. kennedy: that's problematic. the idea that you are not suppose to be doing something, so don't do it. if you know his work is being paid for by one of the most of politically contentious political races we have, then that shouldn't equal a partnership with the fbi. judge napolitano: i don't know why the fbi bothered presenting that dossier. the fisa standard for surveil yains patently unconstitutional. this is the congress attempting to free write the fourth amendment. the constitution says probable cause of crime. fisa says probable cause of communication. why the fbi didn't do it that way i don't know. here is the danger. we are in dangerous waters. for the first time in the modern era after the creation of the characteristics a and the surveillance state. we have seen politicians use their top security clearances to cherry pick information from raw intelligence data and use it for a political narrative. we ha