I definitely want to talk about your background and kind of some of the places you've worked and what's happened because it's a very interesting story.
But I want to start with the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabber, declassifying certain documents relating to the Russia investigation.
Well, the simple explanation is that in December of 2016, the outgoing administration, the Obama administration, wanted to change the conversation.
There was a highly classified intelligence product called the President's Daily Brief.
And a key finding was that the Russian cyber activities had not affected the votes in the 2016 election.
And President Obama elected to do a new intelligence assessment that would be declassified and made public.
And that had a very different finding.
And it was that the Russian president had a clear preference for President Trump and that he aspired to help him in the 2016 campaign.
And that, in my view, really sort of set the foundation for these years-long investigations of President Trump and the special counsel, Robert Mueller-Probe.
Now, I want to show a portion of the Senate Intelligence Committee report.
This, as you know, is chaired by Marco Rubio at the time, who was a senator, and it says this.
The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president.
Moscow's intent was to harm the Clinton campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. Democratic process.
No, I believe that to be true, but I don't think that we're necessarily talking about completely different things.
You can reach the conclusion that Russia attempted cyber activities throughout the 2016 election, but they failed to change the vote.
They failed to infiltrate the infrastructure.
You can also take the position that they wanted to denigrate Secretary Clinton.
I think that's pretty clear from the email leaks as well.
The issue the Director of National Intelligence is raising now is that this narrative that Putin wanted to help Trump and aspired to help Trump was based in what she says was faulty intelligence.
Well, I think this is a real opportunity for people to look at these declassified documents independently.
I would draw their attention to the specific section about Putin's intentions.
The Director of National Intelligence makes the argument that of all of the intelligence that was available on this point, they cherry-picked reporting that was the most flawed or the least consistent with proper handling of sources and information.
I think what I would have wanted to see is more transparency early in 2017 about the fact that the Steele dossier, the subsources for that dossier, were already starting to unravel.
And I'm sure your viewers will remember that the Steele dossier was one of the elements to obtain the FISA warrants for Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
And by January of 2017, the sources for the dossier were already unraveling, yet the FBI continued to use the Steele dossier as part of their applications to the FISA court, I believe it was at least two more times.
So as the information matured, I guess I would say, and they understood more about the reliability of the intelligence, I think there should have been more transparency about that.
The argument of the Trump administration is that there was not transparency, that there was a preferred political narrative, and that the intelligence community cherry-picked information to back that up.
Now, President Trump has accused former President Obama of a coup, of treasonous activity.
His administration has accused former President Obama.
Has there been anything that you've seen in these documents that would indicate either criminal behavior, treasonous behavior, or the attempt at a coup?
Well, treason is a very high standard, and the major obstacle with a former president is that they have immunity for the actions they take as commander-in-chief.
Well, I think that there's a much lower bar for them, and I think there's probably a fair amount of heartburn in some circles over the release of these records, because sort of the low-hanging fruit in this is something called 18 U.S.C 1001, which is lying to federal agents, can also be lying to Congress.
And I think there is evidence that some of these officials, specifically the CIA Director John Brennan and the FBI Director James Comey, misled Congress about the use of the dossier and also the extent to which the Russian cyber activities had affected the vote in 2016.
I want to ask you, Senator John Warner on the Intelligence Committee put out a couple of posts on X accusing this release of and declassifying of these documents that they are putting sources and methods at risk and that this could impact our intelligence on Russia.
Wow, based on what I've read, I don't think there's really that strong an argument that it's going to violate or compromise sources and methods.
The documents in that respect, I think, are pretty generic, particularly when it comes to the issues of sort of the faulty, what Republicans see as the faulty intelligence.
I think we've had a full understanding of this deal dossier now that we didn't really have back in 2016 and 2017.
And just sort of anecdotally, from my own reporting at that time, because I was reporting through that entire period of 2016 and 2017 at Fox News as the chief intelligence correspondent, when that story broke about Russia collusion, I was asked to confirm it and then get our own reporting.
That would be standard practice.
And at that point, I'd been in Washington over 15 years.
And I don't know everyone, but I know a lot of people here in Washington, current government people, former government people.
And I talked to everyone.
I was trying to figure out where this information about this alleged collusion was being briefed from.
And I just couldn't find it.
And I remember saying to one of my supervisors, I can't seem to get this.
I don't think it's real.
Those were my exact words.
And I think we understand now that it wasn't an intelligence report in that traditional sense.
Well, I'm limited in what I can say because this is ongoing litigation.
I'm not a party in this litigation.
I'm simply a witness in this litigation.
There's no allegation that my reporting was false or defamatory.
We briefed our case to the appellate court here in Washington, D.C. last fall.
We're waiting for a decision.
More recently, the Justice Department filed a letter with the court asking for, in my view, critical evidence to be unsealed so that the public can understand the basis upon which the plaintiff lost their national security funding through the Defense Department on a national security basis.
I'm very grateful that the district court has paused the fines pending the appeal, but I feel so strongly about this because nobody can really withstand fines of this nature, especially escalating over time.
And I really did a lot of advocacy for the Press Act last year because I understand that smaller independent outfits cannot withstand this kind of legal and financial pressure.
I have the benefit of Fox News standing behind me in this litigation.
It's very expensive defense to mount, and I'm grateful for that, but not every reporter will have the back.
The Press Act would have offered the broadest possible protections for working journalists and for the protection of their confidential sources.
There are what I would call common sense exceptions, like the threat of imminent violence, but for the most part, it was just an all-encompassing protection.
I feel that's so important right now with the explosion in independent media.
When you're an independent journalist or you're in a small digital newsroom, you're not going to be able to withstand a court case to defend your confidential sources.
And if you're an investigative journalist like myself, you understand that if you don't have a credible assurance of confidentiality to your sources, then your investigative toolbox is empty.
I would really encourage you to do your own assessment and read these now declassified documents that are available.
It's highly unusual for such high-level intelligence to be declassified.
The timeline, I don't think, can be in dispute.
In December of 2016, the President's Daily Brief concluded that Russian cyber activities had not changed the vote outcome.
They had not hacked election infrastructure.
The following day, there was a White House meeting.
There was a decision and ordered by President Obama for a new intelligence assessment.
The allegation from President Trump and the Director of National Intelligence is that President Obama overstepped the line, that this process, the new intelligence assessment, was highly irregular and it relied on intelligence that was not supportable.
You, Howard, can go and read these documents for yourself.
I just want to point out something that's being covered up by all this headsteam thing.
That's George Joannadis, the CIA agent that was the handler for Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of Kennedy, who went on to lie to the Warren Commission and lie to Congress.
Well, now, the CIA has done this for a long time.
They have constantly interfered in American politics for the Republicans.
Now, they just did it.
You mentioned it, brushed over it with the Russia report.
So there is a continued pattern of the CIA involvement in American politics that has gone on for almost 75 years.
Now, I could take you back to where they destroyed Iran's democracy to install the Shah.
That was Richard Nixon, and it caused Eisenhower to have a heart attack when he heard about it from Adelaide's state.
Not Adelaide, but I think anyway, the CIA has been involved in a lot of things.
And I appreciate an independent reporter because I'm a true independent, as you can tell.
Well, he seems to know a lot of history, that's for sure.
And I don't want to give people bad information, but certainly the role of the CIA is really under the microscope now.
And I think the question I have consistently is whether we're doing what I would call traditional intelligence gathering, where we're finding the facts on the ground, and that's informing the assessments that are provided for policymakers, or whether there has been a politicization within the CIA.
So you have a kind of a preferred outcome, and then you work backwards from that and you start cherry-picking intelligence.
And whatever your feelings about these newly released documents and the Russia collusion case, I think this is a great exercise in transparency to look at the records that are available and to independently assess whether you think any red lines were crossed.
Well, I don't know specifically what intelligence he's referring to, so it's hard to respond to it.
And I'm not here to be a defender of the administration.
I totally applaud the declassification of records.
And at this point, we have to trust it was done in a responsible way that would not jeopardize ongoing sources of information or confidential human sources.
Time's going to tell whether it was done in a responsible way, but I think that's a legitimate question.