Dave Smith critiques James Comey's testimony regarding the Steele dossier, arguing that the Inspector General's findings of "significant inaccuracies" in FISA applications prove intentional lies rather than mere negligence. He highlights how the FBI knew the source was unreliable yet continued surveillance, framing this as a "deep state" coup against President Trump. Despite Attorney General Barr denying bad faith, Smith insists the evidence points to misconduct, noting Comey's defense of mistakes while admitting the investigation targeted campaign associates. Ultimately, the host suggests Comey's reputation remains intact despite these revelations, speculating he will profit from book deals regardless of the controversy surrounding his tenure. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to Part of the Problem00:02:12
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm wearing my Mises Caucus joint.
Print guns, not money.
I love it.
Deacocks.
Just trying to make my king proud.
Who I'm always joined by my king, our king, the king of the cocks, Robbie the fire, Bernstein.
What's up, brother?
Greetings, everybody.
How are you?
I'm good, man.
How was your weekend?
Nothing too exciting.
I judged the Roast Battle show.
Oh, how was that?
A lot of fun.
They got a good operation over there.
I got to start hanging out there more.
I haven't done one of those.
I haven't judged one of those in quite a while.
It's fun.
People are showing up with good jokes.
Like, every battle was really solid.
And then I felt like it's such a rush sitting there because you got to come up with jokes about the people while they're doing it.
And Eli Sears was on the bench along with another guy, and they're so good at that.
Yeah, he's the best at that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then like there'll be like three in a row where you're like, oh, I came up with like some funny things to say during the thing.
And then like the fourth one comes up and you're like, I thought she won.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm sorry.
I got you.
I was really the whole time.
You know what it's too?
Is that you don't like it fucks with your ability to judge a little bit because you're thinking of shit to say.
Like, because comedians are all just, first off, we're trying to be funny.
And then you're a narcissist.
So you're just thinking about yourself and how funny your thing could be.
And then you're kind of like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry.
I missed like two of your jokes because I was thinking about what joke I was going to do.
But I felt like you won.
So I'm going to go with you.
I wasn't that transparent about it.
Good time.
Yeah.
Good time.
They do it at the stand, right?
The Century of American Empire00:06:14
Yeah, Sunday nights.
Yeah, I used to go to them at the old stand all the time, but I used to live down here by the old stand and, you know, didn't have a baby.
It's actually, it's called Comedy Fight Club now.
Oh, that right.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, right.
Right here on Gas Digital Network.
There we go.
Yeah, if you sign up, use promo code P-O-TP.
You save something.
Just all of it.
You save money every month and you become a supporting listener of this show.
And then you get all those shows for free, too.
Check out all the roast battles.
Excellent.
All right.
Good talk.
Hey, so, you know, I was thinking about that just kind of dawned on me.
And I was thinking about this on the way over here is that, well, obviously, it's, you know, it's December and Christmas is coming up and then the new year's and we're almost in the year 2020.
But what I don't know why, just, I think I saw someone tweet like end of the decade coming up.
And I was kind of like, oh, yeah, it's not just the end of a year.
You know, it's the end of a decade.
And it's not just the end of a decade.
It's the end of the first 20 years.
You get to feel extra worse about yourself.
Well, a little bit.
Well, I mean, honestly, I don't feel, it doesn't make me feel bad, but it makes me feel like, holy shit.
Makes me feel like we're living in the future, you know?
I mean, it's going to be 2020, 20 years into the 21st century.
And I thought there might be something interesting to just talk about that up front on the show today, like the bigger picture, because that's my specialty.
Dave, big picture Smith, most consistent motherfucker, you know.
And 20 years into the 21st century, how crazy it's been so far.
And it's for people my age, you know, like I'm 36.
I was born in 1983.
So I was born roughly, you know, 20 years before the year 2000.
And now it's 20 years after the year 2000.
So people around my age, you know, it's like we got to experience a bit of the 20th century and now a bit of the 21st century.
And there really is, there's a very different feeling in this country.
It's a very different country than it was when I was born in many, many ways.
And for people my age, you know, you do, you remember the year 2000.
I remember this being a big thing.
I was a teenager, you know, whatever, 17, 16, something like that.
And it's, you know, number one, it does, you're like, holy shit, that was 20 years ago.
But then it's also when you, when you're obsessed with politics and stuff like that, the way the way I am, it's, it's hard to not think about it and just be like, holy shit.
I mean, there are so many things about political life in the year 2020 that if you had described this in the year 1980, people would have been like, are you out of your fucking mind?
Like, there's no way this is the reality of our country.
And it's, I guess the big picture so far, right?
20 years into the 21st century, it's not going great for America.
I mean, like, it's, there are some things that are really great, but there's a lot of really ominous shit going down.
It's like the, in many ways, especially when you talk about America as a superpower or America as, you know, what it is, let's, let's be frank, as the world empire.
The 20th century was the century of America.
It was the century of America taking over the world.
I think about as much as anyone's ever taken over the world, and in some ways more.
And that was the 20th century.
Like if you went to the year 1900, I mean, America was like a promising young country, but you couldn't have in any serious way said America is the world empire or America is, you know, the dominant force in the world.
There's no way.
It's not, it was objectively not an empire at that point.
I mean, there wasn't, you know, it wasn't a country.
I mean, like, I'm not saying we hadn't like exerted our will over a few other countries and done some shit in South America and stuff like that, but we didn't run the world.
I mean, the British Empire, you could have made the argument was running shit, but not America.
I mean, the Ottomans or some shit like that, not America.
And the 20th century was the century that saw us take over the world.
And there's lots of reasons for that.
And, you know, a big part of that was winning both of the world wars and a lot of other shit as well.
But that was, you know, in many ways, the century of America.
And in many ways, it was the century of, you know, like, look, some really beautiful shit.
I mean, standards of living rose across the industrialized world in the 20th century and, you know, tremendous innovations and technology and medicine and all these different fields.
But it was also, you know, the century that was the rise of central banks, the rise of, you know, like permanent warfare states and, you know, a century that saw unbelievable growth in the power of centralized nation states and, you know, saw, you know, millions and millions of people killed by those governments.
You know, the numbers are actually like insane.
When you get into it, if you were to add up the democide and the world war numbers, I mean, it's like hundreds of millions of people that were killed by governments in the 20th century.
Pretty horrible.
Pretty brutal stuff.
But I don't know.
I was just thinking about how much the country's changed like since I was, since I was born and since the year 2000.
And it's really something.
You know, it's like there's a, the, we see just like the state of the culture, the fact that Trump's president, I mean, the fact that Donald Trump is fucking president, no matter how much you talk about it, it still has like a fucking, I can't believe this quality to it.
The fact that we sent this guy in there as, you know, as like a real should be to everybody, like a holy shit, where are we as a country moment?
How Much Has America Changed00:06:49
How angry people were that they fucking sent this guy as a big middle finger to the whole establishment.
How much the culture is, you know, people are at each other's throats.
I mean, the idea of like in 1980 or even in the year 2000, if you were like politically on different sides, I don't think there was nearly as much.
I know for a fact in the year 2000, because I was, you know, I mean, I wasn't like exactly an adult, but I was, you know, I wasn't two.
I was 17.
I remember this time.
You could be like on different sides of the aisle or have different political views.
And it wasn't an immediate like, I fucking hate you feeling that it is today.
Today, people are really at each other's throats in a different way.
And that, you know, that's really something.
And the, you know, the crisis with just every mainstream institution being completely like tarnished.
I mean, people just do not like, and there's a lot of good in this, but people just do not buy into mainstream institutions the way they used to.
You know, they just don't like, there's no feeling that the Mr. ABC news anchor is, you know, actually a journalist.
There's no feeling that like, well, the State Department is there for the people.
There's no feeling, you know, there's just none of that.
And I saw, I use the comparison a lot, but I think it really says something.
But like in just as an example of where average Joe Six Pack America was, that in 1985, in 1995, if Vince McMahon wanted you to love a professional wrestler, all he had to do was throw an American flag around his shoulders and then throw some other flag around the other guy's shoulders.
And everyone in the crowd would be like, USA, USA, we're on Team America.
You know, that's the good guys.
And there's really been like the rise of on the left, you have the virtue signaling, we hate America.
Like we, we hate this country.
This country is responsible for all the evil in the world.
And then on the right, you have this kind of like, well, America's been taken over by the bad guys and it's no longer like the noble good country that it once was, right?
This is why we want to make America great again, meaning something happened, right?
Like used to be great and we want to be great again, but something's going on here that isn't so great.
A lot of information conveyed in those five words.
Or four words, make America great again.
But, you know, anyway, it's also the first 20 years of the 21st century have seen an incredible expansion in the size and scope of government, which is the stuff that we, you know, really kind of talk about the most and care about in many ways the most.
And I don't think it's unrelated to the other things.
The size of government has exploded.
I always think, I think that to me, in America, the 21st century started on September 11th, 2001.
Like the year 2000 was pretty much still the 90s.
And like every, you know, it's like it was just a different world.
It was a different country with a different feeling.
And then September 11th happened and everything changed.
And then it became like we're in the new century.
Now we're in the new century.
We're a country that's like in these wars where there's this threat of terrorism.
I mean, there were terrorists in the 90s, but no one took them that seriously as like a fucking threat.
It was like, eh, you know, they'll, they'll blow up a fucking, you know, the outside of an embassy here or there.
A little, you know, it was, it was the 1993 World Trade Center attack.
That's like what you were worried about.
You know, a little bomb and maybe a couple people were injured.
But it wasn't like, holy shit, we're at war and this is an existential threat and all this other, you know, kind of bullshit that happened after that.
But just so, so of course, that was like the one of the great impetuses for why the government grew so fast or why they were able to.
But if you think about it like this, right?
And I don't have the numbers exactly like right in front of me, but in the year 1980, I think federal spending was probably somewhere ballpark, like $500 billion a year.
Okay.
In the year 2000, it was under $2 trillion a year.
And in the year 2020, it's going to be close to $5 trillion of spending.
I mean, I don't know how anyone could deny the incredible rate of growth of government.
And then there's also things like, you know, like that just didn't exist, that didn't exist back then.
Like, what was the Department of Homeland Security doing in the year 2000?
It's like, well, nothing.
It didn't exist.
What was the, you know, was the NSA spying on everybody's phone calls?
Like, no, this technology didn't exist.
They didn't have it.
They didn't have this information.
It's all new.
It's all fucking come like very, very recently.
And who really thinks that America is stronger for any of this shit?
Like, who really thinks we're in a better place now than we were in the year 2000 for fighting all these wars, for growing the state so big, for building these new departments and this mass surveillance state that's been created?
Who thinks we're in a better place?
And yet it seems almost impossible.
Like there's like no political will to roll any of it back.
But I don't know.
I was just thinking about this.
Like it's such a weird fucking, it's a weird turn that the country has made.
And it feels like things are happening very fast.
Like very fast.
There's a lot of countries where 20 years ago, they're pretty much the same country as they are today.
Like really not that much has fucking changed.
There's a lot of countries like that in the world.
And that's not the one, the one that we're living in, that we're talking about.
Things are fucking changing awfully fast.
And I don't think for the good.
And really, the fucking, you know, the day of reckoning has to come for this unsustainable big government.
It's just like, it's going to be impossible to keep this thing going.
I mean, we've, you know, we got through, you know, the century of the state growing in the 20th century.
But so much of that was because, you know, it's like the country was started being based around this idea of a limited government that's like shackled by the Constitution and the divisions of powers and all these different, you know, like pitting different vested interests against each other.
And those whittled away little by little by little.
And now you're at a point where basically there's nothing left.
I mean, it's not, it's like, it's not till the 70s that we go off the gold standard.
Worries About Our Financial Future00:02:45
That takes a few years before the fucking inflation of the Federal Reserve really starts to get into the economy.
You've got like all these kind of like ideas of limitations that were still going on till then.
It's not really until, you know, the 80s and the 90s where you start to see the error of big finance.
I mean, that's really when it starts to be the like, like, you know, that's where people are making millions of dollars on Wall Street.
Like you can just go there and become a millionaire overnight.
That wasn't a thing in the 60s and 70s.
That started in the 80s and then kept going in the 90s and the year 2000.
So much of this stuff is relatively new.
And now, I'm just thinking about it with, you know, in context, well, the Trump stuff, the government, it's so unchecked that you just have straight up the CIA deciding the American people voted for the wrong person.
So we're going to take that guy out.
It's like what, you know, like just a few years ago, they told us, you know.
Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people.
We need to go start another war.
Then it turns out they're wrong about that.
No apology, no anything.
At the same time, they're telling you Donald Trump's colluding with the Russians.
No apology, anything like that.
It's just they're running the fucking show.
And this is a bad, this is a bad, dangerous place to be.
Makes me a little bit worried about the future.
Anyway, happy new year, I guess.
That's what I'm trying to say.
There's your libertarian.
Happy new year to you.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Oh, Rob, what do you think?
What did you do in the year 2000?
I think I was in my grandma's.
That was the whole Y2K scare.
Fox News Media Lies Exposed00:16:13
Sure was.
Turned out that was a bunch of bullshit.
I New Year's it up with my grandma.
She used to pack all the snacks, stay up all night watching cartoons.
It was great.
I remember waking up the next day and being like, so did everything get crazy fucked up by Y2K?
And then just slowly being like, seems like absolutely nothing.
That's got to be one of the first and biggest just news hoax that they scared the shit out of people about something that they just made up, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, it does seem like very strange that there wouldn't have been some, you know, like that, that things like that would ever be able to get off the ground.
But I guess that's what I mean.
Like, look, part of this has got to be like, you know, I'm tainted by the fact that I was a kid then and I'm an adult now.
So, you know, when you're a kid, you just trust institutions more.
It's one of my favorite.
It was a great Joe Rogan bit that I'll probably butcher now.
That was a great bit he had, but he was like, you remember when you were a kid and you believed in adults?
Yeah.
Like you believed there was such a thing as an adult.
And then you become an adult and you're like, oh, everyone's just faking it.
Like, you know, like adults, we're real good at giving the impression to kids that we got this.
We know what's going on.
We're in control.
And partly we do that because we're decent people and that's comforting to kids to be like, no, no, no.
Don't worry.
We got this.
Everything's under control.
Like, everything's fine.
Then you become an adult and you're like, oh, no one knows anything.
We're all just full of shit.
And like, that's, so there's something to that too.
But I do not think that like, and there is like, there's like polling and stuff to back this up, like trust in the mainstream media and stuff like that is like really, really low, historic lows.
Trust, you know, approval in Congress and, you know, stuff like that.
Very, very low.
And of course, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, a very polarizing figure.
And the fact even that, you know, look, I bash them a lot for it because they're fucking, you know, they're just wrong.
And so many of them were fucking idiots on this.
But the fact that it was even believable to such a huge percentage on the left that fucking Donald Trump was a foreign agent really says something.
Like the fact that you would even, that you even thought this was like a plausible accusation.
Like, yeah, maybe this Trump guy is pissing on hookers and working with Putin and all of this.
You know, like even the fact, and look, I get Donald Trump is a person where you could think the pissing on hookers thing.
I get it.
But even that says something.
And you just wonder.
You're like, how can this, you know, how does this, how does this proceed from here?
I mean, I'm still a big fucking default and secede guy.
I mean, that's, that's, to me, the best answer, the best answer going forward.
But the best answer doesn't mean it's the one that's going to happen or it's the one that's the most practical to get to.
I mean, I'm a fucking ANCAP after all.
I'm not saying that like that's the most practical thing that's going to happen in the next fucking, you know, six months, but it does seem to me to be the best answer to so many of these problems.
But anyway, it's just, I mean, I guess, look, I will say, I guess there were a lot of people on the right who believed in like some pretty crazy conspiracies about Barack Obama.
Like they believed that like, you know, he was a Muslim or he was fucking, you know, born in Kenya or he was like working against the interests of America or something like that.
I mean, he was working against the interests of America, but it wasn't, you know, he wasn't a Kenyan Muslim.
He was a fucking Muslim who was pushing gay marriage.
I don't think that's probably, it doesn't seem like that's the most likely answer.
I heard Scott Horton say once.
I thought it was great as he goes, all the conspiracies were that Obama was a secret Muslim, but the real conspiracy is that he was a secret Republican.
That was the more accurate thing.
He was just a secret George W. Bush.
You didn't have to be, which turns out to be the worst thing you could be.
Probably better off with a secret Muslim.
Maybe not.
Anyway, 2020.
Happy New Year.
Happy Libertarian New Year.
All right.
So I saw you sent me the video, and I actually had seen part of it, but I watched the entire thing after you sent it to me.
But it was pretty freaking interesting.
And that was the James Comey, the former head of the FBI under Obama, and then briefly under Donald Trump until he got the If I had.
But he was on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.
So he went on there and you knew, you know, it's an interesting thing where Chris Wallace is really, you know, I'm not a big fan of Chris Wallace, never have been.
He's very much the, I don't know how to say it.
He's the establishment hack of Fox News.
And of course, because he's that, he's like hailed as the like, well, he's the real serious, respectable one.
He's absolutely not.
But he's their guy.
He's there like, well, we put him out and he's Mike Wallace's son.
So what are you going to say?
You know, you can't say Fox News isn't a real news organization because we got this guy.
But, you know.
Anyway, my point is, but they still, the way Fox News works is it's pretty much what they'd call straight news through most of the day.
And then at night, they have the real opinionated, like they have, you know, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram and those people.
Of course, as you know, if you listen to the show before, I have a lot of problems with the whole straight news idea.
I just, I think it's kind of all bullshit.
You know, that's anyway.
So, but Chris Wallace is around a lot of people on his network who have been, say whatever you will about him.
Like, I'm not a fan of Sean Hannity.
I am a fan of Tucker Carlson.
Not a big fan of Sean Hannity.
Not really much of a fan of Laura Ingram.
She's all right, but I don't really like these guys.
But probably just for partisan reasons, like Sean Hannity to me is like, if this had happened to Obama, he'd be completely on the side of the FBI and the CIA.
Like he's just team Republican, not team Democrat.
Tucker, I think, actually has some like principles and would stand by them.
But whether you like Hannity or not, he's been completely right on the whole fucking Russia Gate story.
And so is Tucker.
They've just been, they've been dead on on this from the very beginning of like what was happening.
And there's so many great videos.
If you, I've spent time going back and watching some of the videos, there are so many great ones.
Like Tucker Carlson had Adam Schiff on his show and he had Eric Swalwell on his show and had both of them.
And he, I mean, he just goes relentlessly at them and they're really entertaining to watch.
I mean, I'm not even adding, I'm not exaggerating much.
It would be things like he'd have he'd have Adam Schiff on his show and he'd be like, can you look into the camera and say you know for a fact that Russia hacked into John Podesta's email?
And Adam Schiff looks into the camera and he goes, I know for a fact that Russia hacked into our institutions and our blah blah blah.
He's like, no, no, no, no, that's not what I asked you to say.
That's not what he is.
And he goes, well, I think you're going to have to move your show over to RT because you're doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin.
And you're like, wow.
So it's that.
It's just like, tell me you have evidence for this.
And he's like, Russian traitor.
And Eric Swalwell does the same thing, calls him a Russian traitor and all these guys.
And you really, it was amazing to see at the time them fall apart.
But they would also say that, you know, like the steel dossier wasn't essential to getting the FISA warrants and all these things that have now just been completely, you know, disproven.
But so they've been right about this all along.
And Chris Wallace, I do think, at least I thought going in when I heard that Comey was going to be on, I was like, he's going to have to give him a tough interview.
There's no way that, because he knows, like, what happens in that situation is that when you have Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity breaking down the Russia Gate hoax perfectly, and they've really done a very good job like in the beginning.
And this isn't like a partisan thing to say.
I think honest people on the left would admit this too.
Like, you know, fucking Matt Taibbi or Glenn Greenwald or any of these guys.
What's the guy from The Nation who's been so great on this?
I'm sorry.
I'm fucking retarded.
I'm blanking on his name right now.
But he would, he, he would be, they would all say, yes, like Tucker and Hannity have been right about this from the very beginning.
But the thing is, when you have Tucker and Hannity both being, like, both telling their audience that fucking, like, straight up, this is an attempted coup by the deep state.
Like, this is the, the, like one of the highest crimes you could think of against the president of the United States.
Those are the number one and number two shows on the network.
They go back and forth sometimes, but it's Hannity and Carlson in that order usually are the biggest shows on the network.
They're getting four, you know, 3.8 to 4.5 million people watching their show every night.
I mean, I'm talking about Tucker Carlson gets more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined at his hour.
They're doing, Hannity is getting more viewers than probably every show on MSNBC and CNN throughout the whole day combined.
I mean, like, they're crushing these guys.
So what happens then on Chris Wallace's show is that a huge, and he knows this now, a huge, huge, huge portion of your audience has heard this broken down about how this is a deep state coup.
And now you've got the guy, one of the central figures involved in it on your show.
So if you softball him, they're all going to be like, hey, Chris Wallace, you're not a fucking journalist.
Like, what are you doing?
So there was, I knew there was going to be pressure on him to be somewhat aggressive with him.
and I thought he would get a good, you know, a good interview out of him.
And he did.
He did.
He did a decent job of it.
So anyway, let's get to it.
Here is James Comey, former head of the FBI, being interviewed by Chris Wallace.
Former FBI Director James Comey, Director, welcome to Fox News Sunday.
Thanks for having me.
You have been taking something of a victory lap since the IG report was released earlier this week.
The question is whether or not it's justified.
Here are you and the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, answering the same question.
Do you think this is vindication?
It is.
I mean, the FBI's had to wait two years while the president and his followers lied about the institution.
Finally, the truth gets told.
Does your report vindicate Mr. Comey?
It doesn't vindicate anyone at the FBI who touched this, including the leadership.
All right, just pause a little bit.
What a great way to open the interview.
And don't you just be thankful sometimes.
Like, I'm just thankful that I'm not full of shit.
I mean, I know I don't have everything in the world, and there's people with more money or more prestige, or there's other things, you know, like maybe someone has a bigger house or a bigger, you know, whatever.
But man, it's just great to not be full of shit.
To never have to have that be a question let into you.
Do you feel like this report was a vindication?
Absolutely.
It was a vindication.
Hey, guy, who wrote this report?
Do you think this was a vindication?
How could you possibly think that?
And like, go and go, well, when I say vindication, you just know he's already set up to, you just have to bullshit tap dance your way out of this question.
How anyone could read that report and think that in any way the FBI was vindicated?
I mean, like, you'd have to be out of your mind.
He was like, you guys fucked up massively at every level of this.
And they go, well, I take that as a vindication.
No.
All right.
So let's hear James Comey's response.
G says you should feel no vindication.
Well, maybe it turns upon how we understand the word.
What I mean is that the FBI was accused of treason, of illegal spying, of tapping Mr. Trump's wires illegally, of opening an investigation without justification, of being a criminal conspiracy to unseat, defeat, and then unseat a president.
All of that was nonsense.
I think it's really important that the Inspector General looked at that and that the American people, your viewers and all viewers, understand that's true.
But he also found things that we were never accused of, which is real sloppiness.
And that's concerning.
As I've said all along, has to be focused on.
If I were director, I'd be very concerned about it and diving into it.
Well, sloppiness may be a euphemism for what it is he found.
One of his big concerns is the way the FBI handled the FISA applications and the warrants that allowed you to surveil Carter Page, who was a former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign.
Again, here is what you said about the FISA process and what the Inspector General Horowitz said this week.
Take a look.
I have total confidence that the FISA process was followed and that the entire case was handled in a thoughtful, responsible way by DOJ and the FBI.
We identified significant inaccuracies and omissions in each of the four applications.
Seven in the first application and a total of 17 by the final renewal application.
17 significant errors in the FISA process, and you say that it was handled in a thoughtful and appropriate way.
Yeah, he's right.
I was wrong.
I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI and justice had built over 20 years.
I thought they were robust enough.
It's incredibly hard to get a FISA.
I was overconfident in those because he's right.
There was real sloppiness.
17 things that either should have been in the applications or at least discussed and characterized differently.
It was not acceptable.
And so he's right.
I was wrong.
But you make it sound like you're a bystander, an eyewitness.
You were the director of the FBI while a lot of this was going on, sir.
Sure.
I'm responsible for that.
That's why I'm telling you.
I was wrong.
I was overconfident as director in our procedures.
And it's important that a leader be accountable and transparent.
If I were still director, I'd be saying exactly the same thing that Chris Ray is saying, which is we are going to get to the bottom of the street.
I love when they say this, when he says, it's important that a leader be accountable.
I love the fucking government version of being accountable.
What is he talking about?
Because he's being very specific there when he says it's important I be accountable.
And that's why I said I was wrong.
I was wrong.
And you remember, by the way, it's not just that he was wrong.
It's that the whole media went with him.
Do you remember when James Comey testified?
I remember watching that live when he came out and said the whole process was completely legitimate.
We did everything right.
I know this for a fact.
All the media went, well, there it is.
There's the great James Comey, who was the head of the FBI himself, telling you that there was no shady business with getting these FISA warrants to spy on Trump's campaign.
None of it.
There it is, him telling you.
And then he goes, I was wrong.
You know, it reminds me of when Hillary Clinton said, I was wrong to vote for the war in Iraq, and I've taken responsibility for that.
And you're like, you've taken responsibility.
You've been held to account.
What responsibility are you taking?
What?
I mean, just think about this.
Here's the nature of the state right on full display.
In this Mueller investigation, there were people who misrecalled conversations they had had or got dates wrong, who are doing years in federal prison over that shit.
That's their accountability.
But what accountability does James Comey have to have for lying to the American people?
I was wrong.
Yeah, got me on that one.
There.
It's important leaders are accountable.
So there you go.
Got me.
That's it.
So there it is.
If you needed any more proof that this is how the state operates, these are your rulers and you are the ruled.
It's really laughable when they tell you that fucking they're your servants.
This is how the whole thing works.
Like everything, it's not just that they lie.
It's not like they lie and they take off one shade of the truth.
Like I did something at the level of a 10 and I'm going to tell you it's a nine.
If I did something the level of a 10, I tell you you did something at the level of a 10.
Like that's how, that's how upside down the lies of fucking the government are.
They go, no, we're your servant.
We're your servant.
However, if you lie to your servant, you go to fucking jail.
But if your servant lies to you, nothing happens.
The Broader Mosaic of Truth00:07:40
They go on a fucking book tour.
And he still sits there saying, I'm vindicated.
How do you open with I'm vindicated?
And then your next sentence is like, oh yeah, I was lying through my teeth to you.
I got everything wrong.
And he can say he got it wrong.
This is such bullshit.
The idea that James Comey didn't know what was going on.
And he plays on this more throughout the interview.
But the idea that the head of the FBI doesn't know what's going on with an investigation into the next president of the United States.
Like you're not following that one.
And by the way, it's a lie.
It's not just getting something wrong because he didn't say, I don't know.
He didn't say, hey, I wasn't really on top of that.
He was like, no, I know.
This was done perfectly.
And it is so far from perfect.
It's like the, it's just so insane.
But these are the lies that they tell you.
It's 100% the opposite of the truth.
Like, if you want to listen to one of the things they say, it's 100% the opposite of the truth.
James Comey actually starts there, and I think he says this again in the interview, but he starts by going like, well, let me tell you why I'm completely vindicated because think about what was being reported in the media and how wrong that turned out to be.
Can you imagine with everything that's just gone down with Russia collusion fucking saying that into a camera?
But think about everything that's been reported in the media and think how wrong it turned out to be.
What was being reported in the media was that Carter Page was a fucking Russian spy and that Trump was doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin.
Caught up in a massive conspiracy with the Russians, a hostile foreign power who just attacked our democracy.
What turned out to be a lie?
Oh no, what was a lie is that people were saying that the FBI was trying to unseat the president.
I mean, that was just complete bullshit based on nothing.
Even though, of course, we have Andrew McCabe telling us that they discussed invoking the 25th Amendment or any other method to get rid of Donald Trump, finally settling on a special investigation on special counselor, Robert Mueller.
Even though we have that on tape, that didn't happen.
Don't believe your lion eyes.
All right, let's keep going with Comey.
Most important question is, is it systemic?
Are there problems in other cases?
One of the central issues is that's another thing that he says here.
So the most important question was, is it systemic?
Does this affect other cases?
Well, isn't this case important enough that that's not really the most important question?
I mean, sure, it is an important question.
Is this always going on?
Are we doing this all the time?
Like, shouldn't we review all of these?
You know, when like the, I've seen this happen before, I mean, it's very rare, but there'll be things where like there were videos of cops planting drugs on innocent people, and then, you know, like they go to jail.
And then they'll fucking, like other lawyers, will call up all other people who he's arrested and be like, well, this evidence is no good now because you fucking, this guy was planning drugs.
So if someone else, if he arrested someone else for drugs, how do we know?
A video camera just didn't catch him planning drugs there.
And lots of times they've actually successfully gotten other convictions overturned because some cop is fucking, well, this guy's crooked.
We can't trust him now.
So honestly, I think there's a strong argument to go, I mean, any FISA warrant that these people got, I don't fucking trust them now.
We know they bullshitted their way into this one.
Was this the first and only time ever?
So is it systemic?
That's a fair question.
But you're talking about trying, you know, spying on and opening in criminal investigation against a president whose policies you don't like.
Like you're, you're, because you decided he was the wrong guy.
I don't think the biggest question is whether this happens in other cases too.
Like this was the case.
This was the big one.
And you guys did it in this one.
So that's kind of enough.
And the fact that he said it's so hard to get a FISA warrant is just such a fucking joke.
It's a rubber stamp court.
Everyone knows that.
All right, let's keep going.
That the Steele dossier played, which was oppo-research paid for by the Democrats.
What role it played in getting the FISA warrants to surveil Paige?
Again, here's your version.
And again, here's the Inspector General.
My recollection was it was part of a broader mosaic of facts that were laid before the FISA judge to obtain a FISA warrant.
And we concluded that the Steele reporting played a central and essential role in the decision to seek a FISA order.
Horowitz says it wasn't part, as you told Brett Baer, it wasn't part of a broader mosaic.
He said it played an essential role in establishing probable cause.
In fact, he says, if it hadn't been for the Steele dossier, the FBI probably wouldn't have even submitted a FISA application that had been reviewed in April of 2016, or August rather of 2016.
They decided not to do it.
They get the Steele dossier, they do it.
It wasn't part of a broader mosaic.
That's what you said, sir.
I'm not sure he and I are saying different things.
What his report says is that the FBI thought it was a close call until they got the steel report, put that additional information in, and that tipped it over to be probable cause.
It's a long FISA application that includes steel material and lots of other material.
I don't think we're saying different things.
I think you are, sir, because he's saying, you're saying it's part of a broader mosaic.
It's just one element.
He's saying it was the tipping point.
It's what brought it over.
That doesn't make it part of a broader mosaic.
It makes it the centerpiece of the whole FISA application and the ability to surveil Carter Page.
Yeah, I don't understand him to be saying that.
And I could be wrong about that.
I got his quote here.
He says, we concluded the Steele reporting played essential.
a central and essential role in the decision to seek a FISA warrant that had pushed the FISA proposal over the line in terms of establishing probable cause.
I mean, he says what he says.
Words mean something.
Yeah, and I agree with his characterization.
I'm just confused.
I don't see the disconnect between the two of us, and I'm sorry that I'm missing it.
Well, you don't see a difference between it's part of a broader mosaic and it played an essential role in establishing probable cause?
It was one of a bunch of different facts that were assembled to apply to the court.
It was the one that convinced the lawyers that they had enough now with that added to the pile to go forward.
I guess the question is, it seemed that you were minimizing the role of the steel dossier, and he's saying it's a lot more important than you let on.
Okay, if I was, then I'm sorry that I did that, but I meant it was one part of the presentation to the court.
All right, just respond here.
I can't just say, people used to talk about this, like the people who are considered the serious people.
I remember when I was on SE Cup's show, she would always have these kind of like just conservative ink, you know, like establishment Republican types and establishment Democrat types.
And I remember before all of this like stuff really started coming out, they would all say, one thing we know for sure is that James Comey is a man of the utmost integrity.
Like this is what they would tell me with a straight face.
Now, I've met the man.
I know him.
This guy is the utmost integrity.
And then I'm just like the fucking comedian on the panel, which was so weird about my time at SE Cup show because they just brought me in there to be like, yeah, well, I have like a comic on the panel too.
And they had no idea what they were getting into.
But it's like, this guy, he's so obviously full of shit.
How could you just be, how could anyone look at this guy and not go, what a fucking bullshit artist.
And you said you're going to go, really?
He goes, no, I just, I don't really see the difference between what I'm saying and what he's saying.
Really?
Stamps.com Holiday Savings Offer00:02:18
Really?
You don't see a difference between being like, oh, yeah, the dossier was just one of a whole bunch of things.
And the IG being like, no, it was the whole thing.
Like, this was the reason why they got a FISA warrant was because they had this dossier.
That was the central thing.
It's like the central piece of evidence.
And in some cases, the only piece of evidence, which was actually specifically said in the IG report, in some of the FISA warrants, the only piece of evidence that they had.
You don't see a difference between that and I was just part of a broad mosaic of a lot of different things.
Really?
I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but I just didn't, you know, I don't see the difference.
Okay.
All right.
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Finding Sources for Misconduct00:15:38
All right, let's get back into the show.
Let's go.
A huge part of the presentation to the court, but it was the fact, according to his report, that convinced the lawyers to go forward.
All right.
Then there's the issue of how reliable the Steele dossier, in fact, was.
On January 6th, 2017, in the Trump Tower, you brief Donald Trump, president-elect, about the Steele dossier.
That same month, the FBI talks to Steele's main Russian contact, the main person on whom he based the dossier, who says, according to the IG report, quote, Steele misstated or exaggerated the primary subsources' statements in multiple sections of the reporting.
Director Comey, not only do you fail to go back to the president-elect or president after January 20th and tell them, oh, you know, that report I briefed you on?
Turns out it's bunk, but the FBI goes back and renews its FISA application three more times.
And by this point, the FBI knows that the Steele reporting is not credible.
Yeah, I think you're mischaracterizing both what the FBI knew and what Mr. Horowitz says in his report.
They didn't conclude the reporting from Steele was bunk.
They concluded there were significant questions about the reliability of some of the sub-source reporting.
That should have been included in the renewals.
But when I briefed the president, I briefed him on a small part of it that I told him I didn't know whether it was true or not.
I didn't care.
I just needed him to know about it.
I think you're mischaracterizing.
Steele isn't, or rather, Horowitz isn't saying that the sub-source, the Russian contact, was unreliable or was inaccurate.
The Russian contact said to the FBI, Steele is unreliable because he misrepresented Steele.
Misstated or exaggerated the source's statements in multiple sections of the report.
He's saying, I told him one thing and he wrote something else.
The FBI knew that.
Yeah, but that doesn't drive a conclusion that Steele's reporting is bunk.
I mean, there's a number of tricky things to that.
First, you're interviewing the sub-source after all the reporting has become public.
And so as a counterintelligence investigator, you have to think, is he walking away from it?
Because it's now public.
And that has to go into your assessment of Mr. Steele.
It hadn't, I mean, if it had become public just barely, this is in January of 2017.
This isn't two years later.
Right.
This is when it blew up, when it was published by whatever the outfit is, BuzzFeed, was all over the news and had become a big deal.
And so I...
Did you know all of this?
All of what?
Everything that we're talking about here.
Did you know that, in fact, the Steele report was the key for probable cause?
Did you know that the FBI had talked to the Russian contact and he said what Steele said?
He is.
Pause it right here.
See, this is a real interesting question that Mike Wallace is asking him, or Chris Wallace rather, is asking him here.
Because this is what it all comes down to, right?
Did you know all of this?
Because if you knew all of this, that changes everything from, oh, I was wrong about that, to, oh, you were lying.
You were just blatantly lying to the American people.
Because if you did know all of this, then like, yeah, okay.
Now, by the way, okay, technically, maybe he's not wrong that just because you prove that somebody comes up with a report, a dossier, and lies a whole bunch of times in it, it doesn't prove that everything in the report is a lie, but it does prove that you can't trust anything this guy's saying.
So that's why, like, by Chris Wallace is saying, well, the whole thing's bunk.
I mean, like, if this guy is lying and even the people he's sourcing in there are going, yeah, he lied.
He made this up.
Then, yeah, you can't trust anything he's saying.
Why would you need to present Donald Trump with this salacious information?
It makes no sense.
But the question right now is, did you know all of this at the time?
Did you know what was going on?
And this is a very interesting position that he puts James Comey in.
Because James Comey, you know, you can only say one of two things.
Either you did know or you didn't know.
If you did know, then you're basically your whole spot is blown up.
Your whole spot is blown up.
And you now lied to the American people.
And now it doesn't, now you're not so vindicated from that thing you said at the very beginning, right?
Because if you say that you did know, well, then you're not really vindicated that this was all some fucking, you know what I mean, like conspiracy to get Donald Trump.
Because why else would you be lying to the American people, going out of your way, going on a book tour, going on cable news, talking to the press, like all of this shit?
Why would you be doing that lying and making people think there is something to this investigation when you know the grounds of it were complete bullshit?
And then the other option is, no, I didn't know, which just makes you look like a really incompetent FBI director.
Like at the very least, makes you realize you were terrible at your job.
Like you didn't know this bullshit investigation was going on under you.
So he offers them two bad choices, but one is pretty clearly worse than the other.
The worst option there is that you knew and lied.
So like we could never believe anything you say again.
And also you should possibly be tried for trying to unseat a democratically elected president.
So those are your options.
One's worse than the other.
It's pretty obvious which one Comey's going to take.
And he takes it.
So let's play.
Told him was not true.
Did you know this?
You're the FBI director.
First, again, the report will speak for itself.
I don't believe the FBI concluded that Steele's reporting was bunk after talking to a sub-source.
But no, I didn't.
As the director, you're not kept informed on the details of an investigation.
So no, in general, I didn't know what they'd learned from the sub-source.
I didn't know the particulars of the investigation.
This isn't some investigation, sir.
This is an investigation of the campaign of the man who is the president of the United States.
You just been through a firestorm investigating Hillary Clinton.
I would think if I were in your position, I would have been on that, you know, like a junkyard dog.
I would have wanted to know everything they were doing in investigating the Trump campaign.
Yeah, that's not the way it works, though.
As a director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people, you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you.
You have to leave it to the career professionals to do, to the special agents who do this for their lives.
And if a director tries to run an investigation, it'll get mucked up in all different kinds of ways, given his or her responsibilities and the impossibility of reaching the work that's being done at the lower level.
All right.
And then there is he let he lets him off the hook, you know, so easy there, because of course, Chris Wallace, you know, kind of sucks.
But what a bullshit answer.
And you know, and you can always tell.
I mean, come on, you guys like, isn't it easy to see the trickery that goes on here?
Where he goes, well, you can't try to run the investigation.
It's like, no, no one asked you if you were going to run the investigation.
Saying, are you aware of the basic facts of the undoubtedly biggest investigation that will ever happen at the FBI, probably in the FBI's history, certainly in your reign as director of the FBI?
The most important biggest investigation.
And it's based off this bullshit dossier.
And they're going and re-upping.
Really, the FBI director, we're not talking about, obviously, there's thousands of people who work under you and all this stuff, and there's hundreds of investigations that are going on.
We understand.
But this one involves spying on a presidential campaign.
This one, we're talking about after Donald Trump's won the presidency.
He's the president-elect.
You're talking about re-upping FISA investigations on the man who you know is going to be president of the United States of America.
That one, you're not like, hey, what's going on with the evidence here?
No one's reporting to you what's happening.
Okay, if that is the case, right?
If it is the case, what he says, number one, you're a horribly incompetent director of the FBI.
And number two, I've never heard a stronger case made by anyone that the FBI needs to be rolled back.
I mean, if not abolished, then drastically rolled back.
Because what he's saying is, well, you have to rely on the career investigators.
You have to rely on all of these people who weren't appointed by the president, aren't Democratically elected, just these people who got it completely wrong.
And if they do, nobody up top is really going to be watching over them.
They just kind of have the power to, you know, basically stall a presidential administration for two years.
I don't know.
Now, don't, by the way, don't get it twisted.
What the IG report found, they may have said they won't, they're not going into whether it was politically motivated or not, but they found the real damning evidence.
The most damning part of the IG report was the re-ups of the FISA warrants.
Because when they go into renew the FISA warrants, this is when they know.
They know the Steele dossier is full of shit.
They know all this stuff is bullshit and they keep misleading the FISA courts.
But he's going to claim he just didn't know.
But of course, we all, like I said at the beginning, we know why he's doing this because the other alternative, which is obviously the truth, that he did know what was going on here, the alternative to that is so much worse than him just saying, well, I didn't know.
They were beneath me.
That's not how it works.
I don't run the investigation.
The alternative is him being like, yeah, we knew what we were doing.
And that's much more damning.
So he can't say that.
All right, let's keep lying.
For last, the worst misconduct.
In August of 2016, just two weeks into the investigation, the CIA tells the FBI that it actually has a relationship with Carter Page, that when he has these meetings with the Russians, he actually goes back and he tells the CIA about it.
But you never tell the FISA court that.
And in fact, in 2017, an FBI lawyer doctors a document.
The CIA said, oh, Carter Page, he's a source.
And he puts in the application, he's not a source.
Yeah, I got to take issue with one of the, I'll answer the question, but one of the predications of your question, the Inspector General did not find misconduct by any FBI people.
He found mistakes and negligent and oversight.
No, no, no, that's not true.
In the case of Kevin Kleinsmith, he has referred it for a criminal investigation.
Right, but that's not been resolved, this business with the lawyer changing some email to a partner on the team.
I mean, you make it sound like it's not much.
It's very important.
It's very important.
I mean, not a source.
A source to not a source is a big burden.
I just pause it already.
How full of shit is this guy?
You go, well, the IG report did not find any misconduct.
Well, that's not true.
He did find misconduct and he's referred one for criminal conduct.
He goes, yeah, but that hasn't been resolved yet.
Yeah, but that's not what you said.
This bullshit attempt to just move the goalposts every time a question.
You just said five seconds ago that the IG didn't find any misconduct.
He just found mistakes and all of this, which already is infuriating, even if it's not.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
It's not misconduct.
It's just a mistake.
Don't get it twisted.
Like, understand what you're hearing here.
Carter Page was a CIA informant.
He would go have meetings with Russians and then report it back to the CIA.
And then the FBI is going, he's meeting with the Russians.
And the CIA tells the FBI, he's reporting back to us what the Russians are saying to him while the FBI is applying for a FISA warrant against Carter Page.
And they doctored the memo to take out the fact that Carter Page was a CIA informant.
Okay?
So they doctor that so it doesn't tell them that.
And not only that, they put in the memo, he's not. a CIA informant.
Like they said he's not talking to the CIA when they were specifically told they were.
But you know, mistakes were made.
All right.
I mean, we're crazy.
We're so crazy for saying this was an attempted deep state coup.
This is just, you know, fucking not misconduct, mistakes.
Just a mistake.
He said he was talking to the CIA.
We said he wasn't.
You know, got it wrong.
This is so, this is so batshit crazy.
All right, let's keep playing.
FBI was accused of criminal misconduct.
Remember, I was going to jail and lots of other people were going to jail.
People on this network said it over and over and over again.
The Inspector General did not find misconduct by FBI personnel, did not find political bias, did not find illegal conduct.
Inspector General found significant mistakes on there was this whole conspiracy and I was going to jail and people on this network said it over and over and over again.
It's like, okay, this is the thing where I said, you just tell the opposite of the truth.
You just say, you did it instead of I did it.
Can you imagine?
So people were saying, so this is the standard that we're setting.
People were saying something over and over again on a network that turned out to not be true.
Isn't that an outrage?
Well, what was really said over and over again on the networks that turned out to not be true?
Guys remember anything about Trump-Russia collusion?
You remember that getting repeated on the networks over and over again?
That turned out to not be true.
But no, James Comey is the big victim here because people were saying he was going to go to jail.
For the record, I've never said James Comey is going to go to jail.
I've said many times James Comey should go to jail, but I don't have any faith in these bullshit institutions.
So I know it's not going to happen because they're not actually interested in justice.
But you imagine like even saying this, even saying this about like this is the deep state take on the Trump-Russia investigation.
Well, people on TV kept saying that we were going to go to jail and we're not.
I actually remember the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, we played it on the show here, I think a couple different times, saying a couple weeks before the Mueller investigation that Trump and his family were going to go to jail.
Remember that?
He's still got all these fucking indictments to serve.
Well, they said that on TV.
That didn't turn out to be true.
And none of them were fucking admitting anything.
All right, let's keep going.
Something to sneeze at.
That's really important.
But the American people, especially your viewers, need to realize they were given false information about the FBI.
It's honest.
It is not political.
It is flawed.
Would you agree that the FISA court was also given false information by the FBI?
I think that's fair.
The FBI should have included, or at least pushed to the lawyers so they could make a decision, information that you just said, things like that, that another agency had, not a source relationship, but some kind of contact relationship.
I want to get to three last questions.
And one of them has to do with how serious what this is.
You've talked a lot about mistakes or sloppiness.
Horowitz concludes three separate teams made significant errors in four separate FISA applications on one of the FBI's most significant cases.
I mean, the investigation of President Trump and his campaign.
Trump, I have to keep correcting you.
President Trump was not being investigated.
His campaign was not being investigated.
Four Americans, two of whom are no longer associated with the campaign, were being investigated.
Just asked how he explains it, Horowitz.
Here he is.
It's unclear what the motivations were.
On the one hand, gross incompetence, negligence.
On the other hand, intentionality.
Gross negligence, or they intended to do it.
They intended to lie to the FISA court.
You were in charge during a lot of this, sir.
And in fact, you signed the FISA applications.
Sure, I think I signed at least two or three of them.
He doesn't conclude that there was intentional misconduct by these career special agents.
He just says it's one of two things and he can't decide.
Gross Negligence in Espionage00:14:45
Gross negligence or it was intentional misconduct.
So let's just pause it for one second because I just think it's worth pointing out, right?
So this is what the inspector general is testifying here.
He's going, look, the only things that could that you, the only conclusion that you can reach here is that it's one of two things.
It's either gross negligence or intentionality, and I can't tell you which one it is, which already to me is just crazy because it's so obvious which one it is.
Well, how do you have gross negligence that includes pushing something?
Like, gross negligence is when you forget to do something.
It's not when you very intentionally remove a name or remove that someone's a CIA agent.
Like you're very purposely trying to cover your tracks and trying to, you know, paint a picture of information here to get approval on something.
That's not gross negligence.
Gross negligence is when you forget things.
Right.
And gross, I mean, look, it just seems insane to me.
Literally, I mean, I can't think of a better word to describe it.
It seems insane to me that anybody could look at these facts and in any way in their mind believe that this was gross negligence and not intentional.
I mean, first off, right, like everything you just said is spot on.
But also, wouldn't gross negligence, like, wouldn't it, why is it always going in one direction?
Wouldn't gross negligence at some point work in like Trump's favor?
Like, yeah, we were so negligent that we didn't want to re-up the Pfizers, right?
Like, why is it always going in this one direction of a deep state attempted coup?
Like, it's not the deep state attempting a coup.
It's just the deep state, like, bumbling their way into an attempted coup.
You'd have to claim that the gross negligence is in their decision to pursue that Trump should be spied on without having a full understanding of why they wanted that.
In other words, it's like they sat around and they just concluded, hey, we're going to go through with this.
Doesn't matter what the cost is.
It doesn't matter.
But like, they were being negligent.
It's not that it was for political reasons.
They just kind of came to a bad decision to go spy on Trump.
Right.
But that doesn't really make sense.
And then you see the way.
And by the way, the other thing that Comey said there, which is like, again, just like fucking bullshit, is he goes, no, we were investigating people on Trump's team, not Donald Trump, right?
Okay.
Now, first of all, Andrew McCabe specifically said that they were investigating Donald Trump.
And he said that while Comey was there, they were investigating Trump.
And this is like, does anybody seriously believe that they would have just done this about Carter Page if Carter Page hadn't have been attached to this campaign?
Does anybody believe that?
Look, Paul Manafort and the crimes that he committed were all committed long before he was on Trump's campaign.
They never wanted to go after him until he was on Trump's campaign.
Does anybody really think that the FBI would have done all of this to go after Carter Page because they thought he was working with the Russians and then just go, oh, and then the CIA comes in and tells them, no, he's been informing us about all of his meetings with the Russians.
And they go, now we're still going to try to spy on Carter Page, just citizen Carter Page, unattached to the campaign.
Does anyone believe that?
And then James Comey just does this.
This is why I was saying before, just like, thank God I'm not full of shit.
And to all you people listening who aren't full of shit, be thankful for that.
It's such a better way to live to just not be a full of shit person.
I mean, you could get some things wrong.
I'm sure we all do.
I'm sure I've gotten things wrong.
I know I've gotten things wrong before.
But when you're not full of shit, you don't have to like just like, how the fuck do you look at yourself in the mirror after this interview?
So, James Comey goes, he plays the inspector general's clip going, the only two possible explanations for this are gross negligence or intentionality.
And I couldn't really determine what was going on here, which by the way, I already think is crazy because it's so obvious this was intentionality.
But then James Comey's response to that that we just heard is him going, well, he said he didn't determine that it was intentionality.
Like that, oh my God, the spin, the slimy spin that you have to go through to say, I don't know what you just heard.
What I heard was him say he couldn't determine that it was intentionality.
It's like, well, that's not exactly what he said.
He said it's either gross negligence or intentionality, and I can't really tell which one it is.
And I just, again, I just, it's so painfully obvious.
All right, let's play.
I've read his report.
He says, we are not concluding that there was intentional misconduct by FBI.
Did you hear what he just said here?
I did.
I don't know the context of that.
I've read it.
He was asked specifically.
How do you explain it?
That's the context.
Gross negligence or intentionality.
Yeah.
Well, I'm sorry.
He doesn't find intentionality, but that doesn't make it any less important.
As director, you are responsible for this.
I was responsible for this.
And if I were still there, I'd be doing what Chris Ray is doing: figuring out, so how did this happen?
And is it systemic?
Because that's the scariest thought.
If you were still there and all of this came out and it turned out it happened on your watch, would you resign?
No, I don't think so.
There were mistakes I consider more consequential than this during my tenure.
And the important thing is to be transparent about it and then look to versus pause how you said, dude, you fucking took the words right out of my mouth.
How is that not?
Like, I mean, I understand.
I'm just kind of speaking in jest when I do this, but if he says that, how is it Chris Wallace's response to that?
Not just like, okay, well, we got to keep you here for another hour and cancel all of our other guests because we have to get into that.
You're telling me there were mistakes that had way more, were way more consequential in your term?
Like, well, what the fuck were those?
Because this was a pretty consequential mistake that you made.
There's still a huge portion of the country that believes that Donald Trump is working with a hostile foreign power.
You literally, I mean, you played a huge role in tearing this country apart and stalling a democratically elected president of the United States of America.
Okay?
That seems to be a pretty big consequence.
So what are these other things?
And let's not forget how credible of an institution the FBI is.
Right.
Yes.
Yes, that's right.
So that's exactly right.
Like, we're not allowed to tarnish this great institution, but there it is from the horse's mouth that, oh, you think this is a fuck up?
Wow, it's fucked up way worse than this.
And I didn't step down.
Way worse.
All right, let's keep playing.
A couple of final questions.
As you know, Attorney General Barr has been harshly critical of how the FBI conducted this entire operation.
Here's how he reacted to the IG's findings of whatever you want to call it in the handling of the FISA applications.
These irregularities, these misstatements, these omissions were not satisfactorily explained.
And I think that leaves open the possibility to infer bad faith.
Given the repeated errors, some would say abuses of the FISA process.
Does Attorney General Barr have a point?
No.
He does not have a factual basis as the Attorney General of the United States to be speculating that agents acted in bad faith.
The facts just aren't there.
Full stop.
That doesn't make it any less consequential, any less important, but that's an irresponsible statement.
Finally, just pause it right there.
Can you imagine after all of the statements that Comey's made over the last two years over this, that he goes, that's an irresponsible statement?
Stop.
That's irresponsible for him to say, well, by the way, the most fucking pussy-footing, like, like, fucking cucky, like, phrase that Barr could say, which is what I was criticizing him for fucking on the last show, is that he could sit there and go, like, yeah, I mean, it does leave open the possibility that maybe you could think there were some bad intentions here.
Oh, that's irresponsible.
But to say, to look the American people in the eye and go, the FISA process was perfect and flawless, and we did everything right.
That's not an I was wrong.
I was wrong.
But this is an irresponsible statement.
By the way, I've heard some people giving me shit.
I got a few comments of people giving me shit for the last episode when I kept bashing Barr for saying that this is inexplicable.
And I'm like, well, there's a very obvious explanation.
And they were saying, like, no, this is just him.
You know, there's an investigation going on and he's the attorney general.
So he can't just like decide.
He's leaving it to your imagination.
He's hinting at you that obviously this is the only explanation.
Okay, let's see where this investigation goes and we'll see if I'm right or wrong.
But I'm telling you, don't trust Barr.
He's part of this whole deep state slime too.
If you think these people are going to jail over this shit, you're wrong.
Look, man, what they did to Trump is fucking like as anti-American, as fucking like evil.
And they all deserve, I mean, all of these fucking people deserve to be in jail.
But don't don't fucking forget where all the people who lied us into the war in Iraq are.
Remember Nancy Pelosi last episode?
She told us they all lied us into the war in Iraq.
Where are those guys now?
Fucking Dick Cheney's on his fucking fifth heart somewhere in a mansion.
George W. Bush is fucking drawing pictures of fruit with his fucking dogs somewhere.
Max Boots, you know, at some fucking, you know, prestigious publication.
Bill Crystal's over at NBC, fucking living it up.
There's no consequences for any of these fucking people.
So don't think for a fucking second.
If you think, you think he's just leaving the door open, like he's, well, then let's see where the investigation goes.
Let's see that.
Because I just don't believe that they're actually going to drain the swamp, that they're actually going to hold all of these deep state people accountable.
None of this shit's going to happen.
But anyway, all right, let's play the rest of this.
Here's President Trump, and there's how he reacted to the IG report on the FBI investigation.
They've destroyed the lives of people that were great people, that are still great people.
Their lives have been destroyed by scum.
Okay, by scum.
I'd like your response to that.
And I'd like you specifically, because you said the other day, where does former FBI lawyer Lisa Page go to get her reputation back?
Where does Carter Page go?
The target of these FISA warrants and surveillance.
Where does he go to get his reputation back?
It's a great question.
Carter Page was treated unfairly, most significantly by his name being made public.
He's a United States citizen, and it never should have been made public, and that's an outrage.
But that statement is just a continuation of the lies about the FBI.
The FBI is an honest, apolitical organization.
Remember the treason.
Remember the spying.
Remember all of us going to jail?
That was false information that your viewers and millions of others were.
Sure, we're a bunch of dumbasses.
So, so, right.
So, more or less, he's like, no, we're just grossly incompetent.
Remember all those lies?
It turns out it's just grossly incompetent.
We just take your tax dollars and then do really dumb things with it.
Well, it's like, right, I mean, it's like if somebody like even, which by the way, I think pretty much everything they say, I mean, treason, no.
And I don't just throw out the term treason lightly.
I mean, treason has an actual definition, and it's not technically treason, what they did.
Treason is like aiding or abetting like a hostile foreign power, right?
Or like an enemy.
So, like, you know, what Brennan and Obama did with ISIS in Syria, that is literally treason, like sending weapons to the terrorists we're at war with.
That's that's treason.
Um, technically, no, but it certainly should be some type of like insane crime.
And it's the most, it's, it's a, a blatant attempt to subvert democracy and to destroy the constitution and all types of things like that.
So, of course, that is all real.
Um, but let's even, even if you're going to uh take Comey's line here, it's as if someone's like, Okay, so it just came out that you, um, you know, you beat the shit out of some person and were stomping them uh in their face while they were unconscious on the street.
And you go, Well, you know, people were saying I murdered three people, and that turned out to not be true.
It's like, yeah, but what about what we just said that we've confirmed is true?
Like, it's like, oh, well, people were saying I was guilty of treason.
It's like, right, so just gross incompetence.
That's what you're hanging your hat on.
You're actually taking a victory lap on gross incompetence.
Even if some people were saying that it was worse than gross incompetence, which it was, but even if they're saying that and it just was that, shouldn't you still be a little humble and not be taking a victory lap?
No, it was just gross incompetence.
Like, okay.
But yeah, so he asked him a question, which is a great question that James Comey said, where does Lisa Page go to get her reputation back?
And Lisa Page's reputation is tarnished because of the text messages that were released.
I mean, that's why.
It's because of what she said.
It's what her and Peter Strzok were texting back and forth with each other, which was basically, I'm sorry, but they were confirming everything we've been saying on this podcast for years at this point.
That's what they were confirming.
They were like, we're here to get Donald Trump.
Hey, this is Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
We hate Donald Trump.
We will stop Donald Trump.
We will not allow him to be president.
Blatantly said in their text message exchanges.
Okay.
So that's why her reputation is destroyed.
But how about Carter Page's reputation?
His reputation was destroyed because he was called a Russian spy, which he is not.
Which he absolutely is not.
And even James Comey now is sitting here admitting, yeah, it was wrong.
That's wrong what happened to him.
But then James Comey goes, well, the problem is that it was made public.
The problem is that, well, okay.
I mean, certainly it being made public did a lot to destroy his reputation.
I'll grant you that.
But can you imagine somebody who is the director of the FBI who presides over an FBI, who seeks a FISA warrant, gets it, and then seeks a bunch of renewals, four renewals on Carter Page.
And they're spying on this guy under the grounds that he's a Russian agent, which is false, which they should have known.
They had all the information to know at the time that it was false.
And they're spying on an innocent American citizen, violating his civil rights.
Like anybody would have to say this is a violation of his civil rights.
And then you get found out and you go, well, what about this guy?
And you go, well, it's just a shame it was released to the public.
Okay.
Just shows you how much they actually value somebody's right to privacy.
It's like, yeah, well, yeah, we spied on a guy who didn't deserve it.
But what are you going to do?
Shit happens.
You guys really shouldn't have put his name out there.
James Comey and the Jail00:02:19
All right.
Well, there you go.
There's fucking James Comey.
All right.
Here, is there, there might be one more question, or that might be the end of the interview.
I'm not sure.
I was going to jail.
I kept telling her, look, it's all made up.
It's all made up.
Don't worry about it.
But I couldn't say that publicly for two years.
Well, now I'm saying it on behalf of the FBI.
It was all made up.
And I hope people will stare at that and learn about what the FBI is like.
Human and flawed, but deeply committed to trying to do the right thing.
Director Comey, people are going to have their reaction to what you said, but thank you for coming and thank you for taking all our questions, sir.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
Well, there is Slimy Comey.
Yes, it's I really just thought that was pretty amazing.
Pretty incredible.
What jobs are left for Comey?
Like, is he set for life for having been at the FBI for the time he was there?
I'm sure he's got a sweet-ass pension, and then he wrote a book.
He'll write another book, make good money off that.
He's really buying a James Comey book.
No, it's not a matter of even buying it.
I think these publishers will just give him a huge advance and then they'll go.
And, you know, enough people will buy it because he is still a guy that's like, was there for it all and anything he says makes news.
So, you know, it's like this weird complex where everybody who works in media will have to buy the book and everybody, you know, like it's, it's, it's weird.
But no, I mean, I'm sure there'll be some type of like think tank or news organization.
They're their own little criminal economy.
You know what I mean?
They'll have something for him.
He was a fucking team player.
He fucking did exactly what they wanted him to fucking do.
So he'll fucking.
But is that true even with because he knocked Hillary down pretty bad before the election?
Yeah, that part probably didn't help him so much.
But yeah, no, I still think he'll be fine.
I think he won his fucking back, yeah, with the Trump stuff.
That's my guess.
Oh, we'll follow up on that.
We'll follow up on what James Comey's doing over the next few years.
But that would be my guess that he'll be just fine.
Just fine.
All right, we're going to wrap there a little bit early on this one.
I apologize.
I got some stuff I got to go do.
But we'll be back on Wednesday with a brand new episode.