Freedom Caucus member, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee and was there today with Nutty Nadler, is here to talk about the ridiculous hearing this morning by the House Judiciary committee. Mr. Jordan is on this committee and has been a driving force for justice in the defense of the Trump administration. Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina, also a member of the Freedom Caucus joins to discuss the FISA report and hearings as well. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Well, everything we said, everything we reported, everything we told you was dead on center accurate.
And the mob and the media has missed what is the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in the history of the country.
It is this report putting aside whatever differences for the Attorney General and for John Durham to come out like they have.
And I'll get to these statements in a second.
And it is all there in black and white.
It's all there.
Put the conclusion differences aside for a second here.
There is no more doubt the FBI launched an intrusive investigation in a presidential campaign on what is described as the thinnest of suspicions, the Attorney General said, and in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.
It is also clear from its inception that the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.
By the way, they actually took out exculpatory information.
They purposely misled repeatedly the FISA court.
It goes on that, nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump's administration.
In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of the Trump campaign associates, the FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information, negating the reliability of their principal source.
The Inspector General found the explanations given for these actions unsatisfactory.
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
And that's from Bill Barr.
Now, remember, and this is very critical in where we are at this particular moment, because, and I've spent a lot of time explaining this, Horowitz has already made numerous referrals from all the people that we're now going to be talking about today in the upper echelon of the FBI long before in his earlier reports.
Nobody's lifted a finger because an inspector general does not have the power to convene a grand jury, make charges.
And what I suspect is going on here is now the final step of all this is going to be Durham's report.
Because Durham said, I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Inspector General, the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff.
However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department.
This is why do you think they've been in Italy, Great Britain so often?
What do you think is going on over there?
We're going to know soon enough.
Our investigation has included developing information from other persons, entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Clapper Brennan.
Are you paying attention?
Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General, we don't agree with some of their conclusions as to the predication of how the FBI's case was opened.
In other words, we've got evidence to the contrary.
Let's be blunt here.
That's what he's saying.
And it's also a preview, if you will, of coming attractions.
He's pretty much saying, stay tuned.
We have a lot more.
Now, remember, Inspector General referred Comey already prior to this release today over leaking memos and lack of candor.
And Harrow has found the FBI's handling of the Clinton emails.
Remember, senior bureau officials showed a quote willingness to take official action to prevent Trump from becoming president.
He's already said all of that.
He's referred Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Kevin Kleinsmith, and others, including Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, for further investigation.
Kleinsmith is the same anti-Trump lawyer we're expecting to hear a lot more about in days to come.
And back in May, the IG referred to an unnamed FBI deputy assistant director for referred this person for prosecution for leaking sealed court records.
And in April, the DOJ watchdog, the Inspector General, sent a criminal referral for the disgraced ex-FBI official Andrew McCabe for unauthorized leaks and, quote, lacking candor.
But now, now it's what Durham and Barr are saying, now it's time for accountability because that's all you're going to get out of the Inspector General.
He can't convene a grand jury.
He can't.
So now it's in the Attorney General's hand and Durham's hand.
And their words today should send shivers and shocks down the spines of these people involved in this abuse of power corruption scandal, the biggest in history here, because this is what it is.
And what, you know, you look at the numerous factual errors and omissions.
They failed to vet the information.
Numerous serious performance failures by those handling the FISA application.
The applications relied on the discredited work of Christopher Steele.
The Clinton bought and paid for Dirty Steele dossier, whose own author said, yeah, I have no idea if any of it's true.
In other words, it was an unverifiable document from the get-go.
How could you conclude anything other than, yeah, they did it by design?
As far as the numerous factual errors and omissions, I mean, yeah, as we discussed below, we identified numerous serious factual errors and omissions.
The omissions were exculpatory information, which I'll get into as this day unfolds.
There were serious performance failures.
We conclude the failures described in this report represent serious performance failures by the super advisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over FISA applications.
17 significant errors or omissions in the FISA applications, 17 at least that they've identified.
IG did not receive satisfactory explanations for any of their conduct and the errors in the applications.
Procedures, we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or the problems that we identified.
In most instances, the agents and supervisors told us that they did not know or recall why the information was not shared with the FISA court, that the failure to do so may have been an oversight.
They didn't recognize at the time the relevance of the information.
FBI personnel fell far short of the requirement that they ensure that all information in a FISA application is accurate.
And it goes to Crossfire Hurricane team that McCabe, Comey, others, they wanted to rely on Steele's dossier despite knowing the concerns that Steele was being funded by the Clinton and the DNC.
And Comey and McCabe pushed for Steele's debunk reporting to be in the intelligence assessment on the 2016 election, despite pushback from the CIA.
There were concerns about Strzok and Page bypassing the chain of command to advise McCabe.
The IG report concludes Bruce Orr committed consequential errors in judgment.
The FBI also, it goes on from there, received information raising significant questions about Steele's findings and did not press Steele for information.
Steele's information played the central and essential role in the decision to seek the FISA order.
The FBI did not have information corroborating any of the Steele dossier and the allegations that are being made here.
Do you see where this is all going?
So, you know, what is in here?
We're learning in, I mean, how many pages total is this?
I didn't even get to the last page, Linda.
What is it?
500 and what?
Yeah, it's almost 500.
Almost 500 pages.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
The failure to vet Steele.
Now, here's why would that matter?
All right.
They fell far short in abiding by FISA policy.
No corroborating evidence as it relates to Page allegations.
They purposefully changed, you know, Page, everything he had told us on this program according to this is all true.
He worked for the government.
He worked for another agency.
And then when they were handed that information, they altered the information to get into everything backdoor.
Remember, secondhand information.
Once you get to Christopher Carter Page, now you're in all things Trump campaign world, Trump transition world, et cetera.
There were, quote, mountains of flags regarding Steele's work.
The FBI fell far short in abiding by FISA policy.
Our review found FBI personnel fell far short.
Factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, unsupported by appropriate documentation.
None of these inaccuracies and omissions were brought to the attention of the Office of Inspector General before the last FISA application.
This went on for almost a year.
Operation Crossfire Hurricane was unable to corroborate any of the specific allegations regarding Carter Page contained in Steele's dossier.
They couldn't corroborate any of it.
The FBI's failures created misleading, a misleading FISA application.
17 specific errors and omissions we have identified in these FISA applications.
There are so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate handpicked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations.
This is all in the report.
And then it goes on from there.
They didn't give equal attention, by the way, to the relevant facts on the other side.
They purposely took all the exculpatory information and said, no, we don't want to see that.
I mean, the FISA application was made clear.
The information supporting probable cause was non-existent in this case.
They found the quantity of omissions and inaccuracies breathtaking.
And by the way, the agents may have improperly substituted their own judgments.
You think?
Serious performance failures.
Then it gets into the very, very specific issues involving the dossier, which we've got to now pay very close attention to.
Because if we don't get to the basics in this, we're screwed.
Because, you know, Steele, by the way, in his own sense, in his own way, was up to his eyeballs in this and was doing it for money.
And he, when he finally pushed came to shove, which they could have done from the very beginning, they would have found, yeah, yeah.
Now, one of the, I think, most damning things in this, which validates every single thing that we told you, Christopher Steele was paid by the FBI.
Steele denies ever agreeing to become to work for the FBI, which is an interesting sidebar.
But what I found most telling is what you find out is without any dossier, there was no FISA application.
Remember, we kept saying the bulk of information comes from the unverifiable Steele dossier.
It says it exactly like that in this report.
They had absolutely zero confirmation or even an ability to confirm everything.
James, if you can bring in that earlier version, I would appreciate it.
They didn't even have the ability to verify it because they never took the time to verify it.
And they went as so far as to actually change the evidence that was presented in this case, every bit of it.
They want to, well, okay.
So without the Steele dossier, quote, they would not have even pursued the FISA warrant because they weren't getting it.
When asked about the motivations behind the Steele dossier, the agent involved didn't respond.
The FISA application form was almost entirely based on the unverifiable Steele dossier and this whole circular reporting.
Remember, one step, two step.
Once you get into everything Carter Page, now you're into everything Trump worlds because he worked as a campaign associate in the Trump campaign.
That gave them a backdoor to the Trump campaign, the Trump transition team and the Trump presidency.
The FISA application was almost entirely based on the Steele dossier.
Oh, who's been telling you that?
Nobody in the fake news media.
Without the dossier, they wouldn't have pursued a FISA warrant because they wouldn't have gotten one.
Who's been telling you that about the motivations?
FISA application called Steele a reliable source and lied that his info had been used in criminal proceedings.
They actually lied about that.
Struck himself signed off on an expedited FISA application.
They misled, the agent misled the attorney, saying that Carter Page never met with us.
Then you have the actual changing of this thing where it would have been exculpatory to Carter Page.
And then they did it to screw him so that they could still get to Trump.
Paige to McCabe, we can overcome looking biased in the FISA application.
We can overcome it.
They're bragging about it.
And then Paige to McCabe, oh, she's so innocent, I thought.
We have a robust explanation for any possible bias charges here.
And it goes on from there.
It is a lot to absorb.
It's nearly 500 pages.
I've only had it in my hands for, well, a little over two hours.
And my entire team here was still going through it.
But it is everything we said is true.
Everything.
Every single thing.
The mob was wrong every step of the way.
Now, imagine if this was done to Hillary or Barack Obama or any Democratic candidate ever.
You think the mob would care?
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Ham, and I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So download Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
So what were we telling you versus the mob and the media?
We were telling you that the bulk of information was the Hillary Clinton unverifiable bought and paid for Steele dossier.
Now we know the Pfizer request, quote 126, 127 page, drew almost entirely from Steele's reporting and describing the factual basis to establish probable cause.
The bulk of information was the dirty dossier, the unverifiable dirty dossier.
Now, we also know when asked for the motivations behind the steele dossier, they didn't know.
Without Steele, they could not have gotten a Pfizer warrant.
The unit chief told the OIG that the receipt of Steele's, quote, reporting changed their mind on whether they could establish probable cause.
In other words, without the dirty Clinton bought and paid for, unverifiable, dirty Russian dossier, there is no Pfizer report.
On top of all the lying and exculpatory information withheld, we'll continue.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hammond and I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So download Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, so much to unjust trying to stand back and look at the big picture.
There's so much damning information in this thing.
And what I've now concluded is if you remember the Mueller report, the way the Democrats saw it was going to lead to the roadmap to impeachment.
That got blown out of the water.
By the way, another thing that we find out in this Horowitz report on, you know, it's so, it's so outrageous because all of this is such an abuse, disgusting abuse of power.
It really is.
I mean, if you listen to the words of Durham and Barr, it's devastating.
And Durham has the wider scope.
Durham has the power.
Durham is now officially a criminal investigation.
He can convene grand juries and he's making clear he will be doing that.
And, you know, when with Barr and his statements, it is, it is beyond damning.
Now, I want to go back now that I'm explaining to you everything that we told you is true.
And you can go to page 125 and you can go to 124 and 126 and 127 of this report.
What are we looking for here?
All right, Steele Christopher Steele.
What was the motivations?
Remember, we found out when he was pressed under oath in an interrogatory in Great Britain.
I have no idea if any of it's true.
Single-sourced information from a crazy person that he describes as a crazy person.
Without the Steele dossier, they knew they couldn't get the FISA application.
So McCabe did say it.
He's saying now he didn't say, of course, he probably said it, in my view.
But they're saying in the report that it pushed it over the line in terms of, yeah, that was what did it for us.
And don't forget, they also used the circular reporting.
They linked it out to Isakoff and what's that other hack's name, conspiracy theorist?
Oh, David Corn and Isakoff.
By the way, willing dupes.
Oh, thank you for the information.
Let me report it as true.
And using that conspiracy theorists that they are.
But anyway, without the dirty dossier that Clinton pays for, that we now know is unverifiable, that's how they get in a back door.
Now, of course, you get, once you get to Carter Page, well, now you get into the Trump campaign.
And then after the Trump campaign, you get into the Trump transition, then the Trump presidency.
And what's remarkable in all of this is Comey lies through his teeth repeatedly because he signed off on the application in October of 2016.
He put his signature on that first FISA application with the unverifiable bulk of information.
I'll read from page 126 and 7.
The Pfizer request form drew almost entirely from Steele's reporting and describing the factual basis to establish probable cause to believe that Paige was an agent of a foreign power.
The only additional information cited in the Pfizer request form, the only rest of it was a statement that Paige was a senior foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign and had extensive ties to various state-owned or affiliated entities of the Russian Federation.
The only other thing besides the dossier used to secure the warrant, Papadopoulos' statement, which, by the way, even that's altered, and an open source, which is articles discussing, but all that was was leaks to Isakoff and Korn, as I understand it, to make it seem like it was independent corroboration.
That was done on purpose, too.
So without the dirty, unverifiable Clinton bought and paid for Russian dossier, you don't get the back door.
So remember the standard, because if you look at a FISA application, it has the word verified at the top of it.
Oh, it's unverifiable.
But it was the, it was based almost entirely, but for those three things, the statement that Paige was a senior foreign policy, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Papadopoulos' statement and these two articles written by two conspiracy theorist hacks that they leaked to and did no verification on their own, obviously, because they're just hacks that hate Trump.
That was it.
So it was the dirty dossier, bought and paid for, unverifiable.
And then, but the standard, well, Rod Rosenstein told us in May of last year what the standard was.
Pay close attention.
The way we operate in the Department of Justice, if we can accuse somebody of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence and credible witnesses.
We need to prepare to prove our case in court, and we have to affix our signature to the charging document.
That's something that not everybody appreciates.
Let's go back to the beginning.
You need to have real evidence.
Play that again.
The way we operate in the Department of Justice, if we're going to accuse somebody of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence and credible witnesses.
We need to prepare to prove our case in court, and we have to affix our signature.
If that's not an abuse of power, I don't know what is.
And we're going to, we're career law enforcement officials.
Listen to this.
Charging document.
That's something that not everybody appreciates.
There's a lot of talk about FISA applications, and many people that I see talking about it seem not to recognize what a FISA application is.
A FISA application is actually a warrant, just like a search warrant.
In order to get a FISA search warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career federal law enforcement officer who swears that the information in the affidavit is true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief.
And that's the way we operate.
And if it's wrong, sometimes it is, if you find out there's anything incorrect in there, that person is going to face consequences.
There was at no time, ever, any ability to verify the bulk of that application.
It's unverifiable.
That's why I think we're hearing from Horowitz and Durham.
They're like, okay, I don't know where you're getting this.
You're trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Fine.
But, you know, with all due respect, they failed to meet the basic obligation to ensure applications were scrupulously accurate.
It was never, there was no possibility any of it was accurate.
It's unverifiable.
And they used it four times, a full year of spying.
Then they launch an investigation into a presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions, as Bill Barr says.
And he says, in my view, insufficient to justify these steps taken.
And then you go to Durham.
And Durham's the one that's doing the criminal investigation.
And he was about as clear as he could be.
Yeah, sure.
I respect Horowitz.
Our investigation, though, is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department.
Oh, other people that have information, we can go talk to them.
Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside the U.S. based on the evidence collected to date.
And while our investigation is ongoing, we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to the prediction of how the FBI case was opened.
Remember, Horowitz found the dossier provided probable cause to spy on Carter Page.
Well, yeah, but they had to alter information about Carter Page to get there, which I'll get to.
Omitted information the FBI obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Paige, including Page had been approved as an operational contact for the other agency, three-letter agency,
from 2008 to 13 that Page had provided information to other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officials and officers, one of which overlap with facts asserted in the FISA application.
Now, we also have included in this whole thing, a source characterization statement about Steele's prior reporting.
It had been, quote, corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.
That is a lie.
That's not true.
And I've talked to high-ranking people all day that know within the Justice Department, overstating the significance of Steele's past reporting and was not approved by Steele's handling agent as required by Woods procedures.
Three, they omitted information relevant to the reliability of person, a key Steele subsource.
This is the one source.
You only had one source.
Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane team that one person who was at a big ego and was a boaster gave him the information, may engage in some embellishment.
Steele even told them that.
One source by somebody that lies, basically.
And if you look at the report, 95, you know, and some, if you look at who the attribute attribution here with provided information in the report and some information in other reports relied on the application.
Steele himself told members of the whole team, yeah, it's only one guy.
He's basically telling them, I have no idea if it's true then.
That would mean premeditated fraud.
And that the FBI assessed Steele did not directly provide to the press the information for that Yahoo Michael Izikov article based on the premise that Steele had told the FBI he only shared his election-related research with FBI and Fusion GPS, his client.
The premise was incorrect and contradicted by documentation in the Woods file.
Steele had told the FBI he also gave information to the State Department.
They omitted Papadopoulos' statements monitored to an FBI guest informant denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign ever corroborated with Russia or outside groups like WikiLeaks.
Oopsie Daisy, that would be important.
They omitted Page's statements that he had literally never met or said one word to Manafort.
And Manafort had not represented to any of Page's emails.
And by the way, number seven, Page's consensually monitored statements, et cetera.
They omitted other statements Paid made that were inconsistent with their theory, including denying having met with certain individuals.
If true, those statements contradicted the claims in the report that Paige had met secretly with them about future cooperation.
I'm going to tell you one thing that's going to emerge at some point here that you pay close attention that I'm right on on this.
They never once gave the Trump team a defensive briefing and said, hey, just to give you a heads up, we're looking into this possibility.
But my sources confirming for me today, the U.S. government, through Brennan and Obama himself, informed the Russians of a possible compromise with the Trump campaign.
That is breathtaking.
Brennan called the Russians in August and September of 2016.
Did they ever think they should call the Trump campaign?
Obama called the Russians in September.
How is that possible?
You got Paige and Papadopoulos.
You know, literally, Paige didn't lie to us once.
Do you see that?
Remember, some people saying, don't trust Paige.
This report exonerates him, but they had to use Manafort, Paige, Papadopoulos, and Flynn.
Oh, they just used them.
All these guys were used and abused for the purpose of getting at Trump.
Just like Comey also lied when he said, oh, yeah, it's salacious, but not verified.
Because three months earlier, he was saying it was verified when he signed off on the FISA application, then signed off on two others after he lied to Trump.
He's caught in a million lies here.
And if I'm Durham and I'm Bill Barr, yeah, I'm looking at this saying, yeah, this is not true.
What else do we have in all this?
We have, so they're concerned about the DOJ FBI policies didn't require senior officials to be notified.
The confidential source on Paige and Papadopoulos before and after they joined the Trump team, they altered, literally altered the exact wordings.
They failed to ever vet Christopher Steele or the one egotist that he told them not to trust.
There's a mountain of red flags they point out in terms of serious problems with Steele's descriptions, but they did it anyway.
They never corroborated the allegations against Paige, just the opposite.
The FBI didn't have information corroborating the allegations against Paige.
And as a matter of fact, they had exculpatory information that they purposely withheld from the FISA court.
They never told the FISA court that Hillary paid for the dirty Russian dossier.
That would be important if I was a FISA court judge.
Christopher Steele and the FBI, yeah, they didn't have the relationship that the FBI officials were saying that they had.
You know, one weird thing that came out of this is apparently Steele says he personally knows a member of the Trump family.
Some suspect it was Ivanka.
I have no idea.
I'm not even getting into that.
So you get into this.
Okay, the FISA application is, we now know, unverifiable with a single source lunatic that they even told everybody was a single source lunatic as an egomaniac that makes things up.
The FISA request form referred to Steele as a reliable source, but yet Steele was not considered a reliable source.
He was even fired by the FBI for lying and leaking.
Strzok's telling the Office of Inspector General that he approved the request to expedite the FISA, a sense of urgency.
That's not how it works, though, is it?
According to Rod Rosenstein, which we just played.
By the way, do we have Comey?
Let's play Comey here because Comey confessed in this to the Inspector General that the Steele dossier shouldn't have been used in the application, but that's not what he said back when.
Listen.
Jane Mayer wrote a very comprehensive piece in the New Yorker about Christopher Steele's dossier and about Christopher Steele.
Is he considered reliable according to your sources as an intelligence agent?
Yes.
As it was described to me when it came in, it was raw intelligence, so a series of reports from a credible person with a reliable track record and a known experience and source network in Russia.
And so it was something to be taken seriously.
I didn't mean that it was all true, but it was to be taken seriously.
And its core assertion was corroborated by other intelligence.
Its core assertion being the Russians have a campaign going on to interfere in the American election.
Just like he lied to Trump, salacious and unverified.
Everything about this that we told you is true.
That you have literally an unverifiable Clinton bought and paid for Russian dossier, the bulk of information used for the FISA applications and it to abuse power and get at a candidate, a transition team, and a president.
I can't wait to Durham and Barr get a hold of this.
A lot of people are done here.
Trust me, this is bad.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Ham.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So download Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, I'm not going to go into the details of the conversations I had with Stu, but at the end of the day, we put forth a package that, to my understanding, people in my building and the department were satisfied with.
So to the extent that there were any concerns about how we represented what we knew about the informant and his potential, how he came involved in acquiring this information and what his background might say about his involvement in that collection.
I think everyone was satisfied that we had represented that accurately and adequately in the package.
The court was obviously satisfied.
They signed it, what, three or four times?
But there was one, right, there were three renewals, including by Rod, the last one.
That's right, in May.
The initiation had three renewals, one of which I signed took place after the director had been fired.
It's almost a joke listening to McCabe in retrospect.
When did he actually say that?
Because the report today, what was that?
March?
Because the report today shows, yeah, the dirty dossier.
They wouldn't have gotten, they wouldn't have gotten a FISA warrant without the dirty dossier.
And yeah, the application was almost entirely based on an unverifiable document, almost entirely.
And that, yeah, Christopher Steele, without the dossier, they wouldn't have even pursued it.
Now we know that the Clinton bought and paid for unverifiable Russian dirty dossier was it to spy on Carter Page, deny him his constitutional rights.
By the way, now we know also Manafort and Papadopoulos.
And wow, they went after General Flynn.
That's how we treat 33-year veterans in this country.
This is an excoriating beatdown of how corrupt this whole thing was and what an abuse of power.
And it's, you know, and forget about whatever.
Horowitz doesn't have the ability.
He's referred people left and right and all over the place.
Nothing happens.
When Durham comes out as he does today and says the things he's been saying today, now we're like, okay, this is Our investigation, he goes on, has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside the U.S., Italy, Great Britain, Australia.
And based on the evidence collected to date, and our investigation is ongoing, we invite the Inspector General, we don't agree with some of the report's conclusions.
Interpretation, yeah, we've got a lot more than you do.
Yeah, because we're, because we're not limited in our purview.
You know, you also say the steel dossier provided, you know, probable cause.
No, every indication was it was unverifiable.
Even the interview that he gave, we all know in the interrogatory what he said, but now we know in the interview, he said, yeah, one source, and the guy was an egomaniac who was known to make up crap.
So that's where we are here.
And the inspector general finding himself 17 significant errors.
We've identified at least 17 significant errors or missions in the FISA applications and additional errors in Wood procedures.
It goes on to say in great detail, under the so-called two-hop rule, investigators could collect the communication of every person that Page interacted with.
Why is that important?
Because the reason they had to alter the documents that actually show that Carter Page was a patriot.
Carter Page worked with a three-letter agency.
The three-letter agency warned them all that, yeah, no, he's good.
And then they changed it to make it sound just the opposite.
Why?
Because once you got to Carter Page, then you got into the Trump campaign transition team and presidency.
That's why.
That's how bad this is for them.
And to have the Attorney General of the United States now weighing in as strongly as he is weighed in and saying, yeah, this is bad.
And Durham saying it is bad.
Jim Jordan rightly pointing out, we thought they spied on two Americans.
Now we know it was four.
We know within one week of the investigations opening, the FBI was surveilling the campaign and four specific individuals.
Do you realize how thin it is?
It is so thin that it's based on one thing we're learning today, just one.
And that is George Papadopoulos', what he said at a party.
That's thin.
The Attorney General rejecting all of this in a lengthy statement, you know, saying this is how intrusive this all is.
And him going really, really deep into this never should have happened under the thinnest of suspicions.
He goes and launched on the thinnest of suspicions.
The Inspector General's report now makes clear the FBI launched the investigation, a U.S. presidential campaign on the sinnest, the thinnest of suspicions, in my view, insufficient to justify.
And they knew that they knew, and the overwhelming bulk of evidence was what?
It was the dirty Clinton bought and paid for dossier, just as we have reported and told you.
And what was the point of this?
They couldn't have gotten a warrant without the dirty dossier that's unverifiable.
Go to page 126, 127.
The Pfizer request form drew almost entirely from the dirty dossier.
And then three little other things.
That's it.
It was the bulk of information was this.
The Grassley-Graham Nunes memos were correct.
Durham blasting this, rightly so.
Barr blasting this also and saying that, you know, the report insufficient basis to do any of this.
And it's clear from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.
Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign into deep into the president's administration.
Now we know if you go back, and we'll get to this later, the statements are barred from that speech that he gave.
Ooh, now it's beginning to take on greater meaning than ever before.
We'll play that.
But we know numerous errors, serious performance failures, relied on the discredited, unverifiable work of the Steele dossier.
Comey even, Comey's confessing in his interview.
Yeah, yeah, no, this wasn't ripe enough, the Steele dossier, or mature enough to be complete.
No.
Well, why'd you sign it three times?
That's a problem for him.
Yeah, finally, Director Ray says something.
Oh, he promises reforms.
He's saying that now because he knows it's trouble in terms of this.
I'm going to tell you right now, there's going to be a push to get rid of FISA.
Anyway, two people that have been right with us all along.
Investigative reporter John Solomon, vindicated today.
Greg Jarrett, vindicated today.
And this is only the beginning of the vindication.
Thank you both for your great work.
We were right the whole time.
We were all right the whole time.
The mob and the media did nothing.
Anyway, John Solomon, your take.
And we're going to keep you guys for the hour, so we have plenty of time.
It is just stunning a level of misinformation and erroneous information and disproven information that the FBI allowed to persist with the FISA court.
They fleeced the FISA court.
The FBI, using its most awesome spy powers, fleeced the FISA court.
And in so doing, they fleeced the American public and they violated the civil liberties of the four men who were targeted by this investigation.
It is just when you look at these 17 failures, these 17 misinformations, these 17 omissions, they are so glaring as to almost appear intentional.
And I think that at the end of the day, the idea that this was just simply a case of incompetent cops really, really pales when you start to read the facts, the knowing and willful decisions not to provide information up to chain, the changing of a document that hid Carter Page's relationship with a U.S. intelligence agency.
Oh, by the way, to say that he didn't have it when in fact it said just the opposite.
That's right.
I mean, and the core thing, the only thing that would justify a FISA against Carter Page was that he had met with these two guys in Russia, the two Igors, I call them.
The FBI knew that wasn't true.
It allowed that to persist for a year and allowed the court to keep extending these warrants.
And in January 2017, the FBI interviewed Christopher Steele sub-source, something I told you many months ago.
That sub-source disowned the information attributed to him in the dossier.
We could have saved two years of the Mueller investigation if the FBI had just come clean about that.
It is tragic to civil liberties.
It's tragic to the American desire for truth that these FBI agents and officials allowed this farce to go on for two years.
Greg Jarrett, your takeaway from this.
I guess your two books have been vindicated as well because everything you reported is true.
Yes.
You know, in my books, I go through all of the misrepresentations that were made by the FBI and the Department of Justice to spy on the Trump campaign.
Never told that Clinton's campaign had paid for the phony dossier.
Not told that Steele had leaked and lied.
Instead, they vouched that he was credible.
You know, not told that the FBI's evidence was unverified.
And it clearly was.
It's worse than that, though.
Unverifiable.
And by the way, from page 126, the FISA request form, which says at the top, verified, drew almost entirely from the dirty Clinton bought and paid for Russian steel dossier.
Oh, sure.
And they were not told of exculvatory evidence.
That's really where Barr and Durham come in.
You know, what's revealing about the report today is Bill Barr's damning assessment of it.
Misconduct, misfeasance, clear abuse of FISA process.
What's baffling is how the IG seems to have blindly accepted the stories.
Sorry, my apologies.
It's okay.
Should have turned it off.
They even said.
They blindly accepted all these stories by people like Comey and McCabe and Baker, not to mention Chris Steele himself.
But Horowitz offers the following vacuous excuse.
It's not my role to second guess discretionary judgment.
All Americans are deeply troubled.
Well, it is.
I mean, but I'll tell you, it's so egregious.
I mean, when you see that the Durham and Barr came out as strongly as they did, it's sort of like this is the appetizer, John.
Now we've got a lot of the facts outlined here, everything corroborated that we believe to be true.
But, you know, an inspector general, he's already referred Comey, Page, Struck, McCabe for refer.
He's already referred.
So it doesn't really matter what his assumption is here.
But what I think Durham is saying, oh, God, we've got it all.
We've got this buttoned up so tight.
You have no idea because you can't do what we've been doing on top of what you did.
Keep in mind, he also today revealed that he caught an FBI agent intentionally willfully doctoring a document to keep the FISA scam going.
That is one of the most serious criminal violations I've ever seen come out of an IG report.
So he has provided some new evidence of criminality.
But at the end of the day.
You mean Klein Smith?
Klein Smith, right?
Yep, the lawyer who doctors.
Explain what he did because he actually, this was on Carter Page in particular.
Yeah.
He had a relationship with the CIA that wasn't being divulged.
And if the FISA court knew that Carter Page was trusted by the CIA, they might have had some serious reservations about spying on him.
You know what I forgot to say?
And also, they never told anybody that Hillary paid for it.
That's right.
And here's another one.
When the assessment came out in December, the rushed Obama assessment that Russia had tried to infiltrate our camp, our election, had tried to influence our election, the CIA specifically told the FBI, don't use the steel dossier.
What did McCabe and Comey do?
They used it as part of the assessment, which means that assessment is flawed.
If the FISAs are flawed, the intelligence assessment that relied on the dossier now needs to be revisited for the failures that Steele brought to this table.
But the fact that the CIA was objecting to Steele's dossier tells you something big about just how bad and how little a secret the FBI's misconduct was in the United States.
They're right there.
John Solomon, Greg Jarrett vindicated both as well as this program.
Everything we told you was true.
And now we have the Attorney General and Prosecutor Durham.
Wow, this is going to blow up into something massive.
I can tell you right now, there's no way they would say these things if that was not true.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
And as we continue Sean Hannity's show, John Solomon, investigator reporter, Greg Jarrett, legal analyst for Fox, also two bestsellers as a result of all of this.
Everything we've told you is dead on accurate.
John, you actually go through the list of 17 things.
What are the top takeaways you get, Greg, before we'll go through the 17 that the Inspector General identified, serious omissions, inaccuracies, failures, etc.
What stands out the most to you, Greg?
That the FBI knew that Carter Page was not a spy.
You'll recall in the first FISA Warren application, they absolutely declare that Carter Page is a spy.
They knew he wasn't because they knew he had assisted the U.S. government in previous cases against Russian spies.
And, you know, they also knew that Carter Page had sent a letter to James Comey saying, hey, I'm getting badgered by reporters here.
I'm happy to sit down and talk to you about my recent trip to Russia.
And instead of doing that, Comey decided to go to a FISA court, lie to them, and spy on Carter Page and ruining his life.
You know, it's amazing because Carter Page, we figured him out over time.
He was very reluctant to give me the information that you're saying here.
He did not want to.
I said, I had to figure out.
So basically, you worked for our government.
Well, let's just say I, yeah, I kind of did.
And I was like pulling teeth.
And I was warned, don't trust Carter Page.
I'm like, really?
Because I was asking him all the hard questions, Greg.
No, I mean, I dug up the court documents and put it in my book about how he had assisted in the prosecution of Russians who were trolling, you know, Americans for espionage purposes.
Stay right there.
When we come back, we'll go through the 17 massive failures.
Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, more with Greg and John, and what a Hannity tonight at nine.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called the resistance.
And they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the executive branch and his administration.
Now, resistance is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power.
This is a very dangerous and indeed incendiary notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic.
The fact of the matter is that in waging a scorched earth, no-holds barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law.
Remember that from the speech given recently by the Attorney General Bill Barr.
Today, Barr saying the FBI had insufficient basis to justify the steps they had taken into the investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016.
And he said it's also clear from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.
Nevertheless, the investigation, the surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump's administration.
He also said FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critically exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source in a rush to maintain surveillance warrants on members of the Trump campaign, followed up by the criminal investigator at this point, the U.S. Attorney Durham, John Durham.
And we, by the way, who unlike Horowitz has the ability to convene grand juries and go forward with, yes, charging individuals based on the evidence collected to date, while our investigation is ongoing, we advise the Inspector General that we don't agree with some of his report's conclusions as to predictions on how the FBI case was open.
He said, with the utmost respect, our investigation is not limited to, like what he's saying is Horowitz's limitations, to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department.
Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside the U.S.
Now, this is very key because these are fiercely strong comments made by the Attorney General and by the U.S. Attorney Durham.
Put it this way.
They were said about me, I'd have a lot to be worried about today.
And what they are telegraphing here is very plain for anyone to see because what did we learn today?
We learned everything we told you is true.
Yep, that the Boughton paid for unverifiable Clinton-Russian dossier.
That that was the FISA application was almost entirely based on it.
As a matter of fact, that actually only was three other things.
The only additional information, this is on page 126 and 7, a statement that Page was a senior foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign and had extensive ties to various state-owned or affiliated entities of the Russian Federation.
Yeah, he was working for the CIA.
And then, yeah, when the CIA said, no, this guy's credible for our side.
Yeah, they changed it.
They literally altered the document on purpose.
Wow.
Two.
The only other thing besides the dirty Clinton bought and paid for Russian dossier by Steele that is unverifiable because he even he told them, yeah, no, this guy's nuts.
He's an egomaniac and known to make things up, and that was my only source.
Wow.
And the only other two things were Papadopoulos' statement, which, by the way, also they took out the exculpatory information there in three open sources articles, but that was leaked on purpose from the Steele Dirty dossier.
The rest of it was all the bought and paid for, unverifiable, because it's not true.
Now proven 90% of it not true because they can't prove 100% yet.
And that was used for the whole time.
And this is these, this stinks too high heaven.
If this had ever gone on, if it was Obama or Hillary, wow.
And then you got this, this witch hunt continuing all day today.
No fact witnesses again.
Hearsay witnesses, opinion witnesses.
Let's stay focused on this with John Solomon, investigative reporter, vindicated in a massive way today, his reporting, as well as Greg Jarrett's reporting.
Let's go through the list, both of you, of the 17 failures that were identified in this report.
In Arowitz's own words, John, we'll start with you on number one, omitted information.
Yeah, they omitted the fact that Carter Page was considered a friendly to the U.S. government, working with the intelligence community in a Russia capacity unrelated to the Trump campaign.
And to facilitate or to sustain that lie, they ultimately falsified documents to try to keep that omission from the court.
Just remarkable.
If the court knew that Carter Page was considered a friendly, useful to the United States government, might they have proceeded with this?
I bet not.
And oh, by the way, they didn't tell the court Hillary paid for it.
I think that might have made a difference.
They didn't tell the court it was unverified.
That would have made a difference.
They acted like this is gospel truth.
Greg Jarrett, number two is a source characterization, statement asserting Steele's prior reporting had been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.
Yeah, that wasn't true, was it?
No, it wasn't true at all.
And they knew that Steele was dodgy and that his information was not just dubious, but likely phony.
Because they've been warned by people at the Department of Justice, Bruce Orr.
They'd been warned by Kathleen Kavillak at the State Department, don't trust this guy.
You got to vet his information.
They didn't vet it.
They didn't corroborate it.
It was unverified.
And as you know, when you submit an FBI warrant or surveill to a FISA court, the regulations specifically state, and I'll quote, only documented and verified information may be used in support of a FISA application.
End of quote.
They didn't do it.
Let's go to the omitted information, John Solomon.
Again, we're laying out 17 unbelievable failures, spectacular failures and omissions and inaccuracies.
But the omitted information relevant to person one, what we believe to be Carter Page, I think.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
No, no, this is the story.
No, no, the one source of Steele, they omitted that this guy, and Steele had even told them.
That's right.
That this guy lies, and yeah, he doesn't tell the truth.
Here's the amazing thing about the single sub-source that made up most of Steele's report.
The sub-source tells the FBI in January 17, I didn't say a lot of the stuff that's attributed to me.
And Steele tells the FBI this guy's a blowviator.
And yet based on those two really bad references, they go ahead and use the dossier and its information anyways.
It is the most clear evidence of intention.
Knowing that those two things were that big a problem and still proceeding with the application tells you these guys are in it for something other than the normal process that the FBI follows.
It's really, really egregious.
And another key finding, Greg Jarrett, is the circular reporting and that the FBI had assessed Steele did not directly provide the information to Yahoo, I assume Izakoff and Korn based on the premise that Steele had told the FBI only shared it with Fusion GPS and the FBI and his client.
They cite the Izakoff Yahoo news article as being a secondary corroborating source when in fact it came from the original source, Christopher Steele.
And the FBI pretends to the FISA court that Steele didn't provide that information when they knew he did.
You know, another lie to the FISA court.
And that is clearly intentional.
This isn't sloppy, reckless errors and omissions.
No, these are deliberate lies and deceptions and concealing of information to the court.
And when they talk, John, important on that, Greg has it so right, Sean.
But here's one thing in the bottom of that note for it says that when the FBI told the court that Steele had only talked to the FBI and Fusion GPS about the dossier, the FBI already knew he had talked to the State Department, that famous Kathleen Kavlak.
That amounts to a false statement before a federal court.
So true.
And look, in the case of both Papadopoulos and Page, and these were their consensually monitored statements to the FBI, one in September, one in August in Page's case, they literally omit these very exculpatory pieces of information.
Yeah, there's no doubt.
Five, six, and seven, significant omissions.
Statements made of innocence to unwitting to undercover informants, and the FBI repeatedly withholds them from the dossier.
That's what makes this go beyond just incompetence.
Those are conscious decisions not to put evidence of innocence to inform the court into the FISA application.
I think it's among the most serious stuff that was found by the IG.
I agree with you.
It's serious because the federal law has been consistent for decades.
If you have exculpatory information, you must run to the nearest judge and tell him that they didn't do it.
And they knew it very early in the process.
What about, let's go back to the sub-source for just a second, which they admitted, you know, they're saying that the FBI found credible the sub-source that even Steele said to them was a liar and an egomaniac, that he'd made statements in January of 2017 that raised questions about the reliability of allegations that were in the applications, including, for example,
that they had no discussion with individuals concerning WikiLeaks where there was nothing bad about the communication between the Kremlin and the Trump team.
Yeah, I would think that's important, John Solomon.
Oh, yeah.
In fact, it constitutes what is known as derogatory information under the FBI's confidential human source information.
When you interview an informant sub-source and that sub-source doesn't stand by what the informant is saying he reported, that's known as derogatory information.
And they had so much derogatory information on Steele.
Not just what he told, not the fact that his sub-source disowned him, but also the fact that he had been talking to Steele of the State Department.
The State Department flagged that he was giving them bad information.
Remember that famous story that he claimed that the Miami consulate was coordinating the hacking activities.
There was no Miami consulate for the Russian government.
There is enormous evidence that the FBI had derogatory information about Steele, and yet they certified in four consecutive FISA applications.
We're unaware of any derogatory information about this source.
That is a lie.
All right, let me ask you both this, because I want to let me jump forward, because number one, I would say there are a lot of people in deep trouble here, not the least is the liar and leaker, Jim Comey.
Based on the statements of both Barr and Durham today, Greg Jarrett, where do you see this now headed?
Well, I think Durham has obtained either leads or solid information of corruption and lawlessness, and we'll pursue it against those individuals.
We just don't know who they are.
I find it interesting.
I have candidates.
Would it likely be Comey, Clapper, Brennan and company?
Those would be the logical candidates, but we can't say for sure because we just don't know what Durham has.
But he seems very confident that he has it.
Where do you see it going, John?
Listen, I think the very next step is what does the Justice Department do to the FISA court?
Does it go to the FISA court in light of these revelations and say, we need to withdraw these FISA applications?
We need to come clean with you, court.
That would be a momentous first step in trying to create accountability and clean up this process.
Then there's the grand jury, and Durham has the ability to go bring people before it and get things that the IG couldn't get.
Then there's the hearing with Senator Grassley, excuse me, Senator Graham.
That's Wednesday.
Those are part of a step.
This is a long sprint, and accountability is going to occur over multiple steps, over multiple months.
But the first thing to watch for, does the Justice Department do something with the FISA court over the next few days?
Well, I think they have to.
I mean, we just played Rod Rosenstein earlier.
I mean, he says, and if you find out you got something wrong, you got to go back and fix it.
And by the way, that's another issue that really wasn't addressed.
They had an obligation when they knew this information they presented to the court, the dirty dossier, the bulk of the applications four times, withholding exculpatory information that the court withholding information about Hillary's involvement.
Only one source.
I mean, they've known this all forever, and they never went back to fix it.
All right, wrapping up as we conclude, vindication, John Solomon, Greg Jarrett.
All right.
So I think it's, look, it's a long report.
It's a lot to digest.
We're going to really try and sum it up on Hannity tonight.
Both of you will be joining us.
If this doesn't, if we don't get to the bottom of this, Greg Jarrett, and we don't hold these people accountable for this abuse of power, we're in trouble, I think, real quick.
It'll continue to happen.
We learned from this report how easy it is for the FBI to open an investigation of anybody and convince a judge to permit court-sanctioned surveillance and deception was the key.
It's all true.
John?
Yeah, I think Greg said it perfectly.
I think there are two other revelations in this report that are going to sink in in a few days.
One of them is about Bruce Orr.
The report concludes that he showed exorbitantly bad judgment in allowing, becoming a conduit and a witness and allowing Christopher Steele to keep communicating to the FBI after he'd been fired.
I think there's more to that thread that we ought to be paying attention to.
And then here's the one that no one picked up on yet that I think is so important.
The FBI sent an agent to go see the state.
I got a role more tonight.
Meadows and Jordan next.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
So what is your view of the way the FBI interacted with Steele and how we should understand what his role was here?
That's a big question.
So, look, the investigation was not predicated on the basis of the information that Christopher Steele gave to us in the form of the dossier.
That is just not, was not my understanding at the time and has never been my understanding.
So just to say that flat out.
Steele, at the time, my understanding was that he was thought to be a reliable source that had a prior relationship with the FBI and brought this information to us.
Look, I don't know how to say this other than we're not stupid, right?
The FBI.
We're not stupid.
You take the information and you try to vet it.
And that, my recollection is we spent a lot, we, the Bureau, the folks in the counterintelligence division, spent a lot of time trying to vet that information line by line.
Yeah, they didn't do that because it was unverifiable.
I mean, this is the most amazing thing because we now know everything we've been telling you is true.
That was Baker saying that whenever he said it, line by line, we went by.
No, when the FBI finally got around to vetting it long after the fact, we know that none of it was verifiable.
And now we also know that Steele told them it was unverifiable.
Pretty unbelievable.
But we know that, okay, so the bulk of information, as the Newness report told us, and as the Grassley Graham memo told us, yeah, that would have been the Steele dossier.
The unverified Clinton bought and paid for dirty Russian dossier.
They wouldn't have gotten the FISA.
Tipped the balance, it said.
What were they saying?
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, that was what tipped the balance in all of this.
What kind of pushed it over the line in terms of the FBI being ready to use this?
And I'll tell you another thing that nobody's really paying attention to here is I want to know the calls by Brennan to Russia in August and September of 2016, giving them a heads up, according to a report, and the Obama call to Russia, giving them a heads up, but no defensive briefing with the Trump campaign.
Why wouldn't they ask the American citizen first and say, because I'm sure Trump would have said, oh, wow, we got to get to the bottom of that.
They never gave him that chance.
And, you know, then we know that we have Paige and Papadopoulos.
Yeah, alterations left and right.
Unbelievable.
Anyway, somebody who's been critical in getting all of this information out.
Frankly, I don't know where we'd be, as I say many, many times without the Freedom Caucus.
And I guess you were the original president of the Freedom Caucus.
Is that true?
Well, Sean, actually, Jim Jordan was the original chairman.
He and I founded it.
I was the second chairman.
And then we went on to actually pass the baton to Andy Biggs.
No.
All right.
Let's get your take.
The bulk of information, there were only three minor other items used in the FISA application.
The rest of it was what we now know to be an unverifiable Russian dossier that Hillary paid for that even when they checked in with Christopher Steele, that Christopher Steele knew was phony too.
He said, yeah, my one source was nuts, an egomaniac, and didn't often tell the truth.
Right.
And here's a bigger problem.
It's not that it was just unverifiable.
It's just it was verifiably wrong and a lie.
I mean, when we look at this, Sean, everything that you've been saying and reporting on for many, many months, Over a year now, we know now, based on the IG's report, that indeed you were accurate.
The FBI, James Baker, you just played that little tape.
Maybe he wasn't stupid, but he certainly was looking the other way.
And I've found in reading through this report, as you know, I've gone through a couple of hour briefing.
We've been going through this report, combing it through with a fine-toothed comb.
One of the biggest things that is not being widely reported yet is when the FBI came in to do a defensive briefing with candidate Donald Trump and candidate Hillary Clinton, they did two defensive briefings.
They were supposed to be exactly alike, except the FBI put in an informant in the defensive briefing.
While they were supposed to be helping candidate Donald Trump, they were actually surveilling him.
And that goes along with 12 other times that they actually secretly recorded Trump campaign officials.
I just find it appalling.
The American people should be up in arms.
I know you and I are.
Well, we were right all along.
You were right all along.
Jim Jordan was right all along.
John Solomon, Greg Jarrett, you know, Victoria, Joe, go down the list.
You know, Jim actually pointed out today, oh, we only thought that they spied on two Americans.
Now we know it was four.
Yeah, it was four multiple times.
And one of the people that they spied on was not even a subject or a target of the investigation.
So what that means for your listeners is that they actually spied on a Trump campaign associate that was not even under suspicion for this investigation.
And I guess I have to ask for what reason.
Well, let's go to what the prosecutor John Durham has said.
This is fascinating to me because you have the Attorney General Barr saying that this investigation launched on the thinnest of suspicions.
We now know all it was was one comment at a party or a bar by George Pompanopoulos.
That was it.
And that bar also said that the report, you know, the FBI had insufficient basis to justify the steps they took in investigating the Trump campaign in 2016.
And that concluding that the report, the Bureau had authorized purpose.
But it's also clear from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.
And nonetheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into Trump's administration.
And we also know that it's an unverifiable document, but yet if you go to page 126 and 127, what do we see?
We say that the bulk of information, I'll read it, the Pfizer request form drew almost entirely from Steele's reporting in describing the factual basis to establish probable cause to believe that Page was an agent of a foreign power.
And on top of that, to get there, to get to Carter Page, then they actually had to change the fact that he was working with the CIA and in good standing, apparently.
Well, yes.
And so now what we do know is that one of the documents that was changed, they actually go in to review that and they get a confirmation back that says, yeah, Paige has been helping out the U.S. government.
And the FBI changes that document and then does not allow the FISA court to know any of that.
So, you know, here's the troubling part, Sean.
As we start to dig into this, the deeper you dig, the more difficult it is to comprehend how anyone could let this happen.
How could James Comey allow this to happen?
How could Andrew McCabe allow this to happen on their watch?
And all you can say is they were either extremely poor supervisors, yet they were getting briefed every week on this investigation, or they were complicit in allowing it to continue.
Durham, you're right, has mentioned a couple of things.
He is going beyond where the inspector general is going, where he's looking at the origins of that.
Does it include other Intel agencies?
Were they involved?
What was the predicate for opening all of this up?
And I can tell you that some of our worst fears have come really to fruition as we look at this report.
The deeper we dive into it, the more scathing the review is.
I think Director Wray said there's going to be 40 different things that he is going to put into place to try to make sure this doesn't happen again.
40, 4-0.
Why has he been so MIA?
Why is he so quiet?
You know, I think he got in and originally he was being told by some in that small inner circle, oh, we didn't do anything wrong.
Then all of a sudden, as this report started to pick up steam and as his review, along with Attorney General Barr started to take on hold, I think they realized that not only did they have a problem, but they had a systemic problem that had to be addressed.
But for a long time, I was questioning whether Director Wray was going to address it or cover it up.
Hopefully today is the start of actually addressing it.
Do you believe at the end of the day that this was just because they hated Donald Trump and this was the insurance policy?
Well, I think this was the insurance policy that they referred to as part of it to try to make sure that this investigation.
But here's what you're also going to find, and here's what you and I and a number of us need to make sure the American people are reminded of.
Before President Trump was actually inaugurated, in January of 2017, the FBI knew they had no case.
They didn't tell President-elect Trump they had no case.
They continued to investigate from January through May.
Then they get a special prosecutor.
They spend $30 million.
All of this based on the fact that they knew they had no case, and they continued to just place a hoax on the American people.
And I find that not only a waste of taxpayer money, but it is really a breach of trust between the FBI and the American people.
The idea that one source that was questionable, look, Christopher Steele didn't stand by his own dossier.
You know, they lied.
They literally had to alter a thing with Carter Page.
Right.
And I've got to be honest.
I've never seen such a corrupt abuse of power.
And to think that none of this should have happened, what do you make of Durham saying our investigation is not limited to developing information from within the component parts of the Justice Department, meaning we have the ability to go way beyond your little area.
Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside the U.S.
I take that to mean Great Britain, Italy, Australia, and then we get into the Intel issues.
Well, as I've mentioned before, once again, Sean, you're over the target.
You're exactly over the target because that's what John Durham is looking at.
We now know that this investigation was done just wholly within the FBI and didn't even go beyond some of the key witnesses.
For example, the IG's report did not interview Glenn Simpson with Fusion GPS.
And yet he would be a central key in the dossier and all the coordinating efforts.
And yet they did not interview that because he declined to be interviewed.
And if he declined to be interviewed.
How does Comey get to lie?
Think of the spectacular lies identified here.
Now, remember, he signed the first dossier, the first FISA warrant application.
Then he goes to the White House.
I'm sorry, goes to Trump Tower in January before the president's sworn in and says it's salacious but unverified.
But yet at the top of the dossier, it says verified.
So that makes him a big liar because then he signed two more FISA applications with the bulk of information being the unverifiable steel dossier at Hillary Paper, Russian dossier.
Right.
And that's where the problem's going to come in is James Comey either was inept in his job or he was part of this whole FISA abuse, as you mentioned, a fraud on the FISA abuse court.
Indeed, it happened.
Here's the interesting thing is the FBI was tasked with getting the information.
They were supposed to give the information over to the National Security Council who would draft up the FISA application.
Well, the National Security Council, they weren't even getting the information from the investigators.
They were putting it in a closet or in a desk drawer instead of actually conveying it to the court.
And this is what Andrew McCabe and James Comey were getting briefed every week on, and somehow it slipped through not once, not twice, but three different times.
It's just beyond comprehension.
All right, Mark Meadows, we'd be lost without you.
Great job.
We appreciate all that you did here.
You made a lot of this possible today.
Blood, sweat, tears.
You, Devin, Ratcliffe, Jordan, Gates was great today.
Everybody, honestly, all the Freedom Caucus guys have been phenomenal.
Well, thank you, Sean.
I appreciate you leading the charge and keeping the American people informed.
We couldn't have done it without you.
Hey, Lindsay, you see that the super patriot Jim Comey, the liar Comey, is now, well, he said, I offered to be on Fox and Friends, and Fox and Friends canceled me.
Now, meanwhile, the people at Fox and Friends, I just checked, is that we didn't have him booked on anything.
What do you think?
Should I invite him on this radio show again for three hours?
He hasn't taken us up on our offer, and I'll give him an hour on TV.
You think he'll come?
I mean, listen, he's an egomaniac, so anything's possible.
You think he's in, does he not know at this point?
This is amazing to me because he went in January 2017, goes to the Trump Tower, says in the meeting to the then president-elect, the dossier is salacious but unverified.
Okay.
But at the top of FISA application that he signed in October and the two of the three subsequent renewals, it says verified.
Now, we have the report that says the bulk of information was the dirty bought and paid for Clinton Russian dossier.
So he's using an unverified, and that was the bulk of information.
How does he get out of that one?
He just lies, right?
He's very good at lying.
He's perfected that because nobody ever questions him.
When no one questions you, no higher loyalty becomes a bestseller.
That's a good point.
All right, we'll invite him.
What the hell?
Quick break, right back.
A lot more explaining.
Big day, big night tonight on Hannity.
You don't want to miss this nine Eastern on the Fox News channel.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
Well, what did we tell you?
We said premeditated fraud on a FISA court and an Operation Crossfire Hurricane.
But you know what's so amazing about that is this is not even really in the spectrum of where Horowitz does most of his work here.
All of it is proven now.
And as I look at the extraordinary statements that were released today by the Attorney General and by John Durham, I mean, it's almost unprecedented.
Now, for a lot of reasons of which I went into in the first hour today, I won't go back into it now.
Barr saying of this IG report, how the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of President Trump's campaign on the thinnest of suspicions.
And what did we say?
Premeditated fraud on a FISA court for the purpose of backdooring, which is all confirmed in this report, spying or all things into Trump world, Trump campaign, then transition, and then Trump presidency.
And all predicated.
The whole thing gets launched over what Papadopoulos says at a bar.
That's it.
That's how thin it was.
But again, we have Hillary Clinton and a dirty dossier.
Nobody ever paid attention to that.
And when Barr is saying the thinnest of suspicions, it was launched, saying that this report, in his opinion, the FBI had insufficient basis to justify the steps taken in the investigation of the Trump campaign, putting him at odds with Arowitz in some ways, aspects, more especially about Operation Crossfire Hurricane, that, you know, it's clear from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.
Think about that.
That is huge.
Yet the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump's administration.
Now, when you have a attorney general saying this on top of his previously made comments and then John Durham's comments, you got to pay close attention to this because this is now what we'll learn.
What we've learned here is everything we've reported is true.
We've been right the whole time.
But it's not one thing that we can see here that we got wrong and that the, you know, the FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source in a rush to maintain surveillance warrants on members of the Trump campaign.
And while most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 17 by this, now, by these now former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General's report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process.
And this then gets to the comments of John Durham.
I have the utmost respect for the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff.
However, now remember, Inspector General has no ability because he's already made referrals for Comey and McCabe and Strzok and Paige.
That's all has happened in his previous reports.
I have the utmost respect for him.
Now, the real criminal investigation, that is in the realm of Durham.
Our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department.
He's basically, what he's saying here is, oh, no, we got a lot more coming.
And our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities.
By the way, this is where we're now going to get into Italy and Great Britain, Australia, and outsourcing of spying and all of that on top of really, really hammering home on how corrupt and what an abuse of power all of this was and how political it's been.
And Durham goes on, based on the evidence collected to date and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General, we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to prediction and how the FBI case was open.
It was open on one issue, the Papadopoulos call.
Let me go to the page 414.
We're deeply concerned with so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate hand-picked investigative teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI,
even though the information sought through use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign, even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny.
We believe that this circumstance reflects a failure, not just by those who prepared the FISA applications, but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane Chain of Command, including FBI senior officials who are briefed as the investigation progressed.
Great job, Jim Comey.
We do not expect managers and supervisors to know every fact about an investigation or senior leaders to know all the details of cases of which they are briefed.
However, especially in the FBI's most sensitive and high priority matters, and especially when seeking court permission to use an intrusive tool such as a FISA order, it is incumbent upon the entire chain of command,
including senior officials, to take the necessary steps to ensure that they are sufficiently familiar with the facts and circumstances supporting and potentially undermining a FISA application in order to provide effective oversight consistent with their level of supervisory responsibility.
Such oversight requires greater familiarity with the facts than we saw in this review, where time and again during the interviews, FBI managers, supervisors, senior officials displayed a lack of understanding or awareness of important information concerning many of the problems we have identified.
In the preparation of FISA applications to surveil Carter Page, Crossfire Hurricane Team failed to comply with FBI policies and in so doing fell short of what is rightfully expected from the premier law enforcement agency entrusted with such an intrusive surveillance tool in light of the significant concerns identified with the Carter Page FISA applications.
Oh, we now know that they actually changed.
They literally altered so that they could use this process.
Anyway, another described in the report, the OIG today initiated an audit that will further examine the FBI's compliance with Woods procedures and FISA applications that target U.S. persons in both counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations.
Then they go on to make recommendations into all of this.
But when you think Barr saying that the FBI launched this thing on the thinnest of suspicions, insufficient to justify any of the steps taken, is mind-numbing.
They omitted the FBI had obtained from another U.S. agency details of Carter Page's prior work as an operational contact for that other agency.
He worked for our side, as he'd been telling us, he didn't lie to us on this show.
And he provided information to other agencies concerning his prior contacts, one of which overlapped the facts asserted in FISA, including a source characterization statement, which, by the way, overstated the significance of Steele's past reporting not approved by Steele's handling agent.
Omitted information relevant to the reliability of person, a key Steele subsource.
By the way, we now know, again, it was never verifiable.
Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane team that person one was a boaster and an egoist.
I have no idea if any of it's true.
Asserted the FBI had assessed that Steele did not directly provide to the press information based on the Yahoo News.
This is the hacks.
We talk about Michael Lizikov and David Corn.
Oh, yeah, they're exposed here big time.
They just took, they took propaganda and ran with it.
Lies and ran with it.
Welcome to your fake news media.
And shared, Steele had told the FBI he only shared with his election-related research with the FBI, Fusion GPS, his client.
The premise was incorrect, contradicted by documentation in the Woods file.
Steele had told the FBI he also gave information to the State Department.
They omitted Papadopoulos's consensually monitored statements, exculpatory.
Let's put it that way.
As it related to outside groups, they omitted Page's consensually monitored statements, literally never met or said one word to Paul Manafort.
Wow, amazing.
You can say that, and then it gets changed around, isn't it?
Omitted other statements Page made that were inconsistent with their theory, denying having met certain individuals.
See where this is going here?
All of it?
They didn't provide anything that was correct.
Go back to the beginning.
What matters here?
What matters here is, well, how did we have the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal ever?
Not only is he talking about severely flawed FISA applications, failures to properly vet Steele and seek information about Clinton funding.
What else do we find out?
They sought to spy on Carter Page because an agent thought his past relationship with Russia could be a clandestine relationship.
Oh, but take out that he actually worked for another agency with three letters.
When asked for the motivations behind the Steele dossier, the agent involved doesn't respond.
And everything that we've been saying, no dossier, no FISA application warrant approved.
That is clear.
Without the Steele dossier, they would not have gotten the FISA application approved, period.
The FISA application, remember the bulk of information from the FISA application was almost entirely based on the Steele dossier.
We learned that today.
How much more do we have to know here?
But this is nothing but corruption at the highest level.
This was about getting Trump.
This was about destroying.
This was their whole insurance policy.
You look at every aspect of this.
You have the what, you know, what was Steele hired to do?
Well, now we know Steele under oath said, I have no idea if any of it's true.
The FBI could articulate why it deemed Steele's reporting to be credible because they were advised based on information from Steele that Steele was specifically hired by an individual to provide the information on the candidate.
They failed to tell the court that Hillary paid for this.
How do you not tell the court what is the number one conclusion in all of this?
How do you get there?
You don't vet Steele and seek information about, you know, being funded by the Clinton camp.
Well, that might be, you know, the dirty dossier, by the way, played an essential role in the decision to seek FISA.
And by the way, they never bothered to ever corroborate any of it.
And they used it anyway because it was the only part that they can use.
This is devastating.
But I'll tell you what's even more devastating is that now you have the prosecutor involved in the real criminal investigation because Horowitz never had that power to convene a grand jury or to press charges on anybody.
But they found the quantity of omissions and inaccuracies and all the obvious errors that were made deeply concerning, you think?
May have improperly substituted their own judgment instead of what facts are.
Yeah, that would be because they hated Trump so bad.
So many basic fundamental errors were made on four FISA applications by three separate handpicked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI and FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI's chain of command, management, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
You look at this.
We believe the more should have been done to examine Steele's contacts.
It's all there.
They never bothered.
They never cared because they had their predetermined conclusion in all of this.
You know, a mountain of red flags that they ignored regarding Steele, their failure in creating, you know, the misleading application.
They were all warned ahead of time.
17 specific errors and omissions in these applications, 17 of them.
They didn't give equal attention or treatment or the relevant facts or probable cause at any point.
It was all a foregone conclusion.
Steele was paid by the FBI for years.
FBI admitted much of Steele's work was never corroborated or verified.
But how does it then become the bulk of information in the FISA application as confirmed in this report today?
How does that happen?
Unless you have an agenda.
I will say this.
Again, the mob and the media was wrong.
They lie constantly.
This should have been their story.
The biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in history.
And the good news today is both Barr and Durham are like adamant that this is getting worse by the hour for them and all these deep state operatives.
All right, Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern Fox News Channel.
Devin Nunes, he was right.
Jim Jordan was right.
Ted Cruz was right.
They'll all join us.
Lindsey Graham was right.
Carter Page, wow, he actually served the country.
He told us on this program the truth.
Also, Greg Jarrett, John Solomon, Dan Bongino tonight, and much, much more.
The news, the mob and the media is not going to cover.
They're going to stick with their phony impeachment narrative.
Yeah, with their non-fact opinion and hearsay witnesses that's going nowhere.
Hannity tonight, full coverage.
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