Gingrich talks 'deep state' bureaucrats' attacks on Trump
Fox News contributor speaks out on 'Hannity'
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," March 8, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And welcome to "Hannity." Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin will all join us tonight. But first, an explosive new report raises very serious, critical questions about U.S. government surveillance at Trump Tower, where our commander-in-chief's campaign headquarters were located. Now, these are questions that President Barack Obama needs to answer. And that is tonight's "Opening Monologue."
Investigative journalist Sara Carter from Circa News will joining us in just a minute. Now, she, along with her colleague, John Solomon -- they have confirmed the existence of, in fact, a FISA court warrant order granted in October of 2016, just weeks before the general election, to monitor Trump Tower -- in there, a computer server that was right inside there. Now, the report finds that justification for the warrant was to examine the server that appeared to be communicating with a Russian bank.
Officials told Circa News that they quickly determined that nothing, quote, "was nefarious" happening or going on there. Now, I can tell you for my own experience -- now, think about this. From my communications during the campaign with the Trump campaign, most of the staffers, 99 percent of them, were all connected to the Trump organization. In other words, their emails.
This is beyond troubling. We need answers tonight. Were Trump campaign emails ever connected to the server? If so, were they collected as raw intelligence during the surveillance operation?
Now, the reason we ask this is because of what we saw happen to former national security adviser Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. Remember news reports, a December call that he made to a Russian ambassador was captured by what The New York Times described as a, quote, "routine wiretap" of the Russian diplomat's phone?
Well, U.S. intelligence agencies, they do routinely monitor foreign officials. That's their job. But protections known as minimization procedures have been put in place to ensure that American citizens are not caught up in that surveillance. In other words, they then would have no constitutional rights and that their identities and their rights are protected.
Now, this, of course, was not the case with Lieutenant General Flynn because a transcript of the call was created, given to intelligence officials, who then leaked the details to the press, which, by the way, is a felony, according to the Espionage Act.
We also know from a New York Times report that in his final weeks in office that President Obama revised the executive order 12333, which greenlights widespread sharing of broad data collected by American intelligence agencies across 17 government agencies. That's an additional 16 agencies, all their employees can now gain access to top-secret intel that they never had access to before.
Now, we've been asking, why did President Obama wait until the last minute, two weeks before he leaves, to issue that order? It's an order that he did not apply to himself for eight years.
And since this order was signed, well, we've seen an explosion of leaks coming from intelligence agencies. Look at your screen right there. Now, take a good look at it.
So given what's happened, it's time for President Obama and officials who oversaw this operation and the surveillance of the server at Trump Tower -- they need to come clean. What do they know? What information was gathered? They need to assure you, the American people, that this was not spying on a political opposition party just weeks before an election.
All of this raises very serious national security, ethical issues at a very high level, privacy issues we've never had before, because crimes were likely committed here. Certainly, in the case of retired Lieutenant General Flynn, somebody committed a felony.
So all we're doing on this show is we're raising questions. We're looking for answers. In fact, we have reached out to President Obama's spokesperson to see if they would respond to the questions we've been asking. Shocking, so far, we've not heard back.
Also tonight, WikiLeaks has released thousands of documents and is making very serious allegations about CIA spying capabilities and techniques. Now, according to WikiLeaks, U.S. spies are able to access some televisions, smartphones, iPhones and record sound, images, and even private messages on encrypted communication apps.
Now, WikiLeaks is also alleging that the CIA has the ability to make it appear that its cyber activity was conducted by foreign governments, oh, say, like Russia or hackers. Now, the group explained further in a press release. They said, quote, "The CIA's remote devices branch, UMBRAGE group, collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques stolen from malware produced in other states, including the Russian Federation.
And with UMBRAGE and related projects, the CIA can not only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect the attribution by leaving behind these, quote, "fingerprints" of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from. In other words, they can make it seem like it's the Russians, and it's them!
Now, the power and capabilities of American intelligence agencies are profound, and they are extensive. And if all of this is true, what that means is the possibility that an operative working on behalf of the former president and other left-wing activists are trying to sabotage, delegitimize President Donald Trump. After all, why did the leaks happen as soon as Obama left? Until we get answers, we're going to keep asking these questions.
Here now is Circa News national security correspondent Sara Carter. Sara, do I have all that right? Is that a good summary?
SARA CARTER, CIRCA NEWS: Yes, it was a great summary. There was one a little change that just happened right before I came on your show, Sean. And what was really interesting -- John and I spoke to a very senior U.S. official, they clarified this. They said there was a FISA warrant in October that was looking at the overall Russian hacking investigation, but that the FBI, when they monitored the server at Trump Tower, it was actually located away from Trump Tower. It wasn't under the FISA. They did normal strategic type of FBI investigations that didn't require the FISA. So they went in -- they went into the server, but they did not use the FISA to do that. They did have a FISA, however, in October at the exact same time as this investigation...
HANNITY: So there are two -- wait a minute -- two instances now of spying.
CARTER: Two, yes.
HANNITY: Wow!
CARTER: Two instances. So this is completely new evidence. And remember, we all thought and everybody had reported that the server was inside Trump Tower. The server was not located in Trump Tower, according to our sources.
HANNITY: Would the second one -- would the second issue warrant -- whatever the FBI doing, was that in Trump Tower?
CARTER: That's what we don't know now...
HANNITY: Wow.
CARTER: ... because now that opens up a whole slew of questions, the questions you just brought up in your monologue, right? So the -- those questions need to be answered.
But what we do know is this. The people that were investigating Trump's server, they said that the FBI did not look into e-mails, they did not listen to his phone calls and that they found no evidence, no evidence at all of any type of crime associated with...
HANNITY: Now, this is important.
CARTER: ... Trump business...
HANNITY: Let me -- let me -- this is...
CARTER: Exactly. Very important.
HANNITY: ... important what you're saying. The news media in this country has repeated this narrative that the Trump campaign were colluding with the Russians to undermine the electoral process. You're saying that your reporting and your -- look, John Solomon's worked for AP for what, 20 years? And you both worked together at The Washington Times, credible news organizations.
So what you're saying is they found no evidence at all whatsoever of any collusion between the campaign and the Russians. True?
CARTER: Absolutely true, they found no evidence of that. In fact, when we spoke to our sources who had direct access to this investigation, what was happening with the FBI, they didn't even find evidence of collusion with Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, which is interesting because even when those leaks came out and they were referring to the Logan Act, and everybody saw this as a broad...
HANNITY: Which was ridiculous!
CARTER: Yes, they thought this was part of the original investigation into Russian hacking and now President Trump. It wasn't. It was completely different. It was a completely separate incident. And the leak came out anyways. It was -- it was monitoring a Russian asset...
HANNITY: And that would be a felony as defined by the Espionage Act, as I understand it?
CARTER: That is absolutely correct. And as you know, the inspector general at the DOJ is now investigating...
HANNITY: All right, now...
CARTER: ... both the FBI and the Department of Justice. So that...
HANNITY: Very important. I want to stay on this story because I -- we only have limited time. There's too much information in your piece in your new discovery. So you have confirmed that the FBI found no evidence of any collusion whatsoever, nothing.
CARTER: Absolutely.
HANNITY: Number two, you have confirmed that they did get a FISA warrant in October, in the weeks leading up to the election, correct?
CARTER: That is correct. That is correct.
HANNITY: And they also -- they also found -- they also got somehow another warrant that allowed them to look into the Trump campaign. We don't know what the nature of that was?
CARTER: We think it had to do with the banks in Russia, that they were looking at connections between then President Trump and the -- and the banks in Russia, both which are Alpha Bank and SBB Bank, but we're not 100 percent certain on that.
What we don't know is who was connected to that FISA. What was that FISA looking at? And that is very highly classified. Nobody wants to talk about that particular FISA right now. They said it did have to do with the Russian hacking on a very broad level, but it didn't hone in directly on Trump, is what I was told.
HANNITY: And the bottom line, too, is so far, they found no collusion whatsoever, which I think is really important. And you know, we don't know the degree to which -- if they went to a server that might have been off site but it still took in the information from Trump Tower, then Donald Trump problem -- was seemingly technically right.
The New York Times used the term "wiretapping." Now they're backtracking. But everybody in the media has called Donald Trump a liar when he sent out a tweet about President Obama being involved. Well, certainly, it's his administration and maybe -- I don't know exactly how you call a wiretap -- does it have to be a phone call? If the government is looking into one server, can't you say they were tapping into it, because that's how I would define its.
CARTER: Yes. Exactly. I mean, these are semantics, right? This is how people are using words. There is a distinction between a FISA...
HANNITY: Understood.
CARTER: ... and then a wiretapping. But they did tap. I mean, they were looking into his server.
HANNITY: They were investigating the president in the weeks leading up to the election, and you're saying there were two warrants, one FISA, one non- FISA.
CARTER: Correct.
HANNITY: OK, so, now did, they find anything at all, anything at all, any...
CARTER: According to the sources that we spoke with, they did not find any evidence that would lead to any kind of criminal prosecution of anyone on the Trump team. And that is what we were told.
HANNITY: So basically, you're told by people...
CARTER: Whether something changes...
HANNITY: ... that he is totally exonerated, this whole Russian narrative the media has been running with has been a lie, it's been untrue...
CARTER: Well...
HANNITY: ... and that they've known it for some time and they never told us?
CARTER: Well, to some extent, yes.
HANNITY: That's pretty scary. Now, one other thing because I think this is very important. As it relates to who knew what, when and where, the president made a very clever statement. He said, Well, I didn't order, nor did anyone in the White House order the FISA investigation.
But that's not an acknowledgement -- did he know? Did Ben Rhodes know? Did Loretta Lynch sign off on it? Did any -- Valerie Jarrett know about this? Did Dan Pfeiffer? In the middle of a campaign, you have a sitting president with the power over the intelligence community looking into an opposition candidate in the weeks leading up to an election? Does that seem like something that is appropriate? Were there lies told to gather that FISA approval? Do we know if there was an attempt to get one in June, for example?
CARTER: Well, what we know is that according to our sources, there was really no attempt to get one in June. Now, that's what they said. We don't know that for a fact yet. But what we do know is that in October, it was very interesting. Harry Reid came out and said, you know, there's going to be some explosive...
HANNITY: Hillary Clinton tweeted...
CARTER: ... evidence.
HANNITY: ... tweeted it out a week before the election!
CARTER: Hillary Clinton tweeted that out. So people were getting a whiff of this, and we believe that people were briefed on this.
So this is when everything started. And this is what these intelligence officials are telling us. Look, this has become highly politicized. From October all the way through January, with the removal of General Flynn...
HANNITY: January 20th, yes.
CARTER: ... and from the NSA, you know, this has become so politicized that they're watching this in horror and they wanted to set the record straight.
HANNITY: I have one last question. We did learn from WikiLeaks that the CIA uses stolen malware to give attribution, if you will, to cyber-attacks of other nations. In other words, they leave the fingerprints. They could do the job and leave the fingerprints and say, Oh, it looks like the Russians did it. Is that possible that that happened here?
CARTER: I mean, that's something that we have to investigate. I have no evidence of that. But it is -- but they are capable. They are capable. And so are other intelligence agencies.
HANNITY: Thank you for your great work.
CARTER: Thank you.
HANNITY: We're going to continue to follow this, get these questions answered.
You know, so are there deep state Obama holdover operatives working behind the scenes to try and undermine the Trump administration? Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich weighs in.
And later tonight-
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. PAUL RYAN, R-WIS., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We actually ran on a repeal and replace plan. That's what this is, the repeal and replace plan we ran on. Now I am intent on making sure that we fulfill our promises.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Speaker Ryan is correct, Republicans promised for years they'd repeal and replace ObamaCare. They need to get it right. Why so much infighting? Why wasn't this resolved before?
Also, Michelle Malkin here. She'll join us tonight, as well.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: And welcome back to "Hannity." Now, we've been questioning on this program if there are deep state Obama holdover operatives trying to delegitimize the commander-in-chief. Now, we're not going to stop asking questions.
And joining us now with reaction, author of The New York Times best-seller "Treason," former speaker of the House, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich.
So you know John Solomon. You've known him for years, AP, Washington Times, Sara Carter, you know, legitimate reporter. They're saying and not only was a FISA court warrant approved, now they think a second warrant was approved. In spite of the investigation, zero proof of any collusion between Trump and the Russians.
This has been the media narrative now going on, what, six, seven months at this point?
NEWT GINGRICH, R-FMR. HOUSE SPEAKER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Sure.
HANNITY: What is your response?
GINGRICH: Well, I think, first of all, it's very likely that the deep state, the professional bureaucrats, the people who run the government on a day-to-day basis did do things that were very opposed to Donald Trump. I mean, the fact is that he was overwhelmingly opposed by the civil service.
I think it's also likely that there was -- covering up is probably the wrong word, but that they were willing to be sloppy and to be more aggressive. And the whole thing was done to General Flynn was totally outrageous, violates every civil libertarian in the country, involved the leaking, which is a felony -- the leaking of secret information, which was done in such a way as to hurt an American citizen, even though when you looked at it in detail, it had no meaning. It didn't matter.
By the way, you'll notice that The Washington Post and The New York Times, in their continuing war on the Trump administration, went way out of their way to try to smear and destroy Attorney General Sessions, a very -- again, very similar kind of pattern we're seeing, whether it's in leaking or it is in wiretapping, or it is in a variety of other collusions between the deep state bureaucracy and the deep state media.
HANNITY: Their reporting that not only was a FISA warrant issued, but another warrant was issued. And the FISA warrant was for servers for the Trump -- for the Trump, I guess, monopoly. So this is in the weeks leading up to a campaign and the presidential election. You know, there's no telling what's on those servers. And I know that from my own interactions with people in the campaign, they were using Trump organization email addresses.
GINGRICH: Well, look, I think it's very clear that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have to get deeply involved in this, and it may well be that the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, on behalf of our civil liberties, also have to get involved. There's no question that the Congress has to get to the bottom of this.
And again, I want to emphasize, a number of people have been committing felonies. They have been deliberately leaking secrets in a way which is illegal and which is dangerous to the United States, and it is a real problem.
HANNITY: Well, Obama expanded executive order 12333 to allow the sharing of this very highly, deeply top-secret intelligence signet (sic) communications in the case of General Flynn to be shared with 16 other agencies. He did it on his final two weeks out of the campaign.
How important is Obama's role in this? He made the statement that no -- we had no role in ordering this. But did he know about it? How important is that (INAUDIBLE)
GINGRICH: Well, how can he -- wait. How can he say he had no role in ordering it if it was, in fact, a presidential directive because it affects all 17 agencies?
HANNITY: What he's -- well, that part he did, but he had no role in seeking a FISA warrant. It wasn't ordered from the White House. And my question...
GINGRICH: Well, but -- but let's go back to what he does clearly have a role in. You know, if you read carefully what it says, they didn't just say you can share secrets, they said you can share information...
HANNITY: Intelligence.
GINGRICH: ... that you don't even believe is true.
HANNITY: The dossier.
GINGRICH: So you have all these rumors, all this gossip which goes from NSA to 16 other agencies, one of whom leaks it to The New York Times and The Washington Post. Then it becomes a story. Now, it's a total lie at this point. Then it becomes a story, then other TV channels pick it up and run with it for three straight days.
HANNITY: Do you remember the day that that story about the dossier broke, Buzzfeed and CNN's hysterical, breathless coverage of this as though this was the smoking gun? Well, they also say, Sara Carter and John Solomon -- they also say that they found no evidence even now they had the two warrants, none whatsoever!
GINGRICH: Yes.
HANNITY: Not one smidgen of evidence that backs up the claims by the media that they've been saying.
GINGRICH: And you know, the former director of national intelligence, General Clapper, has said publicly unequivocally that in all the things he looked at and all the reports he saw, there is zero evidence of collusion...
HANNITY: That's correct.
GINGRICH: ... between the Trump campaign and the Russians, which would make you wonder why is this still an issue, except of course, that the Democrats and The New York Times and The Washington Post are desperate to do anything to slow down Donald Trump.
HANNITY: All right, we got to take a break. More with Newt Gingrich right after this. We're going to talk about health care and much more.
And this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYAN: We actually ran on a repeal and replace plan. That's what this is, the repeal and replace plan we ran on. Now I am intent on making sure that we fulfill our promises.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Intramural squabbles existing in Republican ranks, a potential civil war on our hands. We'll ask the former speaker about that.
And also, Michelle Malkin will join us tonight as we continue on this very, very busy news night, and the latest on the explosive WikiLeaks revelations straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWSBREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYAN: I'm prepared to lead our conference to doing what we said we would do in the election. We actually ran on a repeal and replace plan. That's what this is, the repeal and replace plan we ran on. Now I am intent on making sure that we fulfill our promises.
What I want to tell my fellow citizens is the nightmare of ObamaCare is about to end, that we are doing what we said we would do in this campaign, which is repeal and replace this awful law that is crashing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan vowing to fulfill the GOP's promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare. President Trump met earlier this evening with members of the Freedom Caucus to discuss the new health care bill.
As I said last night, they need to hammer out their differences because we cannot have a GOP civil war breaking out in the media. It's only going to hurt their ability to get things done, and that means hurt you, the American people.
We continue now more with Newt Gingrich. The Club for Growth, Heritage Action, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, the Freedom Caucus, some members of the Study Committee, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio are against this bill.
Here's my question. This has been discussed as their primary agenda item, Mr. Speaker, for eight years. They released the bill -- they rolled out a bill yesterday, and there's not consensus. Why didn't they build the consensus, finish the bill in the square that you told me about, how legislation gets made, how the sausage gets made, before they rolled it out? And then have -- maybe something that can never happen. A president with every Republican House member, every Republican senator behind him, this is our answer to ObamaCare. We're all in agreement. We're going to pass it today. Am I naive to think that something like that could have happened rather than the squabbling that's going on on TV the last 24?
GINGRICH: I think that might have been done, but it would be very, very hard. I think there are two key things to remember about where we are. The first is this bill is the beginning of a three or four or five step process. This is not the only bill that is going to come down the road on health care.
HANNITY: But they knew what the criticisms were before within their own ranks.
GINGRICH: Sure. And you can divide the criticisms in a couple ways. One is if you want to pass something very early, you're going to have to pass it under Senate reconciliation rules. That's just a fact.
HANNITY: Right.
GINGRICH: Now, if that's what you're going to do, those rules define narrowly what can be in the bill. So at least half the complaints are about a reality that Paul Ryan at the Mitch McConnell are working with. Second --
HANNITY: And that's legitimate, by the way. That's all true, 100 percent.
GINGRICH: Second, in the Senate, the margin is closer than it looks because it takes 50 votes plus Vice President Pence. That means you can lose to. And you can lose two on the right, you can lose two on the left, you can lose two in the middle over things like, for example, whether or not they're going to have opioid treatments or they're going to drop them which for somebody like Senator Portman who has made an enormous number of speeches on the opioid epidemic really is central. And it's not a right or left issue. It's a practical issue.
So you have all this stuff going on at once. I probably would frankly have been pretty close to what Paul Ryan did. Bring a bill out, go to markups, allow amendments. Then they go from energy and commerce and ways and means to a markup in the budget committee of the combined bill. Then you go to the rules committee. And members of the Freedom Caucus can walk in and say we want to put these amendments in order. And if they can say we're not going to vote for the rule unless we get some amendments.
This is the legislative process. My only point would be, and I think it's fair from a Paul Ryan standpoint to be slightly perplexed. This is not a perfect bill. I want to emphasize, this is the first of five or six reform efforts that are going to come out during the course of the year.
HANNITY: Tom Price last night said that this is going to be rolled out three different ways. So that actually made me feel a little better. But I wish they would've explained it better.
GINGRICH: I think had they started originally, and I agree with this, and I think it's the one criticism than the president should take to heart. If they had started by saying let us give you a context. You're going to get a first bill designed to get through the Senate, not designed to be perfect, designed to get through the Senate so the president can sign it as rapidly as possible. Big a step towards repeal. And guess what, you're not going to get any Democrats. No Democrat is good to vote to repeal this.
HANNITY: Never.
GINGRICH: So that means you have got to carry a narrow burden.
HANNITY: Maybe I would've liked to see a lot of these things result behind the scenes first. Maybe I'm naive.
GINGRICH: Well, no. I just think there is sometimes, and I do think if you look, for example, at the Medicaid reform, it may be the biggest conservative reform since the welfare reform bill of 96. These are not small things.
HANNITY: They've got to remember, they're going to now own this. They better get it right.
GINGRICH: Well, and they better plan on a second bill and they better plan on Tom Price doing a series of regulatory changes. This dance will go on all year. But I want to say one other thing that's really important. Republicans cannot allow the Trump administration to fail in its first big effort. When you're done fighting, you're done complain, you're done amending, virtually every Republican ought to vote yes. We'll have another fight in six weeks and two months. But it's very important that President Trump have a win on this bill.
HANNITY: I agree, big time. Big time, I totally agree with that. Mr. Speaker, always good to see you, thank you.
GINGRICH: Thanks.
HANNITY: All right, we have more reaction to the explosive WikiLeaks allegations, Bill Binney, retired lieutenant colonel Tony Shaffer. And then later, a new report says President Obama is furious with President Trump. All we've learned in recent weeks with all that, shouldn't it be the other way around? Michelle Malkin will weigh in on that on this busy, super busy news night.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: Welcome back to "Hannity." So this week WikiLeaks released a new batch of documents allegedly containing information about tactics the CIA uses as part of its surveillance program. Joining us now with reaction, former intelligence official of the U.S. National Security Agency William Binney, and former senior intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer. Mr. Binney, let me start with you. One of the things, I have a headline here in front of me, "WikiLeaks, CIA uses stolen malware to attribute cyber-attacks to nations like Russia." And what they're really implying here is that they would deliberately mimic the hacking protocols of Russia to obfuscate their own works. Do you believe that's true?
BILL BINNEY, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY OFFICIAL: Yes, sure. I think that that's true, as well as I think a lot of the software that they've gotten to do the penetrations came from NSA, and the other five eyes plus other cooperating countries. And of course they gained additional information once they penetrated into people like the Russians and the Ukrainians.
HANNITY: Is it legal for them to do that at the CIA?
BINNEY: Actually, it's not their charter, but they certainly are doing it and they have been doing it for many decades. It's nothing new for them. They've been using signals intelligence for quite some time.
HANNITY: In other words, we do know what happened in the case of General Flynn, that was a felony, a violation of the Espionage Act, even though he did have in his case a security clearance. Maybe they could have listened but it was certainly illegal to release that.
Colonel Shaffer, what is your take on all of this? And when the intelligence community, and I'm sure it's just a few people, I have great faith in our intelligence services, and what they do is really dangerous and important.
LT. GEN. TONY SHAFFER, RET., FORMER SENIOR INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: Precisely.
HANNITY: But if they're leaking information on Americans and using techniques that could possibly spy through our TVs and not allow full encryptions of our phones, that's troubling to me.
SHAFFER: Part of the deal is all those vulnerabilities, Sean, you just mentioned, the bad guys have, too. This has always been one of my concerns. I've done this sort of thing for a living, about the time Wayne was doing it. My concern was on the inside is these people, our intelligence agencies, have huge technology and huge power. So that power must be used ethically and focused on the adversary only.
What you've seen here, as you pointed out, Sean, it was used against one of our own. Lieutenant General Mike Flynn is a friend of mine. On a personal level, I think it's horrendous. On a legal level, it needs to be prosecuted. So I think we have to understand it's good that we understand these things. It's good we have people who understand the tools. But how you use those tools ethically, legally, and morally is hugely important.
HANNITY: Colonel, if the CIA, in fact WikiLeaks, they have a track record. They've not been wrong in all the years of existence. They've not been proven wrong one at time. And I'm looking at these documents, I guess the most frightening thing if you're in the government as they release less than one percent of the information they say they have. And they're talking about more powerful surveillance techniques than even the NSA without checks and balances. The fact that they built a cyber-attack arsenal that $100 billion came from the Obama years, and that it implies that every single electronic device, they are capable of hacking and spying through, and even turning TVs into listening devices. Do you believe that? Do you think the CIA has that capability? And if they do, if there is no check and balance, doesn't that mean were all potentially subject to living in a police state where the government at will can spy on whoever they want, bribe, blackmail, do whatever they want with that? That's scary.
SHAFFER: That is the danger of having this. And unfortunately, Sean, this is one of the few times I cannot comment on what you're asking me. I used to do this for a living. I will say this. I think some of those things are even more powerful than you know, than you listed. And that's why ethically, legally, and as William said, you have to be very specific about how you use Title 18 as law enforcement, Title 10 as military, Title 50 as intelligence which has use first restrictions. President Obama, I have a feeling, didn't care. He just told people to go out and do things. And this is where, morally, you have to have someone who is at the top willing to do the hard things and says it is my job to restrict people from using those things.
HANNITY: We don't have constitutional protections.
SHAFFER: Precisely. And this is where we were going. Let me say this. I don't know if Bill will agree with me or not. ATP 2829, the so called Russian tool that was used to hack the DNC, Sean, we did it. Not me, but our guys. Former members of NSA, retired intelligence officers use these tools to break in there and get the information out. That's what the Democrats don't want to talk about because it doesn't fit their narrative.
HANNITY: You know that for a fact? You know the Democrats did it -- or that former operatives did it using the malware techniques, that they put the Russian fingerprints on it and make it appear like the Russians. In other words, you're telling me this whole Russian story that the media has been running with for months and months and months, that it was our people that did it and they put the fingerprints of the Russians on it?
SHAFFER: That's right.
HANNITY: You have proof of that?
SHAFFER: I don't have proof of it, but I'm telling you this is what I've heard. And what I'm telling you is if you go back and actually talk to people inside, the evidence is not that the Russians did it. The evidence is a Russian tool was used. What I'm saying is concerned Americans who are fed up with the Clintons doing things I think were the ones who got in there and broke the information out and give it to WikiLeaks. And I've mentioned this to other reporters, by the way. They don't seem to be interested in going and checking this out, because it doesn't --
HANNITY: Talk to John Solomon and Sara Carter. They want to hear this.
Last question. Mr. Binney, you had told me that you say that every phone call, every text, every email of every American is gathered into metadata right now by our government, every single call, text, email. Is that true? You know that?
BINNEY: It's not just the metadata. It's the content also.
HANNITY: And our government is storing every conversation?
BINNEY: And that's why I wrote that up in a sworn affidavit and supported Jewel versus NSA challenging the constitutionality of NSA collecting all this data.
HANNITY: You say executive order 12333 allows that.
BINNEY: Yes, Section 23c.
HANNITY: And that is the same one that Obama altered so 16 other agencies could now share in the information of --
BINNEY: If I could point out a greater danger here, Sean. The point is they know about all these weaknesses and firewalls, operating systems, switches, servers, and so on and how to break into them. And they aren't fixing them. That means that everybody in the world, including all of us here in the U.S., are still sitting here vulnerable to attacks.
HANNITY: You're saying they're doing it as a matter of course, and that's why you left after 32 years at the NSA?
BINNEY: Exactly. And the point is that they come back to us after an attack and say we need more money for cyber-security when in fact they don't fix the problems they already know. And so they're not giving you cyber-security.
HANNITY: This is worse than any spy novel I can think of.
BINNEY: They're swindling us.
HANNITY: And coming up, Wall Street Journal reporting that President Obama is, quote, "furious with President Trump," but shouldn't it really be the other way around? We'll play you many of the nasty comments that Obama has said about Trump and get reaction from a Michelle Malkin next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: Welcome back to "Hannity." So the Wall Street Journal reported today that President Obama is furious at President Trump. Shouldn't it be the other way around? The article also notes that Trump reached out to Obama after his inauguration to thank them for the handwritten note that Obama left and he never returned his call. The unreturned gesture is hardly surprising given the downright nasty things Obama said about Trump during the campaign season. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
THEN-PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: He's insecure enough that he pumps himself out by putting people down. He doesn't care much about the basic values that we try to impart to our kids.
If your closest advisors don't trust you to tweet, how can you trust him with the nuclear codes? You can't do it.
If you accept the support of Klan sympathizers before you are president, you will accept their support after your precedent.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
HANNITY: Joining us now with reaction, the host of "Michelle Malkin Investigates" on CRTV.com, Michelle Malkin. And starting today, by the way, new episodes of her program are available. You know, OK, so he supports the protesters, the snowflakes out there protesting, he said horrible things about on the campaign, doesn't return a phone call. If I'm Trump, I'm like who cares what he thinks at this point?
(LAUGHTER)
MICHELLE MALKIN, HOST, "MICHELLE MALKIN INVESTIGATES": That's how President Trump should feel about this nasty man who will not leave the beltway. But this is a lesson, unfortunately, that too many establishment Republicans have not learned over the years, and that is when Democrats pretend to give you an olive branch, they're not actually making a signal or gesture of working together. What they're going to do is snatch that olive branch back and beat you over the head with it because that's what Democrats do.
HANNITY: Isn't time, really, all these holdovers, there are over 500 people that need to be confirmed by the Senate, and we only got Ben Carson and Rick Perry last week. Isn't it time every Obama holdover needs to be shown the door? Because some of them in there I believe and as evidenced by John Solomon and Sara Carter in my opening segment of the show tonight, there are people in there that are sabotaging the current president because they agree with the old president. Don't they need to all go? Didn't Clinton do that when he became president?
MALKIN: Absolutely he did, and they applied every ideological and partisan litmus test under the sun to do it. Why shouldn't the Trump administration play by the same rules? In fact in many cases there are. It's just going to take a long time. They've got to drain the swamp, and clean house in every crack and crevice of the federal bureaucracy. And of course it's most urgent and exigent in the Justice Department, the Department of Defense. And then you have to work your way all the way down to all of the domestic policy --
HANNITY: John Solomon and Sara Carter, these are respected journalists. Solomon was with the AP for 20 years. And what do you make of what they discovered is that in fact there was a FISA surveillance in the weeks leading up to the election, and reporting now that there might have been a second warrant that was issued, non-FISA. I mean, a sitting president, and he said, well, I didn't order it. Did he know about it? Did his attorney general know about it? Did the people around him know about it? Any information shared with Hillary?
And what was the reason for this? What was the justification? And did anybody think about the political ramifications? Did they see any of the internal political -- remember the political campaign was being run under the same email server. Did anyone think that maybe they shouldn't have access to that?
MALKIN: Yes, right. Well, Solomon and Carter are both incredible journalists. They are doing the job that some of the lapdogs in the beltway media refuse to do under Obama. And of course it's the kind of muckraking that so many of these liberal journalists refuse to do until they woke up when Trump was sworn into office.
And it certainly does lend itself. The more they dig and produce these kinds of scoops, circumstantial evidence of something that I know happened under the last eight years of the administration because I documented it so comprehensively in "Culture of Corruption," and that is that this president, Obama, used every single lever of power in his reach to aggrandize himself and secure a permanent ruling majority for the Democrats. Why wouldn't they use the CIA?
HANNITY: They stomped all over the constitution. Nothing would surprise me. Michelle, congrats on the show, thanks for being with us.
MALKIN: You bet.
HANNITY: When we come back, we need your help, an important "Question of the Day," and some of the nasty messages you people are leaving for me about my hair, my tie, I'm fat.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: All right, time for tonight's "Question of the Day." Is it time for President Obama to start answering questions, come clean about what was going on during the 2016 election? Mr. Obama, what did you know? When did you know? Go to Facebook.com/SeanHannity, @SeanHannity on Twitter, let us know what you think.
All right, time to play some of the messages you left for me on the "Hannity" hotline. Hit me with your best shot, all of you lefties out there. Go ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, I'm Sarah from Florida, and I think Hannity is dead sexy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would like to extend an invitation to -- you can have a chance to beat up a liberal. I understand you don't like liberal very much. We can settle this in the octagon. I am not trained in martial arts. I don't have any training. I'm only 5'9" 160, but I'd like to have a shot, a fair shot, at sweeping the leg and taking you down and making you tap out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Really? No experience at all? I've only been training five years. And as might sensei says, I can really hurt people. But I'm a nice guy. We'll fight another day. Sexy? Oh, my gosh. HDTV is going to kill me. Not true.
For something you want to say, nice or mean, it doesn't matter, call the number on your screen, 877-225-8587. And don't forget to set your DVR. Never miss an episode. That's all the time we have left this evening. As always, thank you for being with us. Back here tomorrow night.
Content and Programming Copyright 2017 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2017 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox