Sen. Lankford: I want to be able to get to 'yes' on tax bill
On 'The Story,' the lawmaker explains why he's not sold on the plan.
This is a rush transcript from "The Story," November 27, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARTHA MACCALLUM, HOST: Here too in New York. Good evening. Thank you, Bret. "The Story" starts now.
Well, it was a bad day for Elizabeth Warren as President Trump sent his own budget director to take over the agency that she created, an agency he claims did a lousy job of protecting consumers, and became an unaccountable arm of the liberal agenda. Warren, not happy.
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SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, D-MASS.: They are in their punching every day, and they are in there everyday making sure that their Republican colleagues in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives are trying to shut down the consumer agency.
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MACCALLUM: And Mick Mulvaney, who ones called her Consumer Protection Agency a sad, sick joke, had this to say as he took over the reins.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You had the opportunity to meet with the president earlier today, what did he tell you about what he wants from you?
MICK MULVANEY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: He wants me to fix it, he wants me to get it back to the point where it can protect people without trampling on capitalism. My opinion of the structure of the CFPB has not changed. I still think it's an awful example of a bureaucracy that has gone wrong when it is almost entirely unaccountable to the people that are supposed to oversee it or supposed to pay for it. By the way, I'm just learning about the powers that I have as an acting director, they would frighten most of you.
It doesn't surprise me, by the way, that this -- to the extent that we're having a succession challenge as launched by Ms. English. It doesn't surprise me that that grows out of an agency that thinks it's not accountable to anybody in the first place. Ms. English is on the Hill meeting with Mr. Schumer and Ms. Warren, and it makes you wonder who she wants to be independent of. Is she want to be independent of everybody or just independent from Donald J. Trump? So, my guess is it is the latter.
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MACCALLUM: Good evening, everybody. I'm Martha MacCallum and "The Story" begins tonight with breaking news out of D.C., where this decisive battle in the swamp draining effort of President Trump played out dramatically today. Chief national correspondent, Ed Henry, live to lay it out for us tonight from the White House. Good evening, Ed.
ED HENRY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Martha, great to see you. Tonight, Mick Mulvaney is in charge just about a block from where I'm standing here at the White House, insisting, at least for now, he has won the power struggle, issuing a 30-day freeze on new hiring of bureaucrats at that agency and the issuing of new regulations that conservatives believe have been stifling economic growth. This was a strange day that started early, about 7:56 a.m. when aides to Mulvaney started tweeting these photos of him hard at work at the desk of the chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and meeting with staffers at the agency to show he was in charge.
Literally, one minute after that first tweet, Leandra English tried to show she was boss sending an agency-wide e-mail at 7:57 to all staff that was signed "acting director." English was the choice of Obama appointee Richard Cordray who abruptly resigned right after Thanksgiving. Mulvaney was not to be deterred; armed not just with legal memos showing that President Trump, not a leftover Obama appointee, has the executive power to install an acting voice, boss. Mulvaney was also armed with doughnuts.
Yes, that shopping bag that said, Dunkin, does catering. He marched back into the agency about 10:00 a.m. and issued a memo telling all staff to do two things, ignore all instructions from English and come get some doughnuts. Here's what all these matters to our viewers: this agency created by then President Obama, who initially installed Elizabeth Warren as the chief before she became a Senator and the office quickly became a flashpoint.
Created by the Dodd-Frank Act after the financial crisis, Democrats insisted they were putting in new safety valves for consumers while Republicans charge regulations on auto lending, for example, actually made it harder for average Americans to get auto loans. Listen.
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SHANNEN COFFIN, CONSERVATIVE LAWYER: Congress doesn't appropriate funds directly like it does for every other agency, so you don't even have real accountability to Congress. So, there are just no checks and balances on the system.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN, D-MD.: The appointment of the OMB director, temporarily as acting director of the CFPB is a naked effort to destroy the independence of the bureau and to neutralize it as a proactive force for consumers in the financial sector.
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HENRY: Now, to the big question I know you want an answer, Martha, how were the doughnuts? This tweet by Mulvaney Spokesman, John Czwartacki, clear evidence the staff like them. A bigger a problem for Mulvaney moving forward is that English is now asking a judge to block him from officially taking over. Mulvaney says, he and the president believe they're on the strong legal ground, but that if the president or a judge tells them to get out he will follow the law, Martha.
MACCALLUM: Ed, thank you so much. So, here now to help explain the lawsuit tonight, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst. So, does the Mulvaney appointment by President Trump, is that on solid ground?
ANDREW NAPOLITANO, FOX NEWS SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST: I'll tell you the ground it's on. We have two conflicting statutes: President Trump relies on a 1998 statute, which says when there's a vacancy at the head of an administrative agency, the president appoints an acting director until he nominates and the Senate confirms a full-time director. But the CFPB, which is this particular agency, which is enacted by Congress in 2010 says when there's a vacancy in the position of director the deputy director becomes a director.
So, you have to statutes that are clashing, which is why the court will decide which one prevails. Normally, when two statutes disagree -- and they're written by the same body, the Congress -- the court decides that the more recent one is the one that would follow. That's the one that backs up Mrs. English, not the one that backs the president because Congress was aware of the old one and decided to leapfrog over it.
S0, the English argument, the Obama argument is this agency was intended to be immune from politics, it was intended to regulate the economy and not even be answerable to Congress because it's not even paid by Congress, its paid by the Federal Reserve. Donald Trump's argument is, wait a minute, in a representative democracy, how can there be some entity in the government that nobody can control? Congress can't control the money that's going to --
MACCALLUM: That raises the question whether or not the consumer financial protection board is constitutional in it of itself.
NAPOLITANO: It does. There's no question that Congress wrote it this way in order to frustrate whoever was going to be President Obama's successor. The question is: is this recognizable under the constitution? That has not yet been ruled on.
MACCALLUM: I mean, Cordray appointed her, his deputy on his way out the door.
NAPOLITANO: Yes.
MACCALLUM: I mean, he, you know, stuck her in that slot in order to allow that statute to hold up -- whether or not that's going to work, we don't know.
NAPOLITANO: Yes. So, this is not forever. The president could nominate a full-time director. He could nominate Mick Mulvaney tomorrow, then it's up to Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate, how quickly they approve that person.
MACCALLUM: All right. So, in terms of where this goes from here, you know, he said basically he would love -- he's going to put a freeze on all of the activity. So, you know, some people watch this and they say, consumer protection, I mean, that sounds like a pretty good thing, so why would we want to get rid of that?
NAPOLITANO: Let me tell you some things that are happening. (INAUDIBLE) there was ordered to turn over $70 million to this agency as some sort of a fine, for some sort of a financial shenanigan. Mick Mulvaney says stop, don't turn any money over to anybody. I'm going to relook at everything Mr. Cordray, who just left after four years there, has done. So, there's a lot of these irons in the fire where a lot of money is moving around, and Mulvaney says to hold off, nothing's happening here that I cannot handle.
MACCALLUM: I mean, I go back to what Mick Mulvaney said. He said, by the way, I'm learning about the powers that I have as an acting director, and they would frighten most of you. In other words, so this, you know, sort of free-flowing, free-form government agency can basically say to accompany, you know what, I just decided you owe us $70 million.
NAPOLITANO: And that money doesn't go to the people that we think you defrauded; it goes then to the federal treasury.
MACCALLUM: And where does it go from there?
NAPOLITANO: However Congress wants to spend it.
MACCALLUM: That's right.
NAPOLITANO: Look, in one respect, I'm glad there's litigation. Because the public needs to know the type of constitutional oddball that this entity is and the powers that it has. We may get a decision tonight. There's a federal judge in Washington, D.C., who are receiving briefs as we speak.
MACCALLUM: We love it! Those federal judges work late.
NAPOLITANO: Yes, they do.
MACCALLUM: Thank you very much, judge. Good to see you tonight. So, here with more: Former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, he is also a Fox News contributor. Governor, great to see you tonight as well. I mean, do we need this agency? That's the question that the Trump administration is nudging at here.
MIKE HUCKABEE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR AND FORMER GOVERNOR OF ARKANSAS: I don't think we do need it. The fact is: this agency has made it more difficult for consumers. Let me give you a precise reason that I say that, and let's be clear, this was not created by people who have run businesses, signed the front of a paycheck, knew what it was like to live in the private sector.
This was done by a bunch of academics like Elizabeth Warren who lied about her ancestry in order to give him a job and keep a job -- that's cultural appropriation, a whole another issue. But here's what happens in the real world: the real world that people in Congress often don't know, if you try to get a consumer loan today because of Dodd-Frank and the extraordinary regulations, it may cost more to process the loan than the bank could ever make in giving the loan and charging interest.
So, one banker told me, he said, we don't make consumer loans anymore, we just stopped them. Now, what kind of loan is that? That the $25,000 loan that helps a family to add a room in the house when their fourth child comes. It's a small business guy who needs it to put inventory on his shelves so he can stay in business. It's the kind of loan that is the bread and butter of America, the bread and butter of real consumers. But the cost of it has made it impossible, and that's why this agency is out of control.
MACCALLUM: Yes. I mean, it was originally designed to make all those big, bad Wall Street banks, you know, pay the money back during the mortgage -- after mortgage crisis, and they did, to the tune of about $18 billion. But here, Mick Mulvaney raised a really good point today, he said you know the Wells Fargo situation? Why -- how did they miss that? They are not protecting, they're not a protective entity where they're stopping things from happening that are bad for consumers. Basically, they did sort of the cleanup after the reporter broke the story on Wells Fargo. So, I mean, should they be called the consumer protection agency at all?
HUCKABEE: Well, they really shouldn't. And you are right, it was the L.A Times who was the one who became the watchdog. All the board did, the consumer board, they just got the money, but it wasn't the consumers who got the money that Wells Fargo coughed up. That's why it's nonsense. The big picture here is that the purpose of anything in government is to make sure there are checks and balances. This has no checks and balances. It's an administrative and regulatory body that's run amok, and I just can't believe that the people in that agency didn't understand that. To quote President Obama, "elections have consequences." Well, this is a consequence of a different president who believes that you shouldn't let government agencies just bully people.
MACCALLUM: I mean, I think this is a great story today because, you know, if it wasn't for this happening today in this sort of shuffle at the top of this agency, I think a lot of Americans would not be aware of the fact that this was created and how sort of autonomous it is and how problematic that is in our system of government, and whether or not it actually is protecting the people that it is supposed to protect. Governor, thank you very much, it's always great to see you, sir. Many thanks.
HUCKABEE: Thank you.
MACCALLUM: So, still to come tonight, was the intel community ordered to cover up classified leaks by Hillary Clinton? The shocking comments that were just made by a former federal watchdog who's now decided to speak out.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of a sudden, I became a shield of the right. I was told by members of Congress, be careful, you are losing your credibility, there are people up to get you.
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MACCALLUM: The story is fascinating. That's coming up. Also, this tonight, Senators Conyers and Franken say they are sorry they are going to head back to work. Nancy Pelosi calls the man accused of working in his underwear and icon. Yes, can you say double standard? That is coming up, folks. And also, here we go again, the GOP senators blocking the White House agenda, is this politics or is this personal? The president says, he will get tax reform past. Karl Rove weighs in right after this, coming up on "The Story."
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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, R-S.C.: We'll get there because failure is not an option when it comes to the Republican Party and cutting taxes. To every Republican senator, the fate of the party is in our hands.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It will be the biggest tax reduction in the history of our country. It will bring jobs, it will bring a lot of income coming into the country, buying products, et cetera. And I think it's going very well.
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MACCALLUM: That was President Trump earlier today, optimistic that the Senate GOP can get enough votes to pass tax reform, but every day seems to bring a new defector. Senator Steve Daines from Montana today becoming the eighth Republican to say that he is not sure that he's going to be able to get to "yes" on this thing. It can only lose two votes in order to get this passed. Ron Johnson, at this point, says he is still a "no." The president met with Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee; they were at the White House this afternoon, and when they came out Chairman Orrin Hatch said this.
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SEN. ORRIN HATCH, R-UTAH, PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE: These are tough times, these are tough issues, they're hard to deal with. I'm known for somebody who can bring both sides together, so we don't want to ignore our Democrat friends as well. I just hope that they will get off their desk and start working with us; they've been just voting and block against everything we try to come up with.
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MACCALLUM: So, there you have it. Here now: Oklahoma Senator, James Lankford. Senator, welcome, great to have you with us tonight.
SEN. JAMES LANKFORD, R-OKLA.: Thank you, good to see you again.
MACCALLUM: I think a lot of people look at this, you know, general legislative process, and say what's going on? I mean, how is it that once again the White House's biggest problem are senators in their own party who won't get on board.
LANKFORD: It's not a matter of just getting on board, it's resolving the final issues and questions. There've been 70 hearings over the past couple of years just in the Senate on this issue of tax reform. Each one of those is built on it as now it gets narrower and narrower and narrower to the final solution. Everyone has one last statement to try to be able to fix -- in favor of resolving. Everyone's looking at a very complicated bill, and saying, OK, what's it going to take to be able to get to "yes"? I don't hear anyone at our conference saying they don't want to do it. Everybody wants to be able to do real, meaningful tax reform, but everybody has a little different opinion and we're trying to be able to work that out all the way to the bitter end.
MACCALLUM: But you're a "yes," right?
LANKFORD: I am still working on some final statements. I absolutely want to be able to get to "yes". I'm trying to work on some areas of backstops just kind of behind the scenes on it, but I can imagine not supporting this. But we're trying to work out all the final details in the end.
MACCALLUM: You know, let's put up the people of the board that are not quite at "yes", as you say. You've got Steve Daines of Montana, you've got Ron Johnson, you've Lisa Murkowski, Senator Collins, Senator McCain, Senator Corker. You are on that list, Flake is also on that list, Jeff Flake -- Senator Jeff Flake. So, what do you think is the, you know, -- you know, when you please some people, you sort of knock some people off the other end of the raft, so what do you think is sort of the main issue that needs to be wired out here?
LANKFORD: Yes. That's the good news on this, there's not one big main issue to save. Everyone is walking away because of this issue. It's everyone trying to look at different aspects of it. Myself, Bob Corker, for instance, are looking at the backstop issue to say if the revenue doesn't come in the way that we plan, what is the backstop to be able to help protect taxpayers in the future and our debt and deficit issue? Ron Johnson and Steve Daines are looking at it saying for the small businesses: how are they being handled, is this fair compared to the corporations, is there a way to be able to fix that? Others are looking at other spots. All those things aren't in competition with each other, they're all a part of trying to get it right at the end. So, again, everyone's trying to get to the final solution to be able to solve this, but there are a lot of details and it is large and this complex.
MACCALLUM: What about the individual mandate? What's the likelihood that that stays in the bill?
LANKFORD: I would certainly hope the individual mandate stays in the bill. I think it will stay there.
MACCALLUM: Good for you, I can actually say.
LANKFORD: I do think taking it out -- that's correct. The individual mandate is an important part of this. It's not only important financial part for the taxpayer, but it's extremely important for those folks that are in the middle class. In Oklahoma, 81 percent of the people that pay the individual mandate fine, make $50,000 or less.
These are individuals that can't afford the insurance anymore, and they certainly can't afford a new fine from the IRS. So, we're trying to be able to help those folks in the middle class not have that additional fine. This doesn't take away the subsidies. I've had folks say those individuals will lose their subsidies, that's not true.
Those subsidies still remain exactly as they are, but we take away the fine punishing those in the middle class that can't afford the extra insurance made exactly the Washington, D.C., way, and they want to be able to buy insurance they can afford rather than what Washington D.C. is compelling them to buy.
MACCALLUM: You know, you just put out the annual waste report, and you claim that there's $437 billion in wasteful, inefficient spending. So, where are the cuts? I mean, you know, this is all -- this tax plan is sort of paid for on the backs of different people rather than asking the government who has all of our tax dollars anyway, to figure out ways that they can cut spending to pay for it.
LANKFORD: So, there are two things that have to happen. We have to be able to reduce spending, we have to be able to deal with government inefficiencies and we've got to be able to fix tax policy. You're right, this doesn't deal with all the spending aspects, this deals with just the tax policy. But there's a lot of bills that need to be done to be able to deal with those spending.
Those come not in just one big bill, but in a lot of small bills. We identified wasteful programs, wasteful grants. We defined areas where the federal government is not doing its job. We call it "100 ways the federal government has dropped the ball."
So, this federal fumble guide that we put out on our Web site, anyone can look at it for free. It's at Lankford.senate.gov, and you get a chance to take a look at it. It's what we talked about over Thanksgiving, quite frankly, at our table, to be able to walk through what is out there and what it really seems and how can we actually fix this. We hope to be able to deal with not only the spending issues but also the tax issue as well. But this week is just the tax issue in the days ahead spending.
MACCALLUM: All right. Senator Lankford, thank you very much, always good to see you.
LANKFORD: You bet. Good to see you as well.
MACCALLUM: So, here with more: Karl Rove, Former Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, and a Fox News Contributor. Karl, good evening. Good to have you here.
KARL ROVE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR AND FORMER DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Good evening.
MACCALLUM: Do you think they're going to get across the finish line with this, and what are your biggest concerns?
ROVE: Yes. I think they will get across the finish line. Some of this is background noise. Some of it is real concerns as people try and get some issues resolved. You pointed it out and Senator Lankford pointed it out.
Steve Daines of Montana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, their concern about the treatment of small business versus corporations. You have the deficit hawks, Lankford, Flake and Corker who are concerned about what's going to happen to our growing deficit? Are we going to match this with some spending restraint?
You have others that are concerned about whether or not the mandate -- Susan Collins' concerned about whether or not to repeal of the individual mandate is included in there. But, look, I sensed that this is a process that is coming together where there are people narrowing their differences, or nobody is saying it's got to be my way or the highway. But people are saying, we listen to my concern, is there something we can do together about it.
MACCALLUM: Yes. And you know, I kind of felt like that right before the health care vote too, and then, we saw what happened. So, I think there are a lot of people who would like to see this happen, who are concerned when they look at this, and they wonder if, you know -- the White House says if we want tax cuts and we want to make it easier for businesses, because we want to generate economic growth. Those are their two main goals that they want to achieve. So, you know, is there a possibility that there are sticklers who refused to get to "yes" that causes thing to --
ROVE: Well, there could be, but this smells different than the vote on health care, because before on health care you didn't have so many people saying, as Lankford did, I'm trying to get there, or people like even Ron Johnson, I'm trying to be a "yes". That means, I've got something I need, I want to try and get it and I'm willing to settle for some, maybe not all.
And look, in this big complex piece of legislation, it's so complex, if you change the dial here, you can compensate for it someplace else. Unlike, you know, we're going to get rid of Obamacare or we're not. You know, your state's going to be better off or it's going to be worse here. You can do some of those dials. I think the biggest threat to the passage of this is the legitimate concerns that people have about what's this going to do to the deficit. And if I could just spend a second on that to show you what I mean.
MACCALLUM: Sure.
ROVE: The CBO estimates that the Senate bill is I think now at 1.4 trillion add to the deficit, the House is 1.5 trillion add to the deficit. Now, that's really not completely accurate because of a thing called current policy. This, in essence, means that hidden in that deficit number are $400 billion of offsets if we just simply let some things expire as they're supposed to expire.
That will reduce their deficit to roughly about a trillion dollars over the next ten years. The federal government is supposed to take in $43 trillion in revenue over the course of that time. So, the question is: can we find, you know, two cents -- two-and-a-quarter-cents in savings out of every dollar of revenue that we're bringing in? And that's the concern that Lankford and others have, do we have a commitment to long-term restraint of spending so that the deficit doesn't really grow by a trillion dollars, or even more.
MACCALLUM: Well, if you got 437 billion in wasteful and inefficient spending as Senator Lankford's report says today, I think you can find $0.02 on the dollar, don't you?
ROVE: Yes, I do. And look, there's another thing in play here. The government does a terrible job of estimating what kind of revenue comes in from creating additional economic growth. In 2003, the Bush administration led an effort to cut the capital gains taxes. The estimate was that it would generate $215 billion in revenue over the next four years. The actual amount was $377 billion because of economic growth, so they were only off by 75 percent and we're likely to see that on this as well. Right now, they estimate 1.9 percent annual economic growth. Every one-tenth of one percent generates $270 billion over ten years. So, if we get this up - - if we get four years of three percent growth --
MACCALLUM: Goldman Sachs says three to four percent.
ROVE: Yes. If we get four years of three percent growth, a trillion dollars. Now, I'm not certain it's going to happen like that but they do a lousy job of estimating revenue coming in. They do a better job of estimating spending going out.
MACCALLUM: Thank you, Karl. Good to see you.
ROVER: You bet. You bet.
MACCALLUM: So, coming up on "The Story" for the first time, new details about Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal as someone involved in the investigation of those emails is now speaking out. Plus, back to work for top Democrats accused of sexual misconduct. Is there a double standard happening here? Charles Hurt and Jessica Tarlov join me next.
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SEN. AL FRANKEN, D-MINN.: I am embarrassed. I feel ashamed.
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FRANKEN: I know there are no magic words that I can say to regain your trust, and I know that's going to take time. I'm ready to start that process, and it starts with going back to work today.
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MACCALLUM: So as more stories swirl about lawmakers who may be accused in the sexual-harassment barrage, Democratic senator Al Franken returned to work today on the hill despite facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment and calls for his resignation. And he isn't the only top Democrat who is still on the job despite all of these allegations. Over the weekend, Congressman John Conyers stepped down from his post as ranking Dem on the powerful judiciary committee, but he says he still wants to stay in office despite the claims of sexual misconduct that have been made against him. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had this defense of the Michigan Democrat.
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REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: Just because someone is accused, was it one accusation, is it two, I think there has to be -- John Conyers is an icon in our country. He has done a great deal to protect women, the violence against women act which the right wing is now quoting me as praising him for his work on that. And he did great work on that.
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MACCALLUM: So you have that, right? And then you also had her saying this.
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PELOSI: We're talking about a child molester. This is -- we're talking about a child molester.
UNINDENTIFIED MALE: Where are you on Senator Franken?
PELOSI: I don't think you can equate Senator Franken with Roy Moore. It's two different things. So let's...
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MACCALLUM: Here's Charles Hurt, political columnist for the Washington Times, and Jessica Tarlov, author of America in the age of Trump, both are Fox News contributors. I mean, you just come to this by mind, I mean, is there a zero tolerance policy or not as Chuck Todd asked Nancy Pelosi, and she did that sort of back spinning answer, Jessica?
JESSICA TARLOV, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: And that she had to correct herself twice. So she had to then walk back which he said to Chuck Todd, which I thought was completely wrongheaded based on the information that we have. He even go to the base level which is that John Conyers used his office money to pay these sexual-harassment settlements, which is taxpayer money at the very base. So we go from icon, then we go to people need to be believed, and then she's actually gone even further tonight, which we we'll talk about things she does believe the women...
MACCALLUM: Let's put that up because Jessica makes a good point. Let's put that up on the screen. This is what Nancy Pelosi is saying just moments ago. This afternoon, I spoke with Melanie Sloan, who worked for Congressman Conyers on the judiciary committee in the mid-'90s. Ms. Sloan told me that she had publicly discussed distressing experiences, as she goes to say, while she was on his staff. I find the behavior Ms. Sloan described unacceptable and disappointing. I believe what Ms. Sloan has told me. So does that mean, Charlie, that she believes that John Conyers has to go?
CHARLIE HURT, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you know, to me one of the most devastating accusations yet have been the accusation from Melanie Sloan. She's a known figure. She's a Washington lawyer, very, very widely respected. This was last week that she came out with her accusations against John Conyers, and went so far as to say that she reached out to Dick Gephardt's office at the time and made clear about these accusations about this abuse and this harassment, and nobody did a single thing about it. And this was however many -- I can't remember how long ago, but this was 15 years ago when these people were talking about what a serious issue this is, and it is a serious issue. But if you have people that look at this through the lens of politics and partisanship it will never get fixed. And you have Al Franken asking what the magic words are. Well, I think the magic words are I'm a Democrat.
MACCALLUM: It looks like it. Let's play this. This is Nancy Pelosi back then around that time, 1998, defending Bill Clinton. Watch this.
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UNINDENTIFIED MALE: Why the silence when there have been these allegations, serious ones, about President Clinton?
UNINDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I'd like to say that I think the women of America are speaking out about what they think about this whole situation, and the women of America are just like other Americans in that they value fairness, they value privacy, and do not want to see a person with uncontrolled power, uncontrolled time, uncontrolled -- unlimited money investigating the president of the United States.
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MACCALLUM: Wow.
TARLOV: Yeah. I mean, this has become a huge issue for Democrats, and we talked about this a couple weeks ago that there were suddenly op-eds coming out saying he should have resigned. And a lot, actually, being pushed forward by my generation, by millennials, who in the '90s weren't really paying close attention. They wouldn't have fallen as in love with bubba as people who wore around voting for him saying how did this slide? You know, how does this go on? And I think that bringing it up now is important. But to Charlie's point, yeah, it does seem like the magic word is I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican, because right now Donald Trump is certainly not saying Roy Moore seems like a guy you want hanging out with their kids, but he saying we don't need another Democrat in the senate, we're going to lose everything. We're barely have control with our majority. I don't know if they're going to be a tax reform across. So that's how he's making the case and for the future of the court. I wish people would stop playing partisan politics, but I would say that Nancy Pelosi did make a good point that what Al Franken is accused of and admitted to is very, very different from what Roy Moore did, which is different from what John Conyers did.
(CROSSTALK)
MACCALLUM: You know, I thought what Nancy Pelosi said about due process is very interesting. I mean, that is the other part of this equation. If she wasn't talking about due process for Roy Moore, but the fact of the matter is that there is no process in this situation. It's sort of like groupthink, you know, and you either get fried or you get to live in the end, Charlie.
HURT: Absolutely. And that is a very important part of all of this. But in the case of Roy Moore, you know, I read that first account and I believed every word of it, and I think he ought to get out of the race, but I'm not an Alabama voter and I don't make that decision. And the good people of Alabama get to make that decision and they'll make that decision on whether they believe the accusations or whether they don't believe the accusations, and that is not a bad way to make that determination. But, you know, going back to the thing about bill Clinton what I think is one of the most interesting aspects of all of this is that because people -- so many of his defenders defended his behavior back then -- and I'm going to what Jessica said about the millennials and the first time that they heard so many of these accusations, to what degree all of that prevented the first woman from being elected president this year or even eight years ago, it's a pretty amazing thing to think about.
TARLOV: And I think it will continue as a problem for women.
MACCALLUM: Thanks you, guys. Thanks for being here tonight. So coming up next, terrorists targeting trains, the new tool that police are using to keep you safe on more than 140,000 miles of rail lines across this country, but can it work? Plus, a new report casts doubts on a key witness on Hillary Clinton's role in the Uranium One deal. That man's attorney joins us with her response to those allegations next.
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MACCALLUM: Some new questions tonight on the confidential FBI informant in the Uranium One case. William Douglas Campbell is said to have intimate knowledge of Hillary Clinton's role in that controversial deal with Russia. But a new report by Yahoo News says, quote, federal officials have serious questions about the credibility of a key witness in congressional investigation of Hillary Clinton's role in the sale of uranium mining company to Russian interest. So the person who knows her story and what he knows probably better than anyone joins me know. Victoria Toensing is the FBI informant attorney. Victoria, good to have you with us tonight. Welcome.
VICTORIA TOENSING, ATTORNEY: It's good to be here. Martha, first of all, I would like to tell the viewers what exactly this Uranium One is all about just so they can have the context. And that is -- as early as 2009-10, the U.S. government was well aware that the Russian uranium industry, the nuclear industry for Russia was corrupt, and how did they know that? Because my client was working undercover and providing them all the information about the bribes and the kickbacks and all the trips. Also, during that time, 2009, 2010, the U.S. government was well aware that Putin wanted to dominate the uranium worldwide, globally, and part of that plan was to buy Uranium One. And how did they know that? Because my client was providing them all the documents...
MACCALLUM: That's what you say he's going to testify to. But I just want to get to this credibility issue and let you address that because the accusation is that in a prior unrelated case, prosecutors dropped William Campbell as a witness because they considered him to be unreliable. Did that happen or not?
TOENSING: No. That reporting from Michael Isikoff is pathetic and na<ve, and what few facts he uses in the story he has wrong. I'm going to give you an example. You just repeated the allegation that he said, oh, the prosecution of the man involved in the Russian bribery, Mikeron was his name, was unrelated to the sale in 2009. No, that's why the sale shouldn't have gone through, because in 2009, Mikeron was taking -- making bribes and making threats. They're intimately related. Not only that, any sophisticated reporter knows full well that the Russian nuclear industry is monolithic, all the companies, even if they have different names, all report to Putin. Michael Isikoff has not read one document...
MACCALLUM: And I know that you say this, but this is a very document-based case.
(CROSSTALK)
MACCALLUM: Let me ask you something else, because when I'm interested in is, so while your client was undercover working on trying to figure out whether or not there was undue influence from Russia, and whether or not they were actually winning anybody over in the Obama administration, namely Hillary Clinton, what was the awareness level of the Obama administration, and why weren't they told all of this supposedly explosive information, and why didn't they derail this purchase if all of that was true?
TOENSING: It's the question that I'm asking, and reporters like John Solomon and Sarah Carter are asking. My client was told by the FBI that high officials at the FBI were being told about it. I don't know what that means Bob Mueller, but if it did, Bob Mueller, I assume, would have reported that to Eric Holder, who was the attorney general and who sat on the body that made the decision to sell the Uranium One. My client was told that President Obama was being briefed on it, and that we can find that out because congress can get the presidential daily briefings. But I want to add one more thing, the FBI gave my client a check for over $50,000 in 2016. That's two years after he was so-called unreliable. And Michael Isikoff, he should have known that before he did the reporting period. He's regurgitating conclusions that are put out there by Clinton supporters.
MACCALLUM: Before I go, I mean, do you think it was because the Obama administration decided that Russia was so yesterday and there really wasn't anything to worry about, so any concerns that were raised were just not that important, and that they weren't really a force to be reckoned with?
TOENSING: I think that they were into their recess. I remember, 2009, 2010, the big recess and Obama thought that his charms were going to woo the Russians and everybody would be hunky-dory, and it didn't work out that way.
MACCALLUM: Hillary Clinton certainly doesn't feel that way now. All right. Victoria, thank you very much. Good to talk to you tonight. So a story that dominated the 2016 race and raised serious questions about the Democratic nominee and national security secrets, now the lid is being blown off the Hillary Clinton email scandal. You have not heard everything there is to know about this because one of the men who was at the heart of that investigation has now broken his silence to Fox News. What did Inspector General Charles McCullough find out, and why was he on the list of people who was first to be fired if Hillary Clinton won the presidency? Tony Shaffer on that next.
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MACCALLUM: Developing tonight, the man who knew all about the Hillary Clinton email scandal breaks his silence tonight on Tucker Carlson in a Fox News exclusive. So what was really in those handful of highly classified emails that we heard so much about? Did she put our national security at risk, and was the intelligence community then ordered to cover that up? Those are the questions. Former Inspector General Charles McCullough worked directly under James Clapper, and he is now breaking his silence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNINDENTIFIED MALE: All of a sudden I became a shill of the right. I was told by members of congress be careful, you're losing your credibility. There're people out to get you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACCALLUM: Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer is a CIA trained intel operative and senior fellow with the London Center for policy research. Tony, good to have you with us tonight.
TONY SHAFFER, FORMER CIA TRAINED OPERATIVE: Thank you for having me.
MACCALLUM: So what exactly did this inspector general know?
SHAFFER: Well, he was the guy, he was the lead investigator who had to go through and examine every single email that was found on her server, especially those which have classified, or in some cases -- I re-watched his testimony just to remind me of what he said. Some emails that were beyond top secret, even congress couldn't see. And Martha, for his work, for his 26 years working with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all this work, he was trying to be the fair arbiter of telling the truth. And what happened, Martha, was simply this. He told the truth during a time of political upheaval for the opposition, that being Jim Clapper, John Brennan, and all them, were coordinating with members of congress like Dianne Feinstein and the Hillary Clinton campaign. So what he found himself doing is trying to be an honest man, confronted with collusion behind -- of all the Democrats who would come to the conclusion there is no classified information when, Martha, he found detailed residual hard-core classified information on Hillary Clinton server.
MACCALLUM: All right. So Catherine Herridge did this interview and it's going to air exclusively tonight on Tucker Carlson. You know, so she brings this information, he's asked to do this investigation, he find these, you know, more than classified documents, he brings them to James Clapper and says here's what we've got. What was James Clapper reason for shutting him up.
SHAFFER: Well, my opinion of Jim Clapper has been well-documented on this network. I will just say that apparently by his unwillingness to accept on face value his conclusions, which, by the way, were to recommend Hillary Clinton for criminal charges and do a damage assessment, Jim Clapper did two things the opposite. He did not protect Mr. McCullough. That was his job. That's your job as the leader. You protect the men who bring to the information. Secondly, to this day there's never been a damage assessment. Now keep in mind, Martha, it's required by law any time you have a compromise with classified information to do a full-blown damage assessment. I and others are calling for hearings on this to find out why on earth we haven't done what was required by law based on what Mr. McCullough found in Hillary Clinton's email.
MACCALLUM: When they say that the James Comey investigation constituted that damage assessment?
SHAFFER: No, not at all. Completely separate. That was a criminal investigation which I and others argue was not completely honest. This has to be done by intelligence professionals examining every email based on the likely compromise of that information. What would be the damage? Comey did none of that. And so, this is clearly what I think needs to be done. It doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican, we need to know what information was lost, period.
MACCALLUM: So Chuck McCullough said if she won he was going to be fired, how does he know that?
SHAFFER: This came up in the Podesta emails, Martha. There's actually evidence of Podesta, John Podesta, the campaign manager of Hillary Clinton campaign coordinating with Diane Feinstein, talking about Mr. McCullough, and what was to become of him. And look, it's inappropriate to even think about using the government for purposes of retaliation, but that's exactly what Hillary Clinton and her ilk were planning to do.
MACCALLUM: Tony Shaffer, thank you so much.
SHAFFER: Thanks, Martha.
MACCALLUM: Coming up next, time for something completely different. Prince Harry officially off the market, ladies. He met the American actress and she will be his bride.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRINCE HARRY: It happened a few weeks ago. Early this month here at our cottage, just standard typical night for us.
MEGHAN MARKLE, ENGAGED TO PRINCE HARRY: A cozy night. What were we doing? Just roasting chicken?
(INAUDIBLE)
MARKLE: Enjoying roasted chicken. It was just an amazing surprise. It was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee.
PRINCE HARRY: Of course.
UNINDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's an instant yes from you?
MARKLE: Yes. As a matter of fact, I could barely let you finish proposing. It's like can I say yes now.
PRINCE HARRY: She wouldn't let me finish. And then there was hugs, I had the ring in my finger, and I'm like can I give you the ring? She was like, oh, yes, the ring. It was a really nice moment. It was just the two of us. I think I manage to catch her by surprise as well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACCALLUM: So that's from Price Williams marry Kate, there were buttons in London that said you can still marry Harry, but that is no longer true. So Prince Harry his fiance Meghan Markle made it official, and formerly announce, as you just saw there. Harry designed the ring which apparently has two smaller diamonds that belonged to his mother Princess Diana. Markle will be the first American to marry a British royal since 1936, when Wallis Simpson married Prince Edward the 7th to then advocate because she was a twice divorced American. But everybody apparently on board from the queen on down. The couple met through a mutual friend in the summer of 2016. Harry and Meghan, a spring Royal wedding is planned. That's nice, right? A nice note to end the evening on.
That's "The Story" from here. We'll be back tomorrow night at 7:00 here in New York. Tucker Carlson is up next. Have a great night, everybody.
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