Ingraham: Prosecutors, politics and personal ambition
As a former criminal defense attorney, I saw my share of individuals and companies caught in the crosshairs of government investigators who desperately wanted a trophy on the wall.
This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," June 14, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: This is important, we're going to get to the bottom of it and there's going to be a huge follow-up when the FBI rank and file talk. Let not your heart be troubled, there she is Laura Ingraham. You wanted to be in Singapore, just admit it.
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I understand that the Singapore government, they're going to bring back caning, they cane people over there. If you don't get out of the country sometime soon they're going to, they're like, "When is Hannity ever going to leave? He's going to-". Anyway your family wants you home Hannity so get back home safe. Fantastic show with Rudy tonight, loved it.
HANNITY: They're trying to get rid of me. Only 22 hours, that's it. I'll be on a plane watching Braveheart over and over and over again.
INGRAHAM: Yeah and patent. Braveheart and patent okay, get it right.
HANNITY: Freedom up.
INGRAHAM: Exactly, thank you so much, all right. Good evening from Washington, I'm Laura Ingraham, this is 'The Ingraham Angle.' Inspector general's bomb shell report on the FBI and DOJ, rocking the nation's capital, as a result, the IG has referred five, count them, five FBI employees for investigation. Now we have full analysis and reaction tonight from every Angle including the first remarks from the House in Del Chair Devin Nunes. Here are the highlights to bring you up to speed really quickly.
The report from the DOJ Inspector General Mike Horowitz on the Hillary Clinton email investigation found that former FBI Director Jim Comey did not follow the bureau's procedures. Comey's actions damaged the FBI's image if impartiality, amazingly, Comey still refuses, though, to admit that he was wrong. He wrote, magically he wrote it so fast in today's New York Times, "Nothing in the inspector general's report makes me think we did the wrong thing".
Now remember it was that very insubordination by Comey that Trump cited when he fired the FBI Director in 2017 and now the DOJ's inspector general agrees. Now, maybe the most shocking revelation was the vow to stop Trump from becoming President and an exchange between FBI loved birds Peter Stzrok and Lisa Page, Page texted, "He's not ever going to become president right, right?" and he replied, "No, no, he's not, we'll stop it".
Remember how highly placed these two were in all of this. Strzok was the FBI's lead investigator in the Clinton email probe and a top investigator sliding seamlessly in to the special counsel's Russia investigation, busy boy. Page was a senior FBI lawyer who also was on the Mueller team, so it's good gigs. Remember it is President Trump who the left said was damaging our institutions, him not the rest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump will stop at nothing to discredit the institution that are meant to keep leaders honest.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The level of lying in this administration has already greatly exceeded that which was done in the Nixon administration and I think it's sort of silly to compare Nixon and Trump, but this is extraordinarily corrosive and damaging our system.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those people are weirdly non-political, they're doing their job, they believe in their job but they're not super political people.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It sows distrust in our institutions and I think it's irresponsible and maybe he needs a history lesson.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Okay here's a history lesson for you. It's now been revealed that the very people who running those institutions did the most damage to them. Despite Stzrok and Page's toxic texts, the IG Report said their bias did not directly affect their actions which is fairly astounding, shocking finding really, when you take into account all that we've learned. Not let's review today's report with our top notch panel of experts, Sol Wisenberg with the White Water deputy counsel who interviewed, remember, President Clinton, retired FBI special agent Bobby and John Solomon, investigative reporter for 'The Hill.' All right I want to get to so much with all of you, John Solomon, of all the things we learned in this report, to you, what is the most shocking?
JOHN SOLOMON, THE HILL INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: I don't think anything's shocking, we've been reporting this for months, right?
INGRAHAM: Thanks. That's a great line, that's a great lead into the segment.
SOLOMON: There is a really consequential thing about this report, the president is under investigation for obstruction for firing James Comey. This report makes that he wasn't fired for stopping the Russian case. He was fired because he was incompetent, he violated the justice department rules. If you're the president's lawyer you have a get out of jail card with Bob Mueller with this report. It makes clear he should have been fired for insubordination.
INGRAHAM: In May 2017, I want Sol to react to this, Mueller was appointed special counsel and the next day Strzok and Page exchange texts and the discussion is whether Strzok should join the special counsel's investigation and Strzok wrote, "For me and this case, I personally have a sense of unfinished business. I unleashed it with the midyear investigation, MYE, now I need to fix it and finish it". So when Solomon says he's not shocked by anything in this, sorry John, that is a shocking revelation. He wants to finish it, big talk from such a little man. Sol
SOL WISENBERG, FROMER DEPUTY INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: Well it's shocking, something can be shocking but not surprising. And he shouldn't, as I've said before, even if we didn't know any of this stuff, he had no business transferring over to the Russiagate investigation, or whatever you want to call it. But I think the, I look at the OIG Report, and I think that they do say that Strzok is biased and left a big cloud over the organization. What they said is we can't say other people made decisions too and we can't say that his bias affected them. But you look at one thing that is stunning in this report and is very ironic, the OIG cannot explain, they said there's no rational explanation why after they found over 300,000 Clinton emails on the Wiener laptop in late September, the FBI did nothing for a month. I say that it's ironic because it's pretty clear there's a real possibility they did nothing because they thought it would hurt Mrs. Clinton during the election. But by waiting so long, when they were finally pressured by the Southern District of New York and decided they had to act, Director Comey said, "Well I had to make my statement to Congress because I didn't think we'd finish analyzing the emails before the election". If he had done his job, if they had all done their jobs in late September when they learned about the Clinton emails on the Wiener laptop, they would have been finished and he wouldn't have made that incredibly damaging announcement. And I think the reason that they just stood down is because they didn't want to hurt Mrs Clinton, I see no other rational explanation for that and neither does Mr Horowitz. He doesn't say we had any proof of it, he just says we can't understand it. It's really amazing.
INGRAHAM: Yeah, we can't explain it. On page 294 of the report Bobby, it kind of jumps out of the page at you. It's titled, `Hillary Clinton and Foundation crime against children', and it's referencing all the emails that were on this Wiener laptop and there was an effort to, I guess sequester, certain emails away from the probe. You can see Coleman's notes containing the following entry, "Anthony Wiener texting 15-year-old sexually explicit, initial analysis of laptop, thousands of emails" et cetera. But they had a conversation about which emails would be allowed to be looked at in this case and which would be set aside, and that also raises a lot of questions. Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton exchanged thousands of emails, apparently, that I don't think were looked at in this investigation at all. Bobby your reaction to where we are here.
BOBBY CHACOON, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Yeah I think that that specific question, I think, has to do with a search warrant. So the office that actually got the search warrant on that laptop, it was for that sexual crimes case against Antony Wiener, and that had specific requirements to the warrant so you can only look for certain things, so they were looking for emails of that type. When it was transferred down to Washington for the investigation, they were looking for different things, that's why the call went from New York to Washington too weeks later saying, "Hey, did you guys get your warrant? You need to get a warrant for the stuff you need to look for on that laptop". And to Sol's point, it's my opinion, this is my opinion, that they were sitting on that laptop and they thought they could sit on that laptop till after the election. But when New York called down and said, "What are you doing with this, why haven't you gotten a warrant yet for your stuff?" that panicked them. They then went and told Comey, I don't think Comey knew, because he claims not to have known but there's no reason why he didn't know. He didn't go to McCabe and said, "Why wait two weeks before you brought this to me?" It's beyond the pale, it's not believable.
WISENBERG: He knew.
INGRAHAM: Oh come on. Yeah I remember Obama supposedly didn't know anything either though guys. Solomon I got to get your weigh in on this, remember back in 2015 when the Hillary private server, classified information thing blew up, the President was asked a question by Bill Clam. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL PLANTE, CBS CORRESPONDENT: Mr. President when did you first learn that Hillary Clinton used an email system outside the US government for official business while she was secretary of state?
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: At the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: That was a lie, that was lie, page 425. We want to be really specific on the show tonight so people understand that we're actually going through this report. There's a lot of headline readers are going to say, "Oh there's nothing in this report", there's a lot in this report, it's fascinating. I'll just read it off the screen, "FBI analysts and Prosecutor 2 told us that former President Barack Obama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account". One of 13 people, he had a pseudonym like a lot of Presidents do, with his official email, but he lied about. Why did he lie about it, why didn't he say, "You know something I think I might have"
SOLOMON: There's no doubt. It's a great question. We don't know the answer and someone should ask President Obama. There's a lot of thing s about the Clinton email case that go back to the idea she was treated differently and there are still unprosecuted crimes still under the statue of limitations that this FBI and this Justice Department could potentially look at, and one of them is destruction of the server. How could it be that the Clinton team instructed someone or caused someone to destroy emails that were under subpoena by Congress and no one's been charged? They get immunity, they move on. I want to agree with one of the things that Sol said that was really important today, he talked about the difference in how they handled this in October, Strzok was the guy that made the decision, we're going to prioritize Trump over reopening Hillary Clinton. That says that in the report, he made a conscious decision to prioritize Trump as the man that was about to defeat Trump.
INGRAHAM: And let's not forget what the IG did say is, they cannot rule out bias in the decision to prioritize Russia and Trump over Hillary, could not rule it out. He soft peddled a lot here. I got to say, Horowitz, everybody's like that Horowitz is great, but he seems to soft peddle a lot though. I know you can only conclude what the document says, I get that, but he really put yourself into a pretzel to come across as light with some of these guys as he did. I want to read something, that Sol I know you are very interested in, about Paul Cambetta, who was the individual who worked for Hillary Clinton involving the deletion of emails and so forth. This is page 147 of the report, don't we all feel like we're back in law school here Sol? 147, get your highlighters out. Guys I'm sorry we have so many pages, 103, sorry here it is, "Cambetta stated that only he and one other administrator had the ability to delete a mailbox from the server when the agent showed him documentation indicating that an administrator had manually deleted back up files and used BleachBit on March 31st, 2015. He stated he did not recall, in addition, he stated that he could not recall the content of the March 25th, 2015 with Kendall and Mills. In sum, Cambetta took responsibility for the deletions without implicating Clinton or her attorneys". Sol
WISENBERG: Well just think you look at this, this is just absolutely sickening how they handled this person Cambetta. First of all, in their opinion, he had lied to them twice in regular interviews and he then declined to answer invoking the Fifth Amendment. But the agents thought that he had lied and they thought they had a decent chance, I thought they had enough, to do an indictment. Now if this had been Bob Mueller, think of what he did to Papadopoulos, if this had been Bob Mueller or any other aggressive counsel, they would have indicted him and put the fear of God in him, and then tried to flip him. Here, he lies to them twice, they give him immunity and he comes in and finally admits that he obstructed justice, which is what they suspected, by erasing items that were under subpoena or under an order to preserve them, but after admitting that he says, "You know what, that crucial conversation I had about these deletions on March 25th with David Kendall and Michelle Mills, I can't remember anything about that". Now, this to me, I know everybody's down on special counsels, but this to me is why there should have been a special counsel in this investigation. Because the special counsel who comes in and does a serious investigation, is a prominent person who's not intimidated by Mrs. Clinton, or anybody else or David Kendall, and puts the fear of God into people and that simply wasn't done here. In addition to all of that, the decision at the end, they had already given up, but the decision at the end to let Cheryl Mills and Miss Samuelson just sit in on the investigation of Mrs Clinton and the excuses for why they didn't issue a grand jury subpoena are just absolutely appalling to me. Again, this is just not the way Bob Mueller would have done it.
INGRAHAM: So Bob I got to ask you. We also learned a couple of other things, we also learned that Jim Comey himself used a Gmail account for his official business so it's like contagious here. So he uses an unsecure email account to do FBI business, number one. Number two, we learn that FBI agents routinely got little perks and benefits from journalists when they had no business talking to journalists, I guess they got tickets to things, dinners and the like. What about that? They get treated to drinks, meals after work and golf outings? What is that? And by the way, some of them were attorneys, they were attorneys.
CHACOON: Yeah it's hard to understand what was going on there. The rank and file, out in the field officers often rolls its eyes at a lot of things that FBI does at its headquarters and I'm sure that's happening here today and will happen tomorrow, I mean, we often keep our distance from FBI headquarters. It's unbelievable, now, to hear this stuff coming out. First of all, these guys never should have been running an investigation. These investigations should have been run out of the Washington field office by experienced agents who do this day and day out. These are FBI Managers who are not investigators, they left the world years ago to get into the management chain and work their way up. So these are not seasoned investigators, no matter what they want to call themselves, this needed to be done out of a field office, FBI headquarters, provides oversight but they shouldn't be the one making investigative decisions and because as you get higher in any bureaucracy, you become more politically sensitive. This was being done by politically sensitive people. Now to Sol's point, I think that there is a stark difference between these two investigations, the Clinton investigation and the Russian investigation. And since we have the same basic investigative team staring out both, we need to know why there was difference, well now we know. Now we know the biases that were brought to the table. Now we know that Strzok, he wanted to reprioritize the Russian investigation over the Clinton email investigation. They were wholly done differently, I still want to know why a grand jury was never seated for the Clinton email investigation, it was not a very aggressive investigation, in my opinion. You have to seat a grand jury, you have to issue grand jury subpoenas, you have to put people under oath before grand jury if you want to do a serious and aggresive investigation.
WISENBERG: There were some subpoenas, just to make it clear. There were some grand jury subpoenas but no witnesses were ever forced to come to the grand jury.
INGRAHAM: And people were given immunity, he should have never been given immunity. At one point they were shocked that, I think it was Cheryl Mills, who was in a meeting when they discussing whether to subpoena Hillary Clinton. What is Cheryl Mills, a close associate of Hillary Clinton, doing in an FBI conversation about whether a subpoena?
CHACOON: A potential witness in the same case.
INGRAHAM: This is like, Sol you learn this, right, in ethics class in law school, right, continuing legal education, do we actually have to do that, I guess, for the FBI? This is insanity, complete craziness. Anyway great panel, great panel to all of you, thank you very much for your insights. And I want you to stay right there for an important reaction to the IG Report you're not going to see anywhere else. My exclusive interview with the House Intel Chair Devin Nunes, just moments away.
INGRAHAM: Continuing coverage of the IG Report out today, well despite some explosive revelations, some law makers are still suggesting that parts may have been redacted. Joining us now to give exclusive reaction is House Intel Chair Devin Nunes. Congressman, this is what we've all been waiting for on the Hillary email matter. Your initial reaction.
DEVIN NUNES, HOUSE INTEL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: The first thing I could think of is, there is information that we got today at 11 o'clock/12 o'clock that Chairman Gowdy had to call and tell me what it was, text messages that we had been asking for since late last year. Now these are text messages that clearly were pertinent to our investigation and to Pfizer abuse and to the Russian investigation, whether or not there was collusion. There are emails or text messages somebody held from us. So every day that goes by, there is a new example obstruction of a congressional investigation.
INGRAHM: So I want to read to you an exchange between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the star-cross lovers. She basically said, "Donald Trump isn't going to get elected right, right?" and he answers basically don't worry, "No, no, no, no we'll stop it" What does that tell you? The lead investigator, the lead investigator.
NUNES: Well he was the lead investigator in the Clinton email case. He's the lead investigator that starts off the counter intelligence investigation using our intelligence agencies to go after and target the Trump campaign, this is the gut who leads that off. But worse than all that, worse than all that, I just want to repeat what I said in opening, why wasn't that given to Congress? Why did I find out about that today at noon? I mean this is a classic case of obstruction, but then the question is, who's going to go investigate these guys? We're going to come out and be very transparent to the American people. We're ultimately going to get all the documents that we want and ultimately this is all going to spill out and people are going to ask, "Well what are you going to do? Who's going to get busted? Who's going to go to jail?"
INGRAHAM: So Lisa Page's text was released before but the Strzok, "Don't worry, we'll stop it, no, no, no we'll stop it", that came today.
NUNES: How could that have possibly been redacted? And that's the problem, thy keep blocking things out, across the board, not giving us documents that at the end of the day always end up being pertinent to our investigation.
INGRAHAM: The IG the following in part of the report, "Under these circumstances we did not have confidence in Strzok's decision to prioritize the Russian investigation over the following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Wiener laptop was free from bias". So the IG cannot confidently state that that decision was not free from bias. But they are all dining out, on the left, that there was no political bias on the part of Comey that was found. So they're trying to really downplay it.
NUNES: Yeah, let me tell you what we really know about the time. So we actually had, I've never actually said this before because we had whistle blowers and we couldn't really use the information, but now that it's in the IG Report, we can. We had whistle blowers that came to us in late 2016 who talked to us about this laptop sitting up in New York that had additional emails on it. The House Intelligence Committee, we had that but we couldn't do anything with it.
INGRAHAM: When was that again?
NUNES: In 2016.
INGRAHAM: Do you know when exactly?
NUNES: I think it was late September.
INGRAHAM: Okay so ultimately, they didn't move on this until late October?
NUNES: So good FBI agents brought this to our attention, but what could we do with it?
INGRAHAM: Well there's another exchange I want to bring to your attention.
NUNES: Because you know why? As I said it had all been classified, and so this is the game that Comey and company had been playing as they hide behind this top secret, classification.
INGRAHAM: Well they all though that Hillary was going to win and rocking the boat was tough. He made a decision to go after that laptop because he thought, "If somebody finds out, they'd think the whole election was illegitimate", and then they quickly dispensed it as, "there's nothing here to worry about".
NUNES: That's true, but what also is true is the same people in charge today still believe they can run the clock out and they're trying to run the clock out for the rest of this Congress so we can't finish our investigations.
INGRAHAM: Are there still people in the FBI today who believe they operate by a different set of rules?
NUNES: At the top. At the top I think that is still true and we heard some great words today from Christopher Wray, the new Director and I got to tell you it's a little bit frustrating because we've had these very same conversations with him, many months ago, where we said look, you're not responsible for any of this. You need to clean this up and we'll support you in cleaning this up. But yet, here it is today we get this text message at noon today, one this absolutely pertinent to our investigation. Now maybe they have a good excuse for it, but the problem with it is, if they didn't give it to us it's a problem, but if they didn't know about it's an even bigger problem because who was obstructing the investigation?
INGRAHAM: All right there are some other things that we need to get to. There's another exchange, FBI attorney sent, number two, they don't identify who this is and I think it's important to know who this is, for some reason we can't get the person's name. "FBI Attorney number two sent an instant message to FBI attorney number one commenting on the amount of money the subject of an FBI investigation had been paid while working on the Trump campaign". Someone they were looking at, how much they get paid. FBI attorney one says, "Is it making you rethink you commitment to the Trump administration?" FBI attorney number two says, "Hell no, viva la resistance".
NUNES: Yeah that's awful, that's awful.
INGRAHAM: I mean the resistance to Trump winning, apparently, for all we know, still be working at the FBI. They're blowing this off on other networks saying this isn't important?
NUNES: Well now there's five, I think there's five now. The IG Report can't get through it all. But there's five people have been kicked off the campaign, right? So if there's five people who have been kicked off the campaign, I mean off the Mueller team, how is it possible, if you look at the rest of the people that were there, they were all Clinton donors. So I don't know how this is going to end up fairly. I don't know where this going.
INGRAHAM: Should we learn the names of these attorney who are sending these messages? Or are part of the resistance?
NUNES: I don't know why, unless they're an undercover agent.
INGRAHAM: An attorney, they're identified as attorneys.
NUNES: It should not be a classified name, no. Unless they are working under cover, no. This should not be classified, this is the stuff that always happens--
INGRAHAM: So now I know how you feel because I feel this is happening I the whole country now. There was another issue involving the FBI employees at every level of the organisation. This is from the report, "With no official reason to be in contact with the media, who are nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. The large number of FBI employees who were in contact with the journalists during this time period impacted our ability to identify the sources of leaks". We also found that they were getting benefits from the journalists, getting perks, getting tickets, getting meals.
NUNES: They were leaking like crazy but the problem with it is, is that the IG Report discovered that this happened a couple of years ago. But don't forget the leak that just occurred last week where at midnight the department of justice sends out this that Devin Nunes and Paul Ryan had a chance to read documents and they didn't read them. Remember that? That was a leak in the middle of the night, a midnight kind of press release so that we would wake up in the morning and have to answer all this new narrative that they are creating that Republicans asked for documents and don't read them.
This is what we are dealing with. So it's not as if the leaks have actually stopped. Now they are just doing it, it's the FBI people that are leaking. Now it's just at the top level the Department of Justice that's leaking.
INGRAHAM: There was a few people in the media today, more than a few, downplaying all of this. I want to play for you a little short montage. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I expected a sledgehammer. We just got the same kind of hammer you use to nail painting on the wall. I was surprised at how mild it was.
JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: If you look at this assault on the FBI that has taken place over the last year-and-a-half, that has been the clarion call of some of the opposition saying that these are crooks. They are corrupt. They tried to throw an election. This report does not say that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Congressman.
NUNES: If you look at the one gentleman on there, that's the guy that it is one of Comey's buddies. He was working at the FBI. A lot of these agents, the other networks have just hired all of these former FBI and DOJ Clinton people and Obama people, and that's just what this is.
INGRAHAM: Josh Campbell, a buddy of Comey's, so nothing there to see. This is all good. Congressman, you still have a lot more to get to with the Russia investigation, and --
NUNES: We're almost there. We're almost there. But there's a reason why they've been hiding these documents for two months. And it's probably very similar to what we found in the I.G. report.
INGRAHAM: Thank you so much, appreciate you coming into night.
NUNES: Anytime, thank you.
INGRAHAM: I have my own take on runaway prosecutors at the highest levels of government. You do not want to miss tonight's Angle before Roger Stone and Dinesh D'Souza react. That's coming up in just a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Prosecutors, politics, and personal ambition, that's the focus of tonight's Angle.
As a former criminal defense attorney, I saw my share of individuals and companies caught in the crosshairs of government investigators who desperately wanted a trophy on the wall. We know the scenes. A CEO arrested and cuffed at his or her office for all the employees to see for maximum humiliation, a prosecutor holding a press conference claiming the evidence will show that some high profile person is guilty of myriad crimes, meaning jail for the rest of his adult life. It's all high drama. It's all like an episode of "Law & Order."
Now of course we need prosecutors to help lock up the bad guys, whether they are white-collar criminals or violent offenders. And when they are operating professionally, I'm talking about prosecutors, and in good faith, they should be recognized for the public service that they provide.
But long before today's I.G. report was released, come on, most of us knew the FBI's handling of the Clinton email and Russia probes are textbook examples of how cases should not be handled. Of course, the usual suspects spent most of the day downplaying the findings of the I.G., because the I.G. found no political bias. Oh, it is just run-of-the-mill insubordination here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: We just got the same kind of hammer you use to nail in a painting on the wall.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Hillary case was properly decided on the law, and that's headline number one. Number two, no indication or evidence that political biases.
REP. NANCY PELOSI, D—CALIF., HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: It's deeply disturbing the Republicans remain obsessed with undermining our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: OK, nice try, Nancy. But the I.G.'s findings show the opposite. As we discussed earlier, the evidence shows that FBI director Jim Comey operated according to his own set of rules in the Clinton email investigation. Quote, "Comey admitted that he concealed his intentions from the DOJ until the morning of his press conference on July 5 and instructed his staff to do the same. We found that it was extraordinary and insubordinate for Comey to do so. We acknowledge that Comey faced difficult choices in late October 2016. However, we found it extraordinary that Comey assessed that it was best that the FBI director not speak directly with the attorney general and the deputy attorney general."
Like so many people in this town, he thought, Jim Comey, that his title gave him a license to ignore basic prosecutorial protocol. And no wonder he wasn't all that keen on pursuing Hillary's use of an unsecured server given the fact that we found out today that he himself was using a personal Gmail account to conduct government business. Even Hillary referenced that in a tweet today.
And if you, like I, thought Comey came off as imperious in television interviews for that stupid book of his, check out this tweet. He said today in a tweet "I respect the DOJ I.G. office which is why I urged them to do this review. The conclusions are reasonable even though I disagree with some. People of good faith can see an unprecedented situation differently. I pray no director faces it again. Thanks to I.G.'s people for hard work."
He lost me at "people of good faith." And notice by the way how he makes himself out to be the victim here. It's unbelievable. Comey should change his middle name to hubris. The man has learned absolutely nothing from this experience. And remember, by the way, this is the guy who signed off on three FISA applications and didn't think it was necessary to tell the FISA court that Hillary paid for the Steele dossier. This is the same man who allowed Peter Strzok, the FBI agent, to change the description of Mrs. Clinton's use of the private server from grossly negligent to merely extremely careless so as not to trigger the underlying criminal statute. But of course there was this breaking news to compete with the I.G. release today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The New York attorney general had just announced a lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Filed just less than an hour ago, a 41- page civil complaint alleging that the Donald J. Trump Foundation was actually an empty shell.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: New York's attorney general is suing President Trump and his three eldest children, alleging, quote, self-dealing another persistent illegal conduct at the president's charity.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I'm sure this is all just coincidence, the timing of this lawsuit, come on, against the Trump Foundation is beyond suspicious. Remember, it comes from the New York attorney general's office. Consider the source. Disgraced former attorney general of New York Eric Schneiderman, who you might remember sent out a fundraising email right after the investigation into the foundation was opened. He is a truly odious figure who abused and humiliated his female victims and then used his office and his position to threaten them into silence. Mark my words, we haven't heard the last of what he did to his victims.
And the person who continues his crusade, Barbara Underwood, who set up on taking over for Schneiderman, quote, "I believe this job at this moment in history is the most important job I have ever had." Yes, little subtlety there. Think about it. Donald Trump operated a foundation that had zero overhead, no administrative costs, and gave away more than $19 million to a variety of charitable causes. Trump and his companies personally poured $8 million into the foundation.
Now there was a mistaken contribution made to Pat Bondi's campaign, but that was rectified once it was discovered. In other words, this is a penny-ante stuff that would never be pursued by the New York state of attorney general's office if Donald Trump hadn't gotten into politics. This is yet another example of politicized law enforcement, an abuse of process. This time it was through a civil action on the state level.
Where were they, by the way, at the federal level when the Clinton Foundation was accepting funds from foreign governments while Hillary was secretary of state? Sometimes they wanted to get meetings with Hillary.
Meanwhile, Comey and his political activists posing as agents bent the legal standards for Hillary Clinton, allowing her to walk free. And they assumed that she was going to be going into the White House let's not forget. Clinton in setting up that private server made up her own rules, just as Comey did in clearing her of any criminal wrongdoing.
My friends, this is all a hideous perversion of justice. Now FBI Director Christopher Wray is insisting the I.G. report clears the FBI, though, of structural responsibility.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: Nothing, nothing in this report impugns the integrity of our workforce as a whole.
REP. TREY GOWDY, R—S.C.: Chris Wray, I'm sorry. You are wrong. Chris, there are consequences. The consequences are that your fellow citizens question whether or not they can have confidence in the world's premier law enforcement agency.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Remember when Jim Comey said this, by the way?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
INGRAHAM: It makes me wildly nauseous reading this I.G. report and learning how Comey and his colleagues intended to impact the election. And they failed. And that's the Angle.
Two men who know all too well what it's like to be targeted by the government. Stay right there because Roger Stone and Dinesh D'Souza react next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Joining us now are two men have been unfairly targeted by investigators tangled up in that mess. Informal presidential adviser Roger Stone, author of the new book "Stone's Rules, How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style," and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza whose new movie "Death of a Nation, Can We Save America a Second Time?" comes out August 3rd. Looking forward to that.
Both of you, it's great to have you both on tonight. So Dinesh, let's start with you. Whether it's the New York state attorney general's office going after the Trump Foundation that gave away $19 million with no overhead, no administrative costs, which a lot of wealthy people do. They set up their own private foundations and then donate the money from there, whether that or what we find out about the bias in Peter Strzok and the merry band of prosecutors from the I.G.'s report, what's your takeaway tonight? What should the American people be thinking?
DINESH D'SOUZA, FILMMAKER: I think the American people, like me, are arriving at the realization that in America today there are quite a few criminals with badges. Growing up as I did in India, we had a lot of corruption, and we knew there were criminals on the street and there were criminals with badges. And the criminals with badges are more dangerous because they don't just violate the law. They corrupt the law. They exploit the neutrality that you expect of them. They pervert the democratic process, as Peter Strzok tried to do, by essentially rigging.
Think about this. This is unprecedented. The FBI attempting to in a sense shape the outcome of a democratic election. So these are terrible things happening now in America. And I think the American people are realizing that something needs to be done about them, and it's not enough to know about them. Some action needs to be taken.
INGRAHAM: It's like you're operating in an alternative universe if you watch any of the other networks tonight. It's no big deal. Let's move on to Stormy Daniels.
Roger, I have to read part of this report. A lot of stuff not being covered at all again by other media outlets. This is a quote from the report. November 9th, 2016, a text message from an FBI, unidentified employee. This is a day after the election, "All the people who were initially voting for her," Mrs. Clinton, "would not and were not swayed by the decision the FBI put out." In other words, the late Weiner emails. "Trump supporters were all poor to middle-class, uneducated, lazy POS that think he will magically grant them jobs for doing nothing. They probably didn't watch the debates, aren't fully educated on his policies, and are stupidly wrapped up in his unmerited enthusiasm."
Has anything ever encapsulated, Roger, the elites' disdain for the American people.
ROGER STONE, AUTHOR OF "STONE'S RULES": No, and I think when we get to the bottom of it, we're going to find out that at the end of the day the Obama Justice Department, the Obama FBI used the authority and the capability of this state and a bogus dossier to conduct surveillance on the Republican candidate for president and to infiltrate his campaign with spies. So FBI Director Wray today said we respect the congressional oversight, at the same time refusing to hand over any information regarding that very FBI infiltration of the Trump campaign.
INGRAHAM: Dinesh, magically Jim Comey has already written an op-ed for "The New York Times." It comes out. It's already written. It's published today. I'm just going to share a small part of it. He said "This independent assessment will be useful to thoughtful people and an important contribution and historical record. Its detailed report should serve to both protect and build the reservoir of trust and credibility necessary for the DOJ and the FBI to remain strong and independent." Wild. The man has learned zippo, Dinesh.
D'SOUZA: You also see the collusion between the deep state operating behind closed doors and organs like "The New York Times" which time these kinds of counterpoints to immediately try to defuse the impact of the I.G. report.
What I want to know here, Roger mentioned the notion of getting to the bottom of it. The tremendous kind of glee and sense of immunity with which these agents at the high level of operating suggest to me that they would not do it without someone giving the order. There's that question from "The Godfather," who gave the order? And you know, Laura, the phrase, cui bono, who benefits is a good way to try to guess who gave the order.
Hillary benefits, but Hillary clearly couldn't have given the order. She was secretary of state and then she was out of the government. Obama on the other hand very much did not want Trump to win. He knew that Trump would try to erase his legacy. It's very embarrassing for him to be succeeded by Trump. I wonder if Obama is the one who gave the order.
INGRAHAM: Roger, we have some emails to that effect. Final thoughts. We already found out the president lied when he said he found out about Hillary's private email server when everybody else did. Now we find out he's one of the 13 people she communicated with on the private server using that private email account, so he lied about that.
STONE: When you add to the fact that Peter Strzok says in one of his text messages the president wants to know everything, the question is very clear. What did the president know and when did he know it? He answered that question. I think he has to answer it under oath to the Congress.
INGRAHAM: He is going to be going out on the campaign trails. Apparently he's the only person who can win elections for the Democrats. So he's going to be fanning out this election season. Thank you both. Phenomenal analysis as always from both of you.
Now we have some breaking news on immigration to bring to you after the break. This is very important. Ron DeSantis is here to give us the latest. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Just in to us moments ago, the House GOP is releasing the text of their new immigration proposal expected to be brought to the floor as early as next week. Wow. What's the rush? Among the highlights -- ending the controversial policy known as catch and release, ensuring minors who enter the country illegally are not separated from the parents. That's not going to draw more people in. Calls for an end to the visa lottery system, but instead just reallocates the 55,000 visas to supposedly a merit-based program.
Let's discuss with Congressman Ron DeSantis. And money for the wall, apparently, $25 billion for the wall. Ron, no E-Verify which I'm told doesn't matter, but I think it matters. The chamber doesn't like E-Verify. E-Verify means you don't get to work unless you are verified to be legally in the country, correct? Chamber doesn't want it.
REP. RON DESANTIS, R—FLA.: Yes. And so if you are doing an amnesty that's 1.8, maybe more million people.
INGRAHAM: We didn't have that in the bullets, but there's a huge amnesty.
DESANTIS: Guess what's going to happen. That's going to create an incentive for more people to come illegally. And if you don't have E-Verify to kind of remove a disincentive, that wall, even if it's a good faith effort at the wall, and I'm not sure it is, that ain't going to be built in a day. You need to strip the courts of jurisdiction over lawsuits because this thing will get tied up forever with the wall. So without E-Verify you're going to have a border surge like we had in 2014. That obviously is going to have a lot of people moving but that's also a wet kiss to the drug cartels because they are going to be able to move a lot product across the border if there's a border --
INGRAHAM: I'm told asylum fraud is addressed, but again, it just was release, 293 pages. We haven't had time to go through the whole thing.
DESANTIS: Here's the thing, Laura, the Goodlatte bill has what we campaigned on. The Goodlatte bill and chain migration.
INGRAHAM: Here's what they say. They won't get it through. They won't get it through. It's not going to pass the Senate. It probably won't pass the House, although Paul Ryan, apparently it will be brought up next week. Then I hear Goodlatte was involved in writing this new bill. I don't know if he was or not.
DESANTIS: We need to defund sanctuary cities. We need E-Verify. We need to end chain migration, get rid of the diversity visa lottery. We need to do all those things. And look, make people go on record for that. It's not a popular vote in the Republican Party, but even in these Democrat district, people want E-Verify. It's not even a partisan thing at the grassroots level.
INGRAHAM: Business doesn't want E-Verify, so the money that is coming into these campaigns, they do not want to check the identity of people.
DESANTIS: And that means it undermines the rule of law, harms taxpayers, and lowers wages for Americans. That's not a good deal.
INGRAHAM: But they will say it's the best we can do. And it does address some of the chain migration. We'll see how much it addresses. We understand that the amnesty could reach parents as well. So it's not just the Dreamers. Parents are included.
DESANTIS: Don't forget, Laura, it's going to the Senate and either die or they're going to make yours. Those were the only two options. The Senate ain't going to just pass this. And so you're really running a risk that this could get --
INGRAHAM: Devil's advocate here. They say the Freedom Caucus people, you never can govern. You say you want to get something done but then when you can get something done, limit chain migration, bring down the immigration of the country, you just say no, were not going to do it.
DESANTIS: The goal is to end illegal immigration. This would fuel more illegal immigration if you don't have things like E-Verify. Will it work, yes or no?
INGRAHAM: The president has got to think long and hard about this because this seems like a bum's rush to me. I do like the feeling of being rushed.
DESANTIS: No committee hearings.
INGRAHAM: That's convenient.
All right, that's it for us tonight. We'll be in San Francisco tomorrow, so tune in. Shannon Bream and the "Fox News @ Night" is next. Stay there.
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