James Comey owes the country an apology, Rep. Jim Jordan says after IG report
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, Jason Chaffetz and Mollie Hemmingway react to the DOJ IG report on former FBI Director James Comey's role in the Russia investigation.
This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," August 29, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST: I'm Laura Ingraham. This is “The Ingraham Angle” from another busy Washington tonight. Congressman Jim Jordan, Jason Chaffetz, and Mollie Hemingway are going to take you inside the DOJ Inspector General's damning report on Jim Comey and revealing important new details. A lot of people are missing it.
Also, the man who first hired Comey in government, Rudy Giuliani - yes, he is responsible - is here with a fiery response and perhaps a tinge of regret. Plus, a man who served at the highest levels of the FBI with Comey is now calling for the former Director to apologize to the men and women of the bureau. His emotional plea later.
And in the latest installment of our "Raymond on the Road" series, it will shock you. We're going to take you to Venice Beach, California, where residents are being overrun by not just homeless people and what that entails, but aggressive homeless people. And he's going to show you how the people and the business owners are fighting back.
But first, the liar, the wimp, and the wardrobe. That's the focus of tonight's “Angle.”
Now, you get the sense that when Director Comey entered the FBI building, it became like the wardrobe in that famous C.S. Lewis book. His own fantasy land with rules that didn't apply to mere mortals. Well, today, the supercilious, pious, sanctimonious former FBI Director Jim Comey was roasted. The Inspector General found that he was in clear violation of Department of Justice guidelines and his sworn duty in handling information related to the dealings - his dealings with the President and the dossier.
Now, Comey's conduct was an affront to the standards expected of all DOJ employees and it's a stain on the long, proud history of the FBI. But tonight here's what you need to understand. Comey along with Clapper, Brennan, Strzok, and McCabe, and perhaps others, fancied themselves as Trump-resisting superheroes, self-appointed saviors of truth, justice, and the American way.
Well, deep state actors, they looked the other way as Comey abused his position. All the privileges and power of the FBI in a planned effort to destroy the man he had utter disdain for, Donald Trump.
Now, Comey comes from the rarified upper crust of elite Washington lawyers. To them, Trump from the outset was an uncouth real estate mogul turned reality star, the antithesis of what many of these self-anointed elites wanted in their President.
Now folks like Comey, themselves, have coasted for years on their pedigree and puffery. They don't like disrupters, because people like Trump, they're going to pull back the curtain on the status quo, the old guard, the establishment. They don't like that one bit.
The IG report tells us that Comey meticulously planned exactly how he would inform President-elect Trump of the salacious details contained in that Steele dossier. He colluded with McCabe, the FBI General Counsel, and others in advance to plan their strategy to set up the President-elect.
So after briefing Trump about the dossier at Trump Tower, Comey started drafting a memo to memorialize the encounter during a car ride back to the office. This was all planned out. Then a day later, on January 11th, CNN reported this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: --that the intelligence chiefs - intelligence chiefs of the United States, when they briefed President Obama Thursday and President-elect Trump on Friday, they believed that the source of the dossier was credible and his sources were credible, and they believed that, A, the President-elect and the President should know that the Russians were claiming they had compromising information on him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: This is disgraceful. Well, that opened, of course, the media flood gates and a wave of damaging and totally fraudulent fake news stories followed about the phony Clinton financed Steele dossier.
Now, in the months that followed, Comey memorialized his other meetings with the President. Several memos were sent to his personal lawyer, Daniel Richman, who then, at Comey's behest, shared the contents of at least two of them with the news media. Why? To spark the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate possible Trump-Russia collusion. But the President smelled a rat. He confronted and ultimately fired Comey over the leaks to the media, which, of course, Comey vociferously denied.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES COMEY, FORMER DIRECTOR, FBI: I don't consider what I do with Mr. Richman a leak. I told him about an unclassified conversation with the President.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: One month after firing Comey and in reaction to the now Former FBI Director's Capitol Hill testimony, Trump in a tweet wrote, "Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication - and wow, Comey is a leaker!" So, is Trump right?
Regarding the leaking. Maybe Comey never considered releasing his own memos leaking because his ultimate goal, bringing down the President, was noble. He saw it as he was carrying out his civic duty.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COMEY: I intentionally gave this information to a friend intending that it'd be out in the media. I wanted it to get out in the media. As a private citizen, I could do that and did that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Actually, Jim, you weren't supposed to do that.
This is from Page 61 of the IG report. "Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a special counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure. What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information, investigative information obtained during the course of FBI employment in order to achieve a personally desired outcome."
So, he leaked and lied to the public about it.
Then there is the question of how many memos Comey shared with his pal, Richman, for media distribution and whether they contained classified material. Now, in repeated interviews, Comey said versions of this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COMEY: I sent Mr. Richman a copy of a two-page unclassified memo and asked him to get the substance of it out to the media.
BRET BAIER, HOST: You personally- -
COMEY: I gave him nothing else, ever.
I sent one memo, unclassified then, still unclassified. And it's recounted in my book.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: The book. But the IG says on Page 51 of the report, "Richman volunteered to the bureau" - in his interview - "that if you're collecting the one, you should get the other three memos Richman had received from Comey" - whoops - adding, "there could be classified information contained in what Richman received from Comey." That is a key part of this - this - the report. Could be classified information.
So, repeated leaker, repeated liar. And in his interview with Bret Baier last year, he made this ludicrous claim.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: The FBI protocol says your own employment agreement with the FBI prohibits "the unauthorized disclosure of any information or material from or related to FBI files or any information acquired by virtue of my official employment without prior written permission from the FBI." Did you have written permission?
COMEY: No. And I didn't consider it part of an FBI file. All the things that I talked about--
(CROSSTALK)
BAIER: You wrote it as an FBI Director. It was a work product.
COMEY: No, it was not. It was my personal aide-memoire--
BAIER: You were talking to the President?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: First of all, any man who says aide-memoire is someone you should never trust. OK? That is just - the IG, on Page 52, says "Comey's characterization of the memos as personal record finds no support in the law and is wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, and policies defining federal records, and the terms of Comey's FBI employment agreement."
So he's not just a leaker and a liar, he's incompetent or, perhaps, willfully ignorant. Neither of those is good either. Still, after all of this, Comey had the gall this morning to tweet, "DOJ IG ‘found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.' I don't need a public apology from those who defame me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you' would be nice."
Sorry, Jimmy, don't hold your breath. The IG report established beyond a shadow of a doubt that Comey engaged in a grand personal vendetta against this President. And in doing so, he abused his authority. And while Comey must be breathing easier tonight given the AG's decision not to prosecute him for this leaking, he's not out of the woods yet. The IG report on the FBI-Russian probe and the use of those FISA warrants is forthcoming. And it was Comey who signed the first FISA warrant to spy on American citizens.
Now, based on the dossier, he knew or should have known, was not credible. That was filed with the FISA court. Big no, no. But if Comey manages to escape prosecution for conduct that his underlings would be charged for, then the damage he did to the FBI will extend to our belief in the treasured words carved into the Supreme Court building, "Equal justice under the law." And that's THE ANGLE.
Joining me with reaction is Congressman Jim Jordan, Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee; Jason Chaffetz, former Chair of the House Oversight Committee, Fox News contributor, and author of the new book "Power Grab," which comes out Tuesday. Also with me, Mollie Hemingway, Senior Editor at "The Federalist" who's been covering this extensively, and a Fox News contributor.
Congressman Jordan, let's start with you. After reading this report--
REP. JIM JORDAN, R-OH: Yes.
INGRAHAM: --are you going to apologize to Jim Comey?
JORDAN: No, Laura, and your opening remarks were right on target. Look, our country had to live to this two-and-a-half saga because of one guy, Jim Comey. Jim Comey is a guy who opens the investigation in July 2016. Jim Comey is a guy who puts Peter Strzok in charge of it, the same guy who ran the Clinton investigation, the same guy who said Trump should lose 100 million to zero. That's the guy he puts in charge. Jim Comey is a guy who allows the dossier to be used to get a warrant to spy on a fellow American citizen. And Jim Comey is the guy who leaks sensitive information, broke the rules of the FBI, leaks sensitive information to "The New York Times" through his friend Daniel Richman, for what reason? To get a Special Counsel who put the country through this entire saga that was based on a false accusation.
So I'm not going to apologize. Jim Comey owes the country an apology because he put us through this for two-and-a-half years, and we know he did it. We know he did it because he was out to get the President based on what happened in that January 6 meeting that you talked about at the Trump Tower, where he used the news hook about the dossier, talking to the President about the dossier. And it says on Page 17 of the report, they did it to try to get information, trap the President, all the while, he was telling the President, you're not under investigation.
INGRAHAM: Bingo. That is a--
JORDAN: So this is as bad as it gets.
INGRAHAM: That's it.
COMEY: This is as bad as it gets, and Jim Comey is responsible for the whole darn two-and-a-half-year thing.
INGRAHAM: That's an extremely important point.
Mollie, at the beginning of “The Angle,” you were nodding about something that you thought was important that probably hasn't got as much attention. I believe it was about the fact that they were ready to move on this before the Trump Tower meeting. His cohorts told to memorialize these things in memos - get this down on paper.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, THE FEDERALIST: That's - I mean, there's so much in this IG report. I don't think people realize usually IG reports aren't full of this type of information and this type of strong language. We had already known about that briefing of the dossier or that just one portion of the dossier to Trump because it immediately leaked to CNN. And I think a lot of people thought that was the purpose of the briefing, was so that it could be immediately leaked to CNN, creating this Russia hoax hysteria.
But we also learn in the IG report today is that they were using that information as - they were using that meeting as a way to get information about a Russia hoax that they apparently really believed, which is deeply alarming that they fell for something that preposterous. But they briefed him in the hopes that he would give them information. That's why he immediately goes to the car and starts typing a memo. And there was already a secure hookup back when he--
INGRAHAM: Hurricane--
HEMINGWAY: --when he arrived at his - with the Crossfire--
INGRAHAM: --Crossfire.
HEMINGWAY: --Hurricane team because they anticipated that they were going to get information for this Russia story. It does leak. Then, the next day, shockingly, CNN was looking for a hook to be able to talk about this dossier, which has been shown to be just completely ridiculous--
(CROSSTALK)
INGRAHAM: In seeing the media folks sitting there at their anchor desks with their - their headsets on, Jason Chaffetz, and they were all ready for this, like they've got that really stern look on their face - Tapper and Wolf Blitzer. And I'm thinking, this whole thing was a fraud. Aren't they angry tonight? Aren't they - they're not even covering this for the most part.
JASON CHAFFETZ, FORMER HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CHAIR: In my 8.5 years of Congress, one of my biggest disappointments is the fact that the national media is just absolutely asleep at the wheel. I think they're actually complicit in this. They seem to act as partners in this.
And to listen to James Comey go out there and sanctimoniously say the self- righteous way that he's not a leaker, that he doesn't do all this stuff, they knew full well that he was the source of much of this information.
And remember, it was the Deputy Assistant Director for the FBI that was highlighted by the Inspector General in a previous notation and recommended for prosecutorial - to be prosecuted because they took sealed court documents and released them to the media. This was a culture that the Inspector General has highlighted time and time and time again.
And I want the Department of Justice to do what they should do and actually charge one of their own because you've got an Inspector General who's doing everything they could possibly do to highlight the problems, but DOJ can't seem to take it upon themselves to actually charge somebody.
INGRAHAM: Yes. We're going to get into that later on in the show because I think a lot of Americans tonight are wondering whether we still actually honor that principle of equal justice under law. I mean, walking into the Supreme Court building every day, I was a clerk many years ago, I looked up at that. And it means something to every American or at least it should.
I want to go into this, Congressman Jordan, how Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution, he was acting in a way as a surrogate for Jim Comey today. He's a close friend of his.
JORDAN: Yes.
INGRAHAM: So Comey hid behind his Twitter account. But this guy, Wittes, came out and spun the report. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEN WITTES, SENIOR FELLOW IN GOVERNANCE STUDIES, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, LAWFARE: Once you've been fired, you are now - at this point, you're not just the Former Director of the FBI, you're also a witness to - really gross misconduct that may be criminal. So what are you - is he - is the IG really saying - and I think, by the way, that he is really saying that if you are a law enforcement officer who's a witness to potentially criminal activity--
CHUCK TODD, HOST, MTP DAILY, MSNBC: Yes.
WITTES: --you've got to shut up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Congressman Jordan--
JORDAN: Oh, come on.
INGRAHAM: --what is - apparently it's Wittes - or witless - not witless - Wittes - thank you. That's what he's saying, that this was his - again, his duty - wasn't a setup. It was his duty to be kind of an investigative reporter/pre-special prosecutor in that meeting - in that Trump Tower meeting.
JORDAN: Laura, Jim Comey was out to get the President from the get-go. When he gets fired, we deposed him in the House Judiciary Committee after he's fired last Congress. He told us in that deposition, they had investigated this whole Trump-Russia hoax, they had investigated for 10 months.
He said, at that point, we still had no evidence of any type of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet he goes ahead and leaks the memo to get the Special Counsel to - appointed and they do another 22-month investigation, spend over $30 million of taxpayer money doing it and they come back with the exact same thing. This was all about to get the President.
They can try to spin it any way they want. But every single thing that they did, and particularly Jim Comey did, was designed to go after the President, including this key information that Mollie just talked about. What they did at that January 6 meeting, where they were trying to get information, trying to trap the President of the United States as they're supposed to be doing him a defensive briefing--
INGRAHAM: By saying.
JORDAN: Yes. That is--
INGRAHAM: By saying - yes.
JORDAN: That is so--
INGRAHAM: Yes. By saying in the media--
JORDAN: Go ahead.
INGRAHAM: I'm sorry to interrupt you, Congressman, you were on a roll. But I just want to say it because I'll forget. By telling him you are not a target.
JORDAN: Yes. Yes.
INGRAHAM: He was the target. They lied to him. They led him on saying he wasn't a target. And he says - says to Bret Baier - or says to investigator, we didn't want him to think that he was - we didn't want him to get all worried that he was a target when, as Mollie says, they had the Hurricane Crossfire group--
JORDAN: They're trying--
INGRAHAM: --ready with a secure connection to get debriefed - debrief Comey.
JORDAN: They're trying to law (ph) him. They're setting up the President, trying to ambush the President saying you're not under investigation even though they coordinated how they were going to do it. They were all going to show up, then they were going to leave, Comey is going to stay and talk about the dossier. And then he goes and records it all. They were out to get him.
And remember, in the previous investigation, when Loretta Lynch told Jim Comey to call it a matter, not an investigation, he did that for Secretary Clinton. Now he goes to the President and tries to trap President-elect Trump and tells him he's not under investigation. This is ridiculous. And one person - one person is responsible for this entire two-and-a-half year saga our country has had to live through. And that is Jim Comey.
INGRAHAM: He's walking a free man tonight, though. Mollie, this is what Chuck Todd said today. He said essentially that Jim Comey's reputation is in the toilet because of the President. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TODD: Can we step back here a minute and realize how James Comey's reputation has been just totally eviscerated by the President? Essentially, he's off of a hook here in doing anything wrong. The way the report was written, you could tell it's sort of in the - the President really is good at this character assassination.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMINGWAY: The report - I mean, this - the--
INGRAHAM: Chuck Todd has ceased to be a reporter with that comment.
HEMINGWAY: Well, he ceased actually--
INGRAHAM: A long time ago.
HEMINGWAY: --long before. But this - the IG report was so detailed and thorough in explaining how James Comey had violated policy and procedure. But we did have a media that completely fell for James Comey's shtick. And it's kind of remarkable that they did because only a little bit prior they had been blaming him for everything that had happened to Hillary Clinton in terms of the loss of the election. But that was all thrown over the board as they completely, uncritically accepted this Russian collusion hoax, they treated him as if he were credible, and anyone who criticized him, they said, were attacking the rule of law or attacking our institutions.
Now we find out he was the one attacking the institutions, as so many people in the resistance are breaking norms, violating norms, and going against our institution.
INGRAHAM: They're from - they're rotting the organization from within the organization. They are eating the organization from within. It is - imagine if they treated, by the way, Hillary in her interview like they treated Trump at the Trump Tower meeting. Remember the Hillary interview at the Justice Department like the day before 4th of July. They didn't take any notes.
Panel, thank you very much for being here tonight.
And up next, the man responsible for first bringing Comey into government, Rudy Giuliani, has a message for the Former FBI Director. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Former FBI Director Jim Comey exposed today for being a liar, a leaker, and he's always been a wimp. But our next guest knew Comey long before his days of infamy. He hired him as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York back in 1987.
Joining me now, Rudy G--
(LAUGHTER)
INGRAHAM: --former New York City Mayor, Trump's personal attorney. Now, we're going to - we've got a lot to get into. But what's your personal takeaway from this report, which is exceedingly detailed and, unlike the Special Counsel's report, actually well written.
RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Well, I think this report - forget whether it's a crime or not - sort of details the worst director in the history of FBI. Clearly--
INGRAHAM: In the history of the FBI.
GIULIANI: Say J. Edgar Hoover, put him aside, whatever he did. This guy, he broke every rule. I mean, if you look at the Horowitz report, he broke every rule of the FBI. Now, I think he should be prosecuted. If you don't think he should be prosecuted, OK. But for him to say I didn't leak, the report demonstrates that he leaked. He's completely lying today. I didn't lie. The report demonstrates he lied. They're just saying - they're giving him a break. They're basically saying, oh, you know, we shouldn't prosecute, not enough evidence. But he lied, he leaked. He's a disreputable head of the FBI. He's a disgrace to the FBI. He used it for political purposes. The report demonstrates all of that.
INGRAHAM: Clapper was on CNN tonight. Did anyone ask him a question about it? Not one question.
GIULIANI: I'm not sure if Clapper knows where he is. I mean, I - Brennan is the brains. Clapper is the idiot. If you want me to guess who orchestrated this, Clapper is not capable of it. I won't tell you who I think did.
INGRAHAM: All right. Rudy, here's what Comey said when he was asked for the reason for briefing Trump back in January of 2017 on that - June 2017 on the Steele dossier.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COMEY: It was important for me to assure him we were not personally investigating him. And I didn't want him thinking that I was briefing him on this to sort of hang it over him in some way. I was briefing him on it because we had been told by the media it was about to launch. We didn't want to be keeping that from him. And I was very keen not to leave him with an impression that the bureau was trying to do something to him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: But today's IG report says something totally different, saying, "Witnesses interviewed by the OIG" - Inspector General - "also said that they discussed Trump's potential responses to being told about the salacious information, including that Trump might make statements about or provide information of value to the pending Russian interference investigation."
Rudy, is this evidence that Comey and FBI officials were trying to undermine Trump--
GIULIANI: 100 percent.
INGRAHAM: --from the very beginning that there was a conspiracy inside that department to set him up at that first meeting?
GIULIANI: Number one, it was a clear entrapment. 100 percent clear entrapment by Comey who, despite his moral problems, is a very smart guy. Unlike Mueller who is lacking in intellect, this guy is very smart. He was trying to trap him like he trapped Flynn.
INGRAHAM: It's just like it.
GIULIANI: Trying to trap - but--
INGRAHAM: You're not a target.
GIULIANI: You're not a target, it's OK, just tell me what--
(CROSSTALK)
INGRAHAM: OK, don't worry, just (inaudible) tell you about that.
GIULIANI: I have the thing in my bag, but I'm going to tell you and I'll indict you. Horrible thing to do. Any reputable prosecutor would be disgraced by that. So he was trying to trap the President. And it's completely disingenuous for him to make these statements now. But who knows what the liberal media is going to do with this. But this guy is completely disgraced in the eyes of any FBI agent. They realize this is worse than anything J. Edgar Hoover ever did.
When he walked in when the President was the President-elect and faced him with that, he was trying to tell him I have something on you, so you better keep me in office. And he even realized he was going to do it. There were other statements that make your clear that he realized he was going to extort the President of the United States. So I hope they prosecute him on the last one.
INGRAHAM: The FISA.
GIULIANI: This guy should go to jail.
INGRAHAM: Well, what--
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: This is the guy - people should realize. This is the guy who put Martha Stewart in jail on a frenzy--
INGRAHAM: And his lawyer went after Conrad Black on a ridiculous--
GIULIANI: Yes, yes, in order to get publicity.
INGRAHAM: --concept. Patrick Fitzgerald is another one.
GIULIANI: The Martha Stewart case was a joke. I don't know Martha Stewart particularly. She's attacked President Trump.
INGRAHAM: Yes.
GIULIANI: I said at that time, this is a publicity stunt by him.
(CROSSTALK)
INGRAHAM: --popover, so--
GIULIANI: Yes, that's what he did.
INGRAHAM: All right. Whose conduct was more egregious and damaging to the rule of law, the integrity of the rule of law, equal justice under the law? Mike Flynn in a setup interview with Sally Yates and her agents or what Jim Comey did for the last two years of lying--
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: Everything revealed today in Horowitz's report should be like a teaching manual for the FBI. Don't ever do this again.
INGRAHAM: Doesn't a lying (ph) prosecutor that just hired--
GIULIANI: So if J. Edgar Hoover was up until now the worst director—
INGRAHAM: Yes.
GIULIANI: --this guy has like gone way beyond.
INGRAHAM: But he claimed - the thing that gets me, Rudy, as a first-year associate at a law firm in D.C., we knew basic rules of ethics as young lawyers. You go into the department as a first-year prosecutor. You have spent the week doing ethics review, ethics - you know it. He claims it wasn't a federal record, a sensitive federal record. He claims his memo to the file wasn't a federal record. That doesn't pass the straight face test, does it?
GIULIANI: No. Everybody will think--
INGRAHAM: So that's a lie.
GIULIANI: Everybody will think I'm making this up. But I'm disgusted at Jim Comey. I have been for over a year. This is disgraceful. And because we have this crazy anti-Trump media, they make him James "Cardinal" Comey.
INGRAHAM: Why aren't they mad? They were led down the path - garden path too.
GIULIANI: He's a disgraceful prosecutor. He's everything they've been against for years. The out-of-control prosecutor--
INGRAHAM: Right.
GIULIANI: --who prosecutes people for his own ambition. This guy is a disgrace. Left or right, he's a disgrace. And he's very dangerous.
INGRAHAM: But the noble goal that he and McCabe--
GIULIANI: They were going (ph) after Trump.
INGRAHAM: --and Strzok going after--
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: But you can do anything--
INGRAHAM: --by any means necessary.
GIULIANI: You can do anything you want to. You can lie, you can cheat, you can try to get Manafort to lie for 13 times, you put him in solitary confinement.
(CROSSTALK)
INGRAHAM: --in solitary confinement, yes.
GIULIANI: You bring him in to get Weissmann, who's a total animal, to go after him. Perfectly OK. Now, if it was a terrorist, they'd be going crazy.
INGRAHAM: Oh. Read him his rights, give him--
GIULIANI: But equal rights means--
INGRAHAM: --free square meals.
GIULIANI: To you and me, equal rights means equal rights.
INGRAHAM: Everyone.
GIULIANI: That includes Trump and the terrorists.
INGRAHAM: Unbelievable. Rudy, thank you so much.
GIULIANI: Thank you.
INGRAHAM: It's great to see you. And I forgive you for hiring him.
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: Being a lawyer, you get this--
INGRAHAM: I'm so glad I'm a lawyer.
GIULIANI: --you get this--
INGRAHAM: Oh, my god, drives me--
GIULIANI: --better than anybody.
(CROSSTALK) INGRAHAM: --you'd be fired as a first-year associate if you didn't know proper document handling in a litigation, a civil litigation, let alone being a prosecutor--
GIULIANI: 100 percent.
INGRAHAM: --and releasing information during your tenure or after--
GIULIANI: 100 percent.
INGRAHAM: --as a Director of the FBI.
GIULIANI: Absolutely.
INGRAHAM: I mean, this is just like basic Ethics 101--
GIULIANI: Yes.
INGRAHAM: --whether you are a civil lawyer, criminal lawyer, or a prosecutor. This kind of stuff is just - in CNN, shame on you for not covering this tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
INGRAHAM: I mean, I know - I know you're CNN, but come on. James Earl Jones, where does he go to get his voiceover back?
(LAUGHTER)
INGRAHAM: All right. In moments, Sol Wisenberg is here on why Comey is not yet clear of prosecution, why the heck wasn't he charged today. Raymond Arroyo also brings us the story of LA's homeless crisis spilling over to some of the most expensive residential areas in this city. So what are the rich liberals thinking about the homelessness crisis now? He'll tell you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was fairly clear that there was not a strong case here for prosecuting Jim Comey based on leaking classified information.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The DOJ has cleared -- well, we knew they cleared James Comey, the former FBI director, of any criminal wrongdoing. They do say he set a dangerous precedent here, but they did clear him of releasing any classified information in the memos that he wrote.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Be it wasn't classified is really an exoneration for James Comey.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Not surprising, the so-called experts would rally to the defense of disgraced former FBI Director Jim Comey. Yes, the DOJ is declining to prosecute him over breaking agency rules to damage the president. But is all of this talk of exoneration premature?
Joining me now, Sol Wisenberg, former deputy independent counsel, FOX News contributor. Sol, you say he could have been charged over what we learned today in the report. Would have been a weak case, though. But is there something else out there that he should be worried about?
SOLOMON WISENBERG, FORMER DEPUTY INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: It would have been a very weak case, particularly if it was brought in the District of Columbia of Virginia. Technically, he kept government property. That's not the kind of case anybody wants to bring to a jury.
But he still has potential exposure on the FISA aspect. If a prosecutor were to find, if a grand jury were to find that the FISA court was lied to and that he was aware of it and was a part of it, he can face exposure there. I'm not saying that's going to happen. I've repeatedly cautioned your viewers not to expect that all wrongdoing is going to be prosecuted as a crime, but it's possible. But certainly, this report in no way exonerated him. It really condemned him for his disgraceful conduct.
INGRAHAM: Sol, what I'm curious about, aside from a potential criminal prosecution of him down the road on FISA, what about something that Bill Clinton was faced with, which was losing his law license? Sanctioned from the state bar, District of Columbia, again, liberal bar association, I get it. But this is very damning, this report. And if you're now saying you don't know what a federal document is, you don't know what a sensitive federal document is, you don't understand that's part of the record and investigative process as the FBI director, really? I said it before, that does not pass any straight face test that I know. So could there be some legal sanction against him at least on that score?
WISENBERG: It may not pass a straight face test. It could be anything is possible, but I think it's highly unlikely based upon what we've seen today in this report that he will be sanctioned by a bar association. No question it's a damning report. All of the good friends, his top assistants at the FBI told the I.G. they were shocked when they found out he was keeping this information at his home. And he didn't tell -- that's really the worst thing. When the FBI agents came to his house, he had some of these memos and never told them, oh, by the way, these memos are in the other part of my house. That's really shocking, and there's no excuse for it.
INGRAHAM: The Department of Justice, you walk in every day, you walk into the FBI building, you have the responsibility, do you not, to put your personal viewpoints, political or otherwise, aside in the pursuit of justice, the rule of law. That's what they kept going back to, Horowitz today. You have to put aside your personal convictions. Did he do that?
WISENBERG: Oh, absolutely not. For him to try to say that I considered this my own personal document, that's just an absolute joke. There's no support for it. As Horowitz said, there's no support and he got no support from anybody who they talked to, even his good friends.
INGRAHAM: Sol, thanks so much.
And while James Comey and the media sycophants claim that today's I.G. report, it exonerated him completely. It actually shows that the FBI senior leadership were appalled, as Sol said, by his scheming. The I.G. reporting that "Members of Comey's senior leadership team used the adjectives, "surprised," "stunned," "shocked," and "disappointment" to describe their reactions to learning that Comey acted on his own to provide the contents of Memo Four." Remember he said there was one memo, not it's four memos, "through Richman to this reporter." And by the way, those were his colleagues.
Joining me now, one of Comey's former colleagues, Kevin Brock, former FBI assistant director of intel. Kevin, what do you make of Comey getting on Twitter and demanding an apology?
KEVIN BROCK, FORMER FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE: He made a very bad day for him much worse. That did not sit well with FBI agents, I can tell you that, both current and retired FBI agents. For him to say that he needed an apology is beyond the pale. He broke FBI rules and procedures that he knew he was breaking. He kept official FBI records separate and hidden, were never entered into the FBI case management system until after he was fired. He kept them in a drawer. He kept them in his house. And then he leaked them to the press.
INGRAHAM: What would happen to a Comey underling or member of the military who engaged in an analogous type of conduct?
BROCK: He would be fired. If James Comey was still FBI director, he would be fired today. It's too bad we can't fire him again just for emphasis. By breaking these rules, he broke trust. You can't have a separate records system. You can't keep these things separate.
INGRAHAM: But the I.G. said he also -- they didn't say he didn't -- they were very funny about it. They didn't say he didn't pass on classified information. In fact, part of it said could have been. But that's a separate decision of whether or not you're going to prosecute someone. Sol alluded to the D.C. district court juries being more liberal. We saw what they did to Manafort. We see some of these cases how they come down not favorable to the president. So that's part of the decision making.
BROCK: It's part of the decision making. But, remember, Laura, this is just the first of three bullets that are going to be fired at James Comey.
INGRAHAM: We don't mean bullets like -- we mean. Yes, we don't want to say it that way. But I see what you're saying.
BROCK: You know where I'm going.
INGRAHAM: There are three things that he has to face.
BROCK: The three actions that are coming down the pike that are targeting him, he's got the FISA application scrutiny that the I.G. has yet to release and he's going to ask him to come down. And then U.S. Attorney John Durham is out doing a very thorough investigation to determine whether or not James Comey should have opened up a counterintelligence investigation into a presidential campaign in the first place. And, in fact, I think where that's going to lead is revelations that Comey, along with other senior leaders of the intelligence community, colluded to manufacture reasons to open up a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
INGRAHAM: And that's getting in to how the dossier came to light in the first place, how it was brought into the -- into the entire understanding of this investigation from the very beginning.
BROCK: That's right
INGRAHAM: The connection between Fusion GPS, the Justice Department, all of the interweavings there. I'm not going to get too much into the weeds, but there is a lot that has to be revealed.
BROCK: That's a key part of it. One quick other point is that they martialed sources of the intelligence community and targeted Trump campaign members outside of policy. I know what that policy is. I helped to write it. It doesn't look like they followed rules and regulations in doing that.
INGRAHAM: FBI, this is a major black eye on the great men and women of the FBI. They deserve better of our country.
BROCK: They're the ones that deserve the apology.
INGRAHAM: And our country deserves a lot better. Kevin, thank you so much for your insights tonight.
And up next, Raymond Arroyo takes us to Venice Beach, California -- that's a switch -- for an exclusive report on how liberal policies, lousy leadership, have brought a homeless crisis to the residents' doorsteps there. Find out, though, how they're fighting back now. Raymond on the road, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: The far left Democrats who run California, have been running it into the ground, are failing to grapple with the state's growing homelessness crisis. Now case in point, a new government report reveals the utter failure of L.A.'s homeless outreach task force. They're responsible for getting the mentally ill and drug-addicted off of the streets. That's what they're supposed to be doing. Despite a doubling of the task force's staff and funding over the last two years, it's been a complete fiasco, according to the city comptroller.
Now, this homeless crisis isn't just contained, though, to places like Skid Row. It's spreading, including to the rich enclaves, and it's costing millions of and millions of dollars. Now facing no choice, residents decide they're going to take matters to their own hands. And our own Raymond Arroyo found that in Venice Beach.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAYMOND ARROYO, CONTRIBUTOR: This is the iconic Gold's Gym, the first Gold's Gym here in Venice Beach. And you see outside the back door of the gym, there are really a string of homeless encampments, garbage, covered goods. Now, the law here is that you can't have more than 60 gallons, one person can't have more than 60 gallons. As you see, most of these folks exceed that.
Mark Ryavec is a Venice resident advocate who runs the Venice Stakeholders Association. When the homeless began to congregate here, residents took matters into their own hands and on the advice of law enforcement, installed these planters to occupy much of the sidewalk in the neighborhood.
MARK RYAVEC, VENICE STAKEHOLDERS ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT: We had a constant problem with a very large homeless encampment here. And the people living in it were living right up against residents. You have a problem of break- ins, both into properties and into cars.
ARROYO: Have crimes gone up?
RYAVEC: Crimes are way up. And then you have a lot of harassment, people screaming at each other at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, a father comes out and says, hey, can you quiet down, you're scaring my kids. And the response is, get the f back in your house or I'm going to fire bomb your house.
We raised, we, the group of over 50 residents, raised $35,000. We got a contractor who would work for basically for free. He brought his crew in, built all of these.
ARROYO: We're three blocks from the beach. This is an area run by a guy named the Van God. Tell me about what we're looking at here.
RYAVEC: His name is Gary Gallery (ph). He has over 15 crappy old vans like this that he rents out for $300 a month. He's illegally taking this street parking.
ARROYO: So he's basically --
RYAVEC: He's running a big business.
ARROYO: He's running a private hotel, a roving hotel for homeless.
RYAVEC: Exactly. Exactly. And some of them are down here right next to a school, even their prohibited 24 hours a day from living in a van next to a school. The cops don't even enforce that. So you've got potential child molesters living literally right next to an elementary school, and there's no effort to enforce the laws that they can't live here.
ARROYO: I notice a Mountain Dew bottle here. Tell me about this.
RYAVEC: Well, they don't have any toilet facilities. There's no restrooms near here. They could walk down to the beach, they're open restrooms, at least during the day. But we frequently will find they'll go right back here in the alley and will use that as a toilet. There will be toilet paper and feces and human waste. And occasionally, I've had people leave glass jars of urine on my curb. It's not like the city takes any responsibility for that. But that's the nature of this whole environment, it's very dysfunctional.
ARROYO: Here at Venice Beach, this is a good example of public toilets that are open to the public. Each of these units, permanent facilities, here on the beach cost the taxpayers of California $174,000 per toilet per year to operate. And the port-a-potties, the port-a-lets that are around town, $320,000 a year to erect and maintain, all for the homeless.
Along Venice Beach, homeless, some posing as artists, have overtaken the boardwalk. Scattered encampments line the beach, and the side streets running off of it.
RYAVEC: One of my neighbors just last year was riding his bike on that bike path over there, and one of these young kids who was freaked out on meth steps off of the grass there and slugs him in the head as he bikes by, knocks him out. He went down to the police substation to report it. They said we didn't see it, so we can't take a report.
ARROYO: But Mark, hasn't both the citizens of Los Angeles as well as a series of bad leadership and court decisions boxed you in? There was a ballot initiative here to do away with misdemeanors for being on the street, for doing certain things here. They can't enforce it.
RYAVEC: It's a combination of Prop 47 and 57. So, yes, those took out a chunk of enforcement. And then you have a very liberal attorney who's really a homeless advocate. And he's unwilling to prosecute anything.
ARROYO: Mark, there are 59,000 homeless people here on the streets in L.A. county. There's a proposal to build a facility for them here in Venice. Why are you opposed to that facility?
RYAVEC: We know that this is just going to invite more people. It's more of the magnet effect that Venice has experienced over the last five years where we went from 400 homeless to 1,100 homeless.
ARROYO: Has this changed the politics of the area at all?
RYAVEC: I'm a liberal Democrat. But on these local issues, and I see my neighbors getting hurt, they're getting assaulted, they're getting broken into, I don't look through rose-colored glasses at the homeless anymore. Within the population, there are people that are lethal, there are people that are assaultive, people that are criminals. It just has to be a small minority for it to ruin things for everybody here.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
INGRAHAM: Wow.
And coming up, New York City is finding out what happens when leaders forsake the brave men and women who actually keep the streets safe. Bernie Kerik on the Democrat-controlled city's latest failures, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Well, New York City now learning the hard way about what happens when city leaders abandon the police, you know, the people who actually keep the streets safe? We first brought you the appalling video of these miscreants dousing officers with buckets of water, and that eventually escalated to throwing glass bottles and concrete. And now arrests are plummeting after the NYPD fired Daniel Pantaleo last week. He was the officer who was involved in the death of Eric Garner in 2014.
Here with me now is Bernie Kerik, former NYPD commissioner who has been watching this unfolding in his city. Bernie, what is happening to the great city of New York and the relationship with the police? People focus on the video, Eric Garner, and it is really awful. And I'm sad for his family. It is horrific. But the police now feel like they're damned if they do, they're damned if they don't.
BERNIE KERIK, FORMER NYPD COMMISSIONER: You know what, Laura, in 1994 there was a renaissance in New York, and it all started when Rudy Giuliani came in and took over New York City at a time when crime was at the highest and the murder rate was at its highest. And over the eight years Rudy was in place, that dropped -- murder dropped by 70 percent, violent crime by 65. The cops were given the tools and the backing and the support they needed to go out and do the job that had to be done to change --
INGRAHAM: So what's happening today, Bernie? We know what happened under Rudy. We just had him on. It was awesome. I was there in New York, I was living there for a while around that time. But today --
KERIK: Today, listen. Today you have a mayor --
INGRAHAM: Fast forward to today. Look at these, we've got a 27 percent drop in arrests. I just want to put this up on the screen. Sorry to interrupt. A 27 percent drop in arrest, 29 percent drop in criminal summons, "New York Daily News."
KERIK: You know what, Laura, you have a mayor that, one, doesn't want the cops to go out and do proactive quality of life arrests. What you just saw in Venice, California, is coming to New York City in a bigger way than ever. And you have cops that know, 100 percent, that the administration is not going to support them and not going to give them the benefit of the doubt should they have a problem as we saw in the Garner case.
So the cops are out there. They're not proactive. They're not preemptive. They want to -- all the mayor wants to do is focus on community issues. Well, guess what, bad guys, they know exactly what the cops are doing, where they're doing it, why they're doing it, how they're doing it. And they're going to circumvent it all. And you see in the city, Times Square today is turning into a cesspool like it was back in the 90s.
INGRAHAM: It's disgusting. They have the pedestrian chairs and people -- that's nice. They got rid of Seventh Avenue going all the way down, it's completely changed, all the bike lanes and all that. But it's not like it was when Giuliani, even Bloomberg.
But Bernie, I want to show you this shocking video. These are bystanders doing the unthinkable when NYPD are making an arrest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SHOUTING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got him! Got him! Got him! Got him! I got your -- I got your --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: So, they're crowding around the police to make it virtually impossible or very, very difficult to make an arrest. They put their cell phone cameras up, because those are the new, it's very useful. And what happens to the officer here?
KERIK: You know what, Laura, things like this, these people, all of them, they're emboldened by the mayor. They're emboldened by the Democratic leadership in cities all around the country, not just New York. You see this behavior all over the U.S., especially in areas where you have Democratic leadership and they allow this kind of conduct. There are prosecutors today around the country that aren't prosecuting people like this, which is completely insane.
INGRAHAM: They should all be jailed. They should all be thrown in jail for what they did. It's basically an assault of a police officer. Bernie, thank you so much for being here tonight.
And Ilhan Omar's plan for the border. It's our Last Bite. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ILHAN OMAR, D-MINN.: It doesn't make any sense for us to be committing these kinds of human rights violations. So we have to bring in the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: So the U.N. at our border, that's going to solve the problem, or will it open the floodgates? That's what she wants, isn't it.
That's all the time we have tonight. Do not forget, new podcast drop today and Shannon Bream and the "Fox News @ Night" team take it all from here.
Shannon?
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