Sekulow on Mueller report: This is a tremendous victory for the president, the US, justice

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Sekulow on Mueller report: This is a tremendous victory for the president, the US, justice

President Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow reacts to the findings of the special counsel's investigation on 'Hannity.'

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," March 25, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: All right. We have so much to unpack here. I'm just telling you tonight, it's the tip of the iceberg. This will take months.

Stay with us. I have so many details. And we are holding everyone accountable.

Mueller's report on Russia election interference finds, as we have been telling you, zero collusion between the president, his campaign, and Russia. Tonight, Newt Gingrich, Senator Lindsey Graham, the great one Mark Levin, Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow will be here in just a moment.

My opening monologue and how we got here, what it means -- and more importantly where do we go forward in just a few minutes.

We break order tonight to join -- joining us now from Washington is the president's attorney, Jay Sekulow. Oh, yes. And Jay has done legal work for me and we actually had dinner together once and actually were friends.

JAY SEKULOW, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: There we go.

HANNITY: I know this because I know you. I know this because I've watched all along and I ask a lot of questions. I don't think you or your entire legal team has slept more than three hours as all of this has gone forward, as you have steadfastly fought and defended the president. And now, you have literally gotten to the point where it is so important for the country.

Let's walk through how we got here.

SEKULOW: Well, let me tell you something. First of all, I appreciate you saying that. And we have a great legal team. We have a great client.

And my -- one of my granddaughters said how proud they were of me in a text yesterday. And that's what I think about when we're handling this case, I think about my kids, I think about my grandkids, and the country we're going to leave them.

But let me say this, Sean. This was a tremendous, tremendous victory for the president, a tremendous victory for the United States of America. It was a tremendous victory, frankly, for our system of justice.

That is the bottom line on all of this. And although the president had to go through an awful lot and a lot of other people have as well, the end result was a complete -- really a complete vindication. Complete vindication, exoneration of the president.

And it's so interesting to me that this started as a counterintelligence investigation called Crossfire Hurricane, a year before the president was the president. Actually before he was even a candidate -- actually was a candidate. And the conclusion, which is unmistakable, which is exactly what the president said, no collusion, no obstruction.

HANNITY: All right. Let's go over what the attorney general who got the report, what he said, absolutely no collusion. You know, the media say he didn't make a definitive statement. But when you read further, and I will go into the details in a moment, it is very clear Rod Rosenstein and the Attorney General William Barr looking at the evidence and what was presented, that they used the rule of law, determinations and found there is no way that you can indict or pursue any charges related to obstruction in any way of the president. And that is not picked up by the media. I want you to go into details.

SEKULOW: What they're doing -- let me tell you what they've done. They've taken -- so Bob Mueller in the report, at least what Bill Barr has released so far, says we're not accusing the president, of course, of any criminality with regard to obstruction. And then they have this tag line about we're not exonerating either, which, by the way, is not really their job. They either recommend a case to go forward or decline it.

What has happened here is the special counsel followed department of justice protocol. In other words, he stated -- this again is in the attorney general's letter -- that these were difficult questions of law and fact. We don't make a case out of difficult questions of law and fact.  So, he took it to the Department of Justice.

Remember, he is not -- I said this on another -- excuse me -- another network. He's not an independent counsel. He is a special counsel. He works for the Department of Justice.

And their conclusion, which was then reviewed by the office of legal counsel which is the ones who look at these theories of law and fact, the deputy attorney general of the United States, Rod Rosenstein and the attorney general of the United States, Bill Barr, came to that conclusion that there was no basis for obstruction as there was also no basis for collusion. So, there was nothing in that sense to obstruct.

So, look, they're parsing a word out of context without understanding the internal operating principles within which a special counsel operates under the Department of Justice guidelines and regulations. What Bill Barr did was follow the law.

HANNITY: Let me -- let me ask you one last question, because going forward is a big part of my opening monologue tonight. We know now there was never a real investigation into Hillary Clinton as it relates to the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice. I say if we're going to get this right, we've got to go back there.

Not only did they rig a primary, they tried to rig a general election. In spite of warnings from Bruce Ohr in August of 2016, they went ahead and they relied on a phony, unverified dossier full of Russian lies paid for Hillary Clinton. They lied by omission and they lied directly to FISA court judges repeatedly.

How can we possibly have real justice in this country and a real constitutional republic if we don't get to the bottom of all of that?

SEKULOW: Well, I think as Lindsey Graham said, we have to. Senator Graham said, I know he's going to be on later, he said we have to and he's 100 percent correct.

But there's something else fundamental here. You said it. This starts with the dossier, which we know is salacious and unverified. Who said that? James Comey.

Then what do we have?

HANNITY: That was in January --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: That was in January 2017, he signed the FISA warrant in October 2016 saying the opposite to the FISA court. That's a fraud.

SEKULOW: Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say. Then you have the FISA warrants on top of it. The whole impetus upon which this inquiry engaged, where it came out of, was this dossier, this counterintelligence investigation regarding collusion.

And guess what? After 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants -- 300 search warrants, 500 witness interviews, 13 countries, no collusion -- no collusion, no obstruction.

HANNITY: Jay, you and your team performed a service for the country. I thank you on behalf of all the people that want free, fair, open elections.  And no president should ever have to go through this again. I'm going to address that now. Thank you for being with us.

SEKULOW: Thank you, Sean.

HANNITY: All right. First, I want to begin -- I want to welcome everyone to this program, maybe including some of you maybe that don't usually tune in here, those who maybe now realize that you have been lied to by other networks and the news media on a spectacular level for years and years.

You know, I look at so-called competition in cable news, let's start with Rachel Maddow's audience. They have been sold one conspiracy theory night after night after night, lie night after night after night, 22 months. She has profited from these lies to her audience on a spectacular level.

Frankly, she and her so-called colleagues, so-called mainstream media, so- called journalists, they should be embarrassed tonight, they should feel humiliated tonight, they should be apologizing tonight to the American people as well as so many others in the media. It will take me months, but we will follow every lead and we will remind you what has been done here.

Now, the truth has been laid bare for all to see. No collusion, no obstruction, no truth to the lies that have been peddled daily. We, on this program, have been right all along because, unlike the mainstream media, we have been telling the truth with evidence to back it up. Many of you since yesterday have been writing me and you want me to spike the football tonight.

I am not in any type of celebratory mood here tonight in any way. This is a time -- every American that now knows truth, you should be angry at what has happened here, all of America. I am pissed off and so should the rest of the country be over what has happened.

Just because, you know, this is -- this is only the first chapter. This must be a day of reckoning for the media, for the deep state, for people who abuse power, and they did it so blatantly in this country.

If we do not get this right, if we do not hold these people accountable, I promise you with all the love I can muster for this country and our future for our kids and grandkids, we will lose the greatest country God has ever given man. We will lose it.

We now have 675 days, $25 plus million, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 witnesses, 500 search warrants, doors kicked down, pre-dawn raids, felony convictions for process crimes, screws turned to accelerate or hope for or get people to lie to hurt the president. Other lives ruined, mounting legal bills for so many Americans, many who are now facing bankruptcy like Lieutenant General Flynn, a 33-year combat veteran. That's how we repay him?

And after a prior nine-month FBI investigation that found zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, after a bipartisan Senate investigation found zero evidence of collusion -- the press never told you, after another investigation in the House found zero evidence of collusion. Lo and behold, for the fourth time we learn over the weekend, Robert Mueller has found zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion according to the Attorney General Bob Barr's summary findings of the Mueller report.

Quote: The special counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and let me be clear, a direct quote from the Mueller report, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired, coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. And that's not all. President Trump has also been cleared of the issue of obstruction of justice, you just heard from Jay Sekulow. Mueller did not draw a conclusion, quote, one way or another as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.

The special counsel did not conclude that the president committed a crime, it didn't exonerate him, which the media is clinging onto. But read a little further.

After reviewing the matter, the attorney general in consultation with the deputy attorney general who started this whole thing, Rod Rosenstein, concluded, quote: The key phrase that the media misses, the evidence developed during the special counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense -- and this is important -- according to the attorney general, quote, our determination was made without regard to and is not based on the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president. And he concluded, quote, generally speaking, to obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acting with corrupt intent engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding.

Anyone in the media who refuses to admit this truth is continuing the lying they've been involved in for two years. You can't obstruct a crime you didn't commit. There was no collusion, there cannot be any obstruction.  No charges will be filed. The Mueller media witch hunt is finally over.

The big question for this country tonight, this shouldn't be about conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican. Where do we as a country go from here? How do we prevent this unprecedented attack on a duly elected president and an effort to then overturn the will of the American people from ever happening again?

People with the highest levels of power abusing that power to exonerate one candidate that we know should have been indicted, to favor that candidate, to rig a presidential election, and then undo the results that they didn't like. After all, you, we, the American people, we were lied to over and over and over again.

My promise to this country from this night forward is we will hold every liar, every propagandist, every conspiracy theorist accountable. This will likely take us months and maybe longer to unravel the truth. We've got all the tape. We've got all the comments. It will take time.

But I make you this pledge tonight. Every deep state actor that abused the power that you, we, the people give them, will be held accountable. We will hold every super patriot, Comey, who thought they knew better than the American people accountable. We will hold every fake news media liar conspiracy theorist accountable. We will hold every liar -- oh, the cowardly Schiff to begin within Congress -- accountable.

We will name names, we will demand new investigations, we will get this right, we will demand that we get this right, and we will show you can never be trusted again. And tonight, we start with this corrupt media mob in the Democratic Party. We now know they work in unison. They are one entity.

And for the past two years, there have been two parallel narratives in this country. One, of course, was the truth, which we have been proving night after night and reporting on night after night. And tomorrow, all the people that deserve the credit will be here with me about the biggest abuse of power, corruption, scandal perhaps in history.

And then there was the media's pack of lies about a grand scheme where Donald Trump and his team worked closely with Russia to steal the election.  Literally breathless reporting, hysteria pushed week after week, every second of every hour of every day.

Look at some of the headlines. Vox, were common place across nearly every media outlet. There's actually lots of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.  Wrong.

The Atlantic, the collusion with Russia is in plain sight -- wrong.  "Huffington Post" ran this lie on their front page, Manafort indictment reveals Trump-Russia collusion? A lie.

We're talking about thousands upon thousands of reports in the opinion and so-called hard news pages alike. That means The Washington Post, The New York Times -- believe it or not, they actually won Pulitzer prizes for their lying coverage of the Russia collusion hoax. That is a disgusting disgrace and a dishonor to every person that deserved a real Pulitzer Prize.

This horrible conspiratorial coverage was amplified every single day on fake news CNN, conspiracy TV MSNBC. This is but just a tiny sampling.  Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think this meeting and the revelations about it are a game changer in the investigation, because they present the first evidence of actual collusion.

JOHN BRENNAN, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: What Mr. Trump did yesterday was to betray the women and men of the FBI, the CIA, NSA and others, and to betray the American public. That's why I use the term this is nothing short of treasonous.

SIMON ROSENBERG, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: This is direct collusion.  Collusion has been established. It's out in the open, right? We know this all took place.

DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: The whole notion there being no collusion, this is the biggest diversion of the Trump crowd. There was collusion.

DAVID AXELROD, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: So this picture that the president is so desperate to avoid, this picture of collusion, begins to fill in.

CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: You know, what's interesting here, it's both on one hand very damning because it's collusion. You see it there, and it's collusion.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It would seem that collusion is obvious. A criminal conspiracy is unknown.

BRENNAN: There's collusion in plain sight. They were the back and forth between various individuals who were affiliated with the Trump campaign and Russian individuals. That collusion, I think is quite obvious and apparent.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A political hurricane is out there. We'll call it hurricane Vladimir, if you will, the whole Russian thing.

TAPPER: This is evidence of willingness to commit collusion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: This is all a lie. And at the height of this hysteria, especially fake news CNN and conspiracy TV MSNBC -- oh, of course, they were featuring every second of every day, former Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti. More than 108 times in two months because he hated Donald Trump and Avenatti was speculating wildly and spreading these baseless rumors and they ate it up about Trump and Russia on a daily, nightly basis.

Well, today, Avenatti was indicted in two federal separate cases surrounding fraud and extortion. Yet for weeks, Avenatti was there star guest on cable TV, on show after show after show, and the media was a desperate for the false narrative and live to be advanced.

You know, Brit Hume, 50 years in journalism, called this Russia collusion coverage the worst journalistic debacle of his lifetime. Over 50 years in journalism. I thought I had a lot at 30.

You know, even far left former Rolling Stones writer Matt Taibbi I think is his name, wrote: Nobody wants to hear this, but news that special prosecutor Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death blow for the reputation of the American news media.

Jeff Zucker, head of CNN, are you going to apologize for your network's constant stream of lies and hysteria? Phil Griffin, NBC, are you going to apologize for the conspiracy theories you allow to be spread every second of every day on NBC?

What about Jeff Bezos, Marty Baron? Are you going to come clean over the front page deception every day in the Washington Post? Will you at least stop referring to far left collusion obsessed hack Jennifer Rubin and others as conservatives? They're not.

Is the "New York Times" executive editor, Dean Baquet, is he going to give back the paper's Pulitzer Prize for collusion reporting, given they were caught now reporting a hoax?

They all lied to we, the people, day after day for two plus years. In reality, we know there will never be a mea culpa from any of these fake news outlets. They'll just move on to the next group of lies.

They'll never apologize. They'll never retract, their lies, their anonymous sourcing. Their endless speculation. They are hopeless.  Journalism, I told you in 2007, it's dead, it's buried.

And it's not something that I said lightly. They have earned their horrible reputations. Never vetted Obama.

They rushed to judgment going back to Richard Jewell. Look what they did to a 16-year-old kid and other 16-year-olds from Covington, Nicholas Sandmann, and the Covington kids. Look at what they did in the Smollett case.

Look what they did to the Cambridge police, Darren Wilson, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Freddie Gray. They rushed to judgment in Baltimore. The fake rape allegations at UVA, the fake rape allegations against the Duke Lacrosse team.

The rule of law be damned, due process be damned. Equal justice be damned under the law. Equal application of our laws be damned. The Constitution of the United States, to all of them, be damned.

The media mob, the Democratic Party mob, they have caused great harm and division in this country. They laughed at the idea that Donald Trump could win. They begged him to run.

By the way, on all those cases we mentioned, we didn't rush to judgment.  Justice Kavanaugh, another case. We allowed due process. We allowed the presumption of innocence.

They never allowed it in any of those cases and they've never been held accountable but it's never been this big. Now that he's president, they have never taken the time to ever cover Donald Trump's accomplishments, which have been record-breaking.

They hate him. They hate all of we, the people, that dared to vote for him. They thought they knew better. We, the irredeemable deplorables, you know, that we believe in God, our bibles, and our religion. We are the smelly Walmart shoppers.

This hatred as now, this rage has caused as mainstream media to be wrong over and over and over and over and over again. NPR embarrassed after it lied about Don Jr.'s Senate testimony. Oh, we paid for their coverage.

McClatchy blatantly wrong about Michael Cohen's trip to Prague. It never happened. "The Guardian" reporting about a fake conspiracy about Mueller and Julian Assange. Three CNN employees forced to resign after reporting an untrue Russian story related -- about Anthony Scaramucci, our friend.

Fake news story after fake news story, lie after lie, propaganda after propaganda. If it had to do with Russia, President Trump -- well, the story was hastily reported and facts were nothing more than an after thought. Look at more of the video evidence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: The sort of dossier of alleged dirt that the Russians allegedly say they allegedly have on Donald Trump. Alleged dirt they allegedly used to allegedly cultivate him as basically a Russian asset.

(BUZZER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You get the person's phone records. Here they see these calls to the blocked number. Now there seems to be good evidence that that was probably President Trump.

(BUZZER)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Michael Cohen claims that then candidate Donald Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.

(BUZZER)

SCIUTTO: Crucially, these sources tell s us that Cohen is willing to make that assertion to the special counsel Robert Mueller.

(BUZZER)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: We begin with a new report that Paul Manafort, the president's former campaign chairman, paid secret visits, multiple ones to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. This is according to "The Guardian."

(BUZZER)

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: President Trump directed his attorney to lie to Congress.

(BUZZER)

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

HANNITY: Why no due process? Why no presumption of innocence? Why no due diligence, even on a 16-year-old kid? Blatant false reporting, rushing to judgment again and again.

The answer's simple. This corrupt partisan media mob is an integral part of the new radical extreme Democratic socialist party. They clearly work together. They develop, they push the same narrative using the same words whether it is true or not.

Outlets like fake news CNN, conspiracy TV NBC, they have become nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. That's why when they try to kill us here at FOX and you support us, you are allowing the only voice of reason on the air half the time.

That's why Democrats, the media sounded exactly alike. Remember their comments about collusion? Gee, they sound like one another. It's like they're one mind, one heart, one body, one soul.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM HIMES, D-CONN.: You know, my Republican colleagues, the president himself, the White House has been saying there's no evidence of collusion, none at all. We need people to say there's no evidence of inclusion. No collusion whatsoever.

Well, it turns out that there was collusion.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL, D-CALIF.: In our investigation, we saw strong evidence of collusion. The Republicans now are choosing to bury it.

TOM PEREZ, DNC CHAIRMAN: Over the course of the last year, we have seen, I think, a mountain of evidence of collusion between the campaign and the Russians.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, D-CONN.: The evidence is pretty clear that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You think there's evidence, that's pretty clear?

BLUMENTHAL: The evidence is there.

REP. JERROLD NADLER , D-N.Y.: It seems quite clear the present keeps saying no collusion. But there obviously was collusion. The question is, how high did that collusion went? When the president was part of a criminal conspiracy, it was clearly a criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people of an honest election.

REP. TED LIEU, D-CALIF., JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: This looks like an explosive indictment, the facts they set forth look like collusion.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: We saw cold, hard evidence of the Trump campaign, the Trump family, eagerly intending to collude possibly with Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: All lies. In the end, we now know the truth. Trump-Russia collusion, the conspiracy theory was nothing more than a coping mechanism by people that couldn't handle losing, desperately hoping the 2016 election results were not what they were. Some evil force was behind the scenes, behind the curtain pulling the strings, Russia, Russia, Russia.

Never before as a country have we witnessed such sore-loserism ever like this. So many lies, so much hysteria and breathless reporting.

And Democratic House Intel Committee Chairman Schiff -- I call him the cowardly Schiff, lied repeatedly when he said there's significant evidence of collusion. He is not to be trusted. Should be taken off as the chairman of the House Intel Committee. He's a national disgrace.

As is Congresswoman Waters lying to you when she vowed to impeach Trump over collusion.

You can never trust people that lie like this or Congressman Eric Swalwell who said he'd seen plenty of evidence of collusion. He is a liar. He's never to be trusted.

Or Senator Mazie Hirono explaining that we are headed towards a constitutional crisis. More total B.S.

And the list goes on and on. And the hysteria on the left was widespread.  If not for talk radio -- thank God for Rush, Mark, my colleagues here, many of them at the FOX News Channel, like Tucker, Laura, Lou Dobbs on our sister station, "FOX & Friends", a few other brave, logical independent thinkers standing alone, there would have been no one out there advocating for the truth, discovering the biggest abuse of power, scandal in our history. Nobody.

We now have to concern ourselves as a country with a two-tiered system of justice featuring high-ranking deep state powerful officials. We empower them. That try to first rig an election in favor of Hillary Clinton by exonerating her from what should have been obvious obstruction and a violation of the Espionage Act.

Then they use their power to try and influence the 2016 election with Russian lies that Hillary paid for, of all ironies. That's why our Hannity Watch on the deep state is more important than ever.

I am tonight wearing an FBI flag pin given to me by a rank-and-file FBI individual. Can't name him. He'll get in trouble.

But like so many people I know in the FBI, thanking me for distinguishing between the 99 percent of brave, dedicated agents of the premiere law enforcement agency of the world that do a tremendous job, that are embarrassed by what their leadership has done. They serve our country every day.

Don't put them in the same alignment, if you will, with the Comeys, McCabes, Strzok, and Pages of the world.

And this is now time that we get the justice that we deserve. This is now time for those that abuse the power that you gave them, their day of reckoning must now come or else this will happen again. My sources are telling me it's all about to come cascading down.

This all started when they rigged the investigation into Hillary's email scandal. There was clear, compelling and incontrovertible evidence that, in fact, she mishandled top secret, classified information on a private server that we believe six foreign intelligence agencies broken into.  There was clear evidence.

By the way, no attorney could get me or any of you out of subpoenaed e- mails that you may destroy, 33,000 of them, and then you acid wash your hard drive with Bleach Bit and you bang up your phones and your devices with hammers and remove the SIM cards. Remember Strzok and Page and their texts? Remember about Trump supporters they said were smelly Walmart people and saying that Hillary should win 100 million to zero? The lead investigator into the Clinton case, Peter Strzok who did the interview with Flynn and Clinton.

In the Clinton case, imagine allowing two of her friends in the room while she's being interrogated in an investigation, or as Loretta Lynch said, a matter. He was writing Hillary's exoneration with Comey's blessing in May of 2016. They had never done an investigation, the exoneration before the investigation.

By the way, interviewed her July 2nd. Comey exonerated her July 5th. Not before Cheryl Mills was granted immunity. Not before the infamous tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and then Attorney General Lynch and, of course, the testimony last week that Loretta Lynch herself was up to her eyeballs in every decision that was made, and even Lisa Page admitted, well, they're all Democrats, we knew the fix was in.

That horribly flawed investigation into Hillary Clinton now must be reopened if we are to ever have justice in this country. Once Clinton lost the election, the next phase of the deep state corruption, that kicked in.  You know, the insurance policy, Hillary's bought and paid for Russian lies.

Imagine Russian lies put together by a foreign spy and then used on an American citizen to get entry into the entire Trump campaign in the lead-up to a presidential election. They denied Carter Page due process. They denied Carter Page's constitutional rights. They repeatedly committed fraud against FISA court judges. They did it by omission, by not disclosing that Hillary bought and paid for the Russian lies. And of course, they used what is unverified, uncorroborated information, because remember, Christopher Steele doesn't stand by it to this day.

Remember Bruce Ohr warned everybody. This was in October 2016. That dossier was tainted. Hillary paid for it. Christopher Steele hated Trump, and Christopher Steele testified I'm only 50/50 for saying it's raw intelligence as to whether any of the dossier was true. Most of it now was debunked. That rendered that dossier unverifiable. They say they tried to verify it. They're lying. And that didn't stop the dossier from then being used as Nunes and the Grassley-Graham memo said is the bulk of evidence to get the FISA warrants for them.

So tonight, it's time for transparency. Tonight, we begin a process that will take us a long time of accountability. We begin - it is now time to declassify all of those FISA applications. You talk about transparency. Let the American people see the extent to which those FISA warrants were based on Hillary's bought-and-paid-for Russian lies and then fully expose every single one of these deep state actors who abuse the power that you, the American people, gave them.

James Comey, let's start with him. Let's start with Sally Yates. They need to be investigated. McCabe needs to be investigated. All who signed off on the FISA warrants need to be fully investigated. Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, John Brennan, Clapper, Lynch, and also if Lynch is running this whole fix, what did Obama know and when did he know it?

They all must be now put under oath, investigated because they weaponized the powerful tools of intelligence and resources and they literally broke the law. They surveilled against the law, they unmasked Americans against the law, they leaked raw intelligence against the law, and they tried to favor an election in one side and not the other, and then bludgeon and undo a Presidential election.

Clapper and Brennan, let's hold them accountable for leaking a lie. By the way, Comey, oh, he believed in the dossier in October of 2016, but told Trump in January of '17, it's salacious, it's not verified. What about the private memos he purposefully leaked, government documents to a special counsel to begin the investigation?

Think about the harm that all of this has done. Imagine, what President could withstand this, denying a free, fair, open election, and the American people, their right to pick their President, the President and his supporters, and attempted frankly coup of a sitting President, appointing a special counsel filled with partisan Democrats, people that went to Hillary's victory party and even represented as attorneys, Hillary Clinton? This has caused enormous amounts of collateral damage to many people that cannot afford the lawyers they had to hire. The President, his wife, his kids, his family, his advisors. Heroes like Michael Flynn, people like Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and so many others.

And after Attorney General Barr released the summary yesterday of the Mueller report, oh, there is FBI Director Comey tweeting, so many questions, which Senator Lindsey Graham replied, "Couldn't agree with you more. See you soon." I warned Director Comey a long time ago before his book, you have the right to remain silent, I suggest you use it. He didn't take my advice.

Joining us now, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Senator Lindsey Graham.

Senator, a lot of this falls now on your shoulders. I see you laughing, but--

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, R-S.C., SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: That's part of it.

HANNITY: --this--

GRAHAM: I've enjoyed - I've enjoyed listening.

HANNITY: Anything that you heard me say that's wrong?

GRAHAM: No. I mean, we're not going to try these people on cable television. We're going to put it through the rule of law, right? That's what you want. That's what--

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: Whoa! Totally agree.

GRAHAM: Yeah.

HANNITY: I believe--

GRAHAM: Yeah--

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: --in due process, the presumption of innocence.

GRAHAM: Absolutely. And you've been consistent on that. Here's what I want to find out. Did they exonerate Clinton because they had a political bias? Did they ignore all the facts, because if they indict her, they know she can't beat Trump and they wanted Trump to lose? Was the counterintelligence investigation a back doorway of spying on Trump? There's really no evidence of working with Russia. They just used it as an excuse. Was the FISA warrant obtained unlawfully based on fraudulent documentation to surveil the campaign? Those are the things that I think you want to know about and I want to know about.

HANNITY: What will you do? Tell us the steps that you will take.

GRAHAM: OK.

HANNITY: You will play--

GRAHAM: Great question.

HANNITY: --a pivotal role here, sir.

GRAHAM: First thing I want to do is find out why they got a warrant against Carter Page if the dossier was a bunch of garbage. What did you have beyond the dossier? Why didn't you listen to Bruce Ohr? At the end of the day, how could you use this document that's unverified to the state to get a warrant on four different occasions? I want to find out all about that.

I want to know if the e-mail investigation was basically dropped because they had a political bias. I want to know if the counterintelligence investigation - why didn't you warn Trump that you thought the Russians were trying to infiltrate his campaign? Why didn't you tell--

HANNITY: Yeah. What would he say--

GRAHAM: --him what you told--

HANNITY: He's a patriot.

GRAHAM: --Dianne Feinstein?

HANNITY: Right.

GRAHAM: Well - so the reason I think they didn't tell him about the Russians infiltrating his campaign is that they wanted to infiltrate his campaign, not the Russians.

HANNITY: All right. Senator, I know that you have a - and by the way, there are a lot of good people that have been very helpful in all of this. And Meadows and Jordan and--

GRAHAM: Yeah. They've been great.

HANNITY: --and Ratcliffe and all these people. You now have the ability to make public and the President will have the ability to make public the FISA warrants, the 302s, the Gang of Eight information.

GRAHAM: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

HANNITY: And these other buckets, the five buckets I always talk about.

GRAHAM: Yeah. Right.

HANNITY: How important is it that the American people see that besides the Mueller conclusions?

GRAHAM: I've been pretty consistent. I said I thought Mueller was the right guy to look into the allegations against President Trump. He was a man of law. He had a great reputation. And I fought to make sure he could do his job. He has rendered his verdict. There is no collusion. Now it's time to look at how this got off the rails.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to use every tool available to me, disclose as much as I can without compromising source and methods to make sure the public understands how their President could be accused of working with a foreign government when there's really no basis in fact. This should scare everybody.

Did the investigators, did the prosecutors use the law for political purposes? If that turns out to be true, that is bigger than Watergate. Did they try to take him down after he got elected? Was there a real effort to invoke the 25th amendment?

HANNITY: Was there - looks like it.

GRAHAM: Well, I don't know, Sean. But nobody seems to give a damn but me and you and a few other people. If it had been Republicans hiring Steele to spy on Clinton and they use a dossier prepared by Steele against Clinton associates that was a bunch of political garbage, it'd be front-page news everywhere.

HANNITY: Russian lies, Senator. Ironically, Russian lies.

GRAHAM: I think so. I told Trump that. I think the dossier came from Russia. Mr. President, if you think the Russians are just out to help you, they're not. They're out to destroy America, and they're--

HANNITY: Senator--

GRAHAM: --basically using both campaigns.

HANNITY: --you really had a moment in the Kavanaugh case. A lot weighs on your investigation, and your pledge tonight is so important to getting to the truth so this never happens again, sir. Thank you for being with us.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

HANNITY: Here with more reaction, the host of Newt's World podcast, former Speaker of the House, Fox News contributor, Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Speaker, you have been around a long time and you have fought a lot of political battles, and you've seen a lot from Watergate on through. What we now know is the biggest abuse of power, as far as I can tell, and corruption scandal this country has seen.

NEWT GINGRICH, NEWT'S WORLD PODCAST, FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE & FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I think that's probably right. I think it's going to take a few days for it to sink in. But the Mueller report, the fact that he came back and said flatly, "There was no collusion."

After all the talk, as you point out tonight, it says to me that there are three different investigations that have to go on in parallel. One is, how did we end up in this mess? Who were the people who made the decisions? To what extent was President Obama and his attorney general directly involved? The evidence seems to be pretty clear that they were.

The second investigation I think has to be to - and I challenge the news media to do this themselves. I mean, this is such a total fiasco that starting with, as I've suggested all day today, The New York Times and The Washington Post ought to return the Pulitzer prizes, which they earned for publishing falsehoods. I mean, if they want us to rebuild respect for the press, they got a great opportunity to start. But the whole news media industry has an obligation to look at what went wrong here.

And then third, you have to say to yourself, if the deep state was this anti-Trump, don't we have to go back and look at the entire Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton, that entire process, which by any reasonable standard was felonious and should have led to criminal charges and somehow just got brushed under the rug?

HANNITY: It is - it is that - think of the FISA abuse. I was brought up maybe very differently. I kind of fear judges. If I'm in a courtroom, I'm going to say, yes, your honor; no, your honor; yes, ma'am; no, ma'am; yes, sir; no, sir.

The idea that they never verified - they presented something that was unverifiable. And then they omitted the key point, Hillary paid for what is, we're told, the bulk of information in the FISA applications, she paid for that. They never told the FISA court judges. James Comey, Sally Yates, Rod Rosenstein, they all put their signature with that. To me, that's a fraud on a court. I don't think I would do it and get away with it or I don't think I could delete 33,000 e-mails like Hillary and get away with it.

GINGRICH: OK. I think it's deeper than that, Sean. I think now that we've had - and you and I have both been very critical of the people Mueller hired. They were hard core Democrats. And frankly, mildly amazed that despite all their best effort, they in the end had to conclude Trump was innocent, which is what they did. In terms of collusion, they said there's nothing there.

Now, what that says to me is this is a moment to take a deep breath and recognize the following fact. There was a deep state news media joint conspiracy to protect Hillary Clinton and to destroy Donald Trump. And it, in many ways, is one of the sickest moments in American history.

And I think that it has to be - and I'm glad that you pointed out to Chairman Graham tonight the great obligation and opportunity he has in the Judiciary Committee. But we need to, as a country, come to grips with just how sick this was and how much it still has a lot of pieces sitting out there that need to be - the rocks need to be turned over and we need to see what's under them.

HANNITY: Tonight is the beginning. And I will not stop until we get to the truth. Mr. Speaker, you have been steadfast in always standing up for truth, rule of law, due process, presumption of innocence. Thank you for being with us.

Now with the collusion narrative crashing to its death, will the media ever take accountability for their failures, their outright lies? Somebody who's also been in the forefront, me, Rush, Mark and our ensemble cast here, a lot of us alone on the edge as usual. Mark Levin, host of Life, Liberty & Levin. Mark, we don't have as much time as usual. You go.

MARK LEVIN, "LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN" HOST, FOX NEWS: Well, you have collusion. You have collusion between the Democrat Party, the media, and the Obama administration. Hillary Clinton, she's been silent for three or four days, hasn't she? Barack Obama has been silent throughout all this, hasn't he? For all the talk of the Democrats who run these committees, they don't want to talk to Hillary Clinton, they don't want to talk to Barack Obama. They want transparency. I want transparency.

Here's the impeachment clause of the constitution. Treason, bribery, other high crimes, and misdemeanors. I can name people who've committed treason, other high crimes and misdemeanors. He's not in the White House. They're members of Congress.

We have a big problem in this country. The Democrat Party is not a pro- American party. They lost an election. They act like a third-world party. They want to destroy the President and the Presidency. Listen to their candidates. Anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-liberty, anti-security, anti-immigration. This is the problem. And the media is the mouthpiece.

Now, you want to talk about obstruction? I want to hit this quickly in this report. Did Bob Mueller subpoena the President of the United States to appear before a grand jury over obstruction? No, he didn't. Did Bob Mueller go into any court in this country to try and adjudicate the issue of obstruction? No, he didn't. I keep hearing it said, you either charge or you don't. He didn't. That's the point. He didn't charge an obstruction because there was no obstruction.

What the hell did the President of the United States do? He fired Comey. He was a bad guy, a leaker. Replaced him with a bureaucrat. They spent whatever money they wanted to spend. They went wherever they wanted to go. They went all over the world. They spent all the time in the world. There was in fact no obstruction and no collusion. But it is time to focus on the Democrats in the House. It is time to focus on the media and the Hillary campaign, the DNC, Barack Obama.

This was Barack Obama's government that did all this. When the Russians were interfering with our election, they were interfering with our election when Comey was the FBI Director, when Clapper was the Head of Intelligence, when Brennan was the Head of the CIA, when Loretta Lynch was Head of the Department of Justice. They went after the candidate of the opposition party. They put spies in his campaign. They abused the FISA court system. They used opposition research.

This country doesn't belong to Adam Schiff and Nadler and Pelosi. Big deal, they got one-half of one-third of the government. It belongs to us. And you in the free press, you are destroying the free press. This will be noted in history. What a bunch of loathsome, ideological mouthpieces you are for the tyranny that is the Democrat Party. I don't have anything else to say.

HANNITY: Great One, I think you said a lot and a mouthful. I got to thank you, Rush, Tucker, Laura, Fox & Friends, Sarah, John, Craig, too many people to name. I will bring them on. Alan Dershowitz even as so amazing. This is important. We better get this right, Mark. You were once about a post-constitutional America. This would take us there--

LEVIN: Well, we're living it.

HANNITY: --if we don't rectify it. Thank you for being with us, my friend.

GINGRICH: Amen.

HANNITY: The Great One. Congressman Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, they've been steadfast. Rudy Giuliani, steadfast, next. Straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: All right. Republicans rightfully tonight calling on the hack, the liar, Adam Schiff, to step down as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. These two men from their freedom caucus - I've said many times, without the freedom caucus, we don't have Republicans that stand on principles, support the President and fight to keep their promises.

Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, guys, we're just short on time. How important is it now that we get this right? Mark.

REP. MARK MEADOWS, R-N.C., HOUSE FREEDOM CAUCUS CHAIR: Well, I think it's very important that we go back to how it all started. Let's get the reams of documents, let's give it to Senator Graham over on the Senate side, let him do a real investigation. Let's get to the bottom of it and hold people accountable. And the time is now.

HANNITY: And you guys laid the foundation perfectly. The work you've done, it is--

REP. JIM JORDAN, R-OHIO: Thank you.

HANNITY: Honestly, without you, we wouldn't be here. And Devin Nunes and some others.

JORDAN: Yep.

HANNITY: Jim.

JORDAN: No. Mark is exactly right. Let's do everything we can to work with Chairman Graham to get to the bottom of this and expose how they used one party's opposition research document to get a secret warrant to spy on the other party's campaign and launch this whole ridiculous thing that we saw unfold over the last several years.

HANNITY: How do you investigate Russia collusion and ignore the Hillary bought-and-paid-for lying Russian dossier that is used to bludgeon the President, infiltrate his campaign, deny human rights and constitutional rights, and then they used to try and undo a duly-elected President, and try and remove him? Mark.

MEADOWS: Well, we - we spent twice as much time, four times the amount of resources investigating Trump than we did Hillary Clinton. And yet, we find that all the collusion that happened was actually from Fusion GPS, spending--

HANNITY: Yeah.

MEADOWS: --$12 million to get dirt on the President of the United States. And in the end, there was nothing to it.

HANNITY: They'll never stop in Congress. Endless investigations. Jim Jordan.

JORDAN: Here's the good news, Sean. 19, 40, 500, 2,800. 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, 500 search warrants, 2,800 subpoenas, and what were the findings of the Mueller investigation? No - no new indictments, no sealed indictments, no collusion, no obstruction. So in spite of everything they did to try to take down this President, they still - when Mueller does his investigation, he finds no collusion, no obstruction, no sealed indictments. That's the - that's the ultimate vindication for this President.

Now let's go find the people who started this whole thing and let's hold them accountable. That's what's good for the country. That's what's good for this nation. That's our charge. That's what we have to do now.

HANNITY: All right. You two have been in the forefront. I want America to know that we wouldn't - we may not have been here today but for these two guys. Thank you, both.

And when we come back, the attorney for the President, Rudy Giuliani, will weigh in, as we continue. Oh, and a surprise. Straight ahead. But oh - oh. Wait a minute. Hang on. Rudy Giuliani - hello - the attorney for the President, is with us now.

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY: Longtime friend of mine. Mr. Mayor, good to see you. And I-

(CROSSTALK)

RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: It's good to see you, Sean. It's a good night.

HANNITY: --privately. I know you work tirelessly. I know you guys didn't sleep and--

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY: Well, it's true.

GIULIANI: It's worth it. To defend an innocent man and see justice done is the ultimate goal of any lawyer. It was an honor for me to work on this case and to see it turn out such a complete victory. I've never seen a declination letter, which is what this is, so powerful. Usually prosecutors just say we're not going to go forward with the case.

HANNITY: That's it.

GIULIANI: Mueller put in this thing about he didn't commit a crime, but I can't exonerate him. That is totally unprofessional. You're not supposed to say that. Then Barr and Rosenstein kind of knocked the obstruction thing right out of the park. No obstruction--

HANNITY: But Mueller did hand it back to Rosenstein and--

GIULIANI: Well, because the guy - the guy got paid somewhere upwards of $30 million, but he couldn't make the key decision. His hands were shaking. He probably had - he had Jekyll and Hyde. He had the bad guys and the good guys. That little cheap shot probably got stuck in there somewhere along the way by Weissmann who tortured Manafort, who tried to get Corsi to perjure himself, who jammed up Flynn in a really pathetic false statement case--

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: I want him to pull back that plea. This is--

GIULIANI: How about if they don't prosecute Cohen? They got to pull back the plea. Cohen lied brazenly to Cummings. Cummings said he'd throw the book at him. The book hasn't been thrown yet. And I was just on Chris Cuomo show and told him he'll be the--

HANNITY: Who is he?

GIULIANI: --he'll be the first witness. Well, he's the guy on the other network. I told the other network--

(LAUGHTER)

GIULIANI: --that they got to--

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: There is no other network. But go ahead.

GIULIANI: I told the other network they got to apologize. You got to watch it.

HANNITY: Chris is a good guy. I am kidding. Go ahead.

GIULIANI: I said they got to apologize. And I told him, you're the first witness because you got the tape that proves he's a perjurer. There were --

HANNITY: What's the take?

GIULIANI: --13 witnesses to his perjury.

HANNITY: Well, there are a lot of tapes involved in this case. According to my sources, Mr. Mayor, if we don't get this right, this was an attempt to rig an election, this was an attempt to undo an election. If we don't get to the bottom of it starting with Hillary, what happens?

GIULIANI: Yeah, yeah. Well, this is even more than that. To me, as a lawyer and former prosecutor, this was a massive attempt to frame the President of the United States and to hijack the American Electorate. This was an attempt to take out the President of the United States, and we don't have to go much further than the texts of Peter Strzok. It was first an attempt to prevent him from becoming President. And then it was an insurance policy to take him out if he was the President. And I know Peter Strzok is involved. He's got to be prosecuted. Ohr has to be prosecuted for conflict of interest. His wife who was working for the company--

HANNITY: Absolutely.

GIULIANI: --that got a million dollars has to be prosecuted for conflict of interest. But here is the big question.

HANNITY: Real quick. We got to go.

GIULIANI: This wasn't made up. Who came up with this story first? Who made it up?

HANNITY: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We'll have you back.

GIULIANI: I have a good idea, but I got to prove it first.

HANNITY: The football is back, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: Tonight show is the beginning. Tomorrow, we're going to have all of those people, Gregg Jarrett and Solomon, everyone that contributed, and we will get to the bottom of this every single night. And also, they'll be here to tell their story. By the way, George Papadopoulos has a new book. You've got to read it. He's doing a live signing right now. Go to my Twitter account, you'll get it. The football is back. Let not your heart be troubled. The news continues.
 
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