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Published June 06, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "The Fox News Specialists," June 5, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
EBONI K. WILLIAMS, CO-HOST: Hey, everybody. I'm Eboni K. Williams, along with Eric Bolling and Kat Timpf. And we are "The Fox News Specialists." Anti-terror raids sweeping London today in the wake of Saturday's attack that killed seven and injured dozens. U.K. authorities are now identifying two of the three terrorists in that attack that ISIS is claiming responsibility for. Fox News correspondent Mike Tobin joins us from London with more.
MIKE TOBIN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: And Eboni, the first of those terrorists identified is Rachid Redouane. He's a bit of a mystery. They assume he's 30-years-old, but investigators at least with the information they had made public cannot pin down his country of origin. It's a different case for 27-year-old Khuram Butt. He was well known to police, as well as MI-5, the investigative agency. The intelligence agency said at least 2015. Primarily he got on the radar for talking a great deal about radical Islamist ideology. You mentioned anti-terror raids. They've been happening at a flurry since the weekend, a couple of boroughs just outside of London. We know in one they picked up some 12 people, release one. At least 11 are being held. Investigators do believe that they killed all the attackers but believe there might be a wider network of people who assisted or sympathize with the attackers. Meantime, as London mourns, thousands have gathered in an area known as Potters Field very near the London Bridge for a vigil. An angry London mayor, Sadiq Khan, himself a Muslim, said the attackers used a perverse ideology that's against the faith of Islam. And the commander of Scotland Yard is appealing to the public, particularly the Muslim community for more information on what led up to the attacks. Back to you in New York.
ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: Hey, Mike Tobin, before we let you go, they named two of these attackers. They have identified all three. Why are they waiting to name the third for?
TOBIN: It has to do with him being international. They're trying to pin down exactly where he's from, at least according to investigators the particulars about him, before they release that information, Eric.
WILLIAMS: Thank you so much, Mike. So with that, let's meet today's specialists. His career spans 15 years as a covert field operation officer for the CIA, he's also the co-founder of Diligence LLC, a global intelligence security firm, he's a Fox News channel regular, and he specializes in global crisis and U.S. national security. Oh, look at that. Mike Baker is here today. He is a best-selling author, a former member of Israel's top counterterror unit, he's also the founder of Cherry, a leading manufacturer of specialized law enforcement products for terrorism readiness, but he specializes, and get this, late '80s hair metal drumming, but just don't ask him to successfully grow out his hair, Aaron Cohen is here. I had to rebound a couple of times. I was like, heavy metal -- no, no hair metal. But going in here because this is certainly serious, I want to start with you on this, Mike. I want to read to read a couple of things that stood out to me.
MIKE BAKER, DILIGENCE LCC CO FOUNDER: Sure.
WILLIAMS: Number one, two of these three attackers were already known to authorities, we're being told. One of them it's being reported that a friend actually called one of these hotlines and reported him because he was obsessed with this hate preaching YouTube videos or what have you. And also, police were warned that at least one of them was actively radicalizing children in local parks, giving them treats and candy and things like this. So the theme here, much like we saw in Manchester, and in Orlando, and in San Bernardino, at least some if not all of these terrorists already on law enforcement's radar, yet somethings falling to the crack. Help me out, Mike. How does this keep happening?
BAKER: Yeah. This is why the public sometimes loses their mind, and the first top line story you hear is that it's an intel failure or law enforcement failure. The reality is that, yes, some of those things that you said, those things happen. The individuals have become -- on the radar screen. The candy and sweet things radicalizing children that, you know, that's a Ramadan thing. I'm going to hand out candy. But, you know, at the end of the day, law enforcement and the intel community, whether we're talking about the U.K. or we're talking about the U.S., can only operate within the parameters of the laws that are established. That is it. And so.
WILLIAMS: So are their hands tied?
BAKER: I mean, yes. I mean, their hands are tied. If what you want them to do is be more aggressive. So when people say, look, the individuals are on your radar screen, why weren't you following them, 24/7, for the next several months? It's because you can't unless you've got sufficient evidence. And just because he was out at the park and waved an ISIS flag, believe it or not, that's.
BOLLING: They documented him on a documentary. He's -- jihadist next door and he went on some terror watch list, and he fell on the low end of the terror watch list. They let him go. Mike, I'm going to push back here a little bit.
BAKER: Sure.
BOLLING: A few years ago, I was on the show, five or six years ago on The Five. And a guest comes on, it was a terror attack, and the guest talks about Muslim no-go zones in Europe. He got in a whole truck load of trouble for saying it, to suggest that there were no-go zones. And now we're finding out, in fact, there are radical Islamic Muslim no-go zones where cops, local cops in France and in Great Britain, don't go into these neighborhoods and they let them actually practice sharia law. I mean, part of this is pc culture gone amok over Europe.
BAKER: I don't disagree with that at all, absolutely. And the political correctness.
(CROSSTALK)
BAKER: All I'm saying, the political correctness has created an environment where the laws exist and you've got to play within those parameters. I mean, I guarantee you if we were following somebody and the investigation didn't meet a certain protocol.
WILLIAMS: Probable cause.
BAKER: . you've got everybody opening up their yap and complaining about privacy issues. Now, of course, after an event, yes, everybody is on board with security, and the pendulum swings over to our security. Everybody wants security. But that doesn't happen for very long before it moves back and people start complaining. But I'm saying if you want it then you got to change the laws and allow investigators and allow intel and law enforcement to be more aggressive. That's a political.
WILLIAMS: Let me get Aaron in here because he's also has a deep background in this stuff. I think a lot of people would feel in agreement with what Mike is saying right now. But, of course, the other concern is protections and civil liberties and privacies because, ultimately, maybe we're talking about changing the probable cause standard, what's needed to move forward with an arrest when someone is suspected of this type of activity.
AARON COHEM, ISRAEL TOP COUNTERTERROR UNIT FORMER MEMBER: If I was leading this operation, I would wanted to rain warrant, terrorist warrant, so I can kick down every door of every possible terrorist, friend of a terrorist, family member of a terrorist. In Israel, if you cohort it with a terrorist or you had any knowledge of a terrorist attack, we're going to destroy your house. The reason why is because you don't deserve to even live here if you had any knowledge of a potential terror attack.
WILLIAMS: It's a different standard in Israel.
COHEN: Well, it's the proper tone. And what we're missing here, and he said the key word, and -- you know, me and the CIA guy, here we are trying to download each other's cell phones the whole time.
BAKER: Now we're working on Eric.
COHEN: Yeah, now we're working on Eric. But here's the thing, he nailed it, it's about the law. But here's the thing, the law is a living, breathing thing. And I'm not a lawyer, but I will say this, tone, it's no different in any other business. What is the tone that you want to set for the operation?
BOLLING: You want the tone? You want the tone here? Here's the tone. After the Manchester bombing, after the Ariana Grande concert, the mayor, Andy Burnham, came out and said business as usual here, folks. What happens? A couple of days later, the London mayor -- there's a terror attack. Hang on. They mowed down some people on the street, exactly what ISIS plans and tells people to do, their fighters to go ahead and do, and what does the London mayor say, remain calm, everybody.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: There's the tone that you don't want to be importing to this country.
WILLIAMS: Real quick, Eric. He said remain calm because don't overreact to the increased police presence.
KATHERINE TIMPF, CO-HOST: He was talking specifically about the police presence. He said Londoners will see an increased police presence today, over the course of these days, no reason to be alarm.
WILLIAMS: But first, this is actually a perfect set up, Eric, about this tone is because Prime Minister Theresa May, perhaps, changing tone. Coming around stating what we all know about the Islamic terror threat.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
THERESA MAY, PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDON: While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is, to be frank, far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult and often embarrassing conversations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Kat, about people who feel like it's too little, too late, or it's just talk, where are you on that? And do you think this is at least even a step in the right direction?
TIMPF: I think that it certainly is. When you talk about somebody we've been discussing, it's on video with an ISIS flag, who's saying I would murder my mother for ISIS, who made it very clear that this is a radical person. How much more obvious or probable cause that you need to look deeper into a dude like that? I'm all about tolerance, but when somebody wants to murder me, I'm kind of not tolerant anymore. He wasn't hiding. He wasn't like, oh, he kind of lost.
(CROSSTALK)
BAKER: I'm just saying, everybody is a counterterrorism specialist after an attack.
BOLLING: And you are. And you're a counterterrorism specialist. What did she mean by saying that we need to be more robust in identifying them and stamping them up?
WILLIAMS: But we know who they are.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: How do you not step up and say no, we're going to knock down doors in these no-go zones, and we're going pull people up, and we're going to look into the mosques.
BAKER: And that's exactly right. We should be doing this. We should be aggressive. We should -- but what I'm saying is -- yeah. What I'm saying is, now she said that, now you know what they've got to do, they got to bang that issue out in parliament. They got to come up and say we've got to revise some laws so that we can adjust the surveillance protocols, so that we can get on there and monitor and do the things we need to be doing so that we can open investigations.
TIMPF: You have to.
COHEN: The Americans and the Brits are experts at investigating crime. Terrorism happens before. You don't have time to investigate, everybody is dead. The responders show up, everybody praises the responders. I love praising the responders. I've been training law enforcement SWAT for 20 years. They're going to get there in 8 minutes. They did a great job. The problem is that profiling afterwards, fingerprinting, investigating. I don't even care if these guys were connected to a larger terror network and let me tell you why. The profile of a would-be with no connection to ISIS with a knife on a bridge or in a car is going to do the same amount of damage by somebody sophistically connected to ISIS.
BOLLING: But this bother you, Aaron, that within minutes -- than within minutes of this terror attack, forget after they're dead, within minutes, they've got 12 people arrested. What does that tell you?
COHEN: It tells you.
BOLLING: They knew.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: You're right, Eric, and that's my frustration as well on all of these attacks. It's not limited to this. It's Manchester. It's Orlando. It's San Bernardino. So I think Mike is really driving this point home. It's a change in law that needs to happen because we do know -- before we go busting down all the mosques, Eric, they know who they are. They know who they are.
BOLLING: Should we be profiling?
WILLIAMS: Criminally profiling? I am a staunch advocate of it. Racial profiling? No. Criminal profiling? Absolutely.
BAKER: No, Eric, you just said that is the key here. And people always say -- and Aaron and I were talking about this earlier. People talk to me and say, how do we get into a tighter situation like in Israel. Israel, they got it right. I say, that's great. They're profiling constantly. That's what they do. You go to the airport, and what are they're doing, they're looking and it's very scientific.
WILLIAMS: Criminal profile.
(CROSSTALK)
TIMPF: Civil liberties are also very important in this country. We have to be.
BAKER: Sure they are.
TIMPF: They have to be absolutely protecting them.
WILLIAMS: Criminally profiling someone doesn't destroy their civil liberties.
TIMPF: I'm not saying that. What I'm saying, talking about busting into mosques.
WILLIAMS: Right, that what I was saying because you don't need to do that. Sometimes we already know who they are, Eric. So it's not an issue of trying to find out who they are.
BOLLING: You're preaching to the choir. I'm telling you, I'm in favor of aggressive profiling of anyone who's been somewhat -- even a friend of a friend is related to a terror cell, bust their butt, too. Find out what they're all about. Go and get in there because this is a whole new world. We're having terror attacks every few days now.
WILLIAMS: Every few days.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Because they'll hide behind the constitution. Come on, I'm a constitutionalist too. But, you know what, there's a certain point in time when America safety, national security is at risk, you've got to go one step further and say we're going to profile these dirt balls.
WILLIAMS: When we say enough is enough, I think that's what that means. I think it's time to look at the statute, revisit them, and recalibrate the standards that we have generally used to say this is how long you can be under surveillance. This is how long we need to have probable cause. Maybe we need to lower some of those standards.
TIMPF: Eric, you mention this in terms of terrorism, right, which what happened with the Patriot Act. This is supposed to be to protect us from terrorism. But as we all know, now it's being used for cases that have nothing to do with terrorism. So that's why you have to be very, very careful.
BOLLING: Should be listening on mosques in.
TIMPF: If you absolutely.
BOLLING: . cities that have -- you know, are terror target this city for one, should law enforcement or FBI intel department be able to listen into mosques?
TIMPF: You were talking about changing laws, the standard for proof, the standard for probable cause, for the sake of terrorism. But when you do something for the sake of terrorism in this country, often it gets expanded, often they start to use it for other cases, and we don't want to let ISIS win in a sense by destroying our way of life for ourselves.
WILLIAMS: I disagree with that, Kat. I think when you talk about the reasons why standard of law could ever be change, there's no greater reason than public safety.
TIMPF: Also it's used to apply on other things like drug cases which have nothing to do with public safety.
WILLIAMS: I'm saying it in this case.
BAKER: If I can inject a really cynical and negative point here which is that I'm listening to this conversation and you're right, I think what you're saying about profiling, what you're saying about adjusting, and looking at the loss, I will say also I've been in the same conversations for what seems like a lifetime now. I've been doing this a long time.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Because we have liberal mayors, we have liberal leaders who says -- no, no, Eboni, come on.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Would you be in favor of listening into the mosques in New York City?
WILLIAMS: Not indiscriminately, but if you can connect dots for me -- not indiscriminately, unless we're going to do that for churches as well.
COHEN: In Israel, Arabs blows themselves up.
WILLIAMS: Absolutely.
COHEN: That's a fact. They're Muslims. We also have a million Muslims who lives in Israel who are Israeli citizens who don't want to be blown up, don't want to blow themselves up. They're good people. They serve in our military. That serve in our military (INAUDIBLE). And we have to listen, the reason why we have to listen because if you don't or if you don't, ultimately in the end you're going to fail. You have to follow that profile.
WILLIAMS: I'm not saying not to listen, right. I'm simply saying this is an important clarification, guys and ladies, Criminal profiling, absolutely.
BOLLING: Explained that.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Eboni, your criminal profile only will occur after the fact the crime has been committed.
WILLIAMS: Eric, you're not listening to me. I am simply saying criminally profile on the front end. I'm not saying not to do that. I'm distinguishing criminal profile.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: I'm just trying to learn. Explain what you mean in a terror scenario how you -- on the front end of a terrorist act, how do you criminally profile a terrorist?
WILLIAMS: You look for things in there totality. So, yes, religion, yes, race, but also their behavior. Who do they know? Like you said, they're friends, who are their friends? Who are they talking to? Who do they communicating with, and then you listen in.
BOLLING: OK. That's what I'm saying.
(CROSSTALK)
BAKER: They key is you can make this happen. It's not a super heavy lift. You can make this happen. But I guarantee you the problem is we've got ADD, short-term memory here, and it doesn't take very long after an attack before we all go back to our lives.
WILLIAMS: I hope we don't do that. President Trump going on all kinds of defense on his travel ban in the wake of the London attack, but will he win over the Supreme Court. It's going to get hot, stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BOLLING: President Trump doubling down on his calls for the Supreme Court to reinstate his travel ban after the London terror attack, the president firing off a series of tweets earlier today, and rebutting those on the left who still seems blind to the threat.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THIS WEEK"/ABC)
SUSAN RICE, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Really no evidence to suggest that by banning Muslims or banning Muslims from a particular set of six countries that we would make ourselves here in the United States safer. And that's I believe one of the major reasons why the courts thus far have been very skeptical of the travel ban.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: Again, he didn't say banning Muslims. He said banning states of origin. It's hard to understand how temporarily banning travel from six terror plagued countries would not keep America safer, but the White House hitting back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "FOX & FRIENDS")
KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSEL TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: Susan Rice reminds everybody that no one on TV is under oath. She knows better that it's not a Muslim ban. And I would say that her comments yesterday are just really parallel to the lies she told after the Benghazi attack which took the lives of four innocent Americans. She -- you know she lied there that it's about a video. She knows it's not a ban against a certain religion. She knows very clearly these are six countries that were identified by her Obama administration department.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: Aaron, let me start with you. I'm going to get to that -- the ban, the temporary travel ban in a second. But a poll found in April, found that two-thirds of British Muslims would not tell the government if a friend or family member became involved with extremists, also half of them said homosexuality should be illegal, and over 20 percent supported establish sharia in the U.K. So when Donald Trump says let's find out who's coming here, what their purpose is, what their intent is by extreme vetting, I don't have a problem with it, do you?
COHEN: No. You have to know who's coming in this country. Here's the thing, America is like a 14-year-old teenager going through security puberty right now, and until we figure out exactly how to do this thing, and this is a process, you have to slow down who's coming here. We're not banning Muslims. I hate it when they spin that because it makes it sound like we're going after somebody because of a specific race. We're not. We're going after them for specific reason which is we're putting them to a certain type of box, temporarily, so just we can filter them to make sure that they're coming here to not blow up women and children.
TIMPF: I agree with that. But how long is it going to take? It's supposed to be a 90 day band. It's now been 129 days since the original one was supposed to take place. And we haven't heard anything.
BOLLING: A 90-day window to start reevaluate.
TIMPF: What's going on with the reevaluating? Haven't heard anything about.
(CROSSTALK)
TIMPF: There's been nothing going on with the reevaluating. We haven't heard about the reevaluating whatsoever.
BOLLING: Ninety days to start -- the clock starts so that they can go ahead.
TIMPF: He can't reevaluate it?
BOLLING: No, no, no.
(CROSSTALK)
BAKER: The White House, you know, because they admittedly this is not rocket science, it had some problem with messaging. They lost this argument early on. This was a very simple issue.
WILLIAMS: Yes, it was.
BAKER: It's very simple. The countries were identified by the previous administration. They're failed states. I've worked in places like this. There's no infrastructure. It's a nightmare. I've got a company that does due diligence, background vetting of people all around the globe included places like Iraq. And you have to travel out to a village. There's no infrastructure, no databases in these failed sates. You have to travel out to a village to try to find somebody who knows the subject to say who are they associated with, what's their past activities? That's the granularity that you've got to get to, to do the background vetting on these people. It's a simple issue. We want to take a break, a suspension, and say let's look at the way that we do this.
(CROSSTALK)
BAKER: Because the left hijacked, as they do, and they do it well, they hijack the argument. Suddenly it's a travel ban, it's a Muslim ban, and they conflate it. And they say this is all about.
(CROSSTALK)
TIMPF: Trump does call it a travel ban.
BAKER: There's a messaging issue from the White House.
WILLIAMS: That's not from the left. That's from Donald Trump.
BOLLING: But it's not a Muslim travel ban.
WILLIAMS: I'm just saying that.
BOLLING: It's a travel ban -- countries of origin, really failed states countries with a higher concentration of terrorist activity.
WILLIAMS: So what if I told you, Eric, as you know from the docket last week, I have no problem with that. I've got no problem with the countries identified. It's all a messaging problem from our president because he went on the campaign trail and he talked about not letting Muslims into this country.
BOLLING: So this ninth circuit and fourth circuit is holding this travel ban or extreme vetting up because -- over a messaging problem with the White House? Meanwhile, the country may get attacked or be less safe?
WILLIAMS: Quite frankly, yes.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: That is what they're doing.
BAKER: It's like a toddler holding this hostage. And this is a very important issue.
TIMPF: All I'm just saying, it also wouldn't have protected any of the terrorist attacks taking place here since 1975.
BOLLING: All right. We're going to leave it right there. Up next, the mainstream media's Trump derangement syndrome kicking into overdrive following the London attack. Be right back with it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TIMPF: The mainstream media knee jerk loathing of President Trump on full display after the London terror attacks, following President Trump renewed call for a travel ban, CNN host Rezla Aslan tweeted out this very professional reaction, quote, this (bleep) is not just an embarrassment to America and a strain on the presidency. He's an embarrassment to humankind. Well, Aslan has since apologized. And I'm not sure he wasn't crossing his fingers when he did it. But an even worse media display may have been made on MSNBC with one anchor asking this about President Trump in his response to the London attack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, MSNBC, JUNE 4)
THOMAS ROBERTS, MSNBC: The president doesn't want us to be politically correct, right? So let's not be P.C. about this. Is the president trying to provoke a domestic terrorist attack with this twitter rant and because only to prove himself right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TIMPF: Hard to know where to start with that. I certainly don't think that's the case. He might have been referring a little bit to the reaction he had to the mayor but.
BOLLING: John Roberts is a nice guy, but he's an idiot for saying that. That is one of the most asinine things I've ever heard. I'm sorry, Thomas Roberts. The president of the United States wants to provoke a terror attacks so he can be right? Provoke a terror attack in America.
WILLIAMS: Right.
BOLLING: That along with CNN opinion host saying what he said, Richard Lui on NBC also said he wondered if the London police were being too aggressive with the terrorists. He wondered that out loud, on-air.
I don't know -- the mainstream media has lost their collective mind around the P.C., treat them nice, be careful what you say. You're going to tick someone off, and it's going to get worse.
The opposite has to happen. We've got to get tougher with them. We've got to kill them; we've got to kill the ideology. I just -- I'm blown away that the mainstream media has just gone overboard in the wrong direction with this.
BAKER: We've been hearing about this for some time, about how it's our behavior, it's our actions that fuel the terrorists, that cause them to do this. I don't know if anybody remembers the Beirut barracks bombing. They didn't need, you know, our endeavors in Iraq or Afghanistan to cause that. This has been going on for a long time, and it's going to continue, unfortunately, for quite a long time.
But I am very tired, because I've been hearing it all this time. I am so tired of hearing it's our fault. It's not our fault that there is an element of Islam that wants to kill us.
COHEN: That's the problem, though, because the sympathist mentality stops us from developing the tone and the teeth that we need legally which is No. 1 to be able to go after the terrorists. This has -- this is a collective. If everybody doesn't come together and get on the same page. Let Trump do what he's got to do and let the law enforcement agencies gather the intel. Because I'll say it again: intel -- let me explain this.
Terrorists are no different than the mob. Giuliani disassembled the mob. It took him about 10 or 15 years. How did he do it? Warrants, intel, money, greasing, people inside. All of these guys are buyable. This is a dirty job. If it doesn't start immediately, everything that we're seeing in London is going to come here. Which means that the security needs to reflect the amount of time it's going to take until the Americans can develop that multilayered intel plan to be able to start putting these guys down. Security has to happen, as well.
So there's so much work ahead of us, the fact that there's even this kind of yapping from the other side of the media and putting handcuffs and restraints on the counterterror development is really disturbing.
BAKER: Which also, I mean -- and that's a very good point, because when you talk about how the mob gets taken down, I mean, there's -- it's a bit apples and oranges in the sense from an operational perspective in the sense of sourcing and sources and how do you develop sources. How do you recruit sources? Well, you can get people inside the mob. Getting people inside these terrorist organizations, whether it's al Qaeda, or Boko Haram, or ISIS, whatever it may be, insanely difficult. Insanely difficult. It can be done. It can be done.
COHEN: It's all money. The money.
BAKER: Right. Well, you can do it, but it also causes a reliance, a greater reliance on technical collection, technical coverage, which then goes back to what we were talking about earlier. About you've got to expand the playing field. You've got to widen those parameters so that we can do more and be more aggressive, but then you have, undoubtedly, you have the cries about privacy and civil liberties. I understand that. You need checks and balances.
TIMPF: It's really important. It absolutely is important.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: I want to go back to something you said in the earlier bloc, Mike, which is you've been in rooms where everybody is having this conversation that we're having at this table, and everybody almost agrees that we need to loosen those handcuffs, give law enforcement more latitude, and yet we never get there. Why?
BAKER: Yes, well, my feeling is because we're all like raccoons chasing the next shiny object. Right? And so we tend to think, OK, oh, my God, there's an attack and it's horrific. And we're focused on security. That pendulum goes over there, and we say, yes, we're willing to give up things.
And then, you know what? There's not an attack for a short period of time, and we get busy and we're tired of taking our shoes off at TSA or whatever it may be. And we want life to go back to normal. And -- and there's also just an element that just says no, you can't do these things because there's a mistrust of...
BOLLING: And that's what we have. We have the major cities where a lot of these terror attacks could be taking place, or probably plotting to be taking place. Mayor de Blasio pushed back. There was a task force in New Jersey who said, "We have credible threats to New York City." De Blasio pushed back, because he felt that civil liberties were being violated, because what they wanted to do, they wanted to tap the mosques. They wanted to listen in, and they had credible threats.
WILLIAMS: You know what the difference is?
BOLLING: And De Blasio being a liberal, saying, "No, we're not going to do that." And they had -- they had real stuff.
(CROSSTALK)
TIMPF: How many -- wait, but how many of these things actually protect -- you're talking about something like TSA. Well, then they can just go outside the airport. You create soft zones around the highly-secure zones when you do things like that.
WILLIAMS: Eric Bolling said a magic word, "credible threat." And when you've got that, that's not indiscriminate eavesdropping.
COHEN: You can't get credible intel unless you've got the cops (ph)...
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: And I agree. Totally agree.
TIMPF: All right. The vice chair of the Senate Intel Committee says there's still no smoking gun at this point in the Russia probe. What could that indicate for James Comey's Senate testimony this week? We're coming right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WILLIAMS: Welcome back to "The Fox News Specialists." Our specialists today are Mike Baker and Aaron Cohen. We're going to continue our conversation.
Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic vice chair of the Senate Intel Committee, is casting some fresh doubt on whether there's any real hard evidence of the wrongdoing in the Russia probe.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARK WARNER, D-VA., VICE CHAIR, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: There is a lot of smoke. We have no smoking gun at this point, but there is a lot of smoke.
But clearly, it would be very, very troubling if the president of the United States is interfering in investigations that affect, potentially, the president and his closest associates.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Former FBI director James Comey is set to face the Senate Intel Committee on Thursday, of course. And the White House is announcing today that President Trump will not invoke executive privilege to try to block his testimony.
OK, Eric. So we got from the senator there, smoke, smoke, a hypothetical, and smoke.
BOLLING: Yes, lots of smoke. I can't remember who we had. We had someone there a couple of days ago who said there's a heck of a lot of smoke. That doesn't necessarily mean there's fire. And there is no fire.
I mean, did you have -- if you caught the Megyn Kelly interview with Vladimir Putin last night, I mean, he basically said, "You guys are making so much out of this. There is nothing there." And there is nothing there. If there's something there, then I understand. But you know what? This is the -- this is ended up being the best thing to happen to Donald Trump.
You've got the special prosecutor, so all these people can say, "You know what? I'm not talking to your -- your panels here in the House and the Senate and the DOJ. What I'll do is I'll wait for the special prosecutor," and if there's something there, there's there. But my hunch is there's not going to be any -- anything there.
TIMPF: I've got to say, Eric, though, Vladimir Putin, whatever he says about it makes absolutely no difference in terms of what I ultimately think about it. Which is, as you know, I'm still waiting to see what happens happens. But Vladimir Putin, I wouldn't really get, like, a letter of recommendation from that guy.
BOLLING: There's something very important, though. The one nugget during that interview, I didn't think there was a lot of breaking news out of it. But there was one nugget where he said, by the way, the United States does this to every other country. He goes, "Put a finger on a map and almost every country you can touch, the United States will be trying to hack into or influence certain elections." It's global. These guys will tell you, it happens going both ways by everyone.
TIMPF: No!
BAKER: As far as I know, the U.S. has never done that. But, look, I wouldn't trust Putin as far as I can throw him, but I also believe there's nothing there.
And this is another one of those stories that has just spun out of control and, frankly, if it's not the Russia story, it's going to be something else. It doesn't matter, as long as the left has something that they can throw at this administration, it's going to be a problem.
But with Russia, did Russia meddle in our elections? Well, yes, they've been meddling in elections since the early 1940s when they were trying to keep us out of World War II, because they were still, at that time, allied with the Nazis. This is what they do. They fight proxy wars. They do all sorts of things. They're very good at it.
Does that mean there's collusion? No. Do I honestly believe it? And you know what? You can't swing a dead cat in Washington, D.C., without hitting someone who had business dealings with a Russian or somebody from the former Soviet Union.
TIMPF: You can't deny, though, this is going to be great television. We've heard nothing from him until this memo came out. He didn't say anything. Now he can be speaking on the record in the hearing.
WILLIAMS: Let me go to you, Aaron, on this. Were you surprised that President Trump did not invoke his executive privilege here and is having...?
COHEN: No. I think he's doing what he has to do. I think President -- I think Donald Trump, President Trump is focusing on his job. He's got a lot on his plate right now. And I don't really think he needs to be thinking about what Vladimir Putin is saying on television right now. I don't think he ever met the guy.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
COHEN: So I don't -- again, and Mike nailed it, and everybody here gets it. You know, this is just another cog in the wheel to try and slow-- do whatever we can to keep the president from being able to do his job.
Right now, London is under siege. President Trump needs to focus on being able to execute security protocols, and he's having a hard time with that.
So there's so many things working against this guy, I'm surprised -- I'm surprised he isn't absolutely losing his mind at this point. He's got a lot on his plate. And you need to leave him alone and let him do his job, because there's thousands of potential would-be lone wolves or known wolves or whatever you want to call them. That's millions of hours of eyeballs. And you can vet this, Mike.
BAKER: Yes, yes.
COHEN: You know, coming from -- coming from that agency world, it's -- one person takes a lot of people to watch.
In Israel, we're a lot smaller. We don't have the luxury of being able to put a lot of people, so we have to be really savvy and sneaky about how we do this and really dedicate our resources. We don't have the luxury.
There are so many eyeballs to put down in front of these potential would-be lone wolves. And again, I don't care whether they're associated with ISIS ideologically on the Internet where they were motivated or whether or not they're connected to a much larger group. The fact is that any one of these guys can grab a knife, grab a van, ram into a bunch of people and that -- Donald Trump is very...
TIMPF: I'd like to hear more about how they're going to do things with that. Because all we hear is ban, ban, ban, ban. When we really see so many problems with people who became radicalized when they moved here. Home-grown terrorists.
BAKER: And by the way, I just have to get this in, because I found this to be probably the funniest comment of the past week. If you want to know how disingenuous Putin is and the nature of this guy, a former old-school KGB officer. He actually had the gall to say when he sat next to General Flynn at the dinner that was held in Moscow, he had no idea who Mike Flynn was. Didn't occur to him. He had no idea; he found out afterwards that he had something to do with intel.
Don't -- the idea that the press is paying attention to what Putin says is absurd. You know, they're going to act in their own best interests. That's what Russia does. And Putin has always regretted the fall of the Soviet Union, the collapse of that wall. He believes that's the greatest catastrophe of the 20th Century. So we have to understand that.
But at the same time, that doesn't mean there's collusion between the Trump administration. That is just smoke that's going nowhere.
WILLIAMS: Yes, well said.
So a quick programming note. So you don't want to miss this show, particularly on Thursday, the day of the Comey hearing. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski will be one of our specialists for the entire hour. Be sure to catch it.
And coming up, Portland, Oregon, police seizing dozens of weapons as a face-off between the far-left and pro-Trump demonstrators turned violent yesterday. Is this a disturbing omen for protests to come? Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TIMPF: Far-left protesters confronting a pro-Trump free-speech rally in Portland, Oregon, yesterday, and things took a turn for the worst.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tensions were rising in Chapman Square as a pro-Trump rally wrapped up across the street at Terry Schrunk Plaza.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police say protesters started throwing bricks and bottles at them. The protestors held their ground. You can hear police deploying pepper bullets. And they deployed flash bangs. For several minutes, Chapman Square sounded like a war zone. Several arrests were made here, including this woman, who had an altercation with a Trump supporter.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TIMPF: There have been 14 confirmed arrests, but the more disturbing development is that dozens of weapons seized by the police. Local reports say everything ranging from axes to hammers to knives were found, a number from the area occupied by anti-Trump protestors.
I think the larger point here is that this really symbolizes what's going on in our country right now. If you're on one side, the people on the other side, you don't really see them as people at all, just the idea that you have to defeat.
BAKER: Right. I don't understand how they got the name "antifascists." I mean, they're fascists, right?
TIMPF: Hilarious, right?
BAKER: I mean, it doesn't make any sense. That's what you do if you're a fascist. You go and you stop free speech and oftentimes, you know, in hooded garb and carrying weapons.
TIMPF: Yes, I don't know how...
WILLIAMS: Hooded garb?
(CROSSTALK)
TIMPF: Irony is -- irony -- irony is dead in 2017.
BAKER: Hooded garb, yes.
TIMPF: Irony is dead. I don't know.
BOLLING: You lose the name protester when you start, quote, "throwing bricks and bottles and flash explosives."
TIMPF: Absolutely.
WILLIAMS: That's called criminal.
BOLLING: They're a rioter, right? And should be incarcerated. But you know, it's got to be scary, if you're at a pro-Trump rally and there are people with knives and whatever else -- shanks they've got there. That's scary.
TIMPF: Now, what I thought was interesting about this is the mayor was concerned about having this rally here because of the free-speech people. And as it turns out, these weapons, where they were found was the area where the people protesting the protesters.
COHEN: Yes. What I would do is I would instruct law enforcement to dress up as Antifa and to infiltrate those crowds quietly and start arresting them. And just sort of, like, we like to call just appear out of nowhere.
I think there just needs to be a little hair of fear infused into those crowds them, and that's I would do. I would get in there under cover or plain clothed, and I would start looking for the troublemakers. Because you can see those weapons start to kind of present themselves in print a little bit, if they're carrying a wrench or a knife. These are serious. People can get hurt here. It's not a joke. You know what I mean?
So once it escalates to that level of -- a potential threat escalates, I think it's time for law enforcement to start thinking about plainclothes guys, dispersing them into those crowds. That's how I would do it. And then, you know, just start grabbing these guys and arresting them right there on the spot. And they'll start...
TIMPF: This is what some of these people do as, like, a job. They're at every one of these things.
BOLLING: And they're being paid, and these are organized. I mean, MoveOn.org has organized a bunch of them. They're the organizers of these anti-Trump or anti-free-speech protesters.
What they should do is turn around and find the organizers of the protest. Arrest those people. Yes, but then turn around and all the expenses that takes to clean up. Incarcerate them, turn around and -- and they move on down the road.
TIMPF: After they arrest them, they should read them the definition of fascism from the dictionary. Just so they know.
BAKER: Eric makes a very good point here, which is that a lot of times -- and we see this all the time -- is that, you know, something that appears to be a grassroots movement or a community-based or just locals rising up against, you know, a free-speech rally, whatever it may be. There is a national element to it. There's a coordination level, where they provide guidance and training. They provide finances and communications or legal support. And so you're right. That -- hey, where is a good, intrepid investigative journalist? Go after that. Find out who's at the bottom of some of these protests that are supposedly just forming out of the goodness of the local Antifa. Is it Antifa?
COHEN: Antifa.
TIMPF: Go ahead, Eboni.
WILLIAMS: I'll say this. You know, I take a lot of issues with certain things from President Trump, but it's really important that he and his supporters be able to say their piece, come together, and have that moment of speech and what they feel like is important.
And it's actually a circular issue. Because by shutting that down, it really breeds us becoming a nation that so many people say that they are afraid of us becoming, that they don't want us to become.
So if we're going to be truly tolerant, if we're going to be a nation of values that embrace ideologies that are diverse than our own, we should not only tolerate. We have to embrace and celebrate all of these...
(CROSSTALK)
COHEN: And put a bunch of undercover cops in there, as well.
WILLIAMS: Well, I agree. Lock them up. I sort of think Eric's right: when you start bringing weapons, you're no longer a protester. You're a criminal.
TIMPF: Absolutely agree.
COHEN: Someone could get killed. It's not a joke.
TIMPF: All right. Well, when we return, we're going to "Circle Back" with our specialists, Mike Baker and Aaron Cohen. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BOLLING: All right. Time to "Circle Back" with our specialists, Mike Baker and Aaron Cohen. I'm going to forgo my time and just say thank you to two great -- let's call you bad-as-heck dudes. A very special terror- related day. Good having both of you.
BAKER: Thanks very much, Eric.
BOLLING: I turn it over to Eboni.
WILLIAMS: No, that's -- that's really real. And you know what? Moments like this, I mean, I've been on set with Mike several times. Awesome being on set with you today, Aaron. Learned so much. So do absolutely thank you for that.
BAKER: Thank you.
WILLIAMS: So I know you've got ideas. You know, you've got a company that does this type of stuff. What's the -- if there's one thing that every American that's at home right now watching that wants to make this less of an issue for us as a country and as a world, what would you have them do? What can we all do?
BAKER: Do we have, what, four more hours left in the show? You know what? I've -- I've been watching this a long time and dealing with it a long time. I'm cynical. I don't think it's going to go away on our lifetimes.
But A, you've got to get busy living. So you don't change your lifestyle; you don't change your pattern. That's not going to happen. You've got to stay out there.
But I think if there's one thing, we need to -- we need to find a way to begin to actually begin to talk to each other again. We can't -- this is - - Aaron said it earlier. This is not a joke. This is national security issues. We have to be able to converse, both sides, come together. If we're going to get an agreement to improve the future for our kids and try to find some way to minimize this as close to zero as possible, as a risk in the future.
TIMPF: I wanted to "Circle Back," if you will, to something we talked about earlier. I think everyone misunderstood when I was talking about why haven't they been reviewing? I was not talking about the refugees. I was talking about the procedures themselves. So there would be nothing to stop, both of you agree, them from reviewing the procedures in the meantime. Why isn't that happening? Or is has, have they not been talking about it? Do either of you have any thoughts on that at all?
COHEN: It's just being held up up. It's just political gel, gooping up the wheel. That's all it is.
BAKER: As far as I know, there's nothing that's stopping them from doing a review of the process.
TIMPF: Right. That's what I was talking about.
BAKER: They probably are doing that. But the idea was, do a temporary suspension while you do the review.
BOLLING: We've got to go. That's what the courts are holding up right now. Thank you to our "Fox News Specialists" today, Mike Baker, Aaron Cohen.
We thank you all for watching. Make sure to follow us on social media, @SpecialistsFNC on Twitter and Facebook. Five o'clock will never be the same. And guess what? "Special Report" coming up right -- three, two, one. Now.
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