FOX NEWS Ratcliffe on FISA Memo Release

Joining me now for reaction from Dallas is Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe. And here in Washington is Byron York, a Fox News contributor, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, and Victoria Tensing, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. Great to see all of you. We've got a lot to get through, guys. Let's start with you, Congressman. Boy, the Democrats were coming at you guys with everything today, basically saying this is a big dud, that you're endangering law enforcement and they're still keeping up with the methods and sources, you're endangering methods and sources. What's your reaction to the cavalcade of criticism that poured all over the airwaves today? Well, Laura, good to be with you. I have to laugh that, you know, the comments coming from Adam Schiff about protecting classified information, the irony of that is not lost on a lot of folks in Washington who are convinced that he's a graduate of the Edward Snowden School of Keeping Secrets. You know, I understand why the Democrats would be upset with what they read in that memo today, but it doesn't change the outcome of what's in there. And as you know, Laura, I'm one of the few people that have seen the underlying source documents, and having had that opportunity to review those, I feel like they are very consistent with the memo that the public was able to see today that was drafted by the majority members of the House Intelligence Committee. All right. I want to play for everybody the question posed to Devin Nunes tonight by Brett Baier about that issue of the underlying applications. Let's watch. Did you read the actual FISA applications? No, I didn't. The agreement we made with the Department of Justice was to create a reading room and allow one member and two investigators to go over and review the documents. I thought the best person on our committee would be the chairman of the Oversight Committee, Trey Gowdy, who has a long career as a federal prosecutor, to go and do this. In other words, Vicki, he was going off half-cock. The Democrats are saying, he's going off half—he didn't read the thing, and he's pushing this memo. I guess that's where the Democrats are going. He was just following the rules that the Justice Department mandated in order to give them the documents. Those are always negotiated. What bothers you most about what you've seen today with this memo? Oh, there's so many things. But the first thing is that McCabe said that they would not have sought—they would not have even gone to the FISA court unless they had that dossier. That just is really scary. And then the bootstrapping, of course. The dossier was used to put in a story, to plant a story, with Michael Isikoff, a journalistic whore. He just takes whatever the left gives him, and he rewrites it. They're all working on the same team, though, aren't they? I mean, the media— Oh, of course. I mean, of course. This whole thing, they're all helping. It's a boosting society. Everyone's boosting everyone else's narrative. A very aggressive lack of curiosity on the part of the journalists to say, well, where'd you get this information? Let me look at the underlying—Byron, you were the first person to get this memo, it came out in the media. One other person did, I guess, as well. But what Vicky just said about the issue of what they knew, when they knew it, what stands out for you, especially the McCabe point, the deputy director of the FBI? Well, they said—the memo says that the dossier was an essential part of this application. And as Vicky said, it goes on to say that they wouldn't have done it without the dossier. And I've been told there are really four things that they cite as the reason for this warrant. It's the dossier, it's that Michael Isikoff article, it's the Papadopoulos case— In Yahoo News, correct? Yeah, in Yahoo News. It's the Papadopoulos case, and it's Carter Page's history. But what I'm told is the dossier was by far the biggest of all of those. So it was absolutely essential, and it really supports this idea that without the dossier, there's no application. And George Papadopoulos, I mean, what the heck was he doing? Bragging in a bar that Hillary's emails were going to come out soon and the Russians were going to do it? Is that a reason for him to be put under a counter? The Papadopoulos thing is one of the most ludicrous things I've heard to base anything on. Congressman, the issue— Go ahead. I was just going to comment on the clip that you played there, Laura, about Devin Nunes' decision. Why wouldn't you send over Trey Gowdy? Why wouldn't you send over the best lawyer in Congress, a lawyer who has viewed hundreds, if not thousands, of agent declarations, affidavits and submissions to federal courts? Why wouldn't you send a guy who knows exactly what he's looking for, what would pass the smell test and what wouldn't? I think you ought to be applauded for that decision. Hey, Congressman, are you going to move to push to release all these underlying transcripts, redacted as necessary, of course? But the Democrats are trying to kick up dust in your face now, saying, oh, wait, well, that's not accurate. McCabe didn't say that. And his closed-door testimony that they wouldn't have gone after the FISA warrant without that dossier, they're disputing that tonight on other networks. So we need to see that transcript. I know Byron wants to see it. Yeah, I think transcripts of witness interviews, those can be redacted and made public. I think the Democrat memo, the minority memo, ought to be made public, too. I will tell you, having read that, Adam Schiff drafted that, and it's chock full of sources and methods. So it's going to have to be heavily redacted before it's made available to the public. So that does have the sources and methods that they complained about getting compromised. That's interesting. It does. And I will say this about the underlying documents that I've been able to review. You know, it's hard to take four phone books worth of information and distill it down to four pages. So I think it's fair when the FBI director says not every material fact is included. I think that's a fair criticism. But as someone that has reviewed the underlying documents, the story ends the same way. OK, but are you taking things out of context? The Democrats are saying we need the whole context. You're missing key facts that would inform why this warrant was applied for, when it was applied for. You reject that. I reject that. As you know, Laura, I'm a former terrorism prosecutor. I have significant experience with FISA. I've looked at these applications before. And I just as I as I looked at the underlying applications, I kept coming to the same conclusion. I wouldn't make these representations to any federal judge, much less a FISA judge. Yeah. If you were a FISA judge, wouldn't you want to know if someone was asking for a warrant? Right. Yeah. I get that, Congressman. And we got to get to Byron and Vick here. But my question to you is, was there something in that application that referenced a political motivation for the dossier? The Democrats who got Swalwell was over talking about that today, said that was he said that was in the document, in the application, not not mentioning Hillary by name, but that there was a political motivation. Was that in there? Well, I don't know why Eric Swalwell would know that, because he hasn't asked you a question. Was it in there? Did they reference a political motivation for the dossier in the application? Well, I can't disclose anything specifically that's in the underlying document. What I can, again, reiterate is it doesn't change my opinion. OK, got it. Got it. Byron. OK, I want to play this. We got to play this time. Nunez hinted that there's more to come, that this is just the tip of the iceberg in revealing DOJ, FBI corruption. Let's watch. Are there other memos that are going to come out? Are there other memos? You said this was phase one. Yeah. So this so this completes just the FISA abuse portion of our investigation. We are we are in the middle of what I call phase two of our investigation, which involves other departments, specifically the State Department. Byron, what do you know? Well, that's interesting that he says the State Department, because we have had indications recently that there is some sort of involvement of the State Department, not as much as the as the FBI. But we know that John Kerry, the secretary of state, was briefed on the contents of the dossier. So that means the staff knew about it as well. So there's there's another phase. And I'll tell you another phase that should happen. The FISA Corp getting better get busy because they're either incredibly grossly negligent. Thank you. Or they were lied to. And don't you think they should care? And shouldn't they have some kind of a hearing, a process? Vicki, could you could be Carter Page, even with sovereign immunity concerns, could Sovereign Page file in court an action for abuse of process or sanctions against Justice Department attorneys for omitting a material fact in a FISA application? Is there any grounds? Well, he could file something with the D.C. bar, wherever these people are members of the bar. He's filed a case in New York. He did it pro se. So it's not, you know, he has a case. Comey's former chief of staff, Chuck Rosenberg, was all over television today. And he said, look, if they really had concerns about this, if the Trump people or the Republicans were worried about this, they they could have gone to the inspector general and voiced their concerns. And he said they could have gone to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and they could they could go to the FBI. That's what he said today. Comey's mouthpiece was all over MSNBC. I think that just ignores the political urgency of all this, because there will be an inspector general investigation of the handling of this and it's going to come out in 2020 or 21 or something like that. It'll be too late. You're saying the damage will have been done. There are people who want to remove the president from office based on this case. We have to know what the evidence is.