Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" - Transcript: Rep. Bob Goodlate: Page FISA documents show serious FBI problems

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MARIA BARTIROMO, HOST: Good morning. Good Sunday morning.

We are getting a first look at top-secret surveillance records this morning showing how the FBI spied on a former member of the Trump campaign.

And now the president is weighing in this morning.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin makes clear one of his obsessions during that joint press conference with President Trump.

And what is the strategy for House Republicans to keep control of the House, as we witness a rising interest in Democratic socialism ahead of the midterm elections?

Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Maria Bartiromo, and this is "Sunday Morning Futures."

President Trump responds this morning to the Justice Department releasing more than 400 pages of documents related to the 2016 FISA application for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It shows the intimate Steele dossier was, in fact, a major component for the surveillance warrant.

Fresh reaction from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Alan Dershowitz coming up this morning.

Vladimir Putin called him out by the name during the Helsinki news conference by President Trump. Today, Bill Browder responds to the Russian leader. He will join me live.

And the midterm race is heating up. I'll speak exclusively with House Majority Whip Steve Scalise about the Republican leadership's strategy to keep control of the House.

All that and a lot more right now, as we look ahead on "Sunday Morning Futures."

And top of the news right now, the Justice Department is making its first public disclosure of a highly sensitive FISA request by releasing the heavily redacted version of the documents relating to that FISA warrant against former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

The 400-plus pages were released as a result of lawsuits filed by several media organizations, including Judicial Watch. The documents reveal major components in the FBI surveillance request leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

They were memos written by Christopher Steele. That is what they used to get the warrant, the former British intelligence officer hired by a research firm working for Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton.

The president reacting on Twitter earlier this morning, saying: "Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual, they are ridiculously heavily redacted, but confirm with little doubt that the Department of Justice and the FBI misled the courts. Witch-hunt. Rigged. A scam."

The president later tweeted this: "Looking more and more like the Trump campaign for president was illegally being spied upon, surveillance for the political gain of crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out? She did better with crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal scam."

Joining me right now with his first reaction to all of this is House Judiciary Committee Chairman and Virginia Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte.

Mr. Chairman, it's good to see you this morning. Thanks so much for joining us.

REP. BOB GOODLATTE, R-VIRGINIA: Good morning, Maria. It's good to be with you.

BARTIROMO: Well, what strikes me about all of these documents that I have been looking at all morning is all of the redactions on every page, major black, black lines redacted.

So, tell us, what did we learn from this FISA warrant?

GOODLATTE: Well, we certainly learned that there is a serious problem with the FBI presenting to the FISA court an application for a search warrant against a United States citizen and then followed by three renewals when they were basing it on a very flawed document, the so-called Steele dossier, that has never been verified.

Even after all of this came out, they attempted to verify it and failed. So that's number one.

Number two, I have had the opportunity, as have a few other members of the House of Representatives, the opportunity to read these FISA warrant applications without all of those redactions. There are only a few redactions in the document that I reviewed.

And I think it is critically important that the American people have the opportunity to see most of the rest of those documents. We want to make sure that we're protecting sources. We want to make sure that we're protecting methods that are used in investigations.

But most of the information that is redacted in that report should easily be seen by the American people. They can judge for themselves, but I will tell you, it doesn't support the issuance of a warrant against Mr. Page.

BARTIROMO: So, what will be done about it?

GOODLATTE: Well, certainly, this is a big development for the investigation that I, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Trey Gowdy, as chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, have been pursuing now for the last nine months, because, as you know, at each step in that process, the FBI has objected to our looking into this matter, because they claim it's part of an ongoing investigation.

And we have said all along we're not interested in looking at the substance of anything that Mr. Mueller does find in his investigation. We don't want to interfere with that. But we do want to see how this investigation was launched and how it contrasts with the shocking way that they handled the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation.

So that is an absolutely critical aspect of this. And now we have a federal judge who agrees that information regarding that investigation can and should be made public and has ordered it be made public. Much more needs to be done in that regard.

But the Congress, which has subpoena power and has issued subpoenas with regard to both documents and witnesses, is entitled to have answers to our questions. And I think that this is a major boost to that effort.

BARTIROMO: There was one redaction here about an agent, an agent launching this investigation. Are we assuming that that is Peter Strzok, who is also-- his name redacted in this warrant?

GOODLATTE: I can't comment on the redacted items in that until a court has ordered them to be made public.

But I can say that, based upon our other aspects of this investigation, that Peter Strzok was at the heart of both the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation, where the FBI bent over backwards to find every way possible to not proceed with that case.

And, in fact, as you know, they did decide in a very public and controversial way not to proceed in that investigation. And he was also at the heart of the beginning of this investigation into so-called Trump campaign-Russia collusion.

BARTIROMO: I want to know what this tells us about the Robert Mueller probe, because you go back to Carter Page, and here is the guy who was actually wiretapped and surveilled.

If Carter Page was an agent of a foreign power working for the Russians, why is he still running around free? Why are there no charges against Carter Page?

And, by the way, what does that say about Comey, McCabe, Yates, Rosenstein, and the others who repeatedly certified to the court that he was, that he was an agent of foreign power? Why has he not been charged then?

GOODLATTE: Well, excellent question.

He was surveilled for a solid year, three-month increments for -- with three renewals. And I don't believe they found anything with regard to him. I cannot speak for him, and I can't speak for special counsel Mueller.

And, as I have said before, he has been charged with a responsibility to carry out. And if he finds evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, he should bring it forward. This investigation is now more than 2 years old.

And it is, I think, very -- he's only been on the job for a little over a year. But this was going on for almost a year before he came on the scene, and still is a cloud, a shadow over this administration.

It is something that, if they have the goods, as Chairman Gowdy has said, bring them to a grand jury. If you don't, let's let the world know that they don't have that evidence.

BARTIROMO: I want to run for you what Senator Rand Paul said on Fox News this past week, because I'm wondering if this information and all that we're gleaning from all of this, whether it's the FISA warrant or your interactions with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which I'm going to get to, if that is going to dictate where the Robert Mueller investigation goes.

You would think that it would, since his mandate is collusion with the Russians. Here is what Senator Rand Paul said about all of this, this week on Fox News.

Listen to this, Mr. Chairman.

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BARTIROMO: Would Robert Mueller interview Hillary Clinton?

GOODLATTE: Well, again, I can't speak for Robert Mueller.

But I can very heartily agree with Senator Paul when he says that Democratic operatives related to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the creation of the so-called Steele dossier, and then turned it over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But what's so unprecedented about this is that the FBI then took it, weaponized it, without ever verifying its credibility, and brought it to the FISA court without disclosing the source of that information.

That is deeply troubling. And it is a part of the reason why the new FBI director has been hard at work trying to reform this organization, whose credibility has been damaged by a few key people.

And, by the way, those few key people are the same people in both of these investigations, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, the FBI counsel, the chief of staff to the director, the same people in both these investigations.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

GOODLATTE: In one instance doing everything possible to avoid indicting Hillary Clinton, including allowing her chief aides to be in the room with her when she was interviewed by the FBI, creating a memo exonerating her before most of the witnesses, including Secretary Clinton, had been interviewed, not putting this before a grand jury, even though they had impaneled a grand jury in that investigation.

They didn't let the grand jury determine whether she should be indicted, and then changing the language in the memo from gross negligence to extreme carelessness. Gross negligence very closely tracks the statute. Extreme carelessness is not a meaningful phrase. All to avoid indicting her.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

GOODLATTE: That is shocking.

BARTIROMO: And many of the people that you mentioned, they have signed -- on the signage page of this FISA warrant, they all signed it, OKing it, and that includes John Brennan -- Sally Yates, John Brennan, Jim Comey, Peter Strzok.

So, John Brennan, he's the man who deserves a belated bit of scrutiny, according to The Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel's op-ed just this past week. We know that John Brennan has been all over town trashing President Trump and trashing the hearing that your committee actually did with Peter Strzok.

What are your thoughts on John Brennan's involvement?

GOODLATTE: Well, we have lots of questions for John Brennan, and he will definitely be sought by the committees for an interview. This is an extremely disturbing thing to see both he and James Comey, supposedly impartial government officials carrying out their jobs in very important areas in intelligence-gathering and law enforcement, express the kind of extreme bias that they have shown now, which I think reflects quite accurately on what they were doing back in 2016.

BARTIROMO: So, he's on your list of witnesses to have in to interview them?

GOODLATTE: Absolutely. Definitely.

BARTIROMO: Who else is on that list?

GOODLATTE: Well, we're going to go through -- we have received a list from the Intelligence Committee of literally dozens of people.

We're going through that list now and determining which ones are our priority. I think I would rather leave it at that, but certainly we will also be talking to Director Comey and former Attorney General Lynch.

BARTIROMO: Let me ask you about Lisa Page.

I know that you had behind-closed-door meetings with her, but, apparently, during that hearing, you have discovered more information that you want. Can you tell us anything about the Lisa Page testimony and what you learned?

GOODLATTE: Well, it was a private confidential interview.

But I will say this, that Ms. Page, in contrast to Mr. Strzok, was far more forthcoming and gave us far more information regarding what was going on in 2016 and into 2017, to help our investigation.

But I will also say that she reminded us of some documents that hadn't been talked about for a while, including the fact that there are not only memos by James Comey that we're all aware of, but also memos by Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI, that are of interest to us as well, and we're seeking those now.

BARTIROMO: So now you're seeking those documents.

I know that you have been focused and certainly your colleague Devin Nunes has been focused on any information before the actual investigation was launched, which was July 31, 2016.

Mr. Chairman, I want to take a short break, and then I want to come back to that. We also have much to discuss with you, including that showdown with Democrats over a House resolution to support ICE.

We will be right back with Chairman Goodlatte.

Follow me on Twitter @MariaBartiromo, @SundayFutures. Let us know what you would like to hear from Chairman Goodlatte.

And a quick programming note: Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Joe Lieberman will join me this Wednesday on "Mornings With Maria" on the Fox Business Network. So join me weekdays at 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern on Fox Business.

We will be right back with Chairman Goodlatte.

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BARTIROMO: We're back with House Judiciary Committee Bob Goodlatte.

And, Mr. Chairman, we know, based on the copies of the FISA warrant that we were able to look at today, that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy A.G., signed off on the FISA warrant. And they signed off three additional times, so a total of four times, with the same evidence.

Are you among those calling for Rod Rosenstein to recuse himself?

GOODLATTE: I am not at this point.

Rod Rosenstein did sign the third renewal application or, in other words, the last FISA warrant application. He was asked at the hearing that he testified at a couple weeks ago whether or not he read the document. He declined to answer that because he claimed it was part of an ongoing investigation.

I think that's an important question that he needs to answer, but I also think it's even more important that he continue to work with the Congress to move this forward, so that we can get answers to all of our questions and get all of the documents that we have subpoenaed.

There has been definitely more cooperation since we issued the subpoena and since U.S. attorney John Lausch from the Northern District of Illinois was appointed to help us get those documents. We have much greater access to unredacted documents than we have had before.

But we still have a long way to go. This is an ongoing investigation, and there are many more documents and many more questions that witnesses have been instructed by the FBI not to answer that need to be answered.

And I think the fact that a judge has now ordered the release of this FISA warrant application shows that it is entirely appropriate for us to look into how this investigation was launched.

BARTIROMO: Yes. And, of course, that investigation morphed into the Robert Mueller investigation.

And there was one text from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page that basically says there's no there there when the Robert Mueller investigation launched, correct?

GOODLATTE: That's correct.

BARTIROMO: Yes. OK, we will keep following that.

Let me move on to immigration. You have been working, obviously, with two bills. Are you going to be able to get one of them across the finish line before the midterm elections? What are your expectations there, Mr. Chairman?

GOODLATTE: Well, you know, Maria, 224 House Republicans, all but 12 of the Republicans in the House, have voted for one of the two measures that we offered.

Unfortunately, neither one got to 218. One got to 193, just 21 votes short of what is a current -- what -- the majority that day.

BARTIROMO: Right.

GOODLATTE: And there are many members hard at work trying to make sure that we bring some of the measures from the second one into the first one and get over 218 votes. That would be huge.

BARTIROMO: OK. Well, we will wait for that.

And real quick, I know you had some technology executives in a hearing as well. You're looking at the editing of information, conservative ideas. Tell us what you're looking at in terms of technology CEOs and where you are in that regard. Real quick, sir.

GOODLATTE: Well, we held a hearing last week with representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter, in the case of Google, particularly YouTube, regarding their censorship policies, which they do on all three of those social media platforms.

BARTIROMO: Right.

GOODLATTE: And we have had the opportunity to ask some very probing questions about how it is that they have liability protections that newspaper or television...

BARTIROMO: Mr. Chairman, we're going to be looking at this.

GOODLATTE: OK.

BARTIROMO: Thank you so much. Good to see you, sir, Chairman Goodlatte.

GOODLATTE: Thank you, Maria.

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