Fox News "The Story" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Louie Gohmert

Interview

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HENRY: Tonight, Democrats say they are hiring, and it could signal where we are heading when the party takes control of the House next week. Congressional job postings suggest Democrats are recruiting lawyers with experience in "administrative law, oversight work, and even more bluntly, executive branch of investigative counsel."

So, will it be investigations or legislation? Joining me now, Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert, a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Good to see you, congressman.

REP. LOUIE GOHMERT, R-TX: It's great to be with you, Ed. Thank you.

HENRY: A couple of nights ago we had the former DNC chair, Ed Rendell on. He insisted to me, look, his advice to his own party is, legislate, don't just investigate. Do you buy that?

GOHMERT: Yes. Well, I buy that he said that, but you know, it's kind of like Jim Carrey or somebody who say, "somebody stop me." They are not going to be able to be stopped. They are coming after every aspect, every decision and, you know, you had my friend, John Garamendi on before me, and he is my friend. I hope that didn't kill his political career.

But he was saying, you know, if Trump would just tell us exactly where he wants the wall and what he wants, I seem to recall that the Obama administration had billions of dollars to build a wall, a virtual wall, and Janet Napolitano just stopped and said, you know what, we are not going to use it for that.

We don't know where that money went, Ed. We don't know what they did with it. We need to protect the country and we lost the majority. I told our conference repeatedly in September, if we don't put money out there for a wall before the election, we may not be back in the majority. That happened, but a note of encouragement, Ed, we took a stand.

Unfortunately, it was after we lost the majority, but I think it bodes well and it's inconsistent with Boehner's (ph) opposition of just keep feeding the Democrats rope and they will hang themselves, and that's a poor metaphor.

But the fact is, as I told Boehner once, look, you said feed him rope, now they've used it to hog-tie us. It's time to stand up and we never did. Here, we're taking a stand and I think that bodes well for the future.

HENRY: They have said, the Democrats, that they are going to legislate and they are not going to focus. There will be some investigations, but when Axios and others talk about a cannon of subpoenas, 85 different areas that they want to go after the president on. Do you think this is going to be all about the Democrats on the attack?

GOHMERT: I'm telling you, Ed, they're not going to be able to help themselves -- judiciary -- the Democrats once were big on privacy rights and when they saw how important it was for Google and some of these internet providers to support the Democrats, they don't want to do anything to make them mad. It's amazing how they backed off some of the things they used to believe being anti-Orwellian.

They are not anymore, but they are going to do the investigations. I know you are aware, they are out there hiring like crazy -- lawyers that can come in and help with subpoenas. So, it is going to happen. They're going to be investigating everything.

And it is healthy to have oversight investigations. I think Republicans didn't do enough of them, but you don't need a colonoscopy after every minor decision that the administration made and I think that's where they are headed.

HENRY: The president's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has been under the microscope and has flipped on the president, essentially, this whole question of whether or not --

GOHMERT: Well, he needed a colonoscopy.

HENRY: OK, we'll leave that for another for program I suppose, but real quick, McClatchy had a news report in the last 24 or 48 hours suggesting maybe his cellphone signal was picked up in the area of Prague in the campaign in 2016, which he has vehemently denied. A McClatchy reporter went on MSNBC and said this.

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HENRY: So, I wish we had. They do this major story and it now appears that sources were second or third hand.

GOHMERT: Well, and we now know that dossier prepared by Steele, he hadn't been to Russia in years. So Ed, we don't know how third hand, fourth hand, fifth hand hearsay it was that he was utilizing. It was if did it come -- the information he had -- did it come from Russian players?

And I can tell you, this is one of the big dangers of an Orwellian government that just -- they were tracking people in the Trump administration. I've been in Prague. I spoke at the -- it was an honor to be at the Ukrainian Prayer Breakfast and speak on behalf of Congress. But if they were following everything I did, that starts out, oh, my gosh --

HENRY: Sure. And after all this investigation, I think the point is there hasn't been evidence of collusion. We'll see what 2019 brings.

GOHMERT: That is exactly.

HENRY: Congressman Louie Gohmert --

GOHMERT: Exactly. Exactly.

HENRY: We appreciate you coming in.

GOHMERT: We're doing great. Thank you.

HENRY: Thank sir.

GOHMERT: Pleasure to be with you.

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