Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Bartiromo

Interview

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BARTIROMO: Welcome back.

A vote on a contempt resolution against Attorney General William Barr is looming on the House floor this morning, after the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee voted last week to hold him in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over the full unredacted Mueller report and its underlying evidence.

Our next guest was in that chamber on Wednesday when it all went down.

Texas Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe sits on the House Judiciary, Intel and Homeland Security committees. He's also a former federal prosecutor.

And, Congressman, it's always a pleasure to see you. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

REP. JOHN RATCLIFFE, R-TX: You bet, Maria. Good to be here.

BARTIROMO: So, what happened when Jerry Nadler, chairman of your committee, went for a contempt of Congress vote for William Barr? Can you tell us about what that day was?

RATCLIFFE: Well, Maria, there have been plenty of days I have been embarrassed to be a member of Congress, based on the conduct of some of its members, but none more so than this week.

And think about it. The once esteemed House Judiciary Committee marked up a resolution to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt for his refusal to commit a crime.

Bill Barr, who had no obligation to turn over a single word or comma of Bob Mueller's report, turned over as much as was permitted by law. And that wasn't enough for the Democrats. And they stood there and accused him of lying about what Bob Mueller really meant before they have heard a word from Bob Mueller about what he really meant.

It was all staged. It was all scripted. It was all part of the Democratic effort to create the illusion of a cover-up. Remember, Maria, that these are the Democrats that promised evidence of collusion that didn't exist, that promised that Bob Mueller was going to find Donald Trump guilty of crimes that he didn't commit.

And when that didn't happen, they either had to admit they were wrong to the American people, or they had to find a villain. And, unfortunately, they have made Bill Barr that villain. And they will do anything they can to try and damage his reputation before he delivers the message that he intends to deliver, because he's promised to get to the bottom of the very suspect origins of this Russia-Trump collusion, conspiracy investigation.

BARTIROMO: So is that what this is about? They don't want him to do an investigation that he said he would be doing?

I mean, there, in and of itself, is obstruction.

RATCLIFFE: Yes, Maria, they're scared to death.

It's why, when you talk about accountability, one of the things that they fear is Michael Horowitz's report coming out. But the other thing that they fear is an attorney general who has been unapologetic, unabashed and unrelenting in his pledge to get to the bottom of this Trump-Russia collusion narrative that doesn't make any sense.

We know now, because we have waited on Bob Mueller's report, we know that there was no collusion. But the predicate behind looking for that evidence of collusion is quickly unraveling. And the Democrats are in a panic about it.

BARTIROMO: You know, it's incredible to me that they're so obviously upset and afraid for what comes out.

But it's incredible that you have got people like Jim Comey going on TV shows and saying that he's proud of the FBI and how it handled the Russia probe.

We're going to take a short break and come back and hear from Comey.

Stay with us, Congressman. We want to get your reaction to Comey speaking out this week.

We will also hear from Congressman Dan Crenshaw on social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, and are they posing a problem to free speech, particularly conservative points of view?

That's next. Stay with us.

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JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: The FBI doesn't spy to begin with. The FBI investigates.

The FBI, in my view, took very reasonable steps, careful steps to try and understand, is that true? And I can't believe Republicans would have wanted it any other way. And we acted in a responsible, limited and constrained way.

I'm proud of the way we conducted ourselves.

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BARTIROMO: Wow. That was former FBI Director Jim Comey just days ago, a few days ago.

I'm back with Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas.

And, Congressman, you just heard Jim Comey. Can you explain this?

RATCLIFFE: Well, my former colleague Trey Gowdy likes to refer to him as Saint Jim.

I liken Jim Comey more to an Avenger superhero. He's always the hero of every story, saving America time and time again.

Gosh, you know, as I listen to that, Jim Comey is proud and wouldn't change a thing. Really? He's proud that he put Peter Strzok in charge of investigating Donald Trump, the same Peter Strzok who, while he was investigating Donald Trump, promised to F. him and to stop him?

He's proud of his handpicked deputy director, Andy McCabe, who lied under oath, lied to the inspector general, and has been criminally referred for that? And, of course, we know Jim's proud of himself, but the inspector general found him insubordinate.

And many of us believe that he either is or should be under investigation for violating the Espionage Act, for recording his conversations with President Trump in the Oval Office, and then intentionally leaking classified information to start this investigation.

So, Maria, as you know, as a former federal prosecutor, I have worked with hundreds of FBI agents. And over the last two years, they haven't used the word proud once to describe Jim Comey. They use words like embarrassed and ashamed.

And every time he sends out a tweet or pens an op-ed or conducts another town hall, he just tarnishes the brand of the premier law enforcement agency in the world that he unfortunately once headed.

BARTIROMO: So are we going to be able to trust the FBI again? Will there be accountability?

I want to ask you about accountability for Jim Comey, Peter Strzok, and also John Brennan, because I'm being told that the director of the CIA is responsible for all counterintelligence operations. That would be John Brennan. Are we going to accountability for all of the above?

RATCLIFFE: Well, here's what we know about John Brennan.

In August of 2016, he briefed then Democratic Senator Harry Reid on the Steele dossier. Brennan later testified under oath that the Steele dossier played no part of the intelligence community assessment. That was a demonstrably false statement. And there are classified documents that I believe prove that.

I believe that there will be accountability on all fronts, Maria, for a couple of reasons. There's an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied. But I think there's a Mueller exception to that rule. We had to wait two years on Bob Mueller. But now that his report is out, and there is no collusion, we can move forward.

And, within a month, the inspector general's report will come out. And notwithstanding what Jim Comey says, I think that the inspector general, looking at leaking and looking at lying and looking at FISA abuse, is going to save that Jim Comey's FBI didn't perform as the law required.

But the biggest -- the biggest movement on the board in that regard, again, is the attorney general, Bill Barr, who has pledged to get to the bottom of a Trump-Russia conspiracy that doesn't make any sense and the predicate for it and those that were not telling the truth.

Donald Trump was telling the truth when he said there was no collusion.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

RATCLIFFE: And Jim Comey and folks in our law enforcement community and John Brennan and Jim Clapper and folks in the media, none of them were telling the truth.

BARTIROMO: Right.

RATCLIFFE: And I think there will be accountability through an attorney general that has promised to get to the bottom of it.

BARTIROMO: Real quick, before you go, John Solomon at The Hill reported some important news this week, because we basically got the evidence that they wanted to destroy Donald Trump before the election.

RATCLIFFE: Right.

And the first, biggest part of that story, Maria, is that we're just now seeing that. Those are documents that should have been produced previously, and they weren't.

But, needless to say, they do go specifically to the point about the Steele dossier, what the FBI knew. Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec had a memo of her conversation with Christopher Steele, where she discussed the dossier.

And, in one conversation, she determined that Christopher Steele was not being truthful and that the information in the dossier was demonstrably false. And she communicated that to the FBI.

So our own government knew that the source of the dossier was not credible and knew that the dossier itself was not truthful before it was ever used...

BARTIROMO: That's right.

RATCLIFFE: ... before a FISA court to get an application to spy on an American citizen, Carter Page.

BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.

RATCLIFFE: Again, this is one of the things that has to be looked at, and, fortunately, will be looked at.

I really do -- I will tell your viewers, Maria...

BARTIROMO: Yes.

RATCLIFFE: ... that I feel very good about having Bill Barr as the head of our Justice Department at this point in time.

BARTIROMO: Certainly seems like an honest broker.

Congressman, it's good to see you this morning. Thanks so much.

RATCLIFFE: You bet.

BARTIROMO: Congressman John Ratcliffe there.

You heard Senator Lindsey Graham this hour on his plan to roll out new legislation this Wednesday to address the country's asylum laws.

Next up, what that could mean for the crisis at our southern border, when Texas Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw joins me live.

Back in a minute.

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