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

Interview

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Let's bring in Republican Congressman from Texas John Ratcliffe. He's a member of the House Judiciary, Intelligence and Homeland Security committees. He's also a former federal prosecutor.

Congressman, it's good to have you this morning. Thanks so much for joining me.

RATCLIFFE: Good morning, Maria. Good to be with you.

BARTIROMO: You zeroed in on exonerate, because the special counsel said, we could not exonerate the president.

Why was that line of questioning important?

RATCLIFFE: Well, Maria, the Democrats built their entire strategy around the special counsel's statement that Donald Trump could not be exonerated from potential obstruction of justice crimes.

But what the Democrats and the special counsel didn't see was the fatal defect in that legal reasoning, that by requiring Donald Trump to conclusively prove his innocence, they were depriving him of the one thing no one can be one deprived of, which is a presumption of innocence.

And getting the special counsel to admit that they applied a one-of-a-kind, made-for-Donald-Trump-only standard to these facts really rocked the foundation of their entire obstruction of justice analysis.

At the end of the day, you can't impeach somebody over obstruction of justice where you use the wrong legal standard, a legal standard that doesn't exist.

It seemed like that was...

BARTIROMO: So do you think -- do you think you have popped the impeachment bubble?

RATCLIFFE: I think everybody saw and a lot of Democrats have conceded that it's time to move on, that there's a hole in the impeachment balloon that's large enough for Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff to walk through together.

But Schiff and Nadler don't seem to see that. The same folks that promised that there was going to be impeachment by collusion, you know, that died when the Mueller report came out and said there was no collusion or conspiracy.

Then they shifted to it was going to be impeachment by obstruction of justice, that Robert Mueller was going to breathe life into the report. Instead, he sucked the life out of it by, again, applying a legal standard that didn't exist.

So, now they're moving on, saying they want to pursue obstruction by the court system and trying to get grand jury information. Look, it's becoming a joke. I think people see that.

And Nadler and Schiff are starting to look more like Laurel and Hardy. It's time to move on.

BARTIROMO: Well, what is your reaction overall?

I mean, Congressman, if there's one question that I have been asking this entire two-year period, it's this: How is it possible that the Mueller report, the Mueller investigation's going to have any credibility at all if Robert Mueller doesn't look at the origins of the investigation, if he doesn't look at specifically why?

Why am I looking at Trump being involved in Russia meddling? We know Russia has meddled for decades. Why is Trump part of this? So I ask you, your reaction...

RATCLIFFE: Right.

BARTIROMO: ... to the fact that Mueller said he doesn't have -- he's not familiar with Fusion GPS; it's not in his purview?

How -- how -- can that fly?

RATCLIFFE: Of course it can't.

Trey Gowdy said it best this week. The person who learned the most about the Mueller report during Wednesday's hearings was Robert Mueller. And that's sad, but true.

And, really, what it meant is that the Mueller report and its conclusions weren't from Robert Mueller. They were written what a lot of people believe was Hillary Clinton's de facto legal team, people that had supported her, even represented some of her aides.

And so the Mueller report, it really going to be difficult for the Democrats or anyone to rely upon the findings of a report when they just listened to the man whose name was on top of it not have a command of what was even in it.

BARTIROMO: So, the fact that you did have others writing the report, and now we see that, do you think people understand that?

Andrew Weissmann was what, a Hillary Clinton donor? He was at her election party, right?

RATCLIFFE: It's not just Andrew Weissmann. Aaron Zebley represented Hillary Clinton's aide that set up the unsecure server and smashed her BlackBerrys with a hammer.

There were all sorts of folks, again, that were close to the Clinton Foundation. And, you know, so the bias that was involved there, I think, are fair things to talk about. And I think that's why that, in light of the disastrous testimony from Robert Mueller -- you know, the Democrats paid a heavy price for bringing a reluctant witness to testify.

They overplayed their hand, and they did it in front of the American people on a national television audience. And it was just a train wreck of a week for the Democrats. And it was a great week for Donald Trump because of that.

But to your point, Maria, now the things that Bob Mueller said he didn't know about and his team clearly didn't look at, those are things that would be fair for Bill Barr and the Department of Justice to look at, because...

BARTIROMO: Right.

RATCLIFFE: ... we know that things happened in the Obama administration that haven't been answered. There's been no accountability for that yet.

BARTIROMO: That's what I want to talk about.

Let's take a short break. And I want to ask you where the crime and the wrongdoing really was, because we know that Barr's looking at it, and John Durham is looking at it is, and the I.G., along with Senator Lindsey Graham.

We will be right back with more Congressman John Ratcliffe in a moment.

Also ahead, my exclusive interview with former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who's at the center of it all. His name was referenced more than 30 times during the Mueller testimony.

Back in a minute.

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BARTIROMO: Welcome back.

I am back now with Republican Congressman from Texas John Ratcliffe. Sits on the House Intel Committee, as well as Judiciary and Homeland Security.

And, Congressman, let me ask you about where the wrongdoing was specifically.

You have John Durham looking at this, origins of the Russia investigation. You have William Barr. You have Senator Lindsey Graham. And the I.G. Report.

Tell us what they're going to find. Where is the wrongdoing?

RATCLIFFE: Well, I think the first thing we need to do is make sure we don't do what the Democrats have done.

They accused Donald Trump of a crime, and then they try and reverse- engineer a process to justify that accusation. So I'm not going to accuse any specific person of any specific crime.

I just want there to be a fair process to get there. What I do know, as a former federal prosecutor, is, it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration. We talked earlier about Michael Flynn. His phone call with the Russian ambassador was a highly classified NSA intercept.

Someone in the Obama administration leaked that call to The Washington Post. That's a felony.

Glenn Simpson from Fusion GPS, in talking about the Steele dossier, said under oath that he and Bruce Ohr didn't meet until after the election. Bruce Ohr said under oath that they met three months before the election. One of them is not telling the truth.

We need a process to identify that. Where it all started, Jim Comey, he admitted that he leaked his confidential conversations with the president to a reporter. Did that include classified information? We need a fair process to find out answers to that.

I trust, because Bill Barr has earned my trust already and the trust of the American people, that there'll be a fair process with John Durham and with Michael Horowitz to get answers to that and provide accountability where it really belongs.

BARTIROMO: And, obviously, if you have got a team of Clinton donors, like an Andrew Weissmann and the others that you mentioned, they are not going to have much enthusiasm to go investigate why Hillary Clinton and her campaign paid for a dossier of, you know, lies about Donald Trump.

RATCLIFFE: Well, the special counsel told us, words from his own mouth, is that they didn't do it.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

RATCLIFFE: And if they didn't do it, the only place we can get the answers is from the Justice Department right now.

BARTIROMO: Right.

RATCLIFFE: The American people want that.

Their faith and trust, Maria, has been shaken in our Justice Department, and the only way to get that back is, therefore, to be real accountability with a very fair process. Again, I have supreme confidence in Bill Barr's ability to deliver that.

And at the end of the day, wherever the outcome may be, as long as we know that the process was fair, the evaluation was fair, justice will be done. Look, the truth also defends itself.

BARTIROMO: All right, we're going to go.

I want to talk about Joseph Mifsud, because I know that if it is established that he was, in fact, working for Western intel like the CIA, then we know that this was all entrapment. We're going to talk about that with George Papadopoulos.

Congressman, it's good to see you this morning. Thank you.

RATCLIFFE: Thanks, Maria.

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