Joe diGenova: The Mueller investigation is illegitimate

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Joe diGenova: The Mueller investigation is illegitimate

Former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino discuss Mueller's Russia investigation on 'Life, Liberty & Levin.'

This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," May 6, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARK LEVINE, HOST: Hello, America, I'm Mark Levin, this is "Life, Liberty & Levin." We have two great guests, two buddies, by the way, I just noticed, two Italianos.

DANIEL JOHN BONGINO, FORMER UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Yes, you're good...

LEVINE: How about that? Dan Bongino.

BONGINO: Good to see you, brother.

LEVINE: How are you? Joe diGenova, it's an honor.

JOSEPH DIGENOVA, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Mark.

LEVINE: For people who for some reason don't know who you are, let me just briefly say Joe, you are a wonderful United States attorney for the District of Columbia under a great President from 1983 to 1988 under Ronald Reagan. You received your undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati, your law degree from Georgetown. You later served as an independent counsel investigating the 1992 pre-election search of then- candidate Bill Clinton's passport file. Did that go on for eight years, I'm curious?

DIGENOVA: No.

LEVINE: What was it? Six months or something like that?

DIGENOVA: We cleared everybody.

LEVINE: You did you your job and you ended it. Dan Bongino.

BONGINO: Yes, sir.

LEVINE: Attended the City University of New York, you earned both a Bachelors' and Masters' Degree in Psychology; Penn State University, you earned a Masters of Business Administration. You worked with the New York City Police Department for four years from '95 to '99. You joined the Secret Service in '99 as a special agent, and you eventually protected a President, as I recall.

BONGINO: Yes, it was fun. I miss it sometimes.

LEVINE: All right, we're here on very serious business. Very, very serious business, so I wanted two smart, serious people with me, and I want to start the program this way.

I have before me an October 16, 2000 memorandum for the Attorney General of the United States - a Democrat Attorney General, a Democrat Department of Justice, the Office of Legal Counsel which as you, guys, know is the office that passes on Constitutional issues for the United States government, and they're also looking at a 1973 memorandum during the Nixon administration, same office.

This is what they say in the opening paragraph. "In 1973, the Department of Justice concluded that the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions. We've been asked to summarize and review the analysis provided in support of that conclusion and to consider whether any subsequent developments in the law lead us today to reconsider and modify or disavow that determination. We believe that that conclusion reached by the Department in 1973 still represents the best interpretation of the Constitution."

Now, here is some of what they say and I want your significant input. They say among other things that "The burdens imposed on a sitting President by the initiation of criminal proceedings, whether for official or unofficial wrongdoing, must be assessed in light of the court's long recognition of the unique position in the constitutional scheme that the office occupies. Given the unique powers granted to and obligations imposed upon the President, we think it clear that a sitting President may not constitutionally be imprisoned."

And they go on and raise other issues. An investigation, the time it takes of a President undermining a President's credibility, not just at home, but abroad, and all of these issues that affect the function of an Article 2 President of the United States.

So, my first question is: if it is the position of the Department of Justice, unchanged to my knowledge, this memoranda have not been withdrawn, that a sitting President cannot be indicted, then what is this talk about subpoenaing a President of the United States to appear before a grand jury to answer endless questions about his conduct not just before he was President, but when he is President. Joe diGenova?

DIGENOVA: I don't think there is any question that the Mueller investigation, as it sits now is illegitimate. The appointment by Rosenstein of Mueller did not name a crime that was being investigated, it named nothing. This was a way for the Department under Rosenstein to avoid responsibility for conducting an inquiry.

That said, it is quite obvious that any imposition on the President at this point does many, many bad things to the country and to the functions of the President of the United States. Article 2 vests in the President all executive power. He is the unitary authority of the executive branch.

The President cannot be indicted, and so with no crime having been asserted in the appointment of the Special Counsel, how can he constitutionally investigate no crime? And it is fairly obvious, since the President is determined to be no target in the investigation, that all he wants to do is question the President. He will waste the President's time, but more importantly, he will waste the country's time, and it is an incredible burden on the President's exercise of his duties.

I think he is illegitimate, and I think the President should fight to the very end any subpoena issued by the Special Counsel. It will be illegitimate ab initio.

LEVINE: Dan Bongino, do you think the purpose really is to lay out an impeachment case if the Democrats take over the House of Representatives? Is that the reason why these 49 very broad areas, questions that were apparently put together by the Trump team, but represent what Mueller and his team are focused on? Do you think that's what's going on here?

BONGINO: I do, Mark, I think it's twofold. I think they are laying out grounds for impeachment. I think they would lose that in the Senate, even if the Democrats take back the Senate, even by wide margins. I think in red states, this is an embarrassing case.

I think Joe is right, this has been a witch-hunt from the start. But, I think the second thing that's going on here and I've been clear on this from the start, and I'd love to get your input on this as well. The people Mueller hired were very selectively chosen for the witch-hunt.

Now, Andy Weissmann, Enron prosecutor, who we know from public e-mails has an extreme dislike for Donald Trump. He's Mueller's pit bull, number one. A couple of the other people he hires are fascinating. He hires Jeannie Rhee. Jeannie Rhee who represented people in the Clinton sphere. He hires as another one of his bulldogs, Aaron Zebley. Aaron Zebley who represented who? Justin Cooper, one of the Clinton aides who actually admits in a proceeding to smashing some of the Blackberries in the e-mail scandal.

My point on this is, yes, number one impeachment, but number two, I think the entire Mueller operation, Mark is a smoke screen to keep the attention on Donald J. Trump and to keep the attention away from the crimes committed with the Clinton operation and potentially involved in the Obama-Gate spying scandal as well.

LEVINE: This entire investigation, if it is the official position of the Department of Justice, unchanged to my knowledge, that you cannot indict a sitting President. The idea that you can threat a sitting President with a subpoena to drag him in front of a grand jury, one of the things they say in the memorandum here is the reason - another key reason, why you cannot constitutionally or should not indict a sitting President is you're now leaving it to somebody who is wholly unattached from the body politic and responsible to nobody, but himself to determine the outcome of an executive branch official - the President of the United States whether he stays or whether he leaves. So, if he can't imprison a sitting President, why are you investigating him for crimes?

DIGENOVA: The question answers itself, actually, because what you have is an illegitimate basis for the investigation. You can't indict a President, so why can you question him by force of a subpoena? You cannot.

And, in fact, the answer here is what Mueller is doing is he's investigating and using a grand jury subpoena, not for a criminal case, which the law says he cannot indict a President, but rather he's investigating to impeach. That is an unconstitutional position for him to be in.

He cannot issue a grand jury subpoena for purposes of impeachment. That is an illegitimate and unconstitutional use of the grand jury power. And it seems to me that if he does want to issue a subpoena, the President has an extremely strong constitutional position that that subpoena is illegitimate from the very beginning.

Example, among the 49 or 50 questions are questions like, "What were you thinking when you decided to fire Flynn or fire Comey? Why did you fire Comey or Flynn? Did it have anything to do with the Russian investigation?" All of those questions, intrude on the core functions of the President. They involve executive privilege - Article 2 privilege to fire anybody in the executive branch.

He's asking questions about pardons and possible discussions of pardons while he was President. Those are all covered by executive privilege and by the unfettered pardon power which is in the Constitution.

When you put it altogether, you end up with an illegitimate suit. It's an illegitimate putting. He doesn't have the power to investigate to impeach, and so Rosenstein's appointment is not only illegitimate, it's a constitutional farce and it's hurting the country.

LEVINE: What do you think the framers of the Constitution would say about what this does to separation of powers? What it does to the whole construct of our constitutional system? And isn't it why Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, even before the President was sworn in, were demanding a Special Counsel? Because they knew this is where it would lead?

BONGINO: Yes, of course, Mark, this was all set up in advance. I mean, the framers established a remedy, a constitutional remedy for malignant behavior from the executive branch - impeachment. It's clearly delineated.

Now, clearly that is not good enough for the Democrats right now, so not only are they setting as I said before, one path or impeachment. They are also setting up a path to politically bankrupt the President.

Now, we all have a political bank account. I ran for office at one point, you know, you build it with positive credits, good speeches or whatever it may be. There is also a way to diminish that - negative advertising. This is an ongoing negative advertising campaign against the President.

What Joe said is important, though. There is no predicate crime here, Mark. Not only could the Department of Justice handled well by the way, an investigation of counterintelligence investigation into Russian collusion, but the fact that there was no predicate crime to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the President says to me this was meant as a political operation as well to diminish the political capabilities and to basically drain the political bank account of the President.

One more thing, I think it was also sent as a message to people joining the Trump administration, the capable people, "Don't you dare join or look what will happen to you, we'll be coming after you next."

LEVINE: This is important, hasn't Mueller already disrupted this administration? Hasn't he already sent a message as you just point out to people who want to come into the administration, you might be targeted? He has interrogated if you well, dozens, scores of people involving the campaign, the transition, the administration. Hasn't he already done what the memorandum warns against, Joe?

DIGENOVA: Yes, there's no question that when you look at the entire array of actions from the very beginning, the appointment by Rosenstein of Mueller, where no crime was stated to have been committed, you begin an inexorable process of depriving the President of his ability to govern, and what you have now is we are going on 16 months of stripping away from the President his presidency.

It has been taken away by this, and what's fascinating to me is, we go back to the beginning. This started out as a brazen plot to exonerate Hillary Clinton through the Obama Justice Department and the FBI, and then, if she lost, to figure out a way to frame Donald Trump and the people around him.

What is tragic is that the system has allowed that to occur, and where we are today is the President is being distracted, constitutionally distracted from the performance of duties, North Korea, South Korea, denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Syria, Iran - everything that he's working on is being disrupted because of this, and for what reason? No good reason.

LEVINE: Here's the last paragraph of the memorandum, "In 1973, the Department of Justice concluded that the indictment of criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unduly interfere with the ability of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned duties, and would thus violate the constitutional separation of powers. No court has addressed this question directly, but the judicial precedence that bear on the continuing validity of our constitutional analysis are consistent with both the analytic approach taken and the conclusions reached by the courts. Our view remains..." This is the Department of Justice, "... that a sitting President is constitutionally immune from indictment and criminal prosecution."

When we come back, I want to ask you, but what should Congress do about this? And what about Mr. Rosenstein. We've got a lot to cover.

Ladies and gentlemen, you can watch LevinTV and join us there every week night, go to CRTV.com, CRTV.com or give us a call 844-LEVIN-TV, 844-LEVIN- TV. We'd love to you join us each night in our community there. We'll be right back.

Rather than try to pass legislation, I posted this on Facebook, "To protect special counsel Mueller, the GOP Congress should subpoena Mueller and demand he answer legitimate questions..." about what we just discussed. "... the course of his investigation." Why? Because he's giving it a constitutional impact. A constitutional patina.

"Congress need not wait for Mueller to issue his pronouncements. Surely, Mueller cannot be a power unto himself. This is what I posted, immune from legislative oversight while disrupting and threatening a presidency. In fact, "Congress has a more legitimate constitutional authority if not duty to inquire in the Mueller investigation given its lurch in to constitutional areas and threats of obstruction against a sitting President, than Mueller does to question the President about his Presidential functions." Do you agree with that?

BONGINO: Mark, I agree with you 100 percent. Can I be candid with you for a moment, I know you don't mind my candor.

LEVINE: Not from you.

BONGINO: I mean, Congress has been castrated, they're largely a bunch of feckless, whiney, pathetic little swamp rats that I'm pretty disgusted with, and the problem with the Congress right now is what you said is absolutely correct, it is their constitutional duty, a matter of fact to do what you said. They use the Constitution as toilet paper, and the real problem here is that most of the Republicans up on Capitol Hill, and don't forget this, are really Democrats, but no Democrats are really Republicans.

Don't ever forget that. See, that's the problem. These whiney little snobs up on the Hill don't have the cojones to do what you just said, which is their constitutional duty to do because they are really Democrats, the Republicans.

Again, remember this, there are no Democrats that are really Republicans, and that's why none of that will happen and I'll end it on this here, that is why bob Mueller is effectively the most powerful person in the world right now, because the Constitution is being used as Kleenex by these cowards up on the Hill who won't rein this guy in.

DIGENOVA: We had a series of speakers who would not allow committee chairman to issue subpoenas to the Obama administration because they feared the political backlash, and as a result, they wasted their constitutional power of oversight.

It is only recently that they have begun to issue subpoenas for documents from the Department of Justice. It is only recently that they have threatened contempt of Congress for the failure of the Department of Justice under Rosenstein and sessions to produce documents that Congress is entitled to under constitutional oversight.

They are now only beginning to exercise the power that they had. They clearly have the authority under the Constitution to subpoena Mueller, to have him answer questions about why he is conducting his investigation the way he is. Why there is no basis for a crime for this investigation and why he is using grand jury subpoenas not to investigate a crime, but to gather evidence for an impeachment report, and finally, by what authority does the Special Counsel issue a report from grand jury material about impeachment?

I think that's an unconstitutional abuse of the grand jury process, and I think it's subject to litigation.

LEVINE: As a matter of fact, Congress got rid of the independent counsel statute, that was one of the reasons.

DIGENOVA: Yes.

LEVINE: The violation of the grand jury secrecy in the use of what we call succeeding material. Now, shouldn't Mueller also be asked, "Mr. Mueller, when you were appointed Special Counsel, the rules specifically say you must follow department policy. Can you please explain to us your position and the Department of Justice's position that you cannot indict a sitting President, and haven't you in fact intended to disrupt this administration?" Shouldn't he be - isn't that a key question?

DIGENOVA: I don't think there is the question, it is the inescapable question. In fact, it is the fundamental question because it is clear that from the beginning, they weren't investigating a crime. They were investigating a person, as you so aptly put it yesterday.

They're investigating a person, not a crime. And in so doing, it is the most vile violation of the Constitution, but it's okay because it's Donald Trump. Just think of what we're doing, we are reversing the presumption of innocence just because the media and the Democrats and the people in the Intelligencia don't like Donald Trump.

Well, guess what? He's the President of the United States. He won the electoral college vote. He is the President, but there are people who will not accept it, and Mueller is a tool. He is a tool of that vast group of people who cannot stand Trump, who want to destroy him, and all of these folks in the intelligence community and the law enforcement community under Obama who decided they were going destroy him have succeeded in the sense that they have made the first 15 to 16 months of his presidency extremely difficult for him to conduct, and yet, what a success he has been.

BONGINO: Can I double down on that?

LEVINE: Go right ahead.

BONGINO: Because as Joe said, I have been bringing this up repeatedly, as a Federal agent, Mark, because people think in stories and they think in analogies, and I don't think our liberal friends understand the destruction of the constitutional republic going on right now before our eyes, right? You cannot walk into a Secret Service office when I was a Federal agent in New York and say, "I want to investigate Mark Levin. For what? Oh, nothing, but find something, you'll get it eventually."

We would laugh you out of there, if not investigate you, why you came in there, right? You cannot ever walk in and say, "Hey, I want to investigate - whatever, Joey bag of doughnuts because we think he stole a credit card number." That's fine. You have a crime, therefore, you are investigating a person.

We do not investigate people and look for a crime. We will all be Federal criminals, and that liberals are playing into this game to take down Donald Trump because they lost an election. What they don't understand, Mark, is they could be next, because Lord Acton was right, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." And I would never want a Republican to do to a Democrat what they're doing to Donald Trump now.

LEVINE: And to underscore your point, we turn to Mark Penn, a Democrat adviser to Bill Clinton at the time in the Hill. He says, "The questions of the Special Counsel suggest that even considering standing up to such an investigation through constitutional means will be met with possible charges by a team that has thought nothing of leading intentionally public raids, bringing charges on unrelated crimes, threatening family members of defendants to secure pleas." I might add, lawyers of defendants and press people of defendants, "... and ignoring Congressional subpoenas about its own process."

In other words, he's agreeing with you guys. He's saying, this guy has evil intent, and that is what he's up to.

DIGENOVA: Just think of this, Mark. Remember the mortgage scandal we went through that almost brought down the stock market? The crash? Not one white shoe law firm was raided during that entire scandal. They raided Mr. Cohen's office for one reason and one reason only, it was a small firm, no big deal, and it was an in terrorem use of the grand jury and the search warrant process. What happened to Mr. Cohen, whatever anybody may think...

LEVINE: They can go through the back door to get the treasure trove.

DIGENOVA: Absolutely disgraceful abuse of Federal law enforcement power. Just remember, not one big law firm was raided during the mortgage scandal. How can that be?

MARIANNE RAFFERTY, CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: Live from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Marianne Rafferty. Lava flowing from Kilauea, Hawaii's most active volcano has now destroyed at least 21 homes. A pair of strong earthquakes deep inside the volcano opened new fissures spewing lava and toxic gas toward nearby communities as aftershocks continue rattling the island.

More than 1,700 people evacuated their homes and scientists warn it could be days or even weeks before the volcano begins to calm.

And the Trump administration preparing for a potentially tough battle this week. The confirmation hearing of Gina Haspel for CIA Director. Haspel faces criticism for her role in enhanced interrogations of terror suspects during her time at the agency. She briefly considered stepping aside worried that the confirmation process would damage her.

I'm Marianne Rafferty, now back to "Life, Liberty & Levin."

LEVINE: What is Rosenstein's connection, the Deputy Attorney General, to Mr. Mueller? Is there a connection?

DIGENOVA: Well, Rod actually worked for Mr. Mueller for more than three years in the public integrity section of the Department of Justice. They all know each other - Mueller, Comey, Rod - they all know each other. It's a big family. Rod, of course, signed the memorandum recommending that Comey be fired...

(CROSSTALK)

LEVINE: Let me read from that.

DIGENOVA: Yes, please.

LEVINE: Let me read from that and bounce this off you. This is the memoranda, " May 9, 2017." And the subject is, "Restoring public confidence in the FBI." That's his memorandum, and it's from Rosenstein to the Attorney General. I can't read all of it, but it is a very well-written indictment of Jim Comey, and he says among other things, "I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's e-mails and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes. It is one of the few the issues that unites people of diverse perspectives."

Then he has a laundry list of former attorney general, deputies attorney general, solicitor generals, Democrats, Republican administration. He says, "The Director was wrong to usurp the attorney general's authority on July 5. Usurp the attorney general's authority, "... and announced his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution."

He goes on, "My perspective on this issue is shared by former Attorneys General, Deputy Attorneys General from different eras on both political parties," and he starts to list them. But in the end, he says, "Although, the President has the power to remove FBI director...." I think Mr. Mueller should pay attention, "... can remove the FBI director. The decision should not be taken lightly. I agree with the nearly unanimous opinions of former department officials..." This is his last paragraph, ".. the way the Director handled the conclusion of the e-mail investigation was wrong . As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and Congressional trust, until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions."

So, here's my question, is Mr. Mueller unaware of this? One of the questions or areas that he wants to inquire why was Comey fired? Is he Helen Keller? Number two, why is Mr. Rosenstein involved in any of this, given his role in firing Comey?

DIGENOVA: The Deputy Attorney General has a clear conflict of interest, not only because they're personal friends, are all of the people together - Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein - they're all friends, but he wrote the memorandum recommending that Comey is fired.

He is a witness in this case that Mueller is allegedly investigating, but beyond that, it doesn't matter what the President did. The President has the authority under Article 2 to fire anybody who is an executive branch official. Comey was eminently fireable.

The only thing President Trump did wrong in firing Comey was that he didn't do it Inauguration Day when he should have.

LEVINE: What's your take?

BONGINO: Two problems with Rosenstein. Number one, he signs one of the FISA warrants, Mark, against Carter Page.

LEVINE: One of the extensions.

BONGINO: One of the extensions on the FISA warrant. Now if Carter Page was, in fact being investigated through a court used almost exclusively to gather intelligence on foreign terrorists, if Carter Page - there was probable cause which is what the FISA warrant would needs, probable cause that Carter Page was not only a foreign agent, but was doing so in violation of US law, acting as a foreign agent, then why is Carter Page out there on cable news right now? Are you telling me this guy is James Bond? He's on MSNBC every night doing whatever he wants to do.

LEVINE: They haven't charged him.

BONGINO: Nobody has charged him. By the way, they barely interviewed Carter Page until later. Rosenstein has never quite explained that away. I think it is the legal patina to an unauthorized spying operation that happened under the Obama team. The FISA warrant put a legal face on an unauthorized unmasking operation before.

DIGENOVA: That is absolutely correct.

LEVINE: I agree.

BONGINO: But number two on Rosenstein is well...

LEVINE: Wait, and you and I know about FISA warrants, and we don't need lectures from Rosenstein on CSPAN the other day trying to educate the plebes out there about how FISA works. You are a US attorney, I was Chief of Staff to an Attorney General of the United States, and we know stink when we smell it. Go ahead.

BONGINO: Number two on Rosenstein, which is a grotesque conflict, Rosenstein was the United States Attorney in Maryland during the prosecution of the precursor to the Uranium One debacle, the TENEX case where an informant noted that the Russians by the way, who are buying our uranium later on, that they were lobbying US people and those same Russians by the way, Mark, were helping the Iranians build the nuclear program. You think that might be a conflict?

LEVINE: Who was the director of the FBI?

BONGINO: Bob Mueller, of course. It is an incestuous circle swamp of people.

LEVINE: As a matter of fact, let me ask you quickly, who was the Director of the FBI when Manafort apparently did all of these criminal acts and concealed his foreign connections? Was bob Mueller the Director of the FBI?

DIGENOVA: Yes, and I'll tell you something else.

LEVINE: How did he miss it all?

DIGENOVA: And I'll tell you something else. There is a gentleman named Deripaska who is a very famous Russian oligarch who dealt with Paul Manafort. Mueller used Deripaska and kept his name out of the Manafort indictment.

Manafort dealt with Deripaska. It's in there, but they took his name out.

LEVINE: Why?

DIGENOVA: To protect Mueller. Because Mueller allowed him to come to the United States when he was on a watch list where he was not legally allowed to enter the United States. Mueller has covered up for Deripaska who is in the Manafort indictment, but not mentioned, and this is part of the disgrace of Bob Mueller.

Mueller is doing things that no one should ever tolerate and the fact that Jeff Sessions as the Attorney General can sit there and know all of this and not do anything about it says more about Sessions than it does about anybody else.

LEVINE: One minute.

BONGINO: Deripaska who was also involved heavily in the Skolkovo project, a Russian military intelligence operation to steal our intel, the people involved in the Skolkovo project the Russia Silicon Valley, 17, I think of the 20 companies donated to who? The Clinton Foundation. Deripaska was involved in that heavily with Vladimir Putin and conveniently all this gets swept away.

DIGENOVA: And Mueller just forgets that Deripaska exists.

LEVINE: All right, when we come back, I have a question, how does the Hillary campaign and the DNC and the Democratic Party escape all investigations related to Russian interference given the dossier.

Ladies and gentlemen, check us out at CRTV.com where you can watch LevinTV and a host of wonderful shows every week night. Join our community there. Give us call at 844-LEVIN-TV. 844-LEVIN-TV.

Welcome back. Joe diGenova, Dan Bongino. So, the Deputy Attorney General gives this really broad power to a Special Counsel to investigate interference by the Russians in our campaign, collusion with Trump world and the Russians, but basically says, "Take the lead, if you find criminality, go ahead."

The last time I checked, Hillary Clinton is not President. So, there's no bar under any memos from the Department of Justice to investigate her campaign and what she knew about the dossier and collusion with the Russians, through Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, the DNC the same exact thing. He's absolutely incurious about evidence that has been uncovered through litigation by private groups and by Congress. Comment?

BONGINO: Mueller's sole purpose, Mark, and when we understand this from the 30,000 foot view, your question will make sense. Mueller's sole purpose right now is to run a smoke screen while investigating Donald Trump to protect Hillary and Obama and the empires with what happened when they were there.

I will give you a quick example of this, Michael Cohen raid, Trump's lawyer, which was a disgrace in and of itself, the Cohen raid according to leaks was because of a donation made by a guy named Victor Pinchuk to Donald Trump for a speaking fee. Pretty common, people get paid speaking fees all the time.

LEVINE: Clinton gets speaking fees from Russia...

BONGINO: A whole lot of it. What's fascinating about that is, is Mueller ignoring the Pinchuk connection to the Democrats? Pinchuk who funds Atlanta Council, the Atlanta Council which partners up with a natural gas company called Burisma, which hires who? Oh, Joe Biden's kid and John Kerry's stepson's friend, oh, and the Atlanta Council, one of the guys who sits on that, a guy named Dmitri Alperovitch, he is a CTO of a company called CrowdStrike, the very same company that analyzed the DNC servers for the so-called hack, which still hasn't been proven by the FBI.

I know those webs are complicated without a chart in front of you, all you need to know is this.

LEVINE: How much money did he give to the Clinton Foundation?

BONGINO: Up to $25 million. Pinchuck - but the point I am making on that is, it's interesting that they are investigating Pinchuk for a speaking fee, a six-figure speaking fee to Donald Trump, perfectly legal on its face, right?

But we seemingly avoided all of the connections to the Clinton Foundation, CrowdStrike, the natural gas company, Joe Biden's kid and John Kerry's stepson's friend.

LEVINE: And further to your point, why is he investigating connections with Russians period. The issue is interference in the election and collusion in the election with the Russians, not business relationships with Americans have with Russians and Chinese and all, you know, all over the world?

DIGENOVA: But if he's doing that, though, if he has exceeded his mandate and is investigating those business relationships, then there's just no doubt that the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign should be subject to the same intrusive investigative techniques that he's using against the Trump campaign because we know that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the fake Steele dossier, which used Russian sources, former Russian KGB people, current Russian government officials to smear Donald Trump with fake information.

Why isn't that being investigated? That seems to me to be the key interference in the United States Presidential campaign in 2016. The dossier for which CNN just got an award at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. If it's such a big deal, if they are giving out awards for the dossier leak, why isn't it being investigated by Mueller?

And the answer now seems to be clear, all of the Clinton supporters who are now lawyers on Mueller's staff are simply preventing that from happening. I think the Mueller operation is such an embarrassment to the Department of Justice and for all of us who have a deep respect for Federal law enforcement.

The combination of Comey and Mueller has become a symbol of embarrassment for Federal law enforcement.

LEVINE: Go ahead.

BONGINO: Mark, one thing on that, finding number 44 in the house permanent select committee on intelligence's report which was just released a couple of weeks ago, Finding 44 is clear as day, Christopher Steele's information came second and third hand from who? The Kremlin and Russian intelligence sources.

So, let me get this straight, we now know the Russians colluded with a British spy to help Hillary and the investigations into Donald Trump? I mean, we're really living in bizarre circumstances.

LEVINE: This is why Mueller must be brought before Congress.

DIGENOVA: Absolutely.

LEVINE: And held to account before he tears this nation apart any further on behalf of the Democrat Party and the losers in the Presidential campaign. I think we can all agree with that. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. Here's the bottom line. The kryptonite for all of this is the dossier. You get to the bottom of the dossier, you drag down the whole FISA issue and Comey. You drag down Rosenstein who extended it and approved it, you drag down the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC that paid for it, you drag down Mr. Clapper who was pushing it, Mr. Brennan who was pushing it - all the secretive activity that was going on, top echelons of the Obama administration. You drag down the Obama administration. Isn't that why they don't ever want to get to the bottom of the dossier?

BONGINO: Yes, yes, absolutely, and the other reason is, there was a black ops basically intelligence operation being run against President Trump not through official channels. Devin Nunes acknowledged this much in his interview on Fox.

LEVINE: I mentioned this, in March 2017, I came under withering assault, and that's how I knew I was under...

BONGINO: I remember, and you called for - which to this day, you called for the FISA warrants to be - and they were not, but this is important, there were two channels here. These were not official channels, this is the intelligence operation being run against the candidate Trump, one was being run through the United States Senate - John Brennan, Harry Reid - John Brennan the CIA Director, Senator Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein's staff, that operation by the way is still going on through some of her former staffers.

The second channel, notice by the way, I'm not talking about official intelligence channels, the second channel was the State Department. Diplomats and bureaucrats who are running an intel-op against President Trump being run through Victoria Nuland and Jonathan Winer who has already acknowledged, by the way, both of them Clinton acolytes, they have already acknowledged their roles...

LEVINE: We haven't gotten even close to the bottom line.

DIGENOVA: No, and when all is said and done, with all of that at the same time, there was an unmasking going on and it involved Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, John Brennan and James Clapper.

That unmasking was illegal and unconstitutional, then they leaked the names of people who were unmasked purposely to embarrass them and then they leaked telephone conversations of the President of the United States shortly after taking office with foreign leaders. That is the scandal.

What Mueller is doing is nonsense, utter legal nonsense. The scandal was the coup d'etat that started during the election by the Obama Justice Department and National Security apparatus, and it has not stopped until this day.

Look at Brennan, look at the viperous things being said by a former Director of Central Intelligence, and he's not the slightest bit embarrassed.

LEVINE: Because he's invested in this. Look at clapper - a proven liar, under oath, repeatedly, not a single charge ever brought against him. Clapper is a leaker. Comey is a leaker. McCabe is a leaker.

DIGENOVA: Why do they still have their security clearances?

LEVINE: Why do they still have their security clearances? Why do Strzok and Page still have jobs? Why wouldn't Mueller say, "I want to demonstrate to the American people how clean we are. The Inspector General, not I, found all these texts." These people have their security clearances and are moved to other positions within the FBI?

Is that not - you're a former Secret Service.

DIGENOVA: Here's the answer for the President, when you get that subpoena from Mr. Mueller, you fight like hell for the Constitution of the United States, for the people of the United States, because this is a coup d'etat, and Mueller is part of it.

LEVINE: Agree?

BONGINO: Yes. Clapper is inexcusable, but I do -- still having a clearance, but I do believe the FBI agents, there are some people working...

LEVINE: To void clearances?

BONGINO: I believe they have their clearances because the FBI is holding an administration cudgel over their heads to get them to cooperate.

DIGENOVA: They are coopearting.

BONGINO: I believe so.

LEVINE: We'll be right back.

Dan, Joe, we only have a minute. President gets the subpoena. To see to it or fight it?

BONGINO: They fight it, but I think it actually benefits Mueller, too, because it prolongs this whole Russian collusion myth and delays the shutting down of this witch-hunt.

LEVINE: So, it's part of the continuing strategy to drag...

(CROSSTALK)

BONGINO: He loses either way.

LEVINE: Joe?

DIGENOVA: It's an unconstitutional subpoena because it's being used not for a grand jury process, but for an impeachment process. The President should fight it. They should litigate it to the Supreme Court and if it gets there, he will win. The President will win. It is an unconstitutional investigation at this point.

LEVINE: Congress needs to get involved now or sit back and wait?

BONGINO: They do, but they won't because they are cowards, chumps.

DIGENOVA: Bring Mueller up and start asking him questions under oath.

LEVINE: Seems to me they have every right to do that. He's moved into heavy constitutional territory and Congress must be involved in protecting the Constitution even as oversight for anything that is where it has oversight. The problem is you have committees like the Senate Judiciary Committee devoted to protect Mueller which sends exactly the wrong message.

You guys have been terrific. I want to thank you, same with you, ladies and gentlemen, and I will see you next time on "Life, Liberty & Levine."

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