Giuliani on answering Mueller's questions, anonymous op-ed
Trump's legal team says the president will not answer Mueller's questions about obstruction of justice; Rudy Giuliani explains on 'Hannity.'
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," September 7, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: And welcome to "Hannity" this Friday night.
Everything is at stake. In 60 days, you, the American people, you will decide the fate of this country.
The Democrats, they are out for blood. They want to impeach the president and now they are rolling out their savior, the anointed one, Barack Obama, all over the country to tell you how to vote. Of course, he wants to destroy the Trump agenda, he wants to preserve the deep state, he wants to decide your future after all of his failure because he thinks he knows better.
Now, tonight, with the help of a new report from John Solomon, we will connect all of the dots tonight. We'll show you just how malignant and dangerous this country's bureaucracy had become. Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Page, all of them, the other unelected officials trying to rig an election, influence your vote, stop Donald Trump, the president you voted for. They tried before he was elected. They've tried to undermine him ever since.
Now we've got anonymous, a figure inside the administration claiming the Trump presidency will soon be over one way or another. Is that a veiled threat coming from the deep state?
Plus, we have new developments surrounding FISA abuse in the investigation. Andrew McCabe, we now know there is a grand jury convened and he may be just the person many officials who are about to be in serious legal trouble.
Buckle up. It is time for the Friday edition, news breaking, opening monologue.
(MUSIC)
HANNITY: He totally wrecked the economy, more debt than every other president before him combined. He failed to stop the rise of ISIS. Billions of dollars to the Iranians mullah that actually were chanting "Death to America." He ignored Putin's massive power grab, Crimea, Ukraine. Neglected the simmering crisis in North Korea and, yes, he's back, just in time for midterm elections, and he wants to tell you how to vote.
Earlier today, Barack Hussein Obama delivered this so called warning to America. Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: I'm here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, need to determine just who it is that we are. Just what it is that we stand for? And as a fellow citizen, not as an ex-president, but as a fellow citizen, I'm here to deliver a simple message, and that is that you need to vote because our democracy depends on it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Now, what a sanctimonious one. As Reagan said, stay the force.
They have former President Obama -- well, he is actually right about one thing, because in 60 days, remember 2016, it was about the forgotten men and women of this country. If you don't go out and vote, the consequences will be dire. The Trump agenda, they will stop in its tracks.
Obama's friends in Congress that brought us to the brink of economic catastrophe and weakness and apology on the world stage -- guess what? They want power back. They want to stop Trump. And they want to impeach him.
Now, we're going to have an important monologue about the midterms you can't afford to miss. That's later in the show, including more of Obama's lo hypocritical, self-righteous remarks that should make your blood boil.
All right. But first our investigation into the deep state rolls on tonight and what we have now uncovered is now beginning to connect all of the dots. I think we now understand what the insurance policy is, worse than we originally thought. The foundation of this republic is now shaken to its core. The biggest abuse of power scandal in history.
You've got a few unelected high-ranking officials inside of our government trying and almost exceeding to alter the course of this country's history. At the very center of it all is the man whose name should be seared into your brain. Bruce Ohr. He is the face now of the deep state corruption.
And according to a damning investigative report from The Hill's John Solomon, in the summer of 2016, it was Ohr, remember he was the fourth highest ranking member of the DOJ, tampering with an ongoing FBI investigation into so called Russian collusion. Why? To destroy then candidate Donald Trump.
We'll break it down step by step, layer by layer. Here's what we know: 2016, Hillary Clinton wanted dirt on her opponent, Donald Trump. This is after she got her exoneration without an investigation. That's another part of the story.
Her campaign and DNC, well, they funneled money through a law firm that was called Perkins Coie, that hires Fusion GPS, an op research firm. And then, of course, they attempted to literally hire a foreign national, which we thought was a bad thing for America. That was Christopher Steele, former MI-6 spy.
And don't forget, Nellie Ohr is the wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr. She's working on the phony what turned out to be Russian dossier, specifically Russian dirt that's on Donald Trump that nobody bothered to verify.
Well, not so coincidentally, at the same time, the FBI was also paying Christopher Steele. They later fired him for lying and leaking in their Russia investigation. But now we know that Bruce Ohr had his dirty little fingers all over this.
It was Bruce Ohr who pushed the FBI to use the Steele campaign opposition research. Remember, he was a hater. He wanted to stop Trump. It was Bruce Ohr. Meaning Steele. It was Ohr who spread Steele's phony dossier throughout the government, to lie to the American people.
It was Ohr who became a back channel. Remember, 70-plus contacts of Christopher Steele even after he was fired by the FBI for leading anti- Trump, leaking it to the press in this country. That means to you. It was Bruce Ohr who knew that Steele was completely bias, desperate to stop Trump at all costs and that Ohr wrote that Steele was passionate about Donald Trump never being president.
Bruce Ohr knew of the dossier was biased, would never hold up in court. He knew it was tainted, he knew it was not verified or corroborated, and yet he pushed that information into the grateful hands of anti-Trump agent Strzok and Lisa Page, and even the pit bull himself, Andrew Weissmann.
So, you got to -- you start with Hillary's campaign, they fund it. They funneled the money. It gets to a foreign spy, a foreign agent. He puts in-- he hates Trump. He gets phony Russian information. It's disseminated to you, the American people, and it gets worse from there.
None of this should happen in America. You have a political campaign, the DOJ working together, coordinating their efforts, literally to stop one candidate over another candidate. This is a humiliating smear on the country's system of justice. And it gets worse because the phony, political, dirty Russian dossier that Hillary paid for, never verified, was used as the very basis for FISA warrants to spy on a Trump campaign associate.
Let's see. Jim Comey signed off on the FISA request, Sally Yates, Dana Boente, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, all signed off on it. And tonight, we can report that fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is now facing a real serious criminal investigation. We know tonight a grand jury has been impaneled by federal prosecutors, multiple witnesses have been summoned, as the former deputy director is accused of using his position to advance his personal political interests.
If justice is served, the McCabe investigation should just be the tip of the iceberg. Everyone who committed this fraud on the FISA court using unverified information, the Steele dossier by a Trump hater probably should be investigated and prosecuted. That would mean Comey and Yates and, yes, the guy that did the last one, Rod Rosenstein. The guy that appointed Mueller need to be held accountable.
Multiple Republican lawmakers now demanding the president declassify and unredact parts of FISA documents. On top of that, the 302s as it relates to Bruce Ohr, and Christopher Steele, and the "Gang of Eight" material. We're expecting the president could make this information available as early as this weekend.
Now, we're talking about everything that the "Gang of Eight" had. We know the specific pages of FISA that we had. Apparently exculpatory information on Carter Page. And even somebody like Papadopoulos, who was just sentenced to 14 days in jail, $28 million later.
This information must be released. You, the American people, have a right to know how a fraud was committed on an FISA court against the Trump campaign associate. Not once, but multiple times. They never verified any of this information that turned out to be false. They purposely omitted information that would have had an impact on these judges. That's lying by omission.
And what we've shown you each and every night right here on this program is what is a scary level of corruption that's only risen to the surface because Hillary didn't win in spite of all these efforts. If she won, we wouldn't know any of this. The deep state would be alive and well, working behind the scenes corruptly, undermining your vote, what you want for your country. It's biggest abuse of power scandal ever.
Now, thankfully, the president is breaking up some china in Washington. He's smashing the status quo. He's shattering all the establishment politics. The old rules are gone. That's why one such cowardly bureaucrat who claims to be a senior official in the Trump administration acting out in The New York Times op-ed, claiming to be part of the so-called resistance.
Really, within our government? We have a resistance? Wow. We have sleeper cells within our government? This is a clear and present danger to the country.
Now, in an interview on "Fox & Friends", the president slammed this anonymous New York Times, and The Times itself for publishing this nonsense. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think this audience would say that an attack on you is an attack on the people that voted for you.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you --
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you any closer to knowing who did it and what should be done if you find out who did it?
TRUMP: Well, number one, The Times should not have done that because really what they've done is virtually, you know, it's treason, you can call it a lot of things.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: That is beyond unacceptable. It's like a soft coup aided and abetted by the corrupt media in this country.
Washington Post reporting sleeper cells within our own government -- think about that -- inside the administration. What? To undermine the commander-in-chief? Does this so-called senior official have a security clearance, access to top secret information, sources, methods and potentially compromised? Does he hear the president talking about war and peace? You know?
And, look at this particularly alarming part of the article. Look at this.
We will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until -- one way or another -- it's over.
One way or another? What is one way or another? Voted out? Impeached? Die in office? Is that a veiled threat?
Where's the Secret Service?
Either way, given this person's alleged proximity to the president, it should be investigated and treated as matter of national security. Now, perhaps the president should use the Obama model and track down the anonymous saboteur.
According to reports, no previous president was more tough on leakers than Obama. I know, shocking. He subjected his own staff to lie detector test, prosecuted multiple individuals, He targeted members of the press who published leaked stories, including former Fox News reporter James Rosen, who was surveilled, even accused of being a co-conspirator because he dared to report with anonymous sources inside the Obama White House. That was Obama that did all that.
Meanwhile, the super patriot who authored this op-ed in The New York Times, if you were truly working behind the scenes for the benefit of the country, why not stay behind the scenes? Why risk exposure in a very public way?
Because this individual, unelected and unaccountable, they think their truth is better than what the president ran on, what the American people voted for. And he's pushing their political agenda, he or her, whoever it happens to be. That they know better than we, the smelly Walmart people, and those opinions are of more value than your opinions.
But ultimately this is an attack on the presidency and the country. The country can get hurt in this process. The very reason why President Trump and the Secret Service now must do everything in their power to dismantle the deep state and find out whoever this is. We got a lot to get to tonight.
Joining us now Fox News contributor, investigative reporter Sara Carter, former assistant U.S. attorney, Victoria Toensing. And yes, Victoria has done legal work for me. And she said I was the worst client she ever had. And The Hill's John Solomon, who -- let's start with your story here.
JOHN SOLOMON, THE HILL: Sure.
HANNITY: Mueller's probe, let's get into what you have discovered as it relates to Ohr, because now we have maybe an answer to the insurance policy question because it includes Page, Strzok or Steele, and McCabe?
SOLOMON: Yes. If you're going to create a company called Destroy Trump Inc, the board of directors would be that group right there, right?
HANNITY: Scary.
SOLOMON: They all had a motive. They all did things to advance the investigation. Sometimes we believe in violation of the FBI's rules, certainly a conflict of interest rules.
And now, we know that they were really action in July, that what happened in July wasn't an organic walk in of intelligence that raised concern. It was Bruce Ohr taking information from his wife's company, Fusion GPS, and Christopher Steele, walking it over to the FBI and literally redirecting the FBI to a different piece of evidence than what they started with.
Remember what they started with. George Papadopoulos. Big case, right?
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Yes, 15 days, $28 million, 14 days and the president tweeted that out --
SOLOMON: And we now know from our reporting that early on, the FBI found out that the Papadopoulos thing wasn't as serious as they thought. Bruce Ohr steps in, he gives them something else to go follow.
HANNITY: By the way, didn't the professor in London say --
SOLOMON: He did. No big deal. Nothing there.
HANNITY: Nothing there.
SOLOMON: Nothingburger. That's what he called it.
HANNITY: Nothingburger.
SOLOMON: Yes.
HANNITY: What else did you get in your report?
SOLOMON: I think at the end of the day, what we now know is that throughout this process, Ohr is acting like a steer. He's steering this investigation. He's putting the FBI onto something else.
And we now know that what he was using, the Steele dossier, he himself thought it was uncorroborated, unverified, not worthy of being submitted to the court, and yet Andy McCabe and all those people you said in your monologue and signed it, they represented that it had been corroborated. Good enough for a FISA warrant. There has to be an investigation of how this went wrong.
HANNITY: And, Sara, we go back, in your reporting as well, on all the things, the communication, 70 communications at least, meetings, texts, handwritten notes. What did we find?
Christopher Steele was afraid he'd be exposed. He wanted fire walls to hold. He was passing information through Ohr to go directly to the special counsel's office. So, that would be Hillary Clinton's bought and paid for lies, ending up right in the office of Robert Mueller, vis-a-vis his pit bull, Andrew Weissmann.
SARA CARTER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Think of how bad this is, Sean. I mean, if you look at John's story, and we focused on Bruce Ohr, yes, that's one part of a much bigger puzzle. We've seen now that there's a resistance within the administration, within the bureaucracy, against the presidency of the United States, meaning against the people of this country.
We're now seeing the pieces of this puzzle just kind of fit and fall together. They were on a fishing expedition to take this president down, to take candidate Trump down and then to go after president Trump. And they haven't stopped.
This is so dangerous because I want us to take a step back. This isn't just about what happened right now. Remember the State Department was involved in this. Victoria Nuland was involved in this. John Kerry knew what was going on. There were other dossiers out there.
And now, I'm hearing there's even more dossiers that we haven't discovered that were put together by Fusion GPS and spread out across Washington, D.C. So, this was an active disinformation effort to take down a candidate that people elected and is still on going.
HANNITY: Let me ask, Victoria, and you've been around Washington politics a long time. And you've seen a lot over the years.
But when you see anonymous people unelected and unaccountable thinking they know better than the president of the United States, we don't know what their classification is, what they may have access or not have access to, it seems extraordinarily dangerous, quote, resistance within our own government and around the president of the United States. Sooner or later, one way or another, it's over.
And then Andrew McCabe, of course, we now know grand jury has been impaneled.
VICTORIA TOENSING, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY: Well, I'll tell you -- I'll tell you what bothers me, Sean. I'm not at all Bruce Ohr was involved in this plots months before, because what do you think? He wasn't talking to his wife and what she was doing early on in 2016?
What bothers me as a former Justice Department official, because I know how it works, is that he was working in a counterintelligence investigation. This -- he is in charge of criminal investigations. That's like separation of church and state.
I never got involved in counterintelligence investigations when I was the head of the criminal investigation unit. They are very different people. They're very different FBI agents that you work with and they're very different rules for collecting evidence.
So I am appalled that this wasn't a big red sign. And if he were really an honest dude, which he isn't, we all know, he would have gone to Sally Yates and say, something really bad is going on here. No. He was participating in it.
And here's what really bothers me about the FISA -- what they did to FISA. They purposely lied to the FISA court about Carter Page. I mean, he is really a big victim in all of this.
The FBI, word in Washington is from -- in the affidavit, that they said, the FBI said, in 2013, that Carter Page was in cahoots with the Russians as opposed to being in FBI asset and helping them bring an indictment against Russian spy.
More than that, they went after him for giving a speech in Moscow at the New Economic School. Guess who else made a speech there, Sean?
(CROSSTALK)
TOENSING: Barack Obama in 2009.
HANNITY: Exactly.
Let me ask you all one last question. And -- should the president declassify, unredact, and what does it mean that we now know a grand jury has been impaneled? Does that mean everyone involved in FISA is in trouble?
SOLOMON: Well, we don't know the scope of the grand jury investigation. We know it definitely involves McCabe lying to the media. If that reason about lying was, they used the media to set up the FISA warrant to get -- create corroborated evidence that wasn't corroborating, then this moves --
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Declassification.
SOLOMON: Opens this all up. We're going to find out all the things that were omitted, all the omissions. And in this case, it's going to be omissions -- the sin of omission that misled this court.
HANNITY: Sara, both on declassification -- go ahead.
CARTER: Absolutely. The American people deserve to know the truth. We deserve to know the truth. Those agencies need to be cleaned out, gutted out, and we need to move forward with our country. Absolutely, Sean.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: And, Victoria, this will be the Spartacus moment?
TOENSING: Yes, I am Spartacus. If the president doesn't do it, he's on defense, and he's got to be on offense because that's his nature.
HANNITY: And if he is, that would mean declassify, unredact and let the American people see.
And, Sara, I know you've been saying, and, John, you have been saying, this will be on a scale of 1 to 10? Or what?
SOLOMON: A 9, 10 maybe.
HANNITY: Nine or 10.
Sara?
CARTER: I believe a 10 and beyond.
HANNITY: Do you know? Everyone's seen it but me. I don't know anything. I thought my sources were better.
All right. Good to see you both.
When we come back, the president's attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Also later, Newt Gingrich, and I've got a special message for Barack Hussein Obama tonight. That's coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: Yesterday, President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani told the "Associated Press" the president will not answer questions for Robert Mueller about obstruction of justice.
The mayor is now with us, president's attorney.
Mr. Mayor, good to see you, sir. How are you?
RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: How are you?
HANNITY: OK. Obstruction is off the table. They're not even asking for it or?
GIULIANI: No, no, they're asking for it, and the only way we would ever consider it is if we would get the questions on collusion first, which we have agreed to do. We'll review them. If they're fair, if they're comprehensive, if there's no holding back of questions so they can ask questions in a later round, if it's done in good faith. Then when we finish that, we'll sit with them and talk about any further questions to whether -- we'll talk about any further questions about collusion or obstruction.
The problem with obstruction is this. It all takes place post-presidency. To agree to it would really be to waive major presidential privilege. Also, it would involve very, very deep conversations that are very much under the protected branch of government.
And finally, they don't need it. One of the things they would have to show is they have particularized need. In other words, they couldn't get it any other way. So far, every question we think they're going to ask, they have the answer to it.
HANNITY: And 1.4 million documents. Don McGahn, this surprised me to find out Don McGahn, the White House counsel, gave 30 hours of testimony?
GIULIANI: After 34 hours of testimony,
HANNITY: Wow.
GIULIANI: -- you don't need anything else. They have 1.4 million documents, 32 witnesses. Here's the big question on obstruction. Why did you fire Comey? Well --
HANNITY: He doesn't have to answer that.
GIULIANI: He shouldn't have to answer that. He has the right to fire Comey.
HANNITY: Article II.
GIULIANI: Plus, they had the answer. Take the Lester Holt tape. Play it.
There's your answer.
Now, if you want him under oath to repeat that, you only want him under oath because you have some nefarious purpose.
HANNITY: In your previous life, people kind of forget, it's -- next week is 9/11, what, 17 years later. But in your previous life, before being the major of New York, you were a prosecutor. So you make the statement, I'll even say, maybe inarticulate, but especially for those outside the legal community, in legal jargon, what you were saying and Alan Dershowitz defended you strongly on this, is that if Don McGahn gives testimony, you said 34 hours. I thought it was 30.
And they interviewed the president and he says one thing that contradicts Don McGahn, they get to decide who's telling the truth.
GIULIANI: Yes. Do I want -- do I want 17 angry Democrats to decide --
HANNITY: Andrew Weissmann and Jeannie Rhee? No.
GIULIANI: Give me a break. I mean, maybe they've shown too much bias to think that they would be objective and fair. The reality is, it's one on one, he said/she said, there can be no determination of truth, which is why I said what I said.
I mean, the fact is, even in a criminal trial, you don't prove truth. You prove whether -- have you proved guilt beyond a reasonable guilt. Not all doubt.
HANNITY: Reasonable.
GIULIANI: Yes, reasonable doubt. So, somebody could be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not all doubt. Somebody that's guilty may not be convicted because there isn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
You got to be naive to think that it's a search for pure objective truth. But I said that only place they can find truth is if you go to Chuck Todd's little magic room and "Meet the Press" can figure out the truth, because he's the one complaining about this.
HANNITY: Now, there's a phrase in The Washington Post this week talking about this anonymous. The sleeper cells have awakened in the United States, meaning the resistance within the administration. There's one line that really caught my attention, I was talking about it earlier, is that, so we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction, until one way or another, it's over.
Why do I think that should be a Secret Service investigation and nobody seems to pick up on it? This is an unelected, unaccountable, anonymous bureaucrat.
GIULIANI: Maybe with top secret clearance.
HANNITY: Maybe hears the president talking about war, peace, sources, methods intelligence.
GIULIANI: Maybe he decides that a very damaging piece of information on national security should be leaked, because it would hurt Donald Trump without regard to whether it would hurt the nation, because whoever elected him to be the repository of determining what should be secret and what shouldn't be secret. This is a perfect perversion of what it means to be in federal office.
This man or woman, we think man, right, unless he's lying about that, too.
HANNITY: Right.
GIULIANI: This man should quit and hold a press conference. That would be the honorable thing to do. This is why I don't think it's any of the generals. I don't think it's anybody ever went to West Point.
Pompeo put it best. Pompeo said, I was taught, if you disagree with the boss, you decide how important it is. If it's not important, you stay. If it's conscience, you leave. And you stand up, like a hero.
This is no hero. This is a little -- this is a slime dweller (ph).
HANNITY: It's also dangerous.
GIULIANI: Dangerous? It's exceedingly dangerous, because this man decided he's the repository of --
HANNITY: Truth.
GIULIANI: -- of truth.
Again, what I'm telling you. All these left wingers (ph) think they know truth.
HANNITY: More than of course --
GIULIANI: You know who knows truth? God. God knows truth. We do the best we can to struggle with it. And hopefully, we get close to it.
HANNITY: But the president ran, the president was elected, the president will be held accountable. The president has -- the American people gave him the seal of approval, not this anonymous person.
All right. Mayor, good to see you. Now the big question, House lawmakers calling on the president to declassify documents that are related to FISA abuse 302.
Ed Henry has a full report tonight. We'll get congressional reaction later. Jim Jordan, Matt Getz later. Well, I have a message and a mini monologue to Barack Hussein Obama. That's coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: All right. So Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill they are calling on President Trump to declassify the highly redacted FISA warrant on Trump campaign aide Carter Page and other documents.
Joining us now with more is Fox News chief correspondent, White House correspondent Ed Henry. They want more than -- they the exact pages 10 through 12 in the final FISA warrant, the third renewal warrant application.
ED HENRY, FOX NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
HANNITY: That the Rosenstein one. Pages 10 to 12, 17 to 34, they want all of the Bruce Ohr 302's. They want all the gang of eight documents.
HENRY: Right.
HANNITY: They want the Page and Strzok memos all released. So they're asking for a lot. The president can do it with the stroke of a pen.
HENRY: That's right. And the 302's are the FBI interviews basically. These are sensitive documents that normally don't leak out.
But what we're hearing from people close to the White House is that the president appear to be inching closer to releasing some of this information, number one. And number two, the people around the president believe that some pieces are now falling into place in the allegations that the president and others have been raising about the investigation of the investigators.
First of all, what we've learned the last 24 hours or so is that there has been a grand jury in Washington impaneled to investigate Andrew McCabe, the former number two at the FBI. That's important because remember, what is being investigated for is allegedly lying about his contacts with the media. That's what got him fired from the FBI job in the first place.
HANNITY: We know if there's more though.
HENRY: Yes. And that's the question. It's because in the course of the investigation, the testimony that Bruce Ohr has given to Congress in the last couple of weeks, there have been questions raised about the fact that Bruce Ohr at one point met with both his wife Nellie who was over at Fusion GPS digging up dirt on Donald Trump, and you see Bruce Ohr there. As well as, Christopher Steele.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: McCabe.
HENRY: Right. Page and then--
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Strzok.
HENRY: Right. Then they talk to Page and Strzok. And there's some sort of a meeting we believe between Ohr and McCabe. And so the question is, was there a lot more here that has not been previously disclosed, number one.
And number two, you're hearing from Democrats in Washington that this information is too sensitive to be released. But interesting they're making that argument, Sean, right after you had Cory Booker at the Supreme Court hearing saying, let's release everything. We need to know everything we can.
So, the idea that Democrats have spent the last week saying we need more transparency, that might actually bolster the case for Republicans in Congress to release this info.
HANNITY: Might be as early as next week according to people I'm talking to. Ed Henry, thank you for the report.
(CROSSTALK)
HENRY: Good to see you.
HANNITY: Joining us now with reaction, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. You know, when you look at the people that Ed mentioned in his report, Page, and Strzok, Bruce Ohr and McCabe, we've got all the essential figures in the insurance policy aspect of this. One has to wonder, is this now -- and Christopher Steele, one has to now wonder is that where this is leading to, Jim Jordan?
REP. JIM JORDAN, R-OHIO: Yes. The first guy that Bruce Ohr talks to after he meets with Christopher Steele is Andy McCabe. He called him up a day or two later. And then meets with him and Lisa Page.
So all of the key people at the FBI knew what was going on before they take the dossier to the court. They knew the Ohr's involvement. They knew who paid for the dossier. And they knew that the guy who wrote it, Christopher Steele, had told Bruce Ohr that he was desperate to stop Trump.
And we don't believe they conveyed any of that critical information to the FISA court when they went to get the warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. That's why this is so important. We get it. They knew this up front when it started late July, early August. That's why this is so critical that this information become public.
HANNITY: And that if you've got Page, Strzok, Ohr, Steele, and McCabe, you got the whole insurance policy, Matt Gaetz.
(CROSSTALK)
JORDAN: And--
REP. MATT GAETZ, R-FLORIDA: Yes. It's almost like you've got the board of directors of the deep state together, Sean. You know what I mean--
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: But they all hate Trump. The one thing in common, they all hate Donald Trump.
JORDAN: Andrew Weissmann too, as well, Sean.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: And he get -- you're right. Because let me say one more thing. Because Ohr is hearing from Christopher Steele over 70 contacts. And not only are they talking about fire walls, not wanting to be exposed. But, also did you get my stuff to the special counsel, which we now know the contact was Andrew Weissmann.
GAETZ: And Sean, to put a finer point on what Jim had said, it's not the statements or words in these documents that we're looking for, it's the omissions.
JORDAN: Yes.
GAETZ: It's the information that is not presented to the courts. So I mean, we caught the Ohrs red-handed. You got Bruce Ohr shuttling information to the FBI that was developed by his wife and the money paying for it all came from the DNC.
I mean, the Ohrs are probably the most dangerous power couple in the Washington since the Clintons were running around this place. And I think that until we get the information about what was presented to the FISA we won't know the full depth of the misconduct at the FBI and the Department of Justice to inappropriately lie to a court. And I think that penalties are just starting to rack up.
HANNITY: Well let's go to the issue that we know the grand jury is impaneled, Jim Jordan.
JORDAN: Yes.
HANNITY: And that is the issue of unredacting by the president and declassifying by the president is do we have any idea? We know witnesses are called.
Does that mean that everybody that was involved in that phony, fraudulent, Clinton bought and paid for dossier, the fraud on the court and information withheld purposely, more fraud on the court? Is everybody that signed that now in legal jeopardy perhaps?
JORDAN: We'll see. What we do know is, the FBI and the DOJ had a sophisticated leaking project going on. Andrew McCabe lied about that, according to the inspector general, three times under oath and faces a criminal referral.
And as Ed pointed out, there's now a grand jury being impaneled on the Andrew McCabe issue. So, this is what they did, I believe. They leaked information to the press and then they used their reports the press wrote to buttress the false dossier to give it legitimacy when it was a false document. That was the game that was being played.
And we know that from Devin Nunes memo that the intelligence committee put out where they cite news reports to add weight to the dossier. It was all baloney this circular games they plane. That's I think may be the biggest concern that we see.
HANNITY: All right. Last word, Matt Gaetz.
(CROSSTALK)
GAETZ: And we may see member -- yes, we may see members of the media caught up in that as well, Sean. You'll remember there was a reference in the inspector general's report, so members of the media inappropriately giving gifts to people of the FBI to get stories and get tips. That may have been facilitated the illegal leaks and I think people could go to jail for it.
HANNITY: All right. Great work. We'll see if that happens. Maybe as early as this weekend or early next week. Good to see you both.
When we come back, I have a message for Barack Obama. A Hannity Friday mini monologue. And by the way, his comments about Trump will be pretty important. We'll remind him of himself straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: All right. So, today, President Obama he thrusted himself back into the political spotlight. He was sanctimonious smug lecturing you, the American people. He wants to tell you how to vote because we, smelly Wal- Mart people that cling to our god cons bibles and religion, well, we can't be trusted to make important decisions.
Only 60 days from today left until you head to the polls. And I keep reminding him what's at stake here come November. By the way that's the subject of tonight's mini monologue.
All right. So President Obama said that Americans need to vote in November because our democracy depends on it. OK. What I'm about to say may shock some people. He's right. This November election is more important than any midterm in our life time. The stakes couldn't be higher.
Democrats have proven again and again they will do anything, say everything and anything, to get their power back, to make sure, even if Donald Trump fails, no matter how much it hurts the country. We cannot let this happen.
Now today President Obama tried attack and take credit for the economic successes we are now seeing. It's not true, but we'll show it to you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, D-FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let's just remember when this recovery started.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: I'm glad it's continued. But when you hear about this economic miracle that's been going on. When the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers, suddenly Republicans are saying it's a miracle. I have to kind of remind them, actually those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Actually fake news. You didn't build that. Let's remind Obama about the economy left remember, under his watch, 95 million Americans out of the labor force. Thanks to President Obama's stellar leadership, we had the lower labor participation rate since the '70s.
We now have the highest. We had the lowest homeownership rate in 51 years. Obama, eight years of Obama, 13 million more Americans on food stamps. Eight million more Americans in poverty. We now have four million fewer Americans on food stamps, four million new jobs.
Under him, anemic growth, endless burdens of regulation, lowest consumer confidence. That was the Obama economy and he took on more debt than every other president before him combined.
He can spin it any way he wants but we, the American people, are smart enough not to believe the fake news that he was trying to feed us today.
Now President Trump responded to Obama's outrageous claims as he tried to claim victory when he was a failure. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think he was trying to take some credit. He was trying to take credit for this incredible thing that's happening to our country. If the Democrats got -- I have to say this to President Obama. And it wasn't him, but would have been the same thing.
If the Democrats got in with their agenda in November of almost two years ago, instead of having 4.2 up, I believe honestly you'd have 4.2 down. You'd be negative. You'd be in negative numbers. You'd be in negative numbers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: The Atlanta Fed right now is predicting 4.7 percent GDP growth for the third quarter. Obama also took shots at the president's foreign policy while ignoring his own blunders during his tenure in the White House. Let's see Iran and I'll have more flexibility, tell Putin. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: They're undermining our alliances, cozying up to Russia. What happened to the Republican Party?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Now Trump has been tougher on Russia than Obama ever was. Remember it was Obama, basically the one guy that ignored Russia's power grab. Remember Ukraine, Crimea? It was Obama who allowed Russia to prop up Assad, the Syrian dictator gassing his own people.
Obama gave Clinton the reset button. How dumb that was. Remember he was promising, I'll have more flexibility after the election. Tell Vladimir.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: I wanted to present you with a little gift which represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying. And that is, we want to reset our relationship.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So let's do it together.
CLINTON: We will do it together. OK?
OBAMA: This is my last election.
DMITRY MEDVEDEV, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF RUSSIA: I understand.
OBAMA: After the election I'll have more flexibility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: A hundred fifty billion to Iranians. By the way, expressed this admiration for his friends and allies in the main stream media which shouldn't surprise us. They helped push their Obama radical agenda. They never held them accountable. It was a love fest from day one. He was the anointed one. They gave him a pass for hanging out with, let's see, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn.
That's where he started his political career. Make excuses 20 plus years in the pew of Mr. G.D. America. And America's chickens have gone home to roost. And it shouldn't shock anybody that Obama is going to defend his media friends. But once again today, Obama he still can't stop taking shots at Fox. Can't help himself. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: It shouldn't be Democratic or Republican to say that we don't threaten the freedom of the press because--
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: -- they say things or public stories we don't like. I complained plenty about Fox News. But you never heard me threaten to shut them down. Or called them enemies of the people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Actually more fake news, a Hannity history lesson. Obama took multiple shots at Fox News, this show in particular, during his presidency. And since Obama seems to have a blind spot in his memory, we got the tape to remind him. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OMABA: I'll put -- I'll put Mr. Burgess up against Sean Hannity. He'll tear him up.
I mean, look, is Sean Hannity suddenly going get on air and say I was wrong about this Obama guy? He's my man. No. That's not going happen.
I think that there's a certain segment of hard core Sean Hannity fans that probably wouldn't want to have a beer with me. There's no doubt about it.
If you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu. They will find folks like who make me mad. I don't know where they find them.
I wasn't viewed through this prism of Fox News and conservative media. It making me scary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: He whined the whole time. And by the way, wanted Mr. Burgess to tear me up. Wow. Obama did talk to Fox News. Here's an example.
In 2009, the Obama White House tried to exclude Fox News from a press pool interview with administration officials. In 2013 the story broke the Obama DOJ under the leadership of Mr. Holder they actually spied on one of our reporters at the time, James Rosen.
They looked through Rosen's phone calls and his e-mails from 2009 while attempting to find a source for one of Rosen's stories. So what you heard from Obama today was nothing more than fake news and liberal spin.
This is why this midterm election is so important. He's right about one thing. It's important. I can't stress enough. Yes, a lot in the country's at stake. Democrats win in November, you stay home, well, this is what's going happen.
They'll rescind the tax cuts. They want their crumbs back. That's right. Nancy Pelosi calls them crumbs and she wants them back. And that's the money in your pay check that will be gone. They want to impeach President Trump. It's not a secret. Chucky Schumer openly admitted it just this past week. Here's him in his own words.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, D-NEW YORK: Sooner the better.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sooner the better. That's not answering the question.
SCHUMER: We got to get a few Republicans.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're trying. We're trying.
SCHUMER: Democrats are on your side.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: They want to impeach him but they're trying not to say it. And then of course, they want to keep Obamacare. How did that work out? Keep your doctor, keep your plan, pay less? Not very well.
This week, we saw just how low they'll scoop to block a Supreme Court pick of President Trump. Democrats want, what, to abolish ICE? They want open borders. They will kill off every single deep state investigation that's going on right now and they'll be investigating Donald Trump from now until the cows come home.
Now when we come back Newt Gingrich is going to weigh in on the anonymous New York Times op-ed and how dangerous this is for the country. That's straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: All right. Earlier, I spoke to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich about the anonymous New York Times op-ed how dangerous it is and he didn't hold back his feelings about the saboteur.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER UNITED STATES SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: If you pretended to be for Trump, you get an appointment to the White House, to the executive branch, you claim you are for what he's doing and then you write this extraordinary piece in the New York Times saying, by the way, I want to systematically undermine him.
I mean, that's as unpatriotic as you can be because it undermines the whole base of our Constitution. This is a country where the people are supposed to have a say. And, as you remember, in 2016, the Republican side of that equation, 16 people lost Donald Trump won. Pretty clear cut.
You get to the general election, billion dollar campaign for Hillary Clinton, total support from the liberal media, she lost. This article will be seen someday by historians as a really good example of how sick the system has become and how arrogant the elites have become that they can just repudiate the American people and try to impose their views.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Extraordinarily well said. All right. That's, unfortunately, all the time we have left this weekend. A busy news week next week, I can promise you that. Let not your heart be troubled. Laura Ingraham is coming up next. We hope you have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday.
END
Content and Programming Copyright 2018 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2018 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox