Rep. Mike Turner: The Mueller report ‘gives us confidence back in our democracy’

close

Video

Rep. Mike Turner: Mueller report puts confidence back in our democracy

As Congress awaits the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, said it “gives us confidence back in our democracy.”

Turner made the comment on “America’s Newsroom” Monday, saying confidence returned because "it says that there was no collusion and we know certainly that we did not have the aspect of the Trump campaign doing that.”

He added, “I do think there should be a concern, though, in knowing what has happened with respect to the Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee-funded dossier, where they actually hired a retired former intelligence officer that was British for the purposes of talking to Russians and then use that information in a way where the government used it to undertake surveillance on the other campaign. I think that's absolutely wrong and I think that's a threat.”

MUELLER REPORT EXPECTED TO BE RELEASED THURSDAY MORNING

Mueller's much-anticipated report is set to be released to the public and Congress with redactions on Thursday morning, the Justice Department announced Monday. The news comes despite mounting calls from Democrats to first release the report to Congress without redactions.

“We gave Mueller the assignment of to come to a conclusion and that’s certainly what he’s done, is finding no collusion,” Turner said in response to Democrats' demands to first release the report to Congress. “One thing is going to be important, though, is that I think it would be absolutely wrong for portions of the report to be released to Congress and not released to the public because already we have people like Adam Schiff and his minions standing up and saying that the Barr statement says that there was no criminal collusion found. Well actually, the quote directly from the report says that they were unable to establish a collusion at all. So if they are going to twist words that we all can read, we certainly don't want to give select access and then let others tell us what it says.”

MUELLER PROBE HAS COST TAXPAYERS MORE THAN $25 MILLION, SPENDING REPORT REVEALS

Last month, Mueller submitted his almost 400-page report to the Justice Department for review by the attorney general and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In a letter to Congress, Attorney General Bill Barr relayed some of the primary findings of the report, stating the special counsel found no evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians during the 2016 presidential election.

Barr said he identified four areas of the report that he believed should be redacted including grand jury material and information the intelligence community believes would reveal intelligence sources and methods.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

On Monday, Turner said even though redactions are expected in the Mueller report, it would hopefully provide “a greater picture.”

“The basic core of the work that's been done by the Mueller group and certainly their conclusions, I think we'll have enough to be able to understand exactly how they got there, what they looked at and why we should be able to take this as a complete report,” said Turner.