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Documents allegedly show Hunter Biden signed off on laptop repairs<br>

Sen. Tom Cotton tells 'The Story' how the developing story is playing with voters nationwide

This is a rush transcript from “The Story with Martha MacCallum" October 19, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARTHA MACCALLUM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening everybody. I'm Martha MacCallum in New York and this is THE STORY. Two weeks from tomorrow is Election Day in the United States of America but in a really astounding turn of events, we have nearly 30 million Americans who have already voted.

Now keep in mind in all of 2016, 136 million was the total number of votes when all was said and done on Election Day. So these numbers show that early voting among Democrats appears to be twice the rate of Republican who tend to wait until Election Day, they want to drop that ballot into the box in person or pull the lever or whatever they do in each state.

So there are the voters stretched out in Florida today where they just began early voting. Long lines, masked, social distance, all in place. They want to place their ballot in person so at this stage of the game watching where the two candidates are, where President Trump is and where the former vice president Joe Biden is, our key to mapping out how each side sees their path to victory.

Today, we have President Trump with back to back events in Arizona. A lot of focus for him in Arizona which I believe he won by about 3 last time. He wants to hold on to that state 3.5 points back in 2016. Joe Biden is in deep preparation apparently for Thursday night's debate.

He has a lid on his campaign events for the next two days until we get to Nashville for the big debate on Thursday night. Here's the DNC Chair Tom Perez on Face the Nation. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM PEREZ, DNC CHAIRMAN: The Democrats are overwhelmingly turning in their ballots and 350,000 of the Democrats that have turned in their ballots haven't voted in the last two elections so it's not just people who are voting for convenience. It's people who haven't turned out and that shows the enthusiasm for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: That on the Democrat side. Now let's bring in Hogan Gidley who is Trump 2020 campaign National Press Secretary. Hogan, thanks for being here tonight. Good to have you with us. Thanks so much. I appreciate the time so these numbers that Tom Perez is talking about 350,000 new voters.

Obviously there's a big effort on both sides because we know that people who register to vote for the first time or the first time in a long time, they said - they tend to turn out. What's your operation seeing in those numbers?

HOGAN GIDLEY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN NATIONAL PRESS SECRETARY: Well look, a couple things I think important to note here, the Democrats put pretty much everything they had in their early voting. They tried to scare Americans to say they couldn't get out and safely do, it that social distancing wouldn't work, that masks wouldn't work, that they need to vote from home and Democrats seem to be doing that in bigger numbers than Republicans.

But that's something we expected to happen because that's something that usually happens in presidential politics. The problem is it's not happening at the rate they thought it would. Michigan is a great example. We expected about 80-20 swing. Democrats voting early to 20 percent of Republicans but in fact it's closer to 50-50 right now.

That tells you that the enthusiasm the excitement of course is for this president and Donald Trump and we've seen that gap widen over the last several weeks because people understand this president has actually delivered on promises he made whereas Joe Biden has a 47-year career of failure.

MACCALLUM: Well, it's interesting because you know when you look at Michigan, it's a very tight race once again so we're seeing that the president is spending a lot of time shoring up the places that he won last time. I remember a moment several months ago when there was $1 billion and the campaign - from the Trump side and the discussion was we're going to win Minnesota, we're going to new Hampshire.

We're going to play in New Mexico, all these other states that the president was going to be spending time in to try to pick up those states.

We see some defense right now.

GIDLEY: That's not defense. I mean look if the president keeps all the states he won in 2016, he's going to be re-elected obviously but the fact is this president fundamentally changed the electoral college map for Republicans moving forward.

Winning states that Republicans hadn't won in decades. We absolutely think we have a good shot at picking up Minnesota, possibly New Hampshire but we still have to make sure we defend all of the states we won the first time around and the people want to hear from the president.

They want to hear what he was able to accomplish on their behalf in the first four years and what he's going to do in the next four years. It matters to people. That's why we have decided to go out and do these rallies again, get in front of the American people, without the filter the mainstream media.

Joe Biden is still counting on that basement strategy and trying to buy advertisements in these states and he thinks that is what is going to bring it home for him. Our campaign apparatus, our turnout models, our methods, it's the envy of the political universe.

We've been building this out for the last three years and I was looking 130 million voter contacts in this cycle to date. That's incredible. No one's seen anything like it and we expect that's one of the things that's going to help drive home this election for a victory for this president.

MACCALLUM: All right, we're looking at COVID-19. The president went after Dr. Fauci today, said you know the idiots talking about the idiots who worked on the task force and all of that saying that people have COVID fatigue, they're tired of hearing about it. Here's what Joe Biden said about that. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My grandfather would say, this guy's gone around the bend if he thinks we turned the corner. Turn the corner.

Things are getting worse. He continues to lie to us about the circumstances.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: We are seeing an uptick in hospitalizations in 39 states across the country. What do you say to that?

GIDLEY: Still our case mortality rate is extremely low, globally. That's good news. The American people are safer now than they were at the beginning of this outbreak and Joe Biden's prescription for all this is just to shut down the country again. That's an untenable situation. Even Dr. Fauci said that and look, I was working closely with Dr. Fauci, Dr.

Hahn, Dr. Birx, Dr. Redfield when I was at the White House when this first initially reared its ugly head in this country.

And the president listened to Dr. Fauci, no question. In fact it was Dr.

Fauci who said the present took all of his advice except for one piece. Dr.

Fauci said he would not have shut down those flights from China and from Europe and now we know thanks to the health experts and the medical experts that that one decision saved countless lives.

MACCALLUM: But let me ask you, do you think it's a good idea for him to call him an idiot at this point? I mean when you've got this escalation because the fact of the matter is that there are places in the country that are experiencing what those of us on the east coast experienced quite some time ago and that part of this whole experience is when you feel very nervous.

And Wisconsin is one of those states so they thought they were out of the woods but now they're seeing what we saw here, not in the numbers I should point out that we saw in New York and New Jersey, not even close but the hospitalization rates are increasing around those people as they get ready to vote.

GIDLEY: Well, we also know you know bumbling Governor Cuomo what he did by sticking people with--

MACCALLUM: That's not my question. My question was how do you manage what people are going through now in the Midwest when you've got a Midwest group of states that you have to win on your side.

GIDLEY: Right but look, I want to talk about this issue because I think it's very important for the American people to understand. Dr. Fauci isn't the only doctor out there and there's competing you know science on various things. It was Dr. Fauci early on said we shouldn't wear masks at all and then came around and said no, we should wear masks after the science changed.

So that's all fair and that's fine but science is meant to be tested and these conversations should be had but regardless, while we see some of these cases increase in the states as you just mentioned, there's still a way to move about our lives in a responsible safe way.

We cannot shut things down again. I mean losing millions of jobs, spending trillions of dollars to keep people just to float, not to allow them to succeed by the way or thrive but just to survive, that's not a tenable position for this country.

We know that we can do things safely. If we wear a mask, if we socially distance, if we use hand sanitizer and all the guidelines that the CDC talks about, we can begin to open up this country and we should. The American people need to be back to work and the livelihoods that have been lost, many aren't going to come back.

It's going to take someone who understands the economy, who will rebuild the economy once, who is doing it again, that's Donald Trump. Shutting down the country is not a strategy and that's what Joe Biden wants to do.

MACCALLUM: Do you think that the president wishes that he didn't shut down

- do you think the president wishes that he didn't shut down the country to the extent that he did at this point, now that the WHO is saying that lockdowns maybe were not the way to go? Do you see any regrets about that?

GIDLEY: Not to my knowledge. Everything I've talked to him about privately and everything he said publicly is that's what he had to do to protect the people in this country. Remember, 2.5 million people were projected to die because of this virus and while one death is tragic and the 200,000 plus is horrific and it's because of China.

It's what they did to the world, it's what they did you know with an unforeseen, unprecedented, global pandemic. They unleashed it on the world but this president's leadership prevented the spread to the numbers of 2.5 million people dying. It's his leadership that protected us against that.

MACCALLUM: And how people grade him on that is going to be the thing that we're talking about after this election is over. We're going to learn one way or the other how people ultimately grade him on the handling of that.

Let me just ask a quick question about the debate before we head out, is there an effort to make any adjustments heading into this new debate. Jason Miller was on over the weekend. He said the president is going to stand back a little bit and let Joe Biden answer these questions to a greater extent. What do you expect?

GIDLEY: Well look, I was on your show I think last week or week before talking about the debate commission and all the stuff they were doing to try and tip the scales for Joe Biden. We saw it again today. First they tried to mess up the whole process with a virtual debate, then all of a sudden the last debate which is typically about foreign policy, something we talked about with the commission early on when we agreed to the rules set forward.

Now what do you know? It looks like the president secured a lot of peace deals in the Middle East, securing the region, making the world a safer place. Information now comes out showing Joe Biden knew about the deals hunter Biden was making with Ukraine, a corrupt country and communist China, also corrupt.

And all of a sudden, they're going to change the topics for the debate yet again so it's clear.

MACCALLUM: Is that confirmed, are they definitely - how can you have a debate where there's no discussion about foreign policy for the Commander- in-chief and the president of United States?

GIDLEY: That is a great question and look, when you have a record like Joe Biden, I know they want to talk about it but his own Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Joe Biden had made a single correct foreign policy decision in four decades. Everyone knows he's been a failure in domestic policy and on foreign policy.

When you're the Commander-in-Chief and you have to deal with these nations in real time like North Korea for example, like Japan, like Russia, like China, you have to understand the global - the global implications and in the global set up if you will and Joe Biden just simply doesn't do that.

For the commission to pull that - to pull that topic and not even discuss--

MACCALLUM: Yes.

GIDLEY: - foreign policy, it's just a failure on their part.

MACCALLUM: I think you're right. I think both sides should want to have the conversation about foreign policy. It must be had between the two candidates on stage and so I would imagine that it's going to take one of the candidates to bring up some of these issues if they want to get into it with the other on this and I have a feeling I know which side it will probably be.

So we'll see.

GIDLEY: I think you're probably right.

MACCALLUM: Hogan, thank you very much. Good to see you tonight.

GIDLEY: Absolutely, sure.

MACCALLUM: So coming up Senator Tom Cotton campaigns for the GOP in New Hampshire today. We're going to talk to him next on the election and also on voters' reaction to this Biden email story after senior political correspondent Mike Emanuel will update us on the very latest. He has been investigating this and bringing out all of the interesting facts so he's up next before Tom Cotton right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM: So we understand that Joe Biden's off the campaign trail today and will be through Thursday until the presidential debate in Nashville on Thursday night. We'll be there to cover that so until then, he won't likely have to answer this question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: What is your response to the New York Post Story about your son, Sir?

BIDEN: I know you would ask it. I have no response. It's another smear campaign to right up your alley. They are the questions you always ask.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: And scolded that reporter for even asking the question, Senior Political Correspondent Mike Emanuel following the new developments on this story for us tonight. Good evening to you Mike.

MIKE EMANUEL, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Martha, good evening. Today the Director of National Intelligence broke his silence, taking aim and critics of reporting on Hunter Biden purported laptop and emails.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN RATCLIFFE, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Don't drag the intelligence community into this. Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign and I think it's clear that the American people know that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EMANUEL: Director Ratcliffe responding to an attack from House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California. Schiff is blaming the Russians for dropping this controversial story at a critical stage in this campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): We know who the driving force behind this smear has been all long and it's been the president and the Kremlin. The Kremlin has an obvious interest in denigrating Joe Biden. They want Donald Trump to win. They recognize he's a weak president.

He's been really unwilling to stand up to Putin and other autocrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EMANUEL: Fox news has obtained new images of a document that appears to show Hunter Biden signature when he dropped off a laptop at a computer repair shop in Delaware and other images that show FBI paper work from its interaction with the computer shop owner and what appears to be serial numbers for a laptop and hard drive taken into possession last December.

Fox news obtained four alleged Hunter Biden emails, two about his business dealings in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015. Two about his 2017 business activities in China and one of those China emails was verified as being authentic by a source on the email chain.

The former head of U.S. Cyber Command says the email should be carefully analyzed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADM MIKE ROGERS, FMR COMMANDER, U.S. CYBER COMMAND: Let's investigate it.

Let's get some factual evidence. Let's get the meta data and let's see if this is accurate or not. I'm just not in a position really to speculate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EMANUEL: The Senate Judiciary Committee is now expected to vote on issuing subpoenas for the CEOs of the social media giant's Thursday unless a deal can be reached before then after concerned Twitter and Facebook had blocked distribution of the initial Hunter Biden story as action gets going on Capitol Hill. Martha.

MACCALLUM: Mike Emanuel, thank you. Thank you very much Mike. So let's bring in Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. He joins us now.

Senator, good to have you with us tonight. What do make of this story so far?

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): Good evening Martha.

MACCALLUM: Good evening.

COTTON: Well, well, we don't know yet if those emails are authentic. That reporting adds more credence to them. I have to say, it sounds like something Hunter Biden would do. We already have known for a long time that Hunter Biden has been selling access based on his father's public office for years just like Joe Biden's brother and his sister have done too.

What I've heard as I've campaigned across the country for the last week or so for Senate candidates in places like Michigan and Georgia and New Hampshire is that they were a little bit more about their families than about Joe Biden's family. They know about Joe Biden's family but they are very worried about their families, about their family's ability to say voice an opinion on social media without being censored.

That's why it's past time that we revoke the immunity for these big tech giants. They worry about their family's ability to make ends meet if Joe Biden and the Democrats raise taxes on them or if they packed the Supreme court as they seem to want to do to worship their God in a way they choose or to own a gun or to speak their mind. Those are the kind of concerns I've heard from families across the country, campaigning over the last of couple of weeks and although they're aware of what Joe Biden family's been up to, they're really focused on their families and what the Democratic agenda means for them.

MACCALLUM: You know I mean, I think you're a 100 percent right. I think this is not something that is foremost in people's minds. However you know I do think it's interesting, one of the things that I think back to with the DNC situation and the Russian meddling then, once the emails came out, you know it's a nefarious way that that these things find their way into the public sphere but we didn't hear then that the emails weren't real and we're not hearing that now that the emails weren't real.

So there's a question of how it gets into the public sphere and then there's a question of whether or not the underlying documents and you know

10 percent goes to the big guy is a real document and if it is, it obviously raises questions but one of the things that it raises most in my mind is the FBI had this for a year and we just saw the documents that the FBI was sending back and forth to the guy who they acquired a laptop from.

Why haven't we heard more about this throughout the impeachment scandal, throughout all of that? Why didn't the FBI tell us what they knew?

COTTON: Those are really good questions Martha and we need to get to the bottom of it in the Senate given FBI's misconduct in the 2016 campaign as well but Martha, as you point out, you know you can talk about meta data, you can talk about a bunch of other technical stuff but in the end, most Americans can use their common sense and for all those Sherlock Holmes fans out there, they can hear the dog that didn't bark.

And that's Hunter Biden and the Biden campaign still not coming out and saying these emails are fake, I did not send them, I did not receive them.

If they really were Russian disinformation as Adam Schiff and the other Democrats are running around screaming without any evidence, you would think that the Biden campaign and Hunter Biden be saying that.

The fact that they're not really is the dog didn't bark in this controversy and most Americans can use their common sense to say what that means.

MACCALLUM: Yes, I think that that's very clear. You know I just think back to you always sort of have to play you know if the shoe was on the other foot, right? And I think back to that meeting at Trump tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya who came you know and talked to Donald Trump Junior and a couple of other people that were in that room and it was a short meeting and then there's no follow up you know and any trail of anything that happens after that, right?

I mean when you compare that to you know 10 percent or whatever the 10 refers to for the big guy and a deal that they are working to close, whether it be offices that would be provided, you know where it came from and if somebody dropped it for a reason nefariously 15 days before an election is significant but whether or not the emails are real is probably the most important part underlying it. Isn't it?

COTTON: And whether or not they reflect genuine corruption and graft.

Putting aside again where the emails came from and what Hunter Biden claimed maybe Hunter Biden was engaged in a little bit of puffery but if Hunter Biden really was arranging deals with Joe Biden, that's very worrisome.

MACCALLUM: Yes. All right, Senator Cotton, thank you. Good to get your thoughts on air tonight. Thanks for coming in.

COTTON: Thank you.

MACCALLUM: So one of the few pollsters who correctly predicted. Remember, pretty much nobody did but this one predicted that President Trump would win in 2016 and now he thinks that the president is headed for repeat based on the numbers as he sees them in all of these states. So Karl Rove and Juan Williams will analyze that on the other side of this break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM: Some big news tonight out of the Supreme Court. They have just denied an attempt by Republicans to stop the extended period for returning mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. So that means mail-in ballots in that crucial swing states will count as long as they are received up to three days post-election.

So that goes up to November 6. Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote siding with Justices Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayar. So there's that and in averages from six key battleground states, Joe Biden leads President Trump by about four points according to the RealClearPolitics average.

But there's at least one pollster who believes that president Trump is actually leading and people are paying attention to this pollster because he did get it right when they were all wrong in 2016.

He's Robert Cahaly of the Trafalgar group in an interview with the National Reviews' Rich Lowry. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT CAHALY, TRAFALGAR GROUP: If it all happened right now my best guess would be an Electoral College victory in the high 270s, low 280s.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM:  So, joining me now to talk about this pollster and how he does things, Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush and a Fox News contributor, and Juan Williams, Fox News political analyst and co-host of The Five.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here. It's good to have you here.

Well one interesting thing in light of this Supreme Court news from Pennsylvania is that one thing that Cahaly says is he probably -- he's talking about Trump -- he'd probably win in Pennsylvania but I'm going to give a caveat on Pennsylvania. I believe Pennsylvania to be the number one state that Trump could win and that is stolen due to voter fraud, this is what he says. Karl, what do you think?

KARL ROVE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR:  Well, I am troubled by the Supreme Court decision because the Pennsylvania law is pretty clear that the ballots have to be achieved by local election authorities by the close of business on election day and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which is seven to two Democrat voted four to three to extended period until the third.

And that -- if that's not only problematic, but they also said that if the postmark was illegible or there was no postmark, then the ballot would be presumed to have been mailed in time unless, quote, "the preponderance of evidence suggests otherwise," which is an open invitation in close election to litigate every one of those ballots that may have a missing postmark or an illegible postmark, so we have hanging chads in 2000, we may have smeared postmark's in 2016.

MACCALLUM:  Yes, postmarks to look forward too.

ROVE:  Or 2020.

MACCALLUM:  All right. So, Juan, this pollster, who back in 2016, as I said, they got Pennsylvania right, Michigan right, Wisconsin right, I believe. So now he's saying that he believes that the president will win North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, I think he will win, he will probably win Pennsylvania and he will probably win Michigan 270, 280 electoral votes, what do you make of it?

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS CO-HOST & POLITICAL ANALYST:  Well, I saw this in the National Review, the interview with Rich Lowry, and what struck me was he simply doesn't believe the overwhelming majority of polls. He thinks that a lot of conservative voters -- but specifically Trump voters -- are not honest with pollsters, that they feel it's not socially acceptable to say that they are planning to vote for Donald Trump.

And I think that you have to assume therefore that every other pollster hasn't thought about this, hasn't tried to guard against it, hasn't worked at it, but it's a persistent thought among Trump voters that, gee, we are down in the polls, maybe people aren't playing ball with all these pollsters and some of them coming from what they perceive to be antagonistic political positions.

MACCALLUM:  Yes.

WILLIAMS:  But I must say there's so many polls, Martha, and they all basically point in one direction, the trajectory being in favor of Joe Biden, and we haven't seen any substantial movement on those polls, so it makes me dubious.

MACCALLUM:  So one of the things he does, Karl, is he takes a larger sample

-- he says he doesn't want anything in the hundreds, it has to be in the thousands and they keep the polling more simple and try to get to the heart of how the person feels and they go overboard to assure them that it is an anonymous poll and they think that's why they get to a little bit more truth, what do you think?

ROVE:  Well, they do have a shorter instrument and they also used a broader means of outreach. They do cell phone calls, landline calls, online panels and then some kind of -- he wasn't very revealing about it, some proprietary technology that's digital in nature that helps them do this.

So, look, I do think that there is -- in Britain they call it the shy tory.

I do think there is a shy Trump order. We saw in in 2000. Take a look at all of those polls the last week that conducted and they show that Hillary Clinton was going to win the nationwide popular vote by almost 3.5 percent and she won by just over 2 percent.

So, they were off by a third on her margin and they could conceivably be off this time around. I think pollsters have been thinking about it but we won't know how good everybody has gotten at evaluating this until after the election.

MACCALLUM:  Yes. There was a Gallup poll last week, Juan, that said that 56 percent of Americans thought they were better off than they were four years ago.

WILLIAMS:  Yes.

MACCALLUM:  Joe Biden sort of mocked it and said if that's the case, they shouldn't vote for me. And now -- so we all wondered if it was just kind of a weird outlier then you got this Wall Street Journal poll, 50 percent say they are better off than they were four years ago. That's a high number compared to some of what we have seen in terms of sentiment. Your thoughts?

WILLIAMS:  Well, you know, Martha, what is it Jim Carville when he was doing the Clinton campaign said is the economy stupid.

MACCALLUM:  Yes.

WILLIAMS:  And the contrary thought this time around is it's not the economy stupid, because if it was all about the economy, then I suppose people would be overwhelmingly supporting President Trump. Instead, what you see is an increasing focus on the president's behavior, the divisive nature of his rhetoric, and we've seen that even over this weekend when you think he might be talking about the economy to drive home a message in the last two weeks he's been off attacking Dr. Fauci, the New York Times, I could go on, but the idea is that if it was simply about the economy, you might have a different result in these polls.

MACCALLUM:  Great to see you both, Juan Williams, Karl Rove, thank you, gentlemen.

WILLIAMS:  Thank you, Martha.

ROVE:  Good to be here.

MACCALLUM:  You bet. So, coming up, a former Black Panther activist convicted of murdering two New York City police officers is now out of prison. The wife of one of those officers has a message for her husband's killer. She is next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DIANE PIAGENTINI, WIDOW OF MURDERED OFFICER:  There were 22 bullet holes in my husband's body when the shooting was over. They were assassinated only because they wore the blue uniform. No other reason just because they wore blue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PETER KING (R-NY):  The murders of Officers Piagentini and Jones were among the most despicable ever. Bottom is getting out I guess within the week. Bell got out two years ago. I was talking to a commissioner who was on the parole board several years ago when they were denied parole and she voted against him getting parole because to this day they show no remorse.

They said they were freedom fighters and they have the right and the obligation to kill New York City police officers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM:  That was Congressman Peter King with us a couple of weeks ago expressing outrage ahead of the release of convicted police killer Anthony Bottom, who is now out on parole.

Back in 1971, Bottom and his accomplice, Herman Bell, members of the Black Liberation Army lured Officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverley Jones into a public housing project in Harlem with if only 911 call and then they turned on them and murdered them in cold blood.

Bell was paroled two years ago and now Bottom is also free as of October the 7th.

Here now with reaction is Diane Piagentini, the wife of Officer Joseph Piagentini. Thank you so much. It is good to have you with us, Mrs.

Piagentini and we are so sorry for your loss all those years ago and I'm sure it burns just as much as it did then.

So, this is one of the most heinous crimes in police killing in New York City, can you just -- he used your husband's own gun to shoot him, is that correct?

PIAGENTINI:  Yes, he did. He removed his revolver from the holster, my husband's revolver was in his holster. He was trying to reach for it to defend himself. Was also begging for his life asking them not to kill him, that he had a wife and children to come home to.

MACCALLUM:  So, yes. How did you --

PIAGENTINI:  And Bottom and Bell --

(CROSSTALK)

MACCALLUM:  How did you hear that he was going to be released? And who do you blame for the situation?

PIAGENTINI:  I heard -- I guess two weeks. Usually you wait two weeks and I hadn't heard and I called. I called the corrections department and it was on a Monday and I said I haven't heard anything and it was at that point that they called us back in the afternoon and told me that he was going to be paroled.

I -- there needs to be a reform with the parole board as to what is happening now. These two cop killers, they are three-time cop killers heinously killed my husband and Waverley Jones. And they should never, ever have been let out of prison.

MACCALLUM:  What message would you send to Governor Cuomo from your family on this release?

PIAGENTINI:  Governor Cuomo has committed an injustice to me, my family, my grandchildren, my daughters with the release of these men and it is under his watch that this has happened. You have 17 murderers of police officers that have been released since 2017 to now, 2020. This should never happen if you take the life of a police officer. You should never be allowed to get out of prison.

MACCALLUM:  We have that whole list that you just mentioned and when you look at the names of these people who left their homes to protect the people of New York and never came home again.

PIAGENTINI:  Yes.

MACCALLUM:  Trooper Emerson Dillon, Robert Welch, Sidney Thompson, Ray Cannon, Anthony Abruzzo, all of these men who were never allowed to return to their homes, but what the parole -- a former inmate said of this man who killed your husband, he said I found him to be one of the exceptional mentors within the New York State prison system, a lot of things happen in prison, human beings transform their thinking and their behavior. That's from Jose Saldana. What do you say to that, Mrs. Piagentini?

PIAGENTINI:  I say this. I read the transcripts. I know what he says and I know how he says it and I know that he just wants to get out of prison.

That's all it is. He is not remorseful for what he has done and he is not remorseful for belonging to the Black Liberation Army. Their mission was to kill police officers. That has not changed in his thinking.

MACCALLUM:  Mrs. Piagentini, thank you very much for being with us tonight.

We wish you and your family well. I know this is a very hard time for you all. Thank you for sharing this beautiful family pictures of your husband and for his service to the city of New York.

PIAGENTINI:  Good.

MACCALLUM:  Thank you so much, ma'am.

PIAGENTINI:  Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

MACCALLUM:  My pleasure. So coming up, House Republicans requesting Attorney General Bill Barr's assistance to dig into these materials that purportedly belong to Hunter Biden. Trey Gowdy joins us with his thoughts on this whole story when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM:  Late today, President Trump calling on the FBI to investigate Joe Biden as materials purportedly from his son Hunter Biden came to light.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:  The FBI should be investigating. I don't know if they are or not but they should be investigating him and you have to call Wray and ask him. But that is -- and why did they have those -- and did they have it -- did they have that laptop for a long time and not do anything with it? And that's the question the Washington Times is going to have to look into. But certainly, the FBI should be investigating it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM:  So, House Republicans are now requesting the president's Attorney General Bill Barr appoint a special counsel to investigate.

Joining me now, former House oversight committee chairman Trey Gowdy, now a Fox News contributor and author of the new book "Doesn't Hurt to Ask." So, I'm going to ask him some questions right now. Hi, Trey. Good to have you with us.

TREY GOWDY, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR:  Hey, thank you.

MACCALLUM:  So, what is the situation with the FBI? I mean, if it's true that they had this for a year, a, do we know if they had it for a year, and b, did they corroborate whether or not any of this information is authentic on here? I mean, this seem like pretty basic questions that would've come up during the whole impeachment cycle for example.

GOWDY:  I think you've put your finger on the most important word, Martha, which is authentic. If the underlying information is authentic, it's definitely relevant. It could be relevant from a criminal standpoint. You have Lobbying Registration Act, you have tax implications.

Their job is to investigate counterintelligence and criminality. It's most definitely relevant from a political standpoint in 2016 notwithstanding, the FBI is not supposed to investigate political crimes. That's what the media is supposed to do.

So, I would encourage Republicans to redirect -- I mean, Bill Barr and Chris Wray, if there's criminality, that is their job. They're not supposed to confirm an investigation is ongoing, they're not allowed to do so and they should not do so. The media has a different oversight role and it doesn't have to be a crime to be relevant for the media to cover it.

MACCALLUM:  But if it was being covered correctly, you would think that if they had looked into it, we could learn the answer, yes or no, are these e- mails authentic? If they had that laptop and they looked at the metadata on it, they would know if the caller on one side of the e-mail and all of these things that go over those kinds of lines is who it appears to be in this and they could put some of that to rest or they could say hey, back down, this isn't what it looks like, it's all junk, it's all garbage and they're not saying that.

And then on the other side of the equation, the Bidens are not denying that these are their e-mails either, so it makes it pretty tough to, you know, sort of push it off the plate and say it's all garbage.

GOWDY:  Well, there's a great opportunity to ask the vice president about it, who is the big guy? That's the most relevant part to me.

MACCALLUM:  Yes.

GOWDY:  I mean, is he the big guy? John Ratcliffe, who I am biased towards, but nonetheless he is in a unique situation to access information. He's concluded it is not Russian disinformation, contrary to what Adam Schiff has said. So, if it's not Russian disinformation and its authentic, then there are two different avenues that make this relevant.

There's the criminal and there's the political -- the reality is I don't think there's enough time between now and the election, if it is criminal, I don't think you're going to see an indictment between now and then.

MACCALLUM:  Yes. And Joe Biden is off the campaign trail until Thursday, so it may be that we never learn the answer to that or the pack the court question until after the election. But we will see. Trey Gowdy, thank you very much, sir. Good to have you as always.

GOWDY:  Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

MACCALLUM:  So, moments ago the Commission on Presidential Debates announced new rules ahead of Thursday's final face-off. There will be a mute buzzer button, so that should be interesting on Thursday in Nashville.

We'll tell you details on the other side of this break. Stick around.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM:  OK. New debate rule according to this A.P. reporting is that each side will get two minutes uninterrupted to answer the questions and if the other side tries to pipe up during that time, there will be a mute on their microphone. So, we'll see how that's going to work out. More details as we get them.

In the meantime, Twitter is sending a clear message to White House adviser Dr. Scott Atlas that his opinions on mask wearing are not welcome on their platform.

White House correspondent Kevin Corke with that story in D.C. Hi, Kevin.

KEVIN CORKE, FOX NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT:  Good evening, Martha. Dr.

Atlas actually joined the White House back in August as a science advisor.

He is not an epidemiologist but he tweeted masks work? Question mark. No.

Saying that widespread use of masks is simply not supported by science.

Now the tweet according to Twitter violated the policy that prohibits sharing, quote, "false and misleading information about COVID-19 that could lead to harm" according to a company spokesperson that policy claims to ban statements that have been, quote, "confirmed to be false or misleading by experts such as public health authorities."

Dr. Atlas saying in an e-mail I don't understand why the tweets were deleted. Calling Twitter's action censorship. He also said his tweet was intended to show that general population mask and mask mandates do not work.

Now you recalled his conversation with Atlas previously in which he cited the World Health Organization's own recommendation on the subject.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCOTT ATLAS, ADVISER, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS VIRUS TASK FORCE:  And nobody gibes, by the way, publicity to the WHO's recommendation, quote, "they do not recommend masks for the general public." Unquote.

MACCALLUM:  Yes.

ATLAs:  Even in their updated note if you bother to read their whole technical notes, they say that. And they're talking about the only time you wear a mask as if you are at risk, a high-risk group in an area of widespread transmission of the disease.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CORKE:  Dr. Scott Atlas there. Now late tonight, Martha, we learned that the Senate judiciary committee will try to set subpoenas for big tech executives related to how social media firms are handling stories like the Hunter Biden story, for example. That will happen on Thursday at 1 p.m.

Eastern. That's also when the committee is expected to be considering the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, Martha.

MACCALLUM:  A lot is going on.

CORKE:  Yes.

MACCALLUM:  Kevin, thank you very much. And the WHO also said you should wear a mask if you can't social distance, if you can't be further apart than six feet. That's when you need to put the mask on and that's what the CDC and the WHO had said throughout this whole thing.

So, anyway, that is THE STORY of Monday night, October 19th, 2020. But as always, THE STORY continues with lots of different opinions on both sides as we analyze what's going on in our world. We'll see you back here tomorrow night at seven o'clock. Have a great night, everybody. Take care.

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