Ronna McDaniel: Trump is an asset on the campaign trail
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This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," August 10, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Welcome to the special edition of the "Hannity," real Russia collusion.
I'm Jeanine Pirro in tonight for Sean. The deep state is starting to fracture. This week shocking new reports are revealing how one time high ranking DOJ Official Bruce Ohr was actively coordinating with members of Hillary Clinton's opposition research team during the 2016 election.
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The Hill's John Solomon unearthed hundreds of e-mails, texts, and handwritten memos between Bruce Ohr and the ex-foreign spy and dirty dossier author Christopher Steele.
The communications detail various meetings, the exchange of intelligence and a coordinated effort between someone who was the fourth highest person at Obama's Justice Department and a former foreign agent working on behalf of the Clinton campaign at a consulting firm called Fusion GPS.
Other documents show that Bruce Ohr was also in touch with the founder of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson. He even knew about Simpson's effort to leak the dirty dossier to the press prior to the election, writing, quote, it was Glenn's Hail Mary attempt.
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This is major developing news. And we're only scratching the surface. But the mainstream media couldn't care less. They were too busy bashing President Trump for everything under the sun. Take a look.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a demagogues tool kit that he uses it, then he uses, and he uses it effectively.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy is certifiably insane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's the most prolific liar to ever be President.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's also misogynist.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A little coward. Disgusting, deranged abusive.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And a president who have a distant relationship with the truth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a laughable proposition, but nothing new coming from this president.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump's newest attempt to strip away our legitimacy and indeed our humanity. More and more I think hate movement is the proper term for what's going on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Allowing Donald Trump rallies to go out live to viewers from beginning to end is delivering a poison to the bloodstream of the nation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel appalled. I feel appalled as American by the divisiveness and by toxicity.
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PIRRO: Joining us now is the author of "The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump." Fox News Legal Analyst Gregg Jarrett and Fox News Contributor Sara Carter.
Sara, I'm going to start with you. I mean the new e-mails that have been unearthed and all the information that we found about this week indicate that there's a connection between Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr his wife, Fusion GPS for whom she worked, Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele. Kind of explain that to the audience.
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SARA CARTER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, this is highly significant, Judge Jeanine, because what it shows is a very contentious relationship between the way that they felt about Donald Trump which we know Christopher Steele had said to Bruce Ohr, these where in the 302's, the FBI interviews with Bruce Ohr.
Where he said, Christopher Steele emphatically said, he did not want President Trump to win the presidency or to become president of the United States. Here is a foreign, a former, former spy with the British Intelligence agency actively involved in our own election. And he's dealing with the fourth highest member of the DOJ.
And now we have Nellie Ohr, his wife. And she's working for Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS. She is a Russian expert. She speaks Russian fluently. And she's passing information along. And as you see these e-mails, they reveal this really tight knit relationship.
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I was talking to law makers today. And they were emphatic about the fact that they needed to bring these people to depose them. They're going to bring them into the House Judiciary Committee, the House Oversight Committee so that they can question them about this relationship and the information they were passing to the FBI.
PIRRO: Well, clearly -- clearly, they're going to be doing that, Goodlatte is going to be doing that. But Greg Jarrett, I'll go to you. I mean, we know it's a Russian hoax, you wrote the book, "The Russian Hoax."
But the issue is I think even more significant. And that is that you've got all of these players, this cabal, this conspiracy of people from the DOJ, the FBI, the Hillary Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, paid for by the DNC, teeing up this Russia collusion investigation. Where does that leave all of these players, legally?
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GREGG JARRETT, FOX NEWS LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you need a calculator to count all of the regulations and laws that have been violated here. Not only did Comey and his confederates used what they knew was a fake document, the dossier. It was being pushed by the Ohr's and Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson, they knew it was phony.
But they used it any way as an excuse to try to destroy Trump, damage his candidacy, remove him from office after elected. And in so doing they violated FBI regulations. And importantly they perpetrated a fraud on the FISA court.
PIRRO: Right.
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JARRETT: That's abuse of power, which is a felony. It's also a perjury, because they swore to the veracity of the document when they presented it to the court. And then cover-up since then, that's obstruction of justice. So there are a variety of crimes. I lay them all out in the book.
PIRRO: Well, and you do it well. And Sara I'll go back to you. You know, this Christopher Steele, who is the spy who got information from Russia, who got paid by Hillary and the DNC and Fusion GPS. Now the FBI says, you can no longer give us information.
CARTER: That's right.
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PIRRO: So Bruce Ohr decides that he's going to back channel the information from Christopher Steele. Then Christopher Steele tries to get on the Mueller team. What does that tell you about the Mueller team and the people on it?
CARTER: Well it tells us a lot. It tells us that they were in communication with each other, that they were trying to back channel this information. I'd be very concerned about Robert Mueller. I would want to talk to him.
But the problem here Judge Jeanine, is that there is nobody checking on the people that are actually in charge. We have a DOJ that has nobody above it. So unless the inspector general releases the report this year, which I don't inspect, I've actually spoken to people. He is in intensely working on this Russia report. But it probably won't come out until next year.
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PIRRO: Sara, I don't care how intense he's work. Look, what happened with the Comey report. Nothing.
CARTER: Absolutely.
PIRRO: OK. So Gregg, I'm going to ask you this. If we've got this guy Christopher Steele, he's trying to get on the Mueller campaign, Sara makes a great point and the point is, but there's nobody looking at this any way. So, are we just engaging in an unnecessary effort?
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JARRETT: No. I, you know, this is how cover ups work. The truth is slow to emerge. It takes a long time to do. We know enough now that it was a cesspool of corruption.
PIRRO: Right.
JARRETT: Christopher Steele, who fabricated this dossier that drove the Russia hoax, the collusion narrative. This is a guy who admitted in court documents, I dug them up out of a British court proceeding. I put it in the book. He basically said that his document wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
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PIRRO: It was written on, right.
JARRETT: And he said it's unverifiable, principally, because it was based on anonymous sources and triple and quadruple hearsay. And the FBI knew this, they didn't care. They wanted so much to stop Donald trump that they were willing to break the law to do it, to abuse their power to subvert the rule of law and undermine democracy.
PIRRO: Sara, do we know where Christopher Steele is now? Is he in this country? Is he in the U.K.? Is he in Russia? Where is this guy?
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CARTER: He is in the U.K., according to all the sources I've spoken with, he's in the U.K. And he's not making himself very public because he's also being sued.
And this is the reason why Senator Chuck Grassley, with the Senate Judiciary Committee is adamant about getting his deposition that he gave in London here to the United States. And they're fighting for that now. I mean look, the problem --
PIRRO: Go ahead.
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CARTER: The problem, Judge Jeanine is here. We have Christopher Steele, a foreign spy involved in our election, collecting information from the Russians. Once again, if there was any collusion, the collusion was on their part with Russia. There is no evidence that President Trump --
PIRRO: Right.
CARTER: -- or his campaign was involved in collusion with Russia. And this was the biggest problem.
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PIRRO: Gregg, Christopher Steele -- Christopher Steele, did he lie or did he testify here at all?
JARRETT: No. No. He hasn't. Now, he has testified in Great Britain, in a British proceeding that Sara referred to.
PIRRO: Well, that's prior inconsistent statement or possibly the basis for a crime here?
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JARRETT: The Congress wants, Grassley in particular wants to get his hands on the transcript of that testimony.
PIRRO: Right. Is it public?
JARRETT: Now, we've already got our hands on the interrogatory answers which are under oath.
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PIRRO: Right.
JARRETT: Answers to written questions. But the deposition I bet is even more damming of what these people did.
PIRRO: All right, guys I want to move on for one second. CNN Spike Lee, you know, talks about the Donald Trump and bullhorn racism, NBC Trump corruption, we heard space cowboys, Mercedes -- is it Mercedes rule is calling space cowboys and proposed space force.
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They're dumping on everything that Donald Trump is doing. How, I mean, how are the American people or are they capable of even knowing what the good things are that this President is doing?
CARTER: They're dumping on the American people, Judge Jeanine. They're not just dumping on the President of the United States, this rhetoric, without any basis, I mean its constant attacks, constant rhetoric, constant going after in it, it's reflective in their ratings. It's reflective in the ratings that CNN has. It's reflective in the ratings the MSNBC is now dealing with.
The American people are sick and tired of it. They're sick and tired of the divisiveness. They're sick and tired of the lies and they want something to be rectified, and particularly with what we were discussing.
PIRRO: Well, certainly that will play out in the midterm elections. But Gregg, what about all the space cowboys, making fun of, you know, the next frontier?
JARRETT: Well these are people who are criticizing something they're utterly ignorant about. We actually already have a space force run by the United States Air Force, the president's idea is to expand it.
Currently, the biggest operation is out in El Segundo, California. I've been out there 6,000 employees run the space defense system to protect our assets in space that are incredibly valuable, that if they're ever jeopardized could actually shutdown systems in the United States that we rely on daily. So these are ignorant people who are criticizing something they know nothing about.
PIRRO: All right. Thank you both for joining me tonight.
And now, with more reaction is RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. Good evening Ronna. It's good to have you here. And I don't know if you heard the last few minutes where we were talking about how the mainstream media, the media on the left is doing everything they can to criticize the president and what he's doing calling him continually calling him every name in the book while all of this evidence comes out about the real collusion between that left the FBI, DOJ, Fusion GPS, Hillary Clinton, and the DNC.
RONNA MCDANIEL, RNC CHAIRWOMAN: Yes. I mean their playbook is the same as it was leading up to the 2016 election, when they said he couldn't win. They were prognosticating that he had not chance to an electoral victory.
And we in the Hartland, I'm from Michigan, we saw something completely different. We saw people, we saw a candidate talking about higher wages and better trade and a country that was lifted up for all people. And that's why Donald Trump won.
And again, the left wing mainstream media continues to ignore the American people. And what we're seeing because of this President, unemployment at a record low, wages are up, our country is rising again.
Good, keep ignoring the facts because the American people are smarter than that, we feel it will and we're going to show it in the midterms.
PIRRO: Well, there's no question. All the American people need to do is, you know, most of them, look at their paychecks but also the consumer confidence and the GDP and all of that.
But in 2018, let's turn right to the midterms. I mean, how is it going to play out in the various parts of the country where, you know, with Steele, Pennsylvania, where the President has just been visiting. And the other states that he intends to campaign in for candidates in the next four months?
MCDANIEL: Well, we've had nine house special elections. We won eight of those. President Trump is our greatest asset in the campaign trail. He energizes our base. He brings an energy to our candidates. And we need that, because he goes into Michigan and Ohio and other states.
And he says, listen, we have to fight for what we've just gained. Our country is doing better. Our economy is roaring. And jobs are coming back. And if we give it to the Democrats they will double down on obstruct and resist and mirror (ph) us down in investigations and stop this great comeback that is helping every single American.
You see African-American unemployment at the lowest level in history, Hispanic unemployment women. These are good things for our country. And this is what we have to fight for. We've won eight of nine. The RNC is on the ground. We're in 28 states. We've trained 20,000 volunteers. We are ready to the defy history in the midterms.
PIRRO: You know, Ronna, as I listen to you, you are one fighter too. I think the president really picked the right person for the job that you're in.
MCDANIEL: Thank you.
PIRRO: But very quickly, Ronna, you know, you know and we've met at speeches around the country. I always get from people, what's going to happen to all this wrongdoing? How come there are no consequences? What do you say to people who get frustrated watching us talk about all of the collusion, the conspiracy, the Russia hoax?
MCDANIEL: Yes. I do hear that a lot. One, they are not interested in the Mueller investigation at all. So let's put that aside. They know there's no collusion. You know, we have something in our constitution called the right to a speedy trial. Boy, we have investigations that can go on forever. And it's just ridiculous. And it needs to end.
But they do look at what happened with Hillary Clinton and the DNC funding, this fake dossier and now, new revelations coming forward that Glenn Simpson was meeting with Bruce Ohr and his wife worked for Fusion GPS.
I mean, it's just, it's ongoing. And we can't seem to get to the bottom of it. And there is a frustration. But I say stick with the President. Put more Republicans in the majority, that's the only way we're going to get this done. We need a bigger majority in the Senate.
And we need to send a message to the mainstream media that we're not listening to them. We're listening to the results that are happening on the ground every day that are benefiting the American people.
PIRRO: Ronna McDaniel, so good to have you on tonight. Thank you.
MCDANIEL: Thanks for having me.
PIRRO: All right and coming up on this special edition of Hannity. I'll tell you why the House Judiciary Committee chairman is preparing Steele dossier subpoenas. Tammy Bruce and Deroy Murdock, we'll have more on that.
And don't forget to get your hands on a copy of my new number one New York Times best selling book, "Liars, Leakers and Liberals."
And Gregg Jarrett is chuckling with me as we both sit here, New York Times number one best sellers, stay with us.
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PIRRO: Welcome back to this special edition of Hannity.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte is reportedly preparing to issue subpoenas to individuals connected to the infamous Steele dossier. Among those, Chairman Goodlatte is seeking to question our former DOJ official Bruce Ohr, his wife Nellie Ohr and Fusion GPS Co-founder Glenn Simpson.
And while Republicans try to conduct government oversight and actually investigate these abuses of power, many on the left are calling for the Republican Party to be up ended. Watch this.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's what needs to happen to the party of Trump. It needs to burn to the ground.
DEVIN NUNES, CHAIR OF HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: -- is a total and complete violation of their oaths of office to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You see the Republican Party now sadly a portion of its base moving closer and closer to Russia.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Left to their own devices they would just let Russia run wild throughout our democracy and throughout the democracies of our allies.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Should Congressman Nunes be removed from his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely, he should have been removed a year ago when it was very clear that he was not working in the interest of congress.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you look at Devin Nunes, you'll look at some members of the freedom caucus. They remind me of the people that we Conservative used to call useful idiots that would fly down to Nicaragua and tell Daniel Ortega in the middle of a hot element of the Cold War that the United States was doing terrible things. And we're apologizing for Ronald Reagan's anti-communist actions.
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PIRRO: Joining me now is Fox's contributor Tammy Bruce and Fox's contributor Syndicated Columnist Deroy Murdock. All right guys, you know, as the -- as Goodlatte prepares these subpoenas, Deroy, I mean, it's clear based upon the information that we've just gotten that we're talking about Bruce Ohr's wife Nellie.
Everybody is being paid by the same group fundamentally, in other words, Fusion GPS, ends up getting funded by Hillary, the DNC and it goes on and on and on.
So, Goodlatte issues these subpoenas, we're going to have hearings. And I'm curious to see how Bruce Ohr is going to appear. Because for some reason, I have a feeling, he's like Peter Strzok but I could be wrong.
DEROY MURDOCK, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I think we need to see how he is in public. I hope that they don't just have these meetings behind closed doors. The American public should see these people. We've heard their names for months now.
And we need to find out what these people did and why as members of the Department of Justice they were behaving more or less like volunteers for Hillary Clinton campaign.
PIRRO: Well, not only volunteers but I mean, when you think about it, Ohr, Tammy was wanted to back channel or launder information from Christopher Steele after the FBI let him go, you know, to the DOJ.
TAMMY BRUCE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. Look, here is what we're finding out. This is what -- finally we're seeing it from the GOP, being focused, using subpoenas, have acting on information they're getting. This is sort of relatively new.
But what we're seeing really is finally, the unfolding of the reality of an attempt to frame the president elect, of an attempt then to continue that frame as that man took office, to nullify an American election.
And while it is actually frightening to think about, so many people don't even want to go there, but you're looking at not many people at all, Peter Strzok, James Comey, this guy.
PIRRO: The upper echelon.
BRUCE: The FBI, the --
(CROSSTALK)
BRUCE: But for Bruce Ohr and his wife, this is what's interesting, people working in different department, with GPS, with Fusion GPS, and with the government, I would remind people and Mary Jacoby's name is been on the list on occasion for in that House Committees. She is the wife of Glenn Simpson. She also worked at the law firm with Hillary Clinton with the Rose Law Firm.
She is a very -- deeply linked with the Clintons. So you have this, again, a very small group of people, very incestuous, who all having the same framework. And these are people who are committed to the establishment, to what they figured what's the next dynamic in line because they had their futures and their retirements figured out. And Donald Trump ruined it and that's what they wanted to stop.
PIRRO: Deroy, I mean, when Tammy talks about, you know, this ball (ph), you know, were I call in my book be, the anti-Trump conspiracy.
MURDOCK: Sure.
PIRRO: You know, they were committed to their own future. But their roots were so deep. These were not people kind of mid-level management. They were right at the top.
MURDOCK: Very high up, absolutely.
PIRRO: And so it tells me, I mean my prosecutorial instincts tell me they don't do this unless somebody in that Oval Office is agreeing to it. And I'm worried that they're worried, the left that we're going to get to that.
MURDOCK: It might get to that. I mean, I think at the very minimum, the attorney general must have known about what was going on just below her.
PIRRO: Loretta?
MURDOCK: It could be, yes, I mean --
PIRRO: The one who met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac. I mean, believe that's going to happen?
MURDOCK: You bet, exactly. What a strange coincidence that was. But they talked about golf and grandchildren.
PIRRO: So I'm sure that was OK.
PIRRO: Of course, for 30 minutes.
MURDOCK: Yes. But I think in addition to subpoenas. What also would help, you know, and President Trump can do his part on this is to declassify as many of these documents that the congressional invest --
PIRRO: Why doesn't he? Why it's taking long?
MURDOCK: I don't know why. I think he may think that at the public outcry, the outcry from the immediate left will be too tremendous.
PIRRO: What do you --
MURDOCK: But they're screaming anyway. So, get the documents out. Let's see what's out there. They're going to yell no matter what. So, let's give them a reason to yell.
BRUCE: I think he is been advised that it is best to not interfere, to retreat as much as he can while you see this unfold because the American people do want to be able to trust the end result. And we will be able to, if this is done legitimately, that the GOP does its job with its own investigations and the president shouldn't have to do that.
But ultimately, in the Michael Goodwin column is said in The New York Time, in New York Post is that it is time in fact to declassify these documents.
PIRRO: OK. All right --
BRUCE: And again, he may in fact --
PIRRO: Whether it's time to we're not -- he's not doing it. But here's is the question.
BRUCE: Yes.
PIRRO: To give it legitimacy how is there any conclusion if there's no prosecution and no one is taken out in cuffs?
BRUCE: Well, I mean, we could get to that point if we've got and frankly -
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PIRRO: If we had an attorney general who had the authority to do it.
MURDOCK: He's invisible, isn't he? We don't see him very much.
PIRRO: He's in the closet hiding somewhere.
(CROSSTALK)
MURDOCK: -- somewhere. And he needs to be out here pushing this thing, moving it along.
PIRRO: All right. But let's talk about these guys. This guy Goodlatte, not Goodlatte, Schmidt, and I'll go to you Deroy, he talks about learning the Republican Party to the ground. This guy was a Republican Strategist?
MURDOCK: Yes. He was John McCain's campaign manager.
PIRRO: Oh, well that is.
MURDOCK: And I guess he's upset because John McCain's didn't make it to the White House. But he has this amazing comeback for there to be new growth for the conservative movement of a right center party. The one that I joined in 1988, it needs to be burned to the ground. I thought -- I think it's amazing as a conservative in fact, he is one.
We have a president now with 88 percent support among the GOP. He's black supports gone from 15 percent last year to 29.
PIRRO: Twenty-nine.
MURDOCK: And why is that? It's because he is implementing a conservative agenda. And it's working. Tax cuts, deregulation, the keystone pipeline is being built. We're drilling. We're about to grow for oil and one of U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, 4.1 percent economic growth, unemployment at 3.9 percent, black and Hispanic unemployment at record lows.
PIRRO: Right.
MURDOCK: So, these things are working and this is with the exception of free trade where I differ with the president a bit.
PIRRO: Right.
MURDOCK: Other than that, this is a conservative agenda and every conservative should be delighted things are going that well.
BRUCE: His comments confirm the importance of what happened in 2016 that there was a lot of sound and fury about who was a conservative. It was theater. And those were individuals, who in fact there was no real commitment to the conservative agenda. It was a commitment to the machine, to the monster that was being created and moving forward --
MURDOCK: That's right.
BRUCE: -- on both sides when it comes to the Democrat and the Republicans.
Donald Trump represented a genuine shift into a genuine framework that embraced the conservative ideal but then also represented the American people, not the machine. And that's why you hear Steve Schmidt now saying it has to be burned to the ground. He is late to the party, that you don't need to bribe him. He's late. He is irrelevant.
MURDOCK: Yes.
BRUCE: These are individuals who understand this. And they will not be coming back into power. And they must simply accept that. And embrace the fact that the country is out of its coma and moving forward to that.
PIRRO: You know the interesting part of this is that you've got people saying that Republicans are putting Trump over country. What is that O'Donnell, not that what he says ever makes sense. But what, I mean, I know where he's coming from. But how does that make sense?
MURDOCK: It didn't make any sense. So, I think Donald Trump is doing what's good for the country, in terms of the economy, in terms of our overseas respect, in terms of projecting American force where necessary. ISIS has shrunk down to a few hundred acres, whereas they were a terrifying force a couple years ago. This is good for Americans. It's good for Donald Trump politically. But it's good for this country. And these two things can go ahead.
PIRRO: You know, I remember a couple years ago everybody was worried. Some was going to show up with a butcher knife yellow hawk where you'd be managed to a head.
MURDOCK: Absolutely.
PIRRO: Now, nobody even thinks about it, 10 seconds.
BRUCE: Now, Lawrence O'Donnell apparently thinks that everyone else is as uninformed as his own audience. Everyone else knows in real life what the president has done. So, he's speaking in a little tiny chamber. But we in the meantime were moving forward and support the President because we like this country being that.
PIRRO: Thank you to both of you.
MURDOCK: Thank you.
PIRRO: Thank you Tammy, thank you Deroy.
And up next, judicial watch is suing the Department of Justice. I'll have more on this new legal action from Tom Fitton himself. David Avila and Doug Schoen as this special edition of Hannity continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS HOST: Welcome back to this special edition of the Hannity.
Columnist Byron York is reporting on newly discovered communications which show a relationship between Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr, and a Russian oligarch during the 2016 election. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BYRON YORK, COLUMNIST, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: The dossier's author Christopher Steele, that former British spy was in touch with an official at the Justice Department, Bruce Ohr a lot earlier than we thought, they were exchanging e-mails in January of 2016.
And what was interesting here is that Steele was writing to Bruce Ohr at the Justice Department and he was talking about a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska--
(CROSSTALK)
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: Oleg Deripaska.
YORK: -- mid-year 2016, Christopher Steele says to Ohr, we need to talk. I need to talk to you about some other business. But I specifically want to discuss with you informally and separately, and it concerns our favorite business tycoon.
And now most people who read this believe that's Donald Trump.
INGRAHAM: Donald Trump.
YORK: Because that's just a few days before Christopher Steele actually tells the FBI, gives them the first installment of his dossier which is the famous Moscow hotel scene.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PIRRO: Meanwhile, Judicial Watch is suing the Justice Department for communications between Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS.
Joining me now with more is Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, GOPAC Chairman, David Avella, and Fox News contributor and former Clinton pollster, Doug Schoen.
OK. You know, we've got this link between Steele, Ohr and the Russia oligarch. But there seems that there is no way for Congress to get information, in their oversight attempts. There is no way the Justice Department is giving information via Freedom of Information.
The only way we're getting information now is as usual through Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch. All right? So now, Tom, you get all this information about the oligarch and Christopher Steele, what is that about?
TOM FITTON, PRESIDENT, JUDICIAL WATCH: Well, look. Christopher Steele it looks like was working with Fusion GPS even back then, which we have to remember was representing Putin interests in court, here in the United States. Trying to target Putin's critics. And the key Putin critic that led to the Magnitsky Act that was famously discussed at the Trump tower meeting.
So you had this Putin interests pushing obviously, it looks like the Justice Department, trying to push it on the Trump campaign, this approach to removing the Magnitsky Act that was curtailing the rights of oligarchs in Russia in terms of sanctions regime and imposition to sanctions.
So, the irony here is that Fusion GPS was working for the Clinton camp to target Trump, also working for the Putin camp to target the government generally in terms of getting this Magnitsky Act to go away.
PIRRO: Well, but then it suggests, David, that the Russians would be colluding with Christopher Steele to make Trump look bad.
DAVID AVELLA, CHAIRMAN, GOPAC: The Democrats right now, Judge, are pushing the biggest blame shift or blame the victim strategy that we have ever seen in political history.
Most Americans don't know who Steele, Ohr, this Russian oligarch, are. Yet, a convincing number of them now realize there were people working for Hillary Clinton who would say or do anything to keep Donald Trump from being president. And it only underscores why Hillary Clinton had the lowest approval rating of any candidate in presidential history.
PIRRO: You know, Judicial Watch, Doug, we find out, found out after Steele had been fired by the FBI, that Bruce Ohr met with him.
DOUG SCHOEN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Sure.
PIRRO: To launder information to get back to the FBI. But it gets even better. Ohr was trying to get Steele back to the FBI as an informant or human confidential source, whatever they call him. But more importantly, he was trying to get him on the Mueller team. This cabal, they're all incestuous.
SCHOEN: You know, I guess my position as somebody in the middle here is all of these documents that Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch are seeking, it strikes me in the interest of justice, not partisanship.
PIRRO: Right.
SCHOEN: Ought to be released so we know what the facts are.
FITTON: Exactly.
SCHOEN: That will help us, Judge, every aspect of this increasingly murky case.
PIRRO: You know, Tom, let me just ask you this. Because what Doug says is so true. No one has questioned any of the information you've un-earthed. You know, no one is saying it's not true, it's not this, it's not that.
But every day we have to fight for everything. To what end are you getting this information? Obviously to get the information out. We know that in the public square. But what do you want ultimately, tom? You're working your butt off here.
FITTON: Well, we think the corruption scandal of our time is this targeting of Trump using the FBI and DOJ in league with the Clinton camp and Russia interests to spy on him and try to destroy now his presidency.
And I frankly think Congress is walking around or trying to talk around Mueller's involvement in all of this. Steele was part of the Mueller operation.
Remember, Judicial Watch uncovered the FISA warrant applications signed by Rod Rosenstein--
PIRRO: Yes.
FITTON: -- in June of 2017, last year right in the middle of the Mueller operation. Mueller was using Rosenstein's -- excuse me -- Steele's information, source number one, the Fusion GPS dossier that Steele helped create to just identify spying on Carter Page of the Trump team or you know, who had been formerly with the Trump team.
Mueller has a lot of questions to answer about his relationship with Steele, his use of that material. Because I'm convinced Mueller was pursuing the Clinton DNC dossier all through his investigation, and it's all based on corruption. This is why Mueller needs to be confronted directly.
I would like to see Congress bring him in and ask him questions about his use and misuse of this.
PIRRO: Wow! OK. Does Congress have the authority to bring him in?
FITTON: Of course they do. It's fear based decision making in Congress, they are protecting Mueller at the leadership level. He needs to be held to account the way every other government bureaucrat--
(CROSSTALK)
PIRRO: I like the way you think, Tom Fitton. David, what's your response to that?
AVELLA: Democrats thought they were going to bring havoc to Republicans this year in the elections by pushing this shifting the blame, blaming the victim strategy. And the reality is, it is one thing that is motivating base Republican voters to go to the polls to make sure that Republicans get a fair chance in this election.
PIRRO: Doug, you are the pollster, what's going to -- you're the Democratic pollster, what's going to happen?
SCHOEN: You know, at this point the Democrats have a clear advantage. And the reason is it's not so much that this investigation or these issues we've been talking about are impacting voters, I don't think they are.
It's that there has been a side show for the Republicans that's taken emphasis off the economy, off the tax cuts, and off the benefits. And if I could offer my Republican friends some free advice, talk about the economy, talk about the progress.
In 1982, the Republican slogan under Ronald Reagan was, stay the course. The Republicans need something like that. Otherwise the Democrats will take the House, which is where things stand now.
PIRRO: You know, David Avella, you are the head of GOPAC. I mean, you have your tentacles all across the country in terms of state legislators. What do you think of what Doug just said? The idea of stepping on our own good news story by going after this Russia collusion. Does he have a point?
AVELLA: He does have a point. We do need to be talking about the economy. But let's also keep in mind, the Democrats keep talking about we're going to pick up, you know, if we the win 17 state legislative seats we pick up eight legislative chambers across the country.
Judge, if the Republicans pick up 11 seats we pick up six more chambers and we already have 67 of 99, we would have 72 of 99, this battlefield is every bit as competitive for Republicans as it is for the Democrats and the key will be which base turns out to vote.
PIRRO: Well, and I think Doug was really talking about you have the historic president advantage. Tom, where are you going next?
FITTON: We're fighting the FBI over text messages for the corrupt FBI official Andrew McCabe. The FBI doesn't want to turn over one text message to us. They don't want me to look at them.
(CROSSTALK)
PIRRO: This blows my mind. This blows my mind. The president appoints Christopher Wray. The first time he testified before Congress Christopher Wray does the dance, well, you know, we'll hand you the stuff over. So now we have to not just ask for FOIA, we have to sue in a lawsuit.
All right, I think I had the last word. Any way guys, Tom Fitton, Doug Schoen, and David Avella, thanks for being with us tonight.
SCHOEN: Thank you.
PIRRO: All right. Now Rudy Giuliani says Mueller's case is about to blow up! Coming up, I have Charlie Kirk and Dan Bongino to break this down.
Plus don't forget my book "Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy" available wherever books are sold. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK LEVIN, FOX NEWS HOST: Robert Mueller is a greater threat to this republican and the Constitution than anything Vladimir Putin did during the campaign. I'm no fan of Vladimir Putin.
So what questions, exactly, does Mr. Mueller have? I'm talking to you, Mr. Mueller. Exactly what questions that you have, where you seek to turn this country upside-down and disenfranchise the over 60 million people who voted for this president of the United States.
You are a play thing of the media, you are a play thing of the Democrats, you are a play thing of people within the Obama administration who sought from day one to take this president down.
RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: The real story here is not that this case is going to fizzle, it's going to blow up on them. The real question is what we talked about before, there's a lot more to what they did that nobody knows about yet.
(CROSSTALK)
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: I know someone--
GIULIANI: A lot more -- a lot more to the obstruction of justice to the collusion, to the fake dossier.
HANNITY: I know a lot.
GIULIANI: Trying to bring Steele back in after he was completely discredited.
HANNITY: And then feed it to Mueller.
GIULIANI: Yes, and Mueller is going to have a lot to answer for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PIRRO: That was attorney for the president, Rudy Giuliani and Mark Levin on this program, both with tough words for special counsel Robert Mueller.
Joining me now with reaction, author of the upcoming book "Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump," former Secret Aeries agent and NRA TV contributor, our friend Dan Bongino, and Turning Point USA founder, our friend also, Charlie Kirk.
All right. Dan, you're sitting here I'll ask you this. You know, is Mueller a greater threat than Putin to this country?
DAN BONGINO, CONTRIBUTOR, NRATV: Well, he's a serious threat. He's based this entire operation, the investigation of Donald Trump on a sham. I mean, Judge, let's use the FBI's own words, right.
The head of the FBI talking about the bedrock of the case, the dossier said it's salacious and unverified. The number two in the FBI said they'd have no case if it wasn't for the salacious and unverified dossier.
The guy in charge of the division working the case says we verified it but we were only i nits infancy, and the lead investigator in the case in a text to his girlfriend, Strzok, says there's no there, there. They're investigating Trump for nothing.
PIRRO: All right. And you know what, and Strzok even thought about not going on Mueller's team because there was no there-there and he wouldn't come you with a great indictment.
Mueller, a greater threat than Putin, Charlie?
CHARLIE KIRK, FOUNDER, TURNING POINT USA: It's tough to say. Mueller is doing so much damage to this country. Now what I'm focused on and I heard enough conversation about this, is who approved Mueller in the first place? It was Republicans in Congress that decided to appoint the special prosecutor, with basic unlimited authority, unlimited power to go after the president.
What have they turned up? Well, they found Paul Manafort not on Russian collusion which was the original intent of the special prosecutor but on tax and wire fraud. They have zero, no interference, no evidence whatsoever.
Talking about Mueller, you look at his background. He was a flawed investigator, he was flawed head of the FBI. He prevented victims from 9/11 from suing Saudi Arabia, he botched the 9/11 intelligence, he botched the anthrax case back in the 1970s, and now he has unlimited power and authority that you have to ask the question why are Republicans in Congress continuing to renew his funding not using oversight and going after him?
(CROSSTALK)
PIRRO: Well, you know what's interesting, is Congressman DeSantis who is often on my show, on my show, Justice, offered an amendment where the Mueller investigation would be defunded after six months, or you know whatever period of time could be agreed on.
And of course, Paul Ryan and the leadership wouldn't allow it to go forward. So Dan, I mean, you know the Republicans, and even Chuck Grassley in the Senate, had talked about a bill where they would be able to prevent the president in the event he tried to fire Mueller.
So you've got the rhinos, you've got people who are supporting Mueller. But this thing is going on and on. Isn't Charlie right? I mean, why are we they funding this ridiculous thing where they're trying a case in federal court that has nothing to do with their charge?
BONGINO: Because Bob Mueller is not investigating a crime, judge. He's investigating Donald Trump. There is a difference. When I was a secret service agent, you can't walk into the Secret Service office and say you know what, I don't like Judge Jeanine, investigate her. For what? I don't know, we'll find something.
What you do is you say, hey, investigate Johnny apple seed or whatever, he stole a car last night.
PIRRO: Right.
BONGINO: And then you do it. They're investigating Trump they don't have anything, they have zero on Donald Trump. There is no real case, there is no there-there.
PIRRO: Right. And you know, Charlie, when they tried to do this investigation of Donald Trump, you know, it seems that, you know, as I say in my book, you point one finger, three fingers are pointing back at you. And that's what's happening with the Russia collusion investigation.
So when Rudy Giuliani in the sound that we had before we started, he said this thing is going to blow up. Well, I believe it based on what we've seen and the revelations this week with Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele and the rest of those bozos, Glenn Simpson, but to what end? Where are we going?
KIRK: Right. Exactly. In your book which is fantastic, by the way, you point out all the deep state actors against this president that have been continually working here.
Going back to Bob Mueller we can't forget that he put Peter Strzok as his lead investigator of the Russia investigation until all this came out. If it wasn't for Devin Nunes who is actually doing a wonderful job and transparency we wouldn't even have known about those text messages.
And so this is such an important point. And Dan hit it out of the park. This is a political assassination, an attempted political against the president, using the special prosecutor to try to filibuster and demagogue his success.
But again the Republicans authorized this. The Republicans in Congress can say, Bob Mueller, you got 90 days, let's see what you've got then the funding is gone.
PIRRO: Yes.
KIRK: Congress has the oversight capacity authority and the prerogative to do their jobs, and they're letting him run reckless and--
(CROSSTALK)
PIRRO: But Charlie, the problem is that Paul Ryan who is not running again, who is not, you know, he just is lame duck right now, and he won't step aside and let someone else come in. And he's stopping everything from, like this from happening.
LIRK: You're right. Here is the great irony. Super quick. They wouldn't have their majority if it wasn't for President Donald Trump, he carried them to a majority in these states.
Pat Toomey would not be a senator if it wasn't for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, Paul Ryan would not have been speaker of the House, and then appoint the one thing that is obstructing his agenda and obstructing his legitimacy, it is beyond words and comprehension.
The lame duck is a great point. We need the House of Representatives to defund the Mueller investigation. They have found nothing against this president.
PIRRO: All right. So defund the investigation, Dan, I don't know if that's going to happen. Then you got the other issue of it's going to blow up, and Rudy Giuliani is suggesting there is even more stuff to come.
And you know, I was thinking about it. You know, who would have thought eight months ago that we'd be this far in terms of what's going on? But this far is taking us where?
BONGINO: Well, there's three sub scandals in this. There's the information laundering operation by the FBI, the spying operation and the framing of Donald Trump in the beginning in his team. What's going to come out next I believe is that the information super highway, the laundering operation, was in fact Democrats and people they paid for working with Russian oligarchs and in fact, colluding against Donald Trump.
There is Russian collusion, Judge. It's real. It's just amongst the Democrats, there's no question about that.
(CROSSTALK)
PIRRO: It is amazing.
BONGINO: It's just the level of it that matters.
PIRRO: All right, gentlemen. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Dan. All right. And coming up, more of the special edition of Hannity right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PIRRO: Welcome back to this special edition of Hannity. But unfortunately, that's all the time we have left this evening. Be sure to pick up a copy of my new number one New York Times bestseller, "Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the anti-Trump Conspiracy."
If you want to know what's going on with this Russia collusion delusion nonsense you got to get it. Don't forget to tune in to Justice tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin are joining to join me. Plus, I've got a barn burner of an open. Sean is back on Monday. "The Ingraham Angle" is next. Have a terrific weekend.
END
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