'Special Report' All-Star Panel on Durham probe

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Durham allegation: What we know

'Special Report' panelists debate the fallout from the allegations surrounding the Durham investigation.

This is a rush transcript of "Special Report with Bret Baier" on February 15, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BAIER: Russia, Ukraine still on the brink tonight, but news that Russia is pulling at least some troops back from that border. Here is how the Associated Press writes it up. "Some Russia troops leaving near Ukraine seeks talks. U.S. and NATO have rejected Moscow's demand to keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations out of the alliance, halt weapons deployments near Russian borders, and roll back forces from eastern Europe. But western powers have agreed to discuss other security measures that Russia had previously proposed."

What about where we stand tonight? Let's bring in our panel, syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, and Tom Bevan, Real Clear Politics cofounder and president. Hugh, where we stand today, is it much different than where we stood yesterday?

HUGH HEWITT, SYNDICATED RADIO HOST: There's a head fake underway, Bret. I had Senator Dan Sullivan on my radio show this morning, and he said head fake. He doesn't believe Putin. I agree with what former Secretary of State Pompeo told you at the start of the show, distrust and verify everything the Russians say they are doing.

And the good news is the president gave a very good statement today. Not one inch of a NATO country can be invaded without triggering the defensive response of every NATO country, so we should give props to the president for clarity on that.

But the bad and the ugly is, why are we rushing arms to Ukraine at this late minute? It's not like this is a surprise? Putin had been menacing the country since 2014. And the ugly party is he's actually played the last four administrations, including Trump's, pretty well in terms of surprising us all the time. At some point we're going to figure out Putin is a mafia- like figure who is running a gas station, to quote Tom Cotton this morning. But we haven't figured it out yet.

BAIER: Mara, covering the White House, you usually hear a lot of speeches. Some of them are very similar. As you are covering this speech today from President Biden, what stood out to you.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: What stood out to me was a couple of things. One is how he said NATO was unified and galvanized, and it has been, and that was a surprise. I think that Putin has reminded NATO what it's for. And it's for, as the president said today, territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and the right for every nation to determine its own destiny and to decide who it wants to ally with.

And that's why the west has refused to give Putin one of his demands, which is to rule out forever the possibility that Ukraine can join NATO. There are some Republican voices, like Josh Hawley, who thought that that would have been a good idea, but the west has stood pretty firm on that.

I think the big question now is who has miscalculated. Can Putin get away with destabilizing Ukraine without serious consequences, or will those allied sanctions and Ukrainian resistance make the cost too high for him? We don't know that yet.

BAIER: And can he also climb down, Tom? Can he climb back from where he is at 150,000 troops on that border? Here is Senator Mark Warner talking about what Vladimir Putin fears.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK WARNER, (D-VA): What Mr. Putin really fears is that if Ukraine succeeds in building a nation where Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers have genuine freedoms, can vote in free elections, and control their own destiny.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Tom, you had the German chancellor essentially saying that Ukraine in NATO is not an agenda item, which he got some criticism for. What about all that?

TOM BEVAN, COFOUNDER, REAL CLEAR POLITICS: Look, I think Putin can climb down, and there might be indications that he's trying to do that. But at the end of the day, the ball is, as it has been for a long time, in his court. There was a report a couple days ago, Bret, that suggested that Putin doesn't really care about sanctions, that they're not going to sway him one way or the other.

But the one thing that is certain about this, and Putin knows it and Biden knows it, is that U.S. troops are not going to be dying in Ukraine.

BAIER: Right, and that's the main thing, the main thing.

Hugh, final word here. Do we think that it's still in the minds of people who look at this in the intelligence community an imminent thing?

HEWITT: Yes, I do. I have gotten texts all day long from people associated with NATO and Europe who expect it to go off tonight, that it's a disinformation. We will wait and see, but we should not be surprised by anything. And Putin is paying for this, every day that gas is close to $100 a barrel, he's paying for since Russia sales one out of every 10 barrels of oil in the world comes from Russia. So the longer he can keep the oil market screwed up, the longer he is going to menace Ukraine.

BAIER: All right, panel, stand by if you would. Up next, the latest on the John Durham investigation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TULSI GABBARD, (D) FORMER HAWAII REPRESENTATIVE: Hillary Clinton and the power elite in this country manufactured this Russian collusion lie, actively undermining our democracy.

REP. MIKE WALTZ, (R-FL): We have the party in charge of all the levers of power colluding with a political campaign to go after an opponent at the opposite side of the presidential campaign to maintain power. That is a banana republic.

REP. DEVIN NUNES, (R-CA): People who testified to us should have told us, given us this information that there were firms hired to go and scrape and mine data. They knew we were looking for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: It depends on what you were looking at, or what you were reading, how to interpret the results of the latest finding by John Durham in the investigation into the Trump-Russia probe. It is still coming out. We are still learning more. However, the revelations did not sit well with some in the mainstream media. Some downplayed them. Others just ignored them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This new wrinkle, it really is just a wrinkle, and it's very vague. We're still trying to get a sense of what the facts are here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It does not show the actual spying that Trump and others are saying it does.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you're going to call it Watergate, it's the security guard at the Watergate while being paid to do security being paid to see just who was coming in. It doesn't mean they were going through their briefcases. It doesn't mean they were going through the files they were bringing in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If what they did had been illegal, we would have had a charge.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: What about that? We're back with the panel, Hugh, Mara, and Tom. We're also joined by Andrew McCarthy, former assistant United States attorney. Andy, I want to start with you and address some of what we saw from some of that coverage, which is it's just not there, and they don't see it, and what about that?

ANDREW MCCARTHY, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY: I think there ought to be a lot more coverage, Bret, because it's very alarming. But you do have to keep reminding yourself that the only thing that Durham has alleged at this point is in connect with Michael Sussmann, the Democratic Party connected lawyer, the only thing he has alleged is that he misled the FBI about who his clients. He hasn't even alleged that the information that they brought to him was in any way fraudulent, although it has been suggested that it's misleading.

And Durham is operating from a premise that the government officials were duped, not that they were in on it. I think if you're going to have a Watergate style bonanza of a conspiracy, and we'll have to see what Durham's final product looks like, but you would think that the government officials in that kind of an arrangement would be driving the train. And here what Durham is basically saying is that they were saps.

BAIER: Yes, but, Andy, when you look at that, that filing, what's, number one, most troubling to you? And number two, how do you read it? Is this an effort to get Sussmann to help and assist and go bigger?

MCCARTHY: Any prosecutor wants to have somebody cooperate and go higher. So that's always thrumming in the mix. But what I see, Bret, is that there's an interest allegation that's made, but it doesn't change the underlying facts of the case. And from Sussmann's perspective, at least from his lawyers are saying, they think it's a weak false statements case because it's only Sussmann and the FBI's general counsel in the room, so it's one guy's recollection against the others. It's not transcribed, it's not recorded, and they think that James Baker, the FBI's general counsel, has made different versions of what happened on different occasions.

BAIER: "The Wall Street Journal" has this, "Trump really was spied on. White House communications are supposed to be secure, and the notion that any contractor -- much less one with ties to a presidential campaign -- could access them is alarming enough. The implication that the data was exploited for a political purpose is a scandal that requires investigation under oath. The unfold information underscores that the Russia collusion story was one of the dirtiest tricks in U.S. political history. Mr. Durham should tell the whole sordid story."

And Hugh, the question is, will he, and when?

HEWITT: Well, it depends on Mr. Sussmann. It seems to me that the analogy that Sussmann is, he's either going to be John Dean, who was the desk officer for Watergate who rolled over and made a deal with the prosecutors and brought everyone down, or he's going to be G. Gordon Liddy and the only people who are going to get penalized for this are him, and Perkins partners aren't going to have to pay any liability.

But if Sussman doesn't say anything, I think what Andy just said about the fact that it's a one-on-one conversation with the FBI general counsel in a weak false statements case, right now Sussmann is staying very strong, silent, and pushing back. So I just don't have a lot of optimism that this goes big unless he rolls over like John Dean did and rat everyone out.

BAIER: Yes. Mara, your thoughts?

LIASSON: Yes, we don't know if there's anybody to rat out. That's the problem. This is one little piece of an investigation. So far, as you've just explained, the only crime that has been alleged is a false statement to the FBI. We've got to see what Durham comes up with, if anything.

BAIER: Yes. Tom, last word?

BEVAN: The media double standard here is absolutely glaring. As you mentioned, Bret, no time spent on any of the networks. "The New York Times" and "Washington Post" didn't even cover it until today when they each spent about 1,500 words defending it, downplaying it, explaining why it wasn't a big deal, after we just spent years and years of the media running with far less. If this was any sort of filing regarding Donald Trump is all we would be hearing about from the media day in and day out. And so that to me is the troubling issue here. The media has again revealed itself as putting their thumb on the scale for one side and not the other.

BAIER: Tom, how does this poll? It's interest to hear Democrats say, and we had Congressman Smith on last night, saying people care about more important things. But rewind the tape a few years to the early part of the Trump presidency and it was all about the Russia investigation. But how does this part, the Durham part, poll?

BEVAN: Well, obviously, it's split heavily along partisan lines. It depends on where you sit. If you are a Republican, it gets very important if you. If you are a Democrat, it's not important to you at all. Overall, in the general mix of things, it's pretty far down the list, the economy, inflation, and crime, and the like. But certainly, when people are asked about their trust in government institution, it is a factor. It's a contributing factor. It's something that has been in decline for a long time, and this only adds to it.

BAIER: All right, panel, thanks so much. Andy, thanks for joining. Have a good one.

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