joining us now is republican
south dakota congressman and member of
the bipartisan
problem solvers caucus dusty johnson
congressman
thank you for being here happy saturday
to you
thanks for having me there's just a bit
of delay thank you though for taking
time let me jump right in
congressman johnson and ask you your
reaction to
the russia probe documents released by
senator graham how significant is it
well i think it's relatively significant
i've just begun my review but already
i think it reiterates what a lot of us
have known that the steele dossier
was a very bad piece of intelligence it
was
relied on to an entirely unfair degree
by the fbi
and that meant the fbi filed things with
the fisa court that was not accurate
i mean there are 17 different
inaccuracies in those fisa court
filings relied on by the fbi i think it
was a mistake and i think it reiterates
that lazy intelligence uh and and
potentially political motivation
uh frankly led to some spots where we
shouldn't have gone
congressman do you believe as a member
of the problem solvers
caucus that continuing to look into this
story
uh under the bind administration will be
productive
well i mean i do think senator graham is
right and wanting to get information out
there frankly additional transparency
is good people do need to have some
trust in their intelligence agencies
i know that uh when we were working on
five though fisa reauthorization in the
house
it was important to me that before i
voted for anything we made the reforms
that
were necessary making sure we had
independent council reviewing these fisa
applications
making sure that lying to a fisa court
was punished appropriately
making sure that the attorney general
him or herself was able to review any
wiretaps of political candidates or
federal office holders if you don't get
the information out
if you don't complete the review you
can't fix the problems
congressman i want to look forward to
the biden agenda as a member now of the
minority party
with democrats in control of the white
house
the senate and the house of
representatives how confident are you
that your side will be listened to on
important issues
well i think president-elect biden has a
critically important choice to make
you know listen he's got to find a dance
partner he is not going to have the
votes that he needs to do it his way
in either the house or the senate the
margins are very close
and let's be honest the democratic party
is fractured so president-elect biden is
going to need to pick a dance partner
now he can pick the extreme voices in
his party like alexandre ocasio-cortez
and try to roll the republicans he can
try to govern
from the left i don't think that's going
to be in america's best interest
and alter an alternative is available to
him i hope he takes it
i hope he tries to work with republicans
find some common ground
i hope he sets aside the most extreme
voices in his party because that's a
better way to run this country
and how confident are you that your
colleagues on the other side of the
aisle
will work with you we had senator bob
casey democrat from pennsylvania
in the last hour talking about the
republicans
claims in the impeachment trial here's
what he had to say listen
he paul said about the election
republican officials in washington
lying about my state over and over again
there has to be a sanction for that i
think there are a lot of american
officials of both parties
that believe that the president based
upon his conduct over the last couple of
months
is a danger to national security
congressman your reaction
well i voted against impeachment both
times
i understand the president has said and
done a number of things that have not
been helpful
and i think he bears some responsibility
for what happened on january 6th
but let's be honest this impeachment
process did not bring the country closer
together
it has made bipartisanship more
difficult some of the most
angry most toxic most rancorous rhetoric
that i've heard in washington the last
two years happened
on the house floor during the
impeachment proceeding
i just think this snap impeachment with
no hearings with no witnesses called
done during the fog of war before even
initial fact-finding is completed
was a mistake and unfortunately it's
going to make bipartisanship
a little bit more difficult until we can
buy down until
we can work down the anger and we're
looking at the nation's capital there
we'll see
congressman dusty johnson if you and the
democrats can get something done for the
american people thank you very much for
taking time sir