Let's turn to
the Trump
indictment,
because as the chairman of the House
Select Committee
on Intelligence, these national security
documents are very important
and you know a great deal
about the subject.
You've seen actually
some of these documents
that were at Mar a Lago
that are now not there anymore.
They allegedly included U.S.
nuclear secrets and vulnerabilities.
Take a listen to former U.S.
Attorney General Bill Barr.
I was shocked by the degree
of sensitivity in these documents
and how many there were, frankly.
He had no right to maintain them
and retain them.
And he kept them in a way, at Mar a Lago
that anyone who really cares about
national security
would their stomach would churn at it.
You care about national security
when you saw the insecure way
those documents were stored at Mar
a Lago. Did it make your stomach churn?
Well, it's certainly of grave concern.
So the
the chairman ranking of both
the House, Intel and Senate
until have seen
some of the documents,
both from the Biden cache
and the Trump documents itself.
And I can tell you
that from having looked
at both of those documents,
I have grave concerns
about both of those
type of documents
being out in an unsecured place.
Both of them include
details of national security issues
that should not have been outside
of a controlled environment.
I take your point.
The White House does say that
President Biden's
team contacted
the National Archives the very same day
they found these documents.
That's obviously not what Trump did.
He stonewalled for 14 months
and allegedly
hid documents from his lawyers
in order to obstruct the efforts
to return the documents
even after receiving a federal subpoena.
Take a listen.
To Bill Barr again describe
describing the process.
They talked to him for
almost a year
to try to get those documents
and he jerked them around.
They finally went to a subpoena.
And what did he do?
According to the government,
he lied and obstructed that subpoena.
So they acted in a very patient way.
And where they were met with was,
according to the government and
and the indictment,
very egregious obstruction.
A lot of legal experts
look at the indictment.
They say if Donald Trump had
just turned over the documents,
we wouldn't be here.
He wouldn't have been charged
with anything.
Right.
Well,
I have a great deal of respect
for Bill Barr,
but I have to correct
something that he said.
My committee
actually brought in the archivist
and we had them testify
as to what was occurring in the
with the issue of the Trump documents.
We released the transcript
and actually the archives was unaware
that they had classified documents.
The first cache of documents
that were delivered to
the archives was the first time
that they became aware
that that there were classified
documents involved.
They were pursuing
just presidential records.
And then within four months of
Trump giving
surrendering to them classified documents
when they open the boxes
and we're surprised
that he even had classified documents.
Within four months,
Mar-A-Lago was raided.
So it wasn't this entire time,
but it certainly was
an unacceptable time.
But it is in the view of the government
obstruction here.
Here's your colleague,
Republican Congressman Don Bacon,
who's an Air Force
veteran who knows from national security
a documents.
This is his description
of how tough it is
for Republicans to defend Trump
and whether they should be at all.
We're missing the obvious.
We have somebody that has
hundreds and hundreds
of top secrets of his
house, showing it to uncleared people.
And then he lied about it.
I'm not in the mood
for mode for defending that.
And I don't think
my colleagues should either.
It does.
Look, if you look at the indictment
and the charges are there,
and unless there's something
some defense we have not yet heard.
It does look like President Trump
broke the law.
Well, and again,
you know,
this is a legal process
that is going to have to go forward
What my committee
is doing on a bipartisan
basis is looking at,
you know, how did this occur?
What laws need to be changed?
Well, we heard from the archivist
that, you know, every administration
since Reagan has delivered to them
documents that included
classified and unclassified
documents mixed.
And 80 members of Congress
have sent documents to libraries
where the libraries had to subsequently
get in touch with them.
And so we found classified documents,
including sort of musky,
but 98 classified documents.
This is a systemic problem.
Now, with respect to this litigation.
It's going to go forward.
And I'm certainly not going to defend
the behavior
that is listed in that in that complaint,
but they're going to have to prove it.
And it's a legal process
that's going to have to go forward.
Let's talk about a few other topics,
because on Tuesday,
your committee is going to hear
closed door
testimony from Trump appointed
special counsel John Durham.
His report
concluded that the FBI
should not have launched
the full Trump-Russia investigation
as it did.
It would have been okay
to do a preliminary one,
but not the full bore one.
What do you want to know
from former special counsel Durham?
So this is very troubling
because this is going to
be troubling for you,
especially as you read
the Durham report
after the years
of which there were these accusations
of Trump-Russia collusion
and that these allegations
were absolutely false.
What's concerning here
is not that
a campaign
would make those accusations
that the Clinton campaign
did opposition research
or the Clinton campaign
made these accusations.
It's when it comes to you,
as the government speaking,
when the government opens
an investigation
over uncorroborated information
that they take directly
from a political campaign
and they make it
a government investigation.
I mean, this was not
just the initial investigation itself.
Then it resulted
in the special prosecutor
Every investigation
that has occurred, including
now the Durham report
making is conclusively states
that this was
a result of people had political
bias who undertook an investigation
based upon total Clinton campaign funded
research that was uncorroborated
and turned out to be even untrue.
And that's where you have to be concerned
when in your government's
lying to you,
when your government is telling you
that something has happened
that has not happened.
That's when our committee
has to be involved.
And that's what we have to look at.
What what happened here?
How do we make sure
that this doesn't happen? Again?
How do we make certain
that we don't have
people with a political bias
entering into political campaigns
and using the
the authority of the government to have,
you know, the major media
and the government take actions
that are not based on truth.
You've said you want to explore possible
changes to the FBI
director Wray has said he's
already made a ton of changes.
And Special Counsel
Durham did not recommend, quote,
any wholesale changes
in the guidelines and policies
that the department
and the FBI now have in place, unquote.
So what do you want to consider changing?
Sure.
So what you're talking about
is the portion of the Durham report
that relates to the FISA, the foreign
surveillance Act, and the
FISA court itself and and the
whole application process with the FBI
lied to the FISA court to get.
Yeah,
and that FBI agent,
I believe, was disciplined.
And what we have found
is that
there are problems
in the entire process
with the FISA courts
in which people are not held accountable.
And it's across the board
that that there is
an bipartisan, bicameral,
that people believe
that this needs to be changed.
Now, Durham didn't say,
I don't recommend any changes, meaning
there are no changes
that need to be made,
he said in the document.
He said no wholesale changes.
He said in the document he delivered.
He didn't think it was appropriate
to include those.
He did, however,
and I've spoken to him directly agree
that he would give us his insight
as to what changes
he thinks need to be made.
And that's the work
that our community is doing,
our committee is doing.
We're pulling him in
to our committee to say, Okay,
now that we've seen that there
there were abuses, that this was wrong
and that there are problems with
FISA itself,
what are the recommendations
that you think we should pursue?
Here are some things we're looking at.
What do you think of these?
So it's a closed door testimony.
Closed door hearing.
I hope that you'll,
you know, issue
whatever you can publicly
so we can report on it.
Thank you so much for being here today.
I appreciate it, Mr. Chairman.