Lindsey Graham explains his outrage over Kavanaugh hearing
Senator Lindsey Graham says on 'Sunday Morning Futures' that he wants Judge Kavanaugh to be treated fairly and reacts to supplemental FBI investigation into the nominee.
This is a rush transcript from "Sunday Morning Futures," September 30, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARIA BARTIROMO, HOST: Good Sunday morning. Welcome.
Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation grinds to a halt while the FBI begins looking into accusations of sexual assault against the judge.
President Trump hits the campaign trail to give Republicans a boost as we enter the final month of the midterm campaigns.
Rod Rosenstein still clinging to his post after reports he could be leaving the Justice Department. And the meeting is next week with the president.
And it is a race against the clock for the U.S. and Canada to make a new deal on NAFTA.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Maria Bartiromo. This is "Sunday Morning Futures."
President Trump renewing his support for Judge Brett Kavanaugh this weekend, slamming the Democrats for their -- quote -- "shameless conduct" during last week's emotional hearings.
I will ask Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Kavanaugh's strongest defenders, about Thursday's testimony, the FBI probe and where the process goes from here.
With 37 days now before Election Day, Republicans are ramping up efforts to keep their majorities in Congress. My next guest recently teamed up with President Trump to raise more than $15 million for some key races. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy will join me for an exclusive interview coming up.
Republican lawmakers are demanding answers from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein this morning over bombshell reports that he discussed secretly recording the president and tried recruiting Cabinet members to remove Trump from office.
How will it play out, and will this lead to accountability in the Justice Department? One of the lawmakers set to meet with Rosenstein this week, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Trey Gowdy, will talk with me exclusively this morning.
Plus, today is the deadline for a new NAFTA deal with the United States and Canada working around the clock this weekend to make a new deal. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro will update, joining me with an exclusive and new details, as we look ahead right now on "Sunday Morning Futures."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, we won. And we have so many things happening that are so good. So we should do well in the midterms. I can't imagine not.
But you have to get -- don't be complacent. This election is about security. And it's about prosperity.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: President Trump hosting a rally in Wheeling, West Virginia, yesterday, in the hopes of keeping the GOP majority in Congress. It was the first of several stops on his Make America Great Again rally schedule, as the midterm elections are now just five weeks away.
A California Republican also swinging through states across the country with the same mission.
Joining me right now is House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
He joins us now from Roanoke, Virginia, with an exclusive interview.
Majority Leader, thanks very much for joining us this morning. Great to see you, Congressman.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY, R-CALI., HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: Well, thanks for having me back, Maria.
BARTIROMO: Well, we want -- we want to kick it off. We're going to be talking with Lindsey Graham in just a moment about what took place last week.
But I wonder if what took place around the Kavanaugh hearing impacted the midterm elections. You have been traveling the country a lot, raising a lot of money to keep the majority. What are you seeing? What's been the reception?
MCCARTHY: Well, the first reception, when you do have Lindsey Graham on, thank him.
As I travel this country, so many people come up to me and say, tell Lindsey Graham thank you, because what he said in that hearing was really what millions of Americans were thinking.
And what I'm finding is, prior to the Kavanaugh hearing, the intensity level was really on the Democratic side, that more Democrats were wanting to go vote than Republicans. Republicans thought there wasn't a need.
But in the last week, there's been a fundamental shift, that people are now becoming upset, not just how Justice Kavanaugh was treated, but Dr. Ford, that the Democrats knowingly had this letter, held it, and then put her through this. You didn't have to do this.
And so it's a big frustration. And I was at an event yesterday, and one of the candidates that I was having a hard time having volunteers come up, now they're just coming to the headquarters. And I think the intensity level has now increased because of what transformed.
But for all your viewers, if they just close their eyes and thought about November 7, if, on November 7, we woke up and the Democrats took the majority, what you watched last week would be intensified for the next two years. We wouldn't be talking about how do we put infrastructure, how do we save Social Security, how do we improve our Veterans Administration?
It would be hearing after hearing after investigation after investigation. America's economy would somewhat come to a stop, because that really was a view of what will happen if they took the majority.
BARTIROMO: So, did things change materially post these last couple of weeks, where we saw the left really ramping up their attacks on the Republicans?
I know that you have been traveling, and you have been speaking with -- with voters, and, this weekend, you with President Trump, the president making an appearance at one of the fund-raisers. We have a picture.
What did the president say about this? And are you seeing that reaction and the numbers actually move? Because over the preceding weeks, a lot of people have been saying, oh, it's in the bag, the House is going to flip.
Has that changed?
MCCARTHY: I think it's changed drastically. We look at just the absentee ballots, those who are requesting ballots prior, that has increased over the last week.
We look at volunteerism coming into the campaign. We look at things that are happening online. And, remember, Republicans are at a disadvantage, because the Democrats have two liberal billionaires that are trying to buy the House to flip it.
You have got Mike Bloomberg, who first promised $80 million. Now he's talking about going to $100 million just on Democrats in the House. And then Tom Steyer, who's already spent $120 million, and he brags because he wants to impeach the president. He brags about his list being larger than the NRA just focusing on impeaching the president.
They're giving you a window into what they would do if they won the majority.
BARTIROMO: right.
And you have been -- but, nonetheless, you have still been very successful in terms of money-raising this -- these last several months.
MCCARTHY: We were successful.
We raised $15 million that night from people across the country. But the difficulty is, when you have liberal billionaires willing to write a $100 million check at the time, that's very difficult to try to equal the playing field.
That's why -- how do we equal the playing field? Results vs. resistance. The results of this economy, better than we have seen in the last 50 years, more jobs being offered than people are looking for. You look what we just did last week, the largest pay raise our military has had in nine years, funding the military and building the military back from those cuts under the Obama administration, or what we done with the VA, given the Choice Act, where veterans and go outside the network even in their own community to find health care.
Or the most comprehensive opioid bill that has just passed the House and Senate onto the president's desk, to combat that, because you have got 112 people who will die today because of an addiction.
But that is all changing in the direction of the results that we were able to accomplish in the last year-and-a-half. But the sad part is, not one Democrat voted for that tax bill that brought us this economy back. Not one Democrat in the House or the Senate. Not only did they not vote for it. They resisted it. They resisted letting people keep more of their own money.
That's the challenge of what we're going forward come November.
BARTIROMO: And we know that Nancy Pelosi very famously said that it's just crumbs. Meanwhile, we just saw this past week another GDP of better than 4 percent. We're about to kick off the third-quarter earnings season, and expectations are for 22 percent earnings growth, another strong quarter for the -- for the corporate sector, which you would expect them to create new jobs.
I know that the president goes to some of these rallies, and it sort of energizes him to hear the people.
Let's run a little of this when you were with the president this weekend at a -- at a fund-raiser. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: All the radical Democrats know is, how do you obstruct and destroy, because that's what they want to find out.
We are asking for your support this November, so that we can protect your family, your country and your freedom. Thank you very much.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: Congressman, go through some of the specific races that you are looking at that are close or that you believe are striking in this midterm election.
MCCARTHY: Well, I'm in Virginia.
One race that I look at, that -- Barbara Comstock. Democrats think they can win that. If that election was today, Barbara would win. What she has been able to do to change that around.
When you look at 41 open seats where Republicans have retired. But I look up in Minnesota, up in Duluth area. This is a Democrat-held area. We're ahead with Pete.
I look across the country, and if you look to Florida, one of the most challenged seats, if you just look on paper, would be down in Miami area, Carlos Curbelo. He has the highest numbers he's ever had because he's been able to focus, one, on the district itself.
But as we go across the country, there's battles in Texas, because you got a little tighter-than-normal Senate race, or you go to California, where we only have 14 House Republican members out of 53, but Hillary carried half those districts, and we have two open seats.
But, Maria, think of this. Ed Royce is retiring. So we have an open race right there. We have Young Kim, individual from the district, worked hard, immigrant, came to America. You know what the Democrat opponent -- their Democratic opponent, Gil, he's been accused of sexual harassment, not by a Republican, but by a Democrat who is running for the state assembly.
And I have never heard Pelosi or Feinstein stand up for her or compete about what was going on there. Or if you go across California, you go down into Mimi Walters and other seats, that it is competitive.
But what's happening is, Mike Bloomberg are writing these million-dollar checks outside of California trying to influence what California voters think or believe.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
By the way, there's also accusations against Mr. Ellison, who used to run the Democratic Party. And you don't really hear about that.
Look, speaking of results, Congressman, you also have moved the needle on this social media conversation, whereas there are many people who feel that they are not getting a fair shot on social media, their voices, their conservative voices are not being heard.
I know this was very important to you. And you made sure that Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, testified, and this past week, you had a meeting with the CEO of Google. What can you tell us about that meeting?
MCCARTHY: Well, I will tell you, as a conservative, I get very concerned about the bias that comes across in social media, because we have watched that Google in that -- own video where they sat there right after the election, some actually crying tears, or talking about in their own memos of a -- of a silent donation of helping by using the Internet.
And how could Google actually use that? Because 90 percent of all searches on the Internet go through Google. And 95 percent of those people drop off when it comes to the second page. So they have a great amount of influence of what goes forward.
But I sat down with the CEO, Sundar. He came into my office. We sat with a number of members walking through not just the bias, but talking about privacy issues, talking about their work within China, making sure that they work with the American military as well.
It was a very good meeting. And Sundar, at the end of this meeting, he pledged to come back to a hearing, because Google had not been there before, and it made me great concerned.
But when I look at what's happened when it comes to Twitter, or what happens when it comes to Amazon, or on Facebook, these are a great bout of influence. Two-thirds of all adults get their news from the Internet. And when you have individuals -- and after we have had these hearings, we have found conservatives who work in these businesses, they have spoken up.
And Facebook, a senior engineer put together his own group because he was -- felt that it was a mob mentality, that he couldn't speak his own -- own beliefs. And then you had Jack Dorsey himself, the CEO, said conservatives were not safe inside Twitter because of their beliefs.
That's the bias we have to stop. We have to have transparency as we move forward. And that is the goal I'm working towards and why I continue to bring the social media and others from Silicon Valley into Washington to have the hearing.
BARTIROMO: Will you be able to make a change here? Do you believe that Google will make changes?
I mean, let's face it. During the primaries in California, if you Googled GOP California ideologies, one of those ideologies that came up on Google was Nazism. How does that happen? And somebody programmed the algorithm.
So are you expecting real change post-this? Or do you think we will see legislation to make these companies smaller?
MCCARTHY: I expect change to happen.
Look, as a conservative, to say my party was Nazism, not the party of Lincoln, not the party of Reagan, and what they do is, they said, that was about Wikipedia.
So a couple things have happened already. I sat down, and I met with Sundar a week or two weeks ago, when we were at a session. After that meeting -- and I didn't request it -- he went back and he wrote a letter to all of his employees about not putting their philosophical beliefs before the company, that they have to stop the bias throughout.
We watched Jack Dorsey who at first saying they weren't shadow banning, but before he came to the hearing, he said yes. He admitted they did shadow ban.
BARTIROMO: Right.
MCCARTHY: So what we're doing is, we're opening them up to see something. They're living in a bubble, that the philosophy that the individuals -- and an algorithm is written by a person. Are they influencing the outcome?
And if 90 percent of all searches go through Google...
BARTIROMO: Right.
MCCARTHY: ... that's a real concern if you have tried to put your thumb on the scale.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
MCCARTHY: You could influence it. Or what comes up in the query, what you write in the query.
BARTIROMO: Right.
MCCARTHY: Because it will give you four different options. But, if you write a negative, that will be their first pick.
BARTIROMO: Yes, exactly.
Congressman, it's good to see you this morning. Thanks so much.
MCCARTHY: Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Congressman Kevin McCarthy.
Senator Lindsey Graham is up next live right here.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: Welcome back.
The FBI reopening its background investigation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump ordering the probe, as allegations of sexual assault spark an emotional nationwide debate.
Last night, in West Virginia, the president appeared to suggest Democrats were playing politics with the accusations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You see what's going on. You see this horrible, horrible, radical group of Democrats. You see it happening right now. And they're determined to take back power by using any means necessary.
You see the meanness, the nastiness. They don't care who they hurt, who they have to run over in order to get power and control. That's what they want, is power and control. We're not going to give it to them. We're going to keep it running the way it's been running.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: Meanwhile, my next guest made headlines this week for his fiery criticism of Democrats' tactics during the Kavanaugh hearings.
Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, R-SOUTH CAROLINA: If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020. You have said that, not me.
Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham, that you knew about it and you held it. You had no intention of protecting Dr. Ford, none. She's as much of a victim as you are.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: Joining me right now is the man himself, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, sits on the Senate Judiciary, Armed Services and Budget Committees.
Senator, it is good to have you this morning. Thanks so much for joining us.
GRAHAM: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
BARTIROMO: And let me say, thank you for your leadership and your courage this past week.
What prompted you?
GRAHAM: Outrage at a Star Chamber process.
I have known Brett for 20 years. He's gone through six FBI background investigations. He's appointed more women to be his law clerk than any circuit judge in the country. He's highly respected, not one hint of impropriety. And they have tried to destroy his life.
I voted for Sotomayor and Kagan. This was about delaying the hearing, keeping the seat open past the midterms, so it could be filled in 2020.
There are no rules when it comes to Brett Kavanaugh. I honored Obama's election. He got to pick Sotomayor and Kagan. They don't want to honor President Trump's ability to pick a fine man. I was -- when Durbin told and turn to Don McGahn, if you're truly innocent and ask for this to continue, that was a bridge too far.
And I think I spoke in a way that a lot of Republicans at least could relate to. And I'm a bipartisan guy. I will continue to be.
But when it comes to judicial nominees nominated by our side, I'm going to make sure they're treated fairly. And he was not.
BARTIROMO: And he was not. You said what a lot of people were thinking.
What is your thought now that they are delaying for another week with an FBI investigation?
GRAHAM: Here's what I would like your viewers to know, that Jeff Flake has been a friend of mine for a very long time.
Susan Collins, Murkowski, Lisa Murkowski, are all fine senators. They want a supplemental FBI background investigation. The committee talked to the people named by Dr. Ford at being at the party. Dr. Ford tell us when it happened or where it happened, sometimes in the summer of 1982, she believes.
So the committee talked to Leland Keyser, a friend of Dr. Ford. And Ms. Keyser has told us that she doesn't refute what Dr. Ford said.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GRAHAM: But she was not at a party. She doesn't know Brett Kavanaugh. So, as to that aspect of the allegation by Dr. Ford, she is confused.
Mark Judge said, didn't happen. P.J. said, don't know what you're talking about.
So the FBI is going to interview these people.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GRAHAM: They're going to ask Mark Judge, have you ever seen Brett Kavanaugh drug women and participate in gang rapes, the Avenatti claim, which Mark Judge was both be an accomplice to?
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.
GRAHAM: We're going to speak -- we're going to speak to Ms. Ramirez, the dorm accusation about exposing himself.
BARTIROMO: Hold on. Hold on one second. Hold on one second, Senator, because there are a lot of people who say they weren't there.
We're going to continue in a moment. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: Welcome back.
And we're back with Senator Lindsey Graham.
And, senator, you were going through some of the things that the FBI will certainly be doing in terms of their questioning.
GRAHAM: Right.
BARTIROMO: We have heard from many of those people. And many of them have said, I wasn't at the party, and I don't have any recollection of Brett Kavanaugh in that behavior.
GRAHAM: Yes. Right. Right.
We told -- they told that to the committee. But the senators that I just named would like the FBI to kind of double-check. Ms. Ramirez refuses to talk to the committee. Democrats haven't helped us at all on the committee to find out what happened.
Her allegations wouldn't be printed by The New York Times, for a very good reason. We're going to vote this coming week. The FBI background supplemental investigation should be done early part of this week, Monday or Tuesday. Then we will have a final passage vote later in the week.
I'm highly confident he will be confirmed. He deserves to be confirmed. He's a good man. He's the best choice President Trump could have made, in my view. I did recommend him to President Trump.
But I want to tell you what's going to happen next, if -- if you will allow.
BARTIROMO: Please.
GRAHAM: OK, here's what's going to happen.
I'm going to ask Senator Grassley to get to the bottom of how this hearing process was so hijacked, the unethical aspects of it, the slash-and-burn aspects of it, the effort to delay it, to abuse, I think, Dr. Ford's trust.
So let me tell you, we're going to start with the following concept. Dr. Ford said at the hearing that she didn't know that the committee was willing to come to California to take her to testimony in a private setting.
Here's what I can -- here's what she said. "I just appreciate that you did offer that. I wasn't clear on what the offer was, if you were going to come out to see me. And I would have happily hosted you and been happy to speak with you out there. It wasn't clear to me that -- that that was the case."
How could that not be clear to her? Let me tell you what this committee did. On September the 19th, the staff told a Grassley letter to Katz, her attorney. "My staff would still welcome the opportunity to speak with Dr. Ford at a time and place convenient to her."
"We also offered that committee investigators are available to meet with Dr. Ford anywhere, anytime, if she would prefer to provide her testimony outside of a hearing setting," September 22, Judiciary Committee staff e- mail to the lawyer Katz and Bromwich.
Grassley tweets: "Come to us or we will come to you."
We wrote a letter -- he did -- to the Democrats: "I'm even willing to have my staff travel to Dr. Ford to California or anywhere else to obtain her testimony," letter from Grassley to Feinstein.
BARTIROMO: Right.
GRAHAM: Dr. Ford's attorney replies, September the 20th: "Dr. Ford has asked me to let you know that she appreciates the various options you have suggested." Katz's e-mail back to Judiciary staff.
So I'm going to find out why she didn't know her options. I'm going to find out who in Feinstein's staff recommended Katz to be Dr. Ford's lawyer. It's improper for senators to recommend lawyers to constituents.
I'm going to ask, if you thought she needed a lawyer as a staff member, why didn't you come forward and tell the committee about the allegation? I'm going to try to find out who betrayed Dr. Ford's trust to remain anonymous.
There are three people at three groups that had the letter, a Democratic congresswoman and her staff, Feinstein and her staff. And I don't believe Feinstein did this. And Dr. Ford's lawyers. No friend sent this out to the press. No friend would do this to her.
The person who sent this anonymous -- destroyed her trust, betrayed her request to be anonymous, had a political agenda.
I'm going to get to the bottom of it.
BARTIROMO: So, is...
GRAHAM: I'm want to find out who on the Democratic side leaked an anonymous letter provided to the committee by Senator Gardner with no postmark on it, no return address, claiming that Judge Kavanaugh did something wrong in 1988 -- 1998 in Colorado.
Somebody on the Democratic side leaked that to NBC News, and they ran it as a story. I cannot imagine, if a Democratic nominee had been before this committee, that NBC would run an anonymous letter provided by Republicans.
BARTIROMO: So, laws...
GRAHAM: The bottom line is...
BARTIROMO: Yes, have laws -- go ahead. The bottom line?
GRAHAM: The bottom line is, we're going to look into a betrayal of trust of Dr. Ford, a betrayal of the committee rules.
We're going to look to see if we can prove what I think is obvious. This wasn't about protecting Dr. Ford. It was about delaying the hearing. It was about not sharing with the committee relevant, credible information.
It was about running out the clock, never confronting him in real time, to put us in the box we're in. That's what this has been about.
BARTIROMO: Well, people also want to know if laws were broken in terms of revealing your personal information.
Your colleague Senator Rand Paul is now calling for an investigation...
GRAHAM: Yes.
BARTIROMO: ... to determine and punish who published the personal information of you and two other Republican senators during the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on -- on Friday.
Tell me what happened as a result of your personal information being published, sir.
(LAUGHTER)
GRAHAM: This is the second time I have had to change my phone number. The first time is when President Trump did this -- and during the campaign. And I'm not worried about me changing my phone number. I am worried about my address being sent out.
But here's what I would say.
BARTIROMO: Who did it? Who do you think did it?
GRAHAM: I don't know. I would like to know.
Why do I want to know? Not so much about me. I want to deter an abuse of the process, because if this is going to be the new norm, God help us all. Who would want to come before this committee if we're going to do this?
And the people who did it, I hope they don't get away with it. I want to find the person, if I can, who destroyed Dr. Ford's trust...
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GRAHAM: ... outed her, when she wanted to be anonymous, who sent a document given to the committee to an outlet that was an anonymous letter, unverified.
But I also want to know what's going to happen to the fifth accuser. Senator Whitehouse got an accusation from a man in Rhode Island who said that a female friend of his was taken out a boat by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh, and poorly treated. She told him about it. He went down to the dock basically and beat both of them up.
I support an FBI look into that. Whitehouse did the right thing.
BARTIROMO: Right. Senator, you said...
GRAHAM: The guy recanted. I want him to be held accountable.
BARTIROMO: You said something interesting this week. You said, "If I am the chairman of this committee in the future, I will remember this."
I want to ask you about that after this short break. Stay with us.
Senator Lindsey Graham returns in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: And we're back with Senator Lindsey Graham.
And, Senator, you made a comment last week, saying, with all of this misconduct on the left, "If I become chairman of this committee, I will remember."
Is that in the plans?
GRAHAM: Yes, I'm going to try to deter this for the -- for the future.
It's a noble cause on the left to destroy Kavanaugh and stop Trump from having a Supreme Court pick when it comes to replacing Kennedy. Most liberal media outlets believe it's a noble cause. They're not going to give much scrutiny to people who try to take Kavanaugh down, the tactics they use.
But this can be played out over time and destroy the ability to get good people to come forward. I am going to find out what staffer recommended Katz to be Ford's lawyer, why that staffer didn't tell the committee about the allegation, if you believed she actually needed a lawyer.
Ms. Ramirez said one the main reasons she came forward, she was urged by Democratic senators to talk, to give an interview. Well, if a Democratic senator believed she had something serious to say, they should have reported it to the committee, so we can investigate it, not to the media, so it would be allegation number two.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GRAHAM: I'm going to find out who leaked the anonymous letter provided by Cory Gardner, if I can, and punish them.
We can't let those people who betrayed Dr. Ford's trust get away with it, because that will affect the committee in the future.
BARTIROMO: But should we trust -- but should we be trusting the FBI here?
GRAHAM: Yes. Yes. Yes.
BARTIROMO: After all that we have discussed in terms of this small cabal of people at the top of the FBI in trying to put their finger on the scale in the 2016 election, what's your trustworthiness of the FBI's investigation of Kavanaugh in the next week? And will it really just take a week?
GRAHAM: It should take just a couple of days. The trust -- the trust level is high.
My beef has never been with the FBI. It has been with McCabe and a few bad apples. I love the FBI. Professional agents who do background checks will talk to the people Dr. Ford named, like the committee did. They will talk to Ms. Ramirez, who refuses to talk to the committee.
And that will be it. It'll be done in a few days. I trust the FBI to do a fair supplemental background check. And I promise everybody who's listening, we're not going to let them get away with this. If this is the new normal, nobody will come forward.
I want to know the Democratic senators who encouraged Ramirez embarrassed go to the press, but didn't tell the committee. It's obvious what they're trying to do. They say it themselves.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GRAHAM: They're trying to delay Kavanaugh, so we can replace him in 2020.
BARTIROMO: Real quick before you go, Senator, what should we expect next week from this meeting with Rod Rosenstein and the president?
GRAHAM: A conversation about whether or not Rosenstein was part of a bureaucratic coup to take him down. I don't believe Rosenstein was. And that's a conversation they need to have.
And I want to thank President Trump for nominating Kavanaugh. He was such an outstanding choice.
But I wouldn't fire Rosenstein unless there's some real credible evidence, other than McCabe, that he did something improper.
BARTIROMO: Because we know, if the House flips, we're not going to hear about that story any longer.
We're going to talk about that right now.
And it is good to see you this morning, Senator. Thanks very much for joining us.
GRAHAM: Can I just add one thing?
BARTIROMO: Yes, please.
GRAHAM: If I had done what Democrats had done, if I had recommended a conservative activist lawyer against a Democratic male nominee, an accuser who came forward in South Carolina, and I hid it, and I didn't tell the committee about it, I would be destroyed.
The double standard here is unacceptable. And we're finally going to do something about it.
BARTIROMO: Senator, thank you. We will be watching. We appreciate your time this morning.
GRAHAM: Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Senator Lindsey Graham.
And House Republicans are planning a closed-door meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein this upcoming week, this after that explosive New York Times report claiming Rosenstein talk about secretly recording President Trump and invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
Joining me right now is South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy. He's the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. He also serves on the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.
It is good to see you, Congressman. Thanks very much for joining.
REP. TREY GOWDY, R-SOUTH CAROLINA: Yes, ma'am. Thank you.
BARTIROMO: What do you want to see in this upcoming week between the meeting of Rosenstein and the president?
GOWDY: Well, I want to see the memos.
I never thought I should have gone to journalism school to get access to Andy McCabe's memos, instead of running for Congress. I mean, think about that for a second. You need an online subscription to The New York Times to read Andy McCabe's memos, despite the fact Congress has been asking for it for months.
So I need to see the memos. I need to ask Rod what he said. And then we will get to what he meant. Those may or may not be the same thing.
Lindsey Graham is right. When your star witness is Andy McCabe, who is already in trouble for both a lack of candor and affirmatively misrepresenting the truth, I want to hear -- Rod deserves to be heard out, and I appreciate the president talking to him this week.
And we're going to talk to him. And I want to know what he said. Then I want to know what he meant. I want to know whether anyone else was present for these meetings. But if your case hinges on the credibility of Andy McCabe, good luck.
BARTIROMO: This is exactly the reason that your colleagues in the Intel Committee want to understand better what went into this whole narrative of Donald Trump having anything to do with Russia meddling.
And, of course, we had news on that this week, your committee, the Intel Committee. Let's talk a bit about that and what we might see from some of these documents that are to be released.
GOWDY: Yes.
Well, you're going to see that Tom Rooney, Mike Conaway and I asked collusion, coordination, conspiracy questions of every single witness, from Jared Kushner to Donald Trump Jr. to Steve Bannon to Susan Rice, Samantha Power. I want -- I want your viewers and my fellow citizens to see every question that was asked.
And what they will learn is, Republicans were just as interested in finding out what happened with respect to collusion, coordination, conspiracy as anyone else. And what they will also learn is that Adam Schiff wanted to go back 25 years and ask questions of witnesses while they were in junior high school.
And then he goes and gets the sparkle notes from the "Brothers Karamazov" and decides to ask about Russian -- ominous-sounding Russian names that none of the witnesses had ever heard of.
So I can't wait for the transcripts to come out and defeat this narrative that Adam Schiff is the only one that is concerned about collusion. You can rest assured this, Maria. If there were evidence of collusion, Adam would have leaked it a long time ago.
But there is not. And I can't wait for the transcripts to be public.
BARTIROMO: Right.
And the House and Intel Committee voted on Friday morning to declassify the transcripts of interviews with more than 50 witnesses from the committee's Trump-Russia investigation.
How much longer do we give the DOJ and the FBI the benefit of the doubt, sir? You have been asking for documents for well over a year, and you still are yet to see specific documents related to how this investigation started.
GOWDY: I have seen almost every document that they're going to allow Congress to see. Paul and Devin have been really good and letting me go to the department.
I also used to work for the Department of Justice. So I understand the tension between the branches. What I do not understand -- think back to Jim Comey memos. Remember, only two of us could read them. And then we couldn't talk about them.
And God forbid they be released publicly. And then the next thing you know, they're in every major newspaper, and you're sitting there wondering, why couldn't I read this six months ago? I wonder if the same thing is going to be true within the McCabe memos. I wonder if the same thing is going to be true with the Bruce Ohr 302s.
I think what my fellow citizens are going to see is that the department and the bureau sometimes hide behind an ongoing criminal probe just because they don't want us to see things that are embarrassing for them. And that's not right.
And the department should be big and strong enough to withstand a few bad actors. The overwhelming majority of those employees are fantastic. I worked with them for 20 years.
BARTIROMO: Right.
GOWDY: For every Peter Strzok, there are 1,000 people that you would love.
BARTIROMO: Right. But Peter Strzok had his hand on the wheel.
GOWDY: But we need to see the documents. Every...
BARTIROMO: This was the guy running the investigation, though.
GOWDY: Every aspect of it, yes, ma'am, exactly the wrong person to be doing it.
BARTIROMO: We all thought that leaking to the media was against the law. So, I guess I'm scratching my head, saying, if we know all of these leaks have occurred, how come people like Adam Schiff are not in trouble?
We're going to take a short break, Congressman, but I want to ask you about that, because, to the rest of us in the audience this morning, we thought leaking was against the law.
Stay with us. Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: And I am back with Congressman Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, also serving on the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.
And, Congressman, the question I asked you before we went to break was that of accountability, really. We understand that there have been a lot of leaks to the media. And that's against the law, is it not?
GOWDY: Well, I want your viewers to think about two different tracks.
There is confidential information, where parties have an expectation of privacy, where you have given your word that you won't repeat it. That's not criminal. That's a moral issue. The criminal -- the legal issue becomes when you disseminate classified information.
Now, there's been both done in the last 18 months, but -- but -- and I'm concerned about both. One is a crime that should be investigated by the Department of Justice. The other, which Lindsey made reference to and which frustrates the daylights out of me, is when you are telling a witness like Hope Hicks that you can't talk about the questions we ask you on House Intel, and while her interview is going on, while it's going on, the Democrats are coordinating with the media, selecting certain portions of her testimony, and then leaking it.
It's not a criminal issue. It's a moral issue. It's really important. It destroys trust. It's part of why Congress is broken.
BARTIROMO: Right.
GOWDY: But it's not something that you would go to jail for.
BARTIROMO: Yes, but I'm talking about leaking by Jim Comey classified information to his friends. I'm talking about Adam Schiff leaking classified information to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
GOWDY: Well, it needs to be investigated. Congress does not investigate crime.
We control the Department of Justice. President Trump picked the A.G., picked the deputy A.G., picked the third in command. Leaking is moral. Disseminating classified information is a crime. It should be investigated by the FBI.
But Congress doesn't investigate, prosecute, sentence for criminal activity.
BARTIROMO: Do you think we're going to see accountability in all of this? You have been investigating the investigators now for a year-and-a-half. We know that there was obviously misconduct done by a handful of people at the top of the FBI and the DOJ.
Andrew McCabe already been referred for criminal activity. Tell us where you see this going.
GOWDY: I think there's already been some accountability. I think there's more to come.
I think, of the 10 people who were most intricately involved in the Russia probe, 80 percent of them are no longer with the department or with the bureau. You mentioned Andy McCabe. Comey is gone. Brennan is gone. Lisa Page is gone. Jim Baker is gone. Rybicki is gone.
A lot -- there has been some accountability. I think there'd be more if the Democrats spent more time working with their Republican colleagues and less time coordinating media leaks. But that's been my great frustration.
The Department of Justice belongs to all of us. You would think Republicans and Democrats alike wouldn't like biased FBI agents.
BARTIROMO: Right.
GOWDY: Who would have thought it took Peter Strzok to get the Democrats to find a law enforcement officer they actually liked?
Who would have thought that? All the times they are critical of law enforcement, and they go out of their way to defend one of the most biased agents I have seen in my time in public service.
But that's where we are in politics, and one reason I can't wait to be gone.
BARTIROMO: Just extraordinary.
Congressman, thank you very much. Thanks for your service as well. We appreciate your time this morning.
GOWDY: Yes, ma'am. Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Congressman Trey Gowdy.
Meanwhile, it is deadline day. In the face of all of that, it's deadline day for Canada and a new NAFTA agreement tonight with the United States. Where do we stand with one of our biggest trading partners?
My exclusive interview with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is next, as we look ahead on "Sunday Morning Futures."
Right back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: Welcome back.
A deadline arrives today for Canada to sign on to a new NAFTA deal with the United States.
Joining me right now, in an exclusive interview, is Peter Navarro, assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.
Peter, it's good to see you this morning. Thanks so much for joining me.
PETER NAVARRO, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF TRADE AND MANUFACTURING POLICY: Good morning, Maria. Good morning.
BARTIROMO: Are we close with Canada?
NAVARRO: I just spoke an hour ago to the team, and I'm going to update you on that.
But I do want to say one thing before we go to Canada, is simply this, that President Donald J. Trump has very quietly been putting together the best performance on the economy and trade of any president in modern history. And it's really, truly extraordinary.
And I say quietly because the media has underreported both the actions we have taken and the results. And exhibit A is this last week at the United Nations, where President Trump orchestrated a groundbreaking deal with South Korea, opened negotiations with Japan, and worked with our allies in Japan and Europe to issue strong statements against the behavior of China.
So, this is great stuff. But Canada...
BARTIROMO: Yes. Peter, let me interrupt you.
I know you had a fantastic week in terms of trade.
NAVARRO: Yes.
BARTIROMO: We only have a few minutes this morning, because we have had such a breaking news program.
NAVARRO: Sure.
BARTIROMO: I want to get to the meat and potatoes, if you will.
NAVARRO: Canada.
BARTIROMO: One of the issues was the so-called Chapter 19 dispute panels the U.S. wants to eliminate from NAFTA, Canada wants to preserve.
Has that been agreed upon?
NAVARRO: Here's where things stand.
The broad brush of the deal is two things. One is that we want to restore North America as a manufacturing powerhouse by reclaiming the supply chain. The deal in principle with Mexico will do that. If Canada comes in, that's great.
There's also a modernization component that brings in things like protection for digital I.P., pharma and things like that. That's where things stand.
There's broad agreement on virtually all of that. There are several sticking points. You mentioned one. Dairy is another.
The last thing I want to do is sit here and interject anything into this debate. Let Bob Lighthizer and his colleagues in these other countries get the job done today.
And I promise you this, Maria. Tomorrow morning, on "Maria in the Morning," you will have some news one way or another that will big -- be big and perhaps market-moving.
BARTIROMO: So, then, we are close, then? You think we could see a Canada deal by tomorrow morning, when "Mornings with Maria" starts on FOX Business, is what you're saying?
NAVARRO: Everybody's negotiating in good faith right now as we speak.
And the deadline is midnight tonight to get the text in to Congress in order to make sure this goes forward. So, it's either going to be the text goes in with Mexico and the U.S., or the text goes in with all three countries.
BARTIROMO: At the same time, the president is working with the Europeans and Japan, very quickly, correct?
NAVARRO: Japan and Europe on a united front against China's forced technology transfer, which this action this week described as deplorable.
Within the NAFTA -- the new agreement with Mexico and Canada is very strong provisions against the state-owned enterprise behavior of China.
BARTIROMO: And that is new. And that is new, a united front against Canada.
Peter, thanks very much for weighing in.
NAVARRO: All right.
BARTIROMO: It is good to see you this morning.
I will see you tomorrow morning on the Fox Business Network. Have a great Sunday, everybody.
END
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