The politics of declassifying Russian probe intelligence
President Trump directs Attorney General William Barr to declassify information on surveillance during the 2016 election; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.
This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," May 24, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: We want to be very transparent, so, as you know, I declassified everything. They will be able to see how this hoax, how the hoax or witch-hunt started and why it started. It was an attempted coup, or an attempted takedown of the president of the United States.
I don't know what it is. I have no idea. But I want to be transparent. Everybody wanted me to declassify. I've done it. And you're going to learn a lot. I hope it's going to be nice, but perhaps it won't be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, HOST: President Trump on his way to Japan talking about declassifying intelligence, actually authorizing the attorney general to declassify whatever he had to in the investigation into the investigators. The House Intelligence Committee chairman tweeted out "While Trump stonewalls the public from learning the truth of his obstruction of justice, Trump and Barr conspire to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies. The cover-up has entered a new and dangerous phase. This is un-American."
With that, let's bring in our panel, Steve Hilton is the host of "The Next Revolution" here on FOX News Channel, Democratic Strategist Leslie Marshall, and Ben Shapiro, syndicated columnist and editor in chief of "The Daily Wire." He's here. There he is. Ben, what do you think?
BEN SHAPIRO, "THE DAILY WIRE": I think that it's about time that we got some of the rumors out of the way. The president has been claiming that there has been some sort of massive conspiracy against him from the beginning. I think the more material in the public eye the better. I felt that way about the Mueller report as well. I do have some issues with Adam Schiff who claimed for years that there was secret information that the president was a Russian cat's-paw suddenly declaring now that manipulation of intelligence information is incredibly dangerous. That seems like quite a flip for him.
BAIER: Yes, and "the cover-up has entered a new and dangerous phase," we hear a lot about the cover-up.
SHAPIRO: I'm wondering what the cover-up actually constitutes here since we actually can see the Mueller report. In fact, it's a bestseller. We can all read it. The portions that have not been released into the public arena have not been done so for because of federal rules of criminal evidence that prevent that from being done. I fail to see where the cover-up is actually occurring. And I guess if it's Don McGahn not testifying, that's up to Don McGahn, isn't it? He doesn't have to listen to the president if he doesn't want to.
BAIER: Leslie?
LESLIE MARSHALL, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: But that's not full transparency. I was agreeing with you until a couple of sentences ago. When we look at what we need to have full transparency, and I agree American people must have full transparency, whether it's with the Mueller report which is three pronged, including Russia's interference with our elections. But we also have to look at what has gone on in the past.
But this is not a witch-hunt. And what bothers me here is the undermining of our intelligence officials who out there with their sources and their methods, this could be a problem in the future for people that they need to have speak to them going forward for information. And also, the perception by many, not just on the left, that the attorney general president is attacking critics of the president and protecting the president rather than the oath he took to have his allegiance to the Constitution, to the people of the United States.
BAIER: But to Ben's point, so the cover-up is the cover-up of the obstructions of justice. The obstruction of justice is to obstruct something is that not find criminal indictment. Right?
MARSHALL: Yes. Well, I have talked to lawyers who are Republicans who said they are very surprised that nobody went after witness tampering. At the end of the day, you have a foreign government who came to the Trump campaign, and, thankfully, they said, look. We're not interested. That's not a coup. They were doing their job with the information that they had. Because it's three-pronged and one of the prongs of that investigation that Mueller was tasked with is to look into the interference by the Russians, this is not just all about the president and all about the Trump campaign.
BAIER: It's going to be interesting, Steve, when we see, and it could be the inspector general report in days, maybe weeks, but days, it will be fascinating to see what's in there.
STEVE HILTON, HOST, "THE NEXT REVOLUTION": Yes, because Leslie talked about undermining the intelligence services. There are a lot of people in this country who are suspicious that it was the intelligence services undermining the president, and the candidate that they were supporting. And I think we should not underestimate the fury of millions of Americans who see their votes for Donald Trump scorned on a daily basis by Democrats who are basically blocking him from governing with these endless investigations. And they want equal justice.
And I think this is a really important step towards that. Now, it may turn out that these suspicions of a deep state coup against the president, it may also be as much of a conspiracy theory as the Russia collusion story turned out to be. But we won't know until they do this.
BAIER: OK. So we will follow all elements of it.
Now, the big question is whether Bob Mueller is going to testify, and here is the president and also John Nadler on that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: They asked Bob Mueller come and testify. He just gave them a 434-page router which says no collusion, which leads to absolutely no obstruction. He just gave that report. Why does he have to testify? It's ridiculous.
REP. JERROLD NADLER, D-N.Y.: Mueller, he, I think can I say at this point that he wants to testify in private. He envisions himself correctly as a man of great rectitude and apolitical, and he doesn't want to participate in anything that he might regard as a political spectacle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: But it is all a political spectacle.
SHAPIRO: Yes. And the fact is that Mueller is doing the right thing, however. Mueller did put out his report. If Mueller believed that the president should have been indicted, the president gave him every ability to say that. So did Attorney General Barr. The fact is that Mueller declined to actually issue any statement on whether obstruction of justice occurred or did not. That was his decision. He could have made a recommendation. He did not.
Democrats have the same information. They can impeach. They are not moving to do so. So I'm just wondering what they are hoping to find. Nancy Pelosi came out this week and said that more impeachment hearings wouldn't actually produce any new information. This just seems like a lot of political grandstanding to me.
BAIER: So is it, Leslie, that Democrats want impeachment but not the impeachment process? They want the hearings, they want the show, but they don't really want to go down the politically dangerous walk of impeachment?
MARSHALL: It is politically dangerous. Look what happened when Republicans impeached Bill Clinton. Newt Gingrich resigned. Republicans lost seats in the House and Senate. And Speaker Pelosi knows this. In addition, when you just look at the polls, the American people don't want this, and they didn't want it then, by the way. But right now you have approximately 15 percent of Democrats in the House and the Senate combined that are pushing for impeachment. And although it seems like it's a much larger number and that Democrats are more split, that is not the case.
But what they are trying to do by having Mueller sit there is ask questions such as, so why didn't you push for obstruction? What specifically were your concerns? Because you are not talking about one area. You are talking about 10-plus areas where he was questioning but he did leave that up to the attorney general. And I don't think it's wrong with their oversight Constitutionally, Congressional oversight of the executive branch, to ask those questions. So if they are going to go through the impeachment process they have every single i dotted and t crossed.
BAIER: But the danger is Republicans would be asking why didn't you look at what the government did at the beginning of the process?
MARSHALL: Absolutely.
BAIER: Why didn't you look at the original start of the investigation?
MARSHALL: Absolutely. Which is why I would think that Republicans would be walking hand-in-hand, if you will, with Democrats, saying we want him to sit down as well because we have questions we want answered.
BAIER: Last thing, Steve, this back-and-forth with the president and Nancy Pelosi. Now you have tweeted videos, now you have back and forth about somebody has got to check whether there is intervention needed. What do we take from this?
HILTON: I think most people look at that and just despair. They think the whole thing is this pantomime. But we've got to be clear about who is driving this. If you look at anatomy of what happened this week, I think it's very evident that Nancy Pelosi insulted the president using all these accusations of a Watergate style coverup, before an important meeting that they claimed they were in favor of. I think she is a completely disingenuous charlatan over this. I think it's ridiculous to try and pretend that they are doing anything other than trying to block this president from achieving anything at all.
BAIER: I just have -- just your face. You have to respond.
(LAUGHTER)
MARSHALL: OK. First of all, my insiders on the left talking to me, one of them, there wasn't a plan to have two rushed meetings to talk about impeachment until the president said McGahn can't testify. They said it's up to him. And he said I'm not going to testify, and they were panicking. And that happened to be before the infrastructure meeting. Yes, we can be clever, but that wasn't like a clever coup, if you will.
We see people, politicians left and right, the president included, insult each other all the time. He is the president of the United States. He needs to have a thicker skin. I'm sorry. She said what she felt and is echoing the sentiments of a lot of people not only in the party but that put her in the position to be speaker.
BAIER: Can this president with this Congress get anything done before the 2020 election?
SHAPIRO: No.
(LAUGHTER)
BAIER: OK. We're going to leave it there.
Next up, the Friday lightning round. Ongoing tension in the Middle East, plus, Winners and Losers.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We want to have protection in the Middle East. We are going to be sending a relatively small number of troops, mostly protective. And some very talented people are going to the Middle East right now. And we'll see how -- and we'll see what happens. It will be about 1,500 people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: Well, the president saying more troops heading to the Middle East as a response to the possible threats coming from Iran. Meantime, we are getting word from declassified documents that the regime is feeling the sanctions. In fact, some of the running militias as well as some of the other groups are being cut off.
We're back with our panel. Steve, thoughts?
HILTON: So I asked President Trump about all of this in my interview with him last week. And I think his position on Iran and the Middle East and all of these things is really clear. He sees his chosen weapon in resolving these tensions as being economic. I asked him specifically what countries do you want to invade, referencing a quote from Lindsey Graham? He said I want to invade everywhere economically. He's putting the squeeze on Iran economically. And it reminds me of that famous quote from Churchill that jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war. I think for Trump it's jobs, jobs, jobs. He sees economics as the way to resolve these tensions.
BAIER: It's playing in the 2020 field, talking more about Iran and Iran policy.
MARSHALL: The problem that I have is when you look at Iran just from the numbers, you have very high unemployment. You have a high number of young males who are very angry. And I'm concerned about the powder keg that this creates. When we pulled out of this deal, you know that the Iranian were going it enrich more uranium. And what are they going to do with that? And where is the money that they're not giving elsewhere? And by the way, they are asking all these Hamas and Hezbollah for donations online. And I think sadly they are probably going to get enough to replenish their war chest.
But I think when you look at the hawks that Pompeo and Bolton are with regard to Iran, I think this is all very calculated to force a regime change, and I think that's what the president and the administration is up to.
BAIER: Ben?
SHAPIRO: I certainly hope that they're hoping to force a regime change, but they're going to do it through economic means. The idea that's being pushed by some people that Trump is desperate for war and that people want war in the Middle East. There is nobody who wants war in the Middle East. This is all economic pressure. The Iranians are feeling it and they're getting more aggressive because of that. And that's why we have to send more troops to contain that threat.
BAIER: Theresa May announcing her resignation today. Steve, there wasn't a tinge of sympathy when she got emotional in that speech?
HILTON: No. I'm going to echo Ben's short answer to your question. The fuller version is, look, she is an accidental prime minister. She was there because she was the last adult standing in the chaos after the Brexit referendum. But she never believed in Brexit. She always saw it as a threat to be managed rather than an opportunity to be seized. As a result, she has wasted three years, achieved nothing either in terms of Brexit or on the domestic front, and frankly she should have made this move a long time ago and allowed the Conservative Party to choose a leader that really believes in delivering the mandate of the people in that referendum.
BAIER: Which is Boris Johnson?
HILTON: He looks like the favorite. They're going to have a new leader by later September when it's their annual party convention. And he's the clear favorite for that right now.
BAIER: That will be fascinating that President Trump trip there. OK, Winners and Losers. Winner first, then loser.
SHAPIRO: I think Joe Biden is probably the big winner this week just given the fact that while everybody is arguing who gets to be mayor of crazy town, Joe Biden is sort of sitting out there just being old Joe, the solid character we all know.
BAIER: And loser.
SHAPIRO: And I think big loser is Beto O'Rourke, who continues to collapse in on himself like a dying star. It turns out that media attention that is directed toward taking down Ted Cruz immediately disappears when you're no longer running against Ted Cruz.
(LAUGHTER)
BAIER: Winner and loser?
MARSHALL: Winner is Tupac Mosley. He graduated as valedictorian. He got $3 million in scholarships all while being homeless. And the loser is Congressman Chip Roy. He blocked passage of the House Disaster Relief bill which most Republicans actually liked.
BAIER: By the way, GOP members are now speaking out about Roy because he delayed that vote on the disaster aid. OK, winner and loser?
HILTON: For Memorial Day my winner a fantastic organization, Pets to Patriots, that provides service animals to our veterans to help them cope with PTSD. This has really proven to reduce that affliction and suicide. It's a great organization, a great cause.
My loser, since we're here on the west coast, San Francisco. A widely read piece this week in the "The Washington Post," how San Francisco broke America's heart, describing it as a train wreck. That city that I know very well is a civic catastrophe. And it shows you what you get whether you have Democrats in complete control.
BAIER: Panel, thank you. Our winners, anybody who remembers that Memorial Day is all about those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for this country. So, when we come back, "Notable Quotables."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BAIER: It's Friday, so you know what that means -- "Notable Quotables."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: With Iran, we will see what happens. But they have been very hostile.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president doesn't want to go to war in Iran, and the Iranians certainly don't want the U.S. to go to war.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He still, as I understand it, still is threatening the United States of America, still committed to the very jihad that he engaged in.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just heard boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it probably lasted maybe 30, 40 seconds. And we opened up the front door and I had a pine tree in my front door.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have a prediction as to who will end up on the throne?
MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG, D-IND., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't know. I thought we were getting -- building up Daenerys, but she's made some highly questionable leadership decisions.
THERESA MAY, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: It is in the best interest of the country for a new prime minister to lead.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The president of the United States needs to be impeached.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This committee will hear Mr. McGahn's testimony, even if we have to go to court to secure it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They need to urinate or get off the pot.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, R-S.C.: After two years of a political rectal exam, nobody has been looked at more than Trump. They found nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just am glad to see today to see that we don't have chicken on the dais.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know what an REO is?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An Oreo?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, not an Oreo.
KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: She treats me like I'm either her maid or her driver or her pilot or her makeup artist, and I'm not.
REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., HOUSE SPEAKER: I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country.
CHUCK SCHUMER, D-N.Y., SENATE MINORITY LEADER: He walked out after three minutes and wouldn't discuss infrastructure.
TRUMP: I'm an extremely stable genius.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: That is one week in Washington.
Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That is it for this “Special Report,” fair, balanced, and unafraid. Have a great weekend, great Memorial Day. "The Story" hosted by Martha MacCallum is next.
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