Truth. Those facts. This is so far off field, this is ispolitical. This is totally political. And it is a dangerous moment for our country that the doj has i mean, doesnt the meeting on the tarmac with bill clinton and the airplane look quaint now . Actually, thats a perfect it looks quaint. We have been talking about what feels like a frantic publicrelations effort. Two statements released from william barr on a report hes had for some time. An extraordinary report about ao open,t ongoing investigation. Some of the most sensitive intelligence and Law Enforcement in our country. And now, guess whos weighing in . Guess. Guess. Guess. Donald j. Trump. Lets listen. Okay. Thank you very much. The ig report just came out. And i was just briefed on it and its a disgrace whats happened with respect to the things that were done to our country. It should never again happen to another president. It is incredible. Far worse than i would have ever thought possible. And its its an embarrassment to
round table when it came to this inspector general s report. the president and his allies in the room selecting pieces of this report that they wanted to promote. that they wanted to put out there. and not addressing at all the top line that you have discussed, which is that the authorized purpose was there for the opening of the russia investigation. expect to see a lot of this. we ve already, as reporters who have covered this white house, have been preemptively reprimanded by the white house for not covering this report thoroughly enough. and i imagine that defiant tone is what we re going to continue to see throughout the afternoon. hallie jackson at the white house for us. thank you so much, myou friend. frank. so look, we are officially living in an alternate reality. with what the president has just said, characterizing the ig report. i ve got the entire ig report in my hand. we re we re reading it. i can assure you the president hasn t read it and is lying about it. i ll
investigation. ignoring the facts. nothe letting the whistle-blowe come in. and,e therefore, not letting u know if we ve talked to more than half a dozen sources for the whistle-blower s complaint in the first place. the guy who has to file an addendum with that clarification sentence. but one thing they did do. onece thing they did do in thei report. is they published the phone records of the president s personal lawyer. the phone records of a member of the press. and the phone records of the chairman of the intelligence committee s political opponent, representative nunes. that s what these guys did and that sys their effort to impeac the president of the united states 11 months before an election. gentleman gentleman s time has expired. mr. chairman, i ask unanimous consent. mr. chairman, i d like to focus on the facts of the president s abuse of power. gentlemen. gentlemen. gentleman. i d ask unanimous consent that the report by the majority staff of the house committee
to have two witnesses. and that s that s not hearsay witnesses. none of this stuff that wouldn t be admissible in any decent court. no, a that s two direct-evidenc witnesses that can come in and positively identify themselves. something they overheard or some but actually be witnesses to treason. and yet, this group comes in here. theyp toss treason out in a report like it s no big deal. we can bring in a bunch of hearsay witnesses. and then we ll have the lawyers testify. and then throw a president out of office. this is is so absurd. it s so absurd. now, we have witness come in and we re told he s gonna be a witness. that s why he doesn t have to follow under the rules of decorum. and then i ve never seen this. he gets to come up and grill his opposing adversary witness. i feel like, to be fair, if we were gonna make this thing fair,
tailgaters. right? they re just going to lie. it s not an issue of we re going to change the standard by which we re going to go because it would have made sense for the president to say we re waiting for thet better report with durham. no, they re justwi going to lie. like, who do you believe? your lying eyes or what i m telling you. that s basically what the president is giving us right now. and i g think what we re also going to see, which is also disturbing,e it s not just goi to be, they re going to go back and say horowitz came in with jeff sessions. we don t like jeff sessions anyway. you are going to see a character assassination of the individuals involved inhe putting together this report. they will attack those people as well. and that, i i think that goes to obstruction. that goes to a a failure to protect this country. that goes to treason because a president who constantly undermines and destroys the very government processes that was supposed to be in place to keep