dnc direct steele s activities. they described him as a fusion gps subcontractor. so the sources from whom you got this story are characterizing this not as the clinton campaign and the dnc telling steele, you know, go write this down for us, go tell us this particular story, they were paying him to find out what he could find out and it was it was self-directed. right. i think i think part of what happens is there is an evolution here and it starts out you know, when a republican donor hires fusion gps at first, our understanding is they re not really looking at russia that closely. it s only later in the election process, you know, roundabout the summer time when steele and the issue of issue really come to the forefront of what fusion gps is doing. yes, that becomes more of an issue as time goes on, and, you know, what we re told is that, you know, the clinton campaign didn t have a ton of interaction with this stuff, however, you know, just as an example of that, a former s
i want them to be well regarded but they can make mistakes like everyone else. if they relied upon an unsourced, unvetted document to launch a really important investigation and use it in court filings, i think our country is big enough to know that truth. if they didn t rely upon us they need to tell us that. they haven t said one way or the other. bill: why has fusion gps pled the fifth? they usually plead it because they think they might get in trouble. they pled the fifth, we took them to court. they were going to lose in court and why you saw the leak last night. the democrats have been fighting us every step of the way to find out who paid for the dossier and whether are not it was relied upon. yesterday they went 15 years back in time to talk about apartment leases and bank loans but they aren t interested in who paid for the dossier and whether or not it was relied
enforcement agency relied on a document that looks like a national enquirer prepared it. bill: did the f.b.i. rely on it or not? you know, bill, i think i can but i want to be able to prove it and the fact that the department of justice not the obama department of justice, the trump department of justice will not give congress access to that information says a lot about why we are looking into the department of justice in decisions they made and did not make. we shouldn t have to ask twice whether or not the f.b.i. relied upon a dossier to launch a counter intelligence investigation. you have to ask once. we haven t had that question answered yet. bill: the f.b.i. continued to pursue this for a period of time after the election last year. what does your hunch tell you as to why you won t get answers out of this department of justice? i don t like to rely on hunches. i think the f.b.i. is interested in preserving its reputation and i am, too.
there s a lot of deflection, is there enough reflection going on? look, i mean, it s so easy to be using the retrospective scope in politics. i prefer not to do that and like to separate out the two presidents and presidents-to-be. i do think that this legitimacy that the idea that the james comey letter 11 days before the election stopped all the momentum for hillary clinton. that i think is so. but i think to try to break this down, you know, hillary got almost 3 million more votes than trump. trump obviously saw something in wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania that the clinton campaign didn t see until it was too late. you know, we can dissect this forever. and i don t think we re going to know until a lot more information comes in. sarah, let me ask you this, no slight is too small for donald trump to tweet his response to. he brought up michelle obama s
romney by 12 points. he did better in wisconsin by 10 points, and the clinton campaign didn t see it coming until it was too late. we want to welcome chris colton, the progressive farmer, a website and magazine focused on the business of farming. chris lives in rural iowa. nicolle wallace remains with us here in the studio. chris, i wanted to have you on ever since your analysis of what we just witnessed in this election. nicolle and i, along with our cast of characters on election night, used those categories for voters that come from the polling business, and they are stigmatizing and minimizing and compartmentalizing. someday we ll look back with amazement that we ever reduced people to these categories. and about halfway through, i realized as a non-college white, i got such a kick out of being told how my voting block was