and then that part of the transcript ends with my time is up, thank you. so the member open released today by house republicans, this classified memo that they thought would be the big get out of jail free card, would end the russia investigation, the one actually alarming piece of it or at least kind of shocking piece of it is when they say that chris steele expressed grave worries about donald trump being elected president of the united states. they take that one piece and bold it, tit s the one bold lin in the whole memo. they held it up as proof that christopher steele they don t say it might be because of what he learned about donald trump and russia and compromise and blackmail. what a fiasco. what an embarrassment. oh! there s one.
of the fox news independent abo hype, there is one assertion in this memo that does still really stick out. i think it s designed to seem very worrying. it s an assertion in the memo about christopher steele himself. republicans have tried to make the dossier a scandal. they ve tried to make christopher steele a scandal. he was the head russia guy at mi-6 for years. they ve been trying to make him a dubious person. they ve turned a lot of what are supposed to be the congressional russia investigations into instead full-time efforts to impugn christopher steele and the russia dossier. because republicans have done that, we ve got pretty good public record, documents in the public domain, about the doss r dossier, about christopher steel
don t look at the underlying materials, we don t want to know. we want to publish our memo. this is about a narrative they wanted to tell that they wanted to get out in the public domain and you re right, i would add one other thing to the timeline. this all began on march 20th when james comey testified before our committee in the first open hearing and revealed there was a counterintelligence investigation going on of the trump campaign. we on the committee, the democrats laid out a powerful case why a thorough and objective investigation needed to be done. republicans said they view that hearing as an utter disaster, as did the white house. it s only a disaster if you view your job as protecting the president and not finding out the truth. it was the very next day after that hearing that devin nunes went on the midnight run to his undisclosed location to get these incriminating documents that didn t stand for anything like he represented them and the day after that that he would pre
number of years in the department previously. so they both represent the kind of quality and leadership that we want in the department. thank you very much. reporter: [ inaudible ]. do you still have confidence you figure that one out. the republicans appear to have laid an egg with the big memo release today. but the president reportedly had been convinced by watching fox news channel segments in the lead up to the memo release he was convinced this would offer him all the ammunition he needed to fire deputy attorney general rod rosenstein at the justice department when the president was asked about that today by reporters, does it make you more likely to fire rosenstein and do you still have confidence in him? the president s response was you figure that one out.
and the firm that commissioned it. the republicans have hauled fusion gps up to capitol hill and pressured their found are into giving 21 hours of congressional testimony about christopher steele and the dossier. well, in this member open released today, this is what they say about christopher steele personally, which is designed to undercut him as a source, thereby undercut the dossier, thereby undercut the russian investigation, even though it want based on the dossier. quote, shortly after the election, the fbi began interviewing a senior d.o.j. official, associate deputy attorney general bruce ohr, who had been in touch with christopher steele. quote, for example, in september 2016, steele admitted to ohr his feelings against then-candidate trump when steele said he was, and this is in quotes, desperate