of 27 seconds, but director, i think you made it clear that you think it unethical, to put it politely, to tout a foreign service like wikileaks publishing stolen political documents to a presidential campaign? certainly calls for investigation. thank you, director. we re to go now to mr. crawford. after mr. crawford, we ll take a five or ten minute break. thank you, mr. chairman, mr. mueller for being here. peter strock concerned there s no big there there in the trump campaign investigation. did strck or anyone else tell you ten months into the consideration the fbi still had no case for collusion? who? can you repeat that? peter strck. there s a quote contributed to peter strck. he testified about his concern that there is, quote, no big
no answer for the exoneration. when did it become the department justice s responsibility to exonerate people? absolutely no answer for how you can investigate russian interference on this day but nothing about the connection with fusion gps the day before or the day after. and no explanation for how much bias is acceptable. peter strzok, we re gonna kick you off but keep other people who manifest bias. his answers aren t better than they were this morning. what do you know about that? there are a lot of folks out there, particularly democrats, who think that s all hog wash, that the whole thinking about fusion gps or looking into the origins of the investigation is just a buzz word for republicans who think there s more to that part of the story. no, i think there s clearly messaging going on here. i think it s coming from the white house. it s basically to say, put the democrats on the defensive. clearly the president is the one who s on not literal trial, it s not impeachment,
there there in the trump campaign investigation. did he or anyone else who worked on the fbi s investigation tell you that around ten months into the investigation the fbi still had no case for collusion? no. has the inspector general report correct that the text messages from peter strck and lisa page s phones were not retained after they left the special counsel s office? it depends on what you re talking about. the investigation into peter strck went on for a period of tim time. did you ask the department to authorize your office to speak to that? it goes to internal deliberations. the circumstances concerning the origin of investigation have
it began with adam schiff, who has long said that there was a lot of very specific evidence of collusion between the trump team and the russian government. he began today by peppering that a little bit, saying that there was not a provable crime but that there was a clear demonstration of what he called disloyalty to country and he believes that is a very serious matter that he wanted to question him about. also mentioning devin nunes, who was a big part of all of this as well. he was sort of laying the ground work for the investigation beginning prior to where everybody thinks it began, in the summer of 2016 and george papadapoulous, he tried to back it up to june 2016 and an invitation that went out to carter paige and steven miller. then you heard him at the end there sort of talking about whether or not he wanted to make sure robert mueller was
were you and your team permitted to access all of though documents? again, i can t get into that investigative, what we collected and what we re doing with investigation materials. let me ask it this way. was there any limitation in your access to documents related to the counter intelligence? that s such a broad question, i have trouble answering it. did special counsel s office under take any effort to investigate and verify or disprove allegations contained in the steele dossier? again, i can t respond. the reason i m asking, for the american public that is watching, it s apparent that the steele dossier formed part of the basis to justify the fbi s counter intelligence investigation into russian interference in the 2016 election. as we know, it was used to obtain an fisa warrant on carter paige. this is why i m asking these questions. did your office under take any