former fbi assistant director. appreciate it, chris. good to be here, ed. how are you? ed: doing great. start with what joe biden said. he said his words are being twisted. he s making it very clear that at the end of the day, the fbi is going to get he said/she said. was he right then or knew think it s possible the fbi is going to get corroboration for the sexual assault allegations? i think uncle joe is right this time. he s right about the fact that the fbi does not render opinions or conclusions. they simply report facts, and it s important to get straight what s going on here. these are called special inquiries. they are not investigations in the traditional sense of the word. they re called special inquiries or spins to draw the distinction. they are interviews and background checks. no wiretaps, no grand jury. there s no subpoena, there s no compelled testimony. they are not full-on
that someone could perjure themselves or lie to an fbi agent. the potential exists whenever an agent goes out and questions somebody, that you would if they lied you would have a potential 1001 violation. this is not a criminal investigation. that would be sort of incidental. we ll see most of the report. you can ask for confidentiality. people can be granted confidentiality whether he they re interviewed by fbi agents in the context of a background investigation. no subpoenas, no grand jury. what s the peril in this for kavanaugh, renato? , well, i think kavanaugh has taken a very aggressive position. for the most part, it s not just that you know, for example, you could imagine him taking the defense that hey, i drank a lot. i don t remember everything that happened but i certainly don t remember ever assaulting someone.
you d have a potential thousand and one violation. but this is not a criminal investigation. that would be sort of incidental. we ll see most of the report. you can t ask for confidentiality. people can be granted confidentiality when they re interviewed by fbi agents in the context of a background investigation. so no subpoenas, no grand jury. what s the peril in this for kavanaugh right now, renato? well, i think kavanaugh has taken a very aggressive position. for the most part it s not just that he for example, you can imagine him taking the defense that hey, i drank a lot. i don t remember are everything that happened, but i certainly don t remember ever assaulting someone. he took a railroad aggressive stance, never blacked out, never did anything like, this never remembers anything of the sort. so since he was so aggressive,
to keep it tight, it was worked in the counter intelligence division at headquarters. you can reasonably disagree with that if you are an fbi person. could have put it in washington field office. could have put it in new york. the decision that counter intention made it will be kept tighter and leak-proof which it was criminal intelligence division. bret: no grand jury. i m not allowed to comment on the way in which the grand jury was used. i will say this though she was not interviewed in front of a grand jury which is another judgment call that prosecutors and investigators make all the time. bret: you thought that attorney general loretta lynch was compromised that you had to do something different because of that tarmac meeting with former president clinton and because she had wanted to call it a matter, correct? and other things. bret: and other things in this classified thing that ends up leaking to the new york times. she denies. this she writes: if he had any concer
clinton s chief of staff, to sit in on that interview? she was potential itly a subject or target in the investigation. she was a government employee. she wasn t clinton s attorney. but, yet, she sits in there and talks with her throughout the interview. yeah. my understanding was at that time she was one of clinton s attorneys. she was no longer a subject in our investigation. the agents had scrubbed her conduct very carefully by that point and she was no longer a subject. that, again, that s a reasonable question. but the facts are not a subject. one of clinton s lawyers. she is entitled to be in the interview. bret: we asked people to tweet in or write in. we have one from jay harper wilson i m a retired fbi agent serving almost 25 years retiring in 1995 as senior equitiesive special agent please ask thursday why a grand jury was not used in the hillary clinton investigation as would be normal and why was it run out of h.q.? book did not address. yeah. second one i will take f