department inspector general michael horowitz s testimony before the senate judiciary committee. his report on the conduct of the f.b.i. during the 2016 presidential election. ken, welcome back. we re about to hear opening statements from the chair of that committee, senator lindsey graham who has described what he called a criminal conspiracy to defraud the fisa court. your expectations for what we re about to see and hear in the hearing room. we re going to hear a tale not of negligence, not of foul-ups, but of deliberate wrongdoing of the most profound kind that really does take us back to the bad old days of the f.b.i. and j. edgar hoover. i think we ll be morally outraged and should be. the issue what was motivating this, was it politics or not will be an open question. the key point is, this conduct
find is that a lawyer supervising the fisa process at the f.b.i., according to mr. horowitz, doctored an email from the c.i.a. to the f.b.i. and he is going to be referred for criminal prosecution. why is that important? carter page, who has been on the receiving end of all of this, the foundation to believe he was a foreign agent comes from a dossier that we ll talk about in a minute. in that dossier provided by christopher steele, and we ll talk about him in a minute, they claim that carter page meets with three people known to be russians. russian agents, people associated with russia. carter page, while being wiretapped by his government says i don t know two of these people and to this day there is no proof that he ever met two
i never told steele that somebody working for the ritz-carlton confirmed this. i heard it at a bar. primary sub source stated that he never expected steele to put the primary sub source s statements and reports and present them as facts. they were word of mouth and hearsay. conversations had with friends over beers, were statements made in jest that should be taken with a grain of salt. so in january 2017, the person who did all the assembling of the information for the now famous steele dossier tells the f.b.i., i disavow everything in there. now, what should happen? time-out? let s reassess? maybe we got this wrong. what would you hope to happen?
ally, that trump advisor george papadopoulos had learned in 2016, the month of april, that russia had and was willing to release, quote, information during a campaign that would be damaging to candidate clinton, end quote. the i.g. report found that quote, this information provided the f.b.i. with a factual basis that if true, quote, indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a threat to national security, or both may have occurred or may be occurring. the i.g. also found that when the f.b.i. learned that in late july 2016 the bureau was aware of russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections, including russian hacking of
bill: the inspector general michael horowitz arrived on capitol hill a moment ago. we ll bring you the video when it s here in new york. attorney general bill barr in two appearances yesterday disputed some of the cue findings. here is part of that i felt it was very flimsy based on a completely bogus narrative largely fanned and hyped by an irresponsible press. there were gross abuses of fisa and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the f.b.i. bill: those interviews got a lot of attention across the country. bring in ken starr. welcome back to our coverage here today. we ll see what horowitz has to say over the coming hours. lindsey graham kicks things off