Make no mistake. What the president has been telling you about the russia probe being a hoax and a witch hunt is dead wrong. Thats not from me. Thats according to the Inspector General at the Trump Department of justice. Years of ugly conspiracies up in smoke. No spying on the trump campaign. The investigation was lawfully started. No political bias. There were some errors made along the way and a new fbi head has a slew of changes to make. But none of the mistakes were judged by the Inspector General as adversely affecting any outcomes. The only arguable deepstate activity today was by this president s attorney general, attacking the findings of his own agency and having a handpicked prosecutor to justify his feelings about spying, doing his own probe, and his prosecutor pulled a comey, broke protocol, badmouthed the Inspector Generals findings while talking about his own Ongoing Investigation. So will those accused of treason and worse get an apology . The two men i rely on most about these matters are in fact in the news tonight. Andrew mccabe, former Deputy Director of the fbi, and former fbi general counsel jim baker. Gentlemen, good to have you as always. Thanks, chris. Good to be here, chris. Andrew, what does it mean to new. You know, it means a lot, chris. Its not a happy day quite honestly because this is something that we have expected and been waiting for for two years. I knew that we had not ever done anything wrong, so to see the i. G. Embrace the unavoidable facts of no bias in the investigation, an investigation that was adequately predicated for an authorized purpose and in fact one that we thought we would be guilty of dereliction of duty had we not begun it, it is satisfying to finally see those words in print. Jim, did you anticipate this a. G. Coming out and raining on his own agencys parade . No, i didnt. I probably should have given the statements he made about the mueller investigation. But i did not see that one coming quite frankly, and it was disappointing given, as andy was saying, the conclusions are quite clear that the president s statements over these past several years were all wrong, that there was no hoax. There was no conspiracy to overthrow anybody. There was no sedition. There was no treason. Theres no evidence of any of that. And as you suggested quite bluntly, i think the president should apologize to us. I respectfully asked him to i would ask him to apologize to me, to my colleagues, because the things he said are just wrong. And i think he should step up and do that at a minimum. Its just wrong. Anyway, i didnt see the a. G. s thing coming, and that i found i found it really quite surprising and just not appropriate under these circumstances given what he said and given what the i. G. Had found. Now, you guys on tv especially are 100 gmen. You guys are always stone cold sober. But i have been with you both and talked to you personally. Andrew, how hard has it been for you after all the years of service not asking you to get mushy but just to be honest about it and have this stink on you, that you were part of this cabal, this deepstate effort to take a president down because of your own politics . Chris, i can tell you, and i feel confident speaking on behalf of all of the colleagues that i worked with on this investigation and many others. To spend your life dedicated to protecting america and upholding the constitution and then to be accused by the president of treason and have him further put the suggestion out that the proper penalty for us would be death, i cant describe to you how revolting that is. And quite honestly terrifying. It is just the exact opposite of what we are as government servants. It dishonors the commitments and the work that we did to try to investigate what we now know is a completely valid investigation. And its just a disgusting level of disrespect for the people who serve this country every day. You know, jim, some of the places that youve spoken since youve been out, ive talked to people who have been there. And you, at least in the episodes that ive heard about, you miss every opportunity to say anything about this president and anything about whats going on. And we are all living this perverse reality where we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the president of the United States. But, you know, what andrews talking about, you know, the penalty should be death. Thats not something thats going to affect you hard. Its your family. The idea that your life of service is somehow a function of perfidy, its not just about you. Its your family. Its your friends. How have you handled that . Yeah, its been very hard. I mean i use the word trauma to describe it, and i dont use that loosely. Its been traumatic. Its had a negative effect on me and my family and my colleagues, my former colleagues and friends. Its been extremely difficult. But i had just resolved that i refuse to get down in the mud with anybody. I just refuse. Its not whats in the best interest of the country. So as ive written about, you know, ive tried to deal with the hatred thats come my way and turn that around and deal with it by trying to love other people, by actually trying to love the president and love his supporters. Thats what ive been about. Ive written about that on lawfare, and thats what i think. Its more honorable, and its more likely to help the country because i love the country so much, and i want to do whats right for it. And dragging us down into the mud is not the right thing to do. Thats what ive been about, chris, but its been really hard, and it negatively affected my career. Its affected my friends. Its just been very, very difficult. And you know it wasnt done out of heartfelt belief. You know it was done out of political animus. We see it time and time again. Heres the problem now. Sorry, fellas, but you know this. It aint over. You know this durham report. He doesnt come out today after all we learned about comey and not going out early during an investigation, and what this Inspector General, horowitz, wrote about that. He comes out with an Ongoing Investigation and says, i disagree. We have our own probe going. You know it is not going to be friendly to this i. G. Reports findings. So how do you deal with that, andrew . On one level, im saying to you, hey, good for you. You just got an attaboy. Youre not the bad guy the president says you are. But you know whats coming next. Of course we do. We know that because this false narrative that weve been dealing with and living under for the last two years is very important to the president politically. And this attorney general has shown time and time again that thats his priority, holding up the president s political narrative, not protecting the institution or trying to make the fbi better or acknowledging the good work that people in the fbi do, but rather perpetuating the president s falsehoods. So i have no doubt that that will continue. Both barr and durham made clear today that they have, to some degree, prejudged the result in barrs investigation, and so now we will continue the waiting game to see where that comes out. Hey, jim, the president sometimes watches this show, is certainly told about it on a regular basis. Makes my life a bowl of cherries. What would you like to say to him . What would you like him to know . He should know that we were trying to do our jobs for the country. We were trying to protect the country from russia. This was always all about russia. And as shown by the Mueller Report and the indictments, the russians are trying to hurt the country, and i call upon the president to step up to the russians and insist that they cease and desist from any efforts to interfere in our elections. And he needs to put the interests of the country ahead of his own political interests at every turn. He should come forward with respect to the impeachment. He should let everybody cooperate with that inquiry and get to the bottom of it. Let the secretary of state, mr. Bolton, and every else cooperate. Always put the interests of the country first. Put your personal political interests second. As you guys know, we always play it straight here with you guys. There were things that came out in this report about mistakes. Theres a list i think of three dozen or maybe 40 changes that the fbi director, mr. Wray, wants to make. I want to ask you about the findings and the fixes, and i want to ask you about the likelihood and the impact of this information that came out about that dossier author, Christopher Steele, the british agent being friends with ivanka trump, and we never heard about it, and theyre saying hes out to get the president , and theyre saying if anything, i was predisposed to like him. Every time you think it cant get more wacky, it does. Stay with me. Well be back in a second. Stay with cnn. Man sneezes skip to the good part with alkaseltzer plus. Now with 25 more concentrated power. Nothing works faster for powerful cold relief. Oh, what a relief it is so fast but he wanted snow for thelace holidays. So we built a snow globe. Ill get that later. Dylan but the one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with homeowners insurance. What . Switching and saving was really easy i love you what . Sweetie hands off the glass. 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Td ameritrade now offers zero commissions on online trades. All right. Lets just be very clear about this Inspector General report. It matters. Were going to get to what the articles of impeachment look like. I have one of the players coming on, congressman jamie raskin. But this matters. Weve had two years, okay, of our president and his defenders saying, it was all bogus, this russia investigation. The way it was done was dirty. It was political bias. The only ugly politics being played are by him and now arguably his attorney general. Im going to save that argument for the argument. But there are these two things that came out of this report that we have to deal with, okay . One, totally wacky, would have never believed it if it didnt come out. Christopher steele is that former british agent that did the dossier, worked for that outfit that in part was paid by the dnc to do this investigation on trump with his sources, right . The president has bashed this guy as proclinton again and again and again. We learned today hes friends with his daughter. The man is friends with ivanka trump. Abc news reported it first. We followed it up. We have it now. How do you make it up . Lets bring back Andrew Mccabe and jim baker. I would have bet 50 pairs of glasses like you guys match up with every day that you would never, ever get any kind of tieinli like it, but here we a, andrew. The guy is supposedly out to get you. Hes friends with your daughter and gave her a kilt, or whatever you call it. Something with a t. Give me it so i dont disrespect a tartan. What do you make of that . All you can say, chris, is that now Christopher Steele has to be added to the long, long list of people who have been unfairly and inaccurately vilified by the president has being supposed political enemies. The simple fact is he has had a long i read in one piece of reporting, sevenyear relationship, friendly relationship with ivanka trump. That is not the stuff that leads to someone out there plotting to overthrow the president or to try to drum up Bad Information for that purpose. Look, even jim baker almost smiled there. Do you have teeth . There they are. How about that . So, jim, this is the interesting part about this, is that how did it not come up . You know, your father is out there beating this man like a pinata on a daily basis, and it doesnt come up that, hey, by the way, dad, i know him. Hes a pretty solid guy. You know, hes been good to me. Hes a friend. Actually were going to do some business with him at one time. How does it not come up . Because the facts that dont fit the narrative are discarded and ignored. Thats what weve been dealing with for several years now, that the president has a narrative about what happened, and hes pushing that for political reasons and facts that dont fit it, he discards. That was his reaction today, i think, to the i. G. Report. Hes still making these statements about how there was this attempted overthrow of the government and so on. There wasnt. There is no evidence of that. There are no facts to support that, and yet he keeps repeating it. So with ivankas supposed relationship with Christopher Steele, it does not fit the narrative, so it was not brought forward. Right. Look, im not making any suggestions about the type of the relationship. I mean its just, you know, if you know somebody and you kind of trust them and youre thinking of doing business with them, certainly, if anything, as he admitted steele if i had any disposition it was to be friendly with the trump family. I wasnt looking to come after them. I like her. The other thing that came out in this, the exact kinds of concerns about investigators using what they like and leaving out what they dont like. There are about a dozen to 17 instances in this report, not of making things up but basically sins of omission. Andrew, the one that grabs the headline is that a staff lawyer altered a document in a fisa application yes, a fisa application is a gazillion pages. Theyre very thick. They go through all these Different Levels of review. But faking a document . Hes now under criminal investigation. Do you acknowledge and own the mistakes . Absolutely. Absolutely. That particular mistake youve referred to, thats a very, very serious allegation, changing a document to alter the substance of whats communicated is something that no fbi personnel should ever be involved in. So im not going to prejudge the young man. I know that it is currently under investigation. Well see where that goes. With respect to the other inaccuracies in the fisa and omissions. Omissions. Yeah, look, that is not what the fbi should be doing. We should be perfect in the facts that we represent to the dort and t court and the way we present facts in a transparent and fulsome way. It seems in this case we didnt do that. Those mistakes should be rectified and people should be held accountable as appropriate. But lets remember even the i. G. Determined that none of those mistakes he didnt find any indicators that those mistakes were intentional misrepresentations or omissions to the court. It was rather a matter of sloppiness or mistakes or what have you. Right. I dont buy it because im an investigative journalist and im the guy who is usually fighting with you people. Im not usually in the business of having to defend democratic institutions. Usual lly its politicians beatg me over the head with that. James baker, this is the idea of restoring peoples faith in the institution. The argument will be, so they left out what they didnt like and then the i. G. Says it didnt affect the outcomes. How did it not affect the outcomes if they left things out . What do you understand about the process that sheds light on that . The process needs to have the highest degree of integrity and the lawyers and the agents need to have the highest they need to adhere to the highest duty of candor to the tribunal, to the court, and they need to hold themselves to high standards. The stuff weve been talking about is just completely unacceptable. It should not happen, and obviously we need to fix the process. Ive been involved in this battle to make sure that pleadings in front of the fisa court are accurate. Ive been working on this for 20 years or so, and its been a problem for lots of reasons, and you need good processes. You need good procedures. But you need to make sure that you have the right people in place and, you know, i share part of this responsibility in terms of management. I didnt know about the facts that are articulated in the i. G. Report, but i was part of the Management Structure there as well andy, as was jim comey, and i think collectively we all take responsibility for that. And i support the efforts by director wray to fix this. I agree and support that and would be happy to help in any way i possibly could. Were going to put out an invite to him. He says he has about 40 changes he wants to make to make the process better. I invite him on the show. Were going to do it formally to come on and talk about the changes and why it makes the agency better. Were all about testing what our agencies do, our institutions do. Andrew mccabe, jim baker, thank you very much for being with me tonight. Its not over for you guys because youre stuck in a political vortex, but im sure its a little validating to get some of the facts out tonight and clear away a little bit of the fog that this president has put over the agency and over you both personally. Thank you for being with me tonight. It is always an honor for me to have those gentlemen on my show. They are good men. They did a good job, and now you had an Inspector General vouch for that. Now, another main fbi trump target has something to say tonight. The name peter strzok, right . Killed by those Text Messages with lisa page. Look, hey, they had an indiscretion. They made a choice, no question about it. But it became a metaphor for this deep state nonsense. His lawyer is here next. What is strzoks take . What does the report mean . What is the reality . Next. My body is truly powerful. I have the power to lower my blood sugar and a1c. Because i can still make my own insulin. And trulicity activates my body to release it like its supposed to. Trulicity is for people with type 2 diabetes. Its not insulin. I take it once a week. It starts acting in my body from the first dose. Trulicity isnt for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic