opened a case into the allegations that the government of russia had made an off of assistance in the potential involvement of members of the trump campaign. i cannot envision a scenario that would not be a reasonable presented case to open an investigation. it s papadopoulos. that s not what they had. you didn t quite get there. i know comey may have said that but you didn t get there. papadopoulos, that s weak. the characterization was that it was a credible source of information, stands on its own. i don t think anybody in this committee would argue that. one, it wasn t appropriate to argument that and it wasn t we have questions about whether it was appropriate because we don t have the underlying information. we read in the new york times from leaks your time of the gentleman has expired. regular order. regular order. the chair recognizes the gentleman mr. chairman, there s a second element of the question
time remaining, what should we conclude? what raises eyebrows about members of a presidential campaign talking about dirt from an opponent and lying about the nature of that meeting? why should that concern the american meet something. i don t want to talk about an ongoing investigation. i hesitate and i don t want to do that in this context. thank you. mr. chairman, i d like to note for the record, we ve had zero hearings in the meddling. zero hearings about our efforts to security the democracy coming up in november. hundreds of hours devoted to hillary clinton s e-mails, this committee has failed to security our elections which is a responsibility for the american people. when we have an opportunity, instead we re going to talk
three corporate entities have been indicted in connection with the trump russian collusion investigation, right? i don t know. they have identify 75 different criminal acts, correct? i haven t tall led them up. there s been five guilty pleas, true? i m not certain. paul manafort has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the united states of america. he s been charged. i don t know the specific crimes. he s sitting in jail as a result of alleged witness tampering. yes, sir. michael flynn has pled guilty to lying to the fbi, correct? yes, sir. trump s deputy campaign manager has been indicted for conspiracy to defraud the united states. he s been indicted. i don t know the charges. george papadopoulos, a former trump campaign national security adviser has plead guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with russian spies during the campaign.
but let s go. let s go. we have already passed the who gives an f one more ad versus an investigation leading to impeachment. i think we ve established that there is a school of thought that you can be impeached even if you re not a current office holder. you can be barred from holding office in the future. but you did not engage in any impeachment analysis in your 0 this 2016 investigation with secretary clinton. you saved that for candidate trump. so i want if go to another text. you and i both know the odds are nothing. if i thought it was likely, i d be there, no question. now, this is the day after mueller was appointed. when you said be there, are you talking about on his team? yes, sir. i hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern. there s no big there there. so in addition to disappointing the hell out of my democrat
big mistake by putting those text messages on your business phone. you opened your personal phone and here we are talking about this mess when it isn t important. because the other thing that i know, mr. strzok, is that even if you do have biases, you did not influence the outcome of this investigation. the i.g. found that the outcome of this investigation was predicated upon evidence and information. the other thing i know is that no matter how much you dislike hillary and/or donald trump, you didn t have anything to do with either one of them getting elected. you have nothing to do with the president of the united states disgracing this country every single solitary day when he embraces our enemies and sucks up embraces our enemies and