In an interview with Sean Hannity from Fox News on Wednesday, President Trump vowed to release the unredacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants and any related documents used by the FBI to investigate his campaign. Trump is eager to “get to the bottom” of how long the Russia collusion theory has been going on. While speaking Hannity, Trump explained that his lawyers had advised him not to release the documents in the past because it could have been considered obstruction of justice.
“I do, I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release. I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers, and they really didn’t want me to do it early on. … A lot of people wanted me to do it a long time ago. I’m glad I didn’t do it. We got a great result without having to do it, but we will. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn’t want me to do it, is they said, if I do it, they’ll call it a form of obstruction,” explained President Trump. “Frankly, though it would be better if we held it to the end. But at the right time, we will be absolutely releasing,” he added.
Accusing them of committing treason, President Trump had quite a number of things to say about the FBI officials who were in charge of investigating the case. Trump referred to FBI Director James Comey as a “terrible guy,” the Democrat House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff as a criminal, and the former director of the CIA John Brennan as possibly mentally ill. There have been previously released redacted copies of the FISA documents that have shown that the FBI relied heavily on the dossier prepared by Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy/Trump-hater who was hired by a firm funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to keep surveillance on Trump and Carter Page. According to text messages received by Fox News last week, there has been at least one senior DOJ official that has shown concern about Steele’s reliability. Steele’s dossier and other related FBI surveillance stirred up the media with the alleged Trump-Russia collusion, which was put to an end on Sunday when Special Counsel Robert Mueller made the conclusion that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the collusion theory. Page wasn’t charged with anything, and he’s in the process of suing the DNC for slandering his character. Late Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul tweeted that ex-CIA Director John Brennan was responsible for pushing the dossier. “I think Brennan’s a sick person, I really do. I believe there’s something wrong with him, for him to come out of the CIA and act that way was so disrespectful to the country and to the CIA. He was not considered good at what he did. He was never a respected guy,” said Trump.
Over the past two years, Brennan was one of the loudest voices to speak out in support of the Russia collusion theory. Just a few weeks ago, Brennan made the assumption that Mueller was most likely preparing to indict members of Trump’s family in a scene that would remind people of the “ides of March,” and Julius Caesar’s assassination. Brennan, who had his security clearance revoked by Trump last year because he claimed that he had inside information about the federal probe, hasn’t received the greatest attention from Trump, who has called his statements “horrible.” Since he made the statements, Brennan has admitted that he was wrong about the collusion theory, even though he stated that Mueller simply couldn’t find enough evidence that would be needed to criminally prosecute someone. Mueller actually didn’t find any kind of evidence that proved that Trump’s team responded to the Russian’s efforts to involve them in their crimes.
During his interview with Hannity, Trump said: “When I said there could be somebody spying on my campaign, it went wild out there. They couldn’t believe I could say such a thing. As it turned out, that was small potatoes compared to what went on. … Millions and millions [spent] on the phony dossier, and then they used the dossier to start things. It was a fraud, paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.”
Just a few hours before his interview with Hannity on Wednesday, Trump made it painfully clear to Republican senators that he was looking forward to selecting a second special counsel to review the source of the Russia investigation. Trump also raised concern for the secret meeting on a tarmac between Bill Clinton and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch on June 27, 2016. While Lynch was meeting with Bill, she was also overseeing the Hillary Clinton email investigation.”I had a lot of planes for a long time. I’ve never stopped the plane on the tarmac to let somebody on the plane. Bill Clinton said he was there to play golf, but I know the area very well. Arizona. It’s a little warm at that time of year for golf, OK?” stated President Trump.
In an effort to bash former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump also told Hannity that “this all would not have happened” if Attorney William Barr had been in his position from the very beginning. Trump also pointed out that several networks have “fallen off” because they have aggressively pushed the Russia-collusion theory. According to the Nielsen company, MSNCB host, Rachel Maddow, had an audience of 2.5 million on Monday, which was 19% lower than her average, but it went down even further on Tuesday to 2.3 million. “If you wrote this as a novel, nobody would buy it; it would be a failure because it would be too unbelievable. We’re getting to the bottom of it. This can never, ever happen to a president again. That was a disgrace and an embarrassment to our country. … Hopefully, they won’t get away with it. We’ll have to see how it all started, but I’m going to leave that to other people, including the attorney general and others, to make that determination. Fifty years, 100 years from now — if someone tries the same thing, they have to know the penalty will be very very great if and when they get caught,” explained President Trump.
Trump also had a few things to say about Adam Schiff, who has been a strong advocate for investigating the possible Russia-Trump link. “Schiff is a bad guy, he knew he was lying — he’s not a dummy. For a year and a half he would just leak and call up CNN and others. You know, I watch him, so sanctimonious … He knew it was a lie, and he’d get in the back room with his friends in the Democrat Party, and they would laugh like hell. In one way, you could say it’s a crime what he did — he was making statements he knew were false. He’s a disgrace to our country.” President Trump insists that the U.S. should have a “great relationship” with China and Russia, but because of “fake news” and “nonsense” his intentions were turned into something entirely different.
Comey was also criticized by the president, who fired him in 2017, for being a “terrible guy.” Trump claims that he didn’t fire Comey because he wanted to obstruct justice. While he was speaking to Hannity, Trump explained that he knew firing Comey would increase the skepticism surrounding the White House. In reference to the texts between former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa page, who discussed an “insurance policy” if Trump was elected, Trump said, “it was treason, it was really treason.” He later said: “You had dirty cops, you had people who are bad FBI folks … At the top, they were not clean, to put it mildly. We can never allow these treasonous acts to happen to another president.”
In regards to a separate issue, Trump has stated that he hopes that the Democrats continue their efforts to push the Green New Deal, which fizzled out during a test vote on Tuesday because most Democrats voted “present” as opposed to voting in support of the deal. “I don’t want to speak badly about the New Green Deal, frankly, because I’m afraid they will stop using it. I really do want to campaign against it. It’s ridiculous,” said Trump. While Trump was being interviewed, several GOP lawmakers claimed that the president could have undermined one of the best weeks he’s had as president by backing the complete reversal of Obamacare. The Justice Department asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on Monday to reaffirm a judgment made by a Texas federal judge who stated that the Affordable Care Act was no longer constitutional because the tax reform legislation of 2017 eliminated the penalty for not having health insurance. Despite a little bit of resistance, Trump vowed that the Republicans would be the “party of great health care.”
