President Trump Completely Cleared By House Intelligence Chairman
FBI director Comey testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on the
Trump campaigns alleged ties to Russia and claims by the president that Barack
Obama wired tapped from tower joining me here in Washington is the man who will
chair that here in California Congressman Devin Nunez chairman Nunez
welcome back to Fox News Sunday thank you you said earlier this week that you
had your words no evidence of the trunk claim that he had been wired tapped in
Trump Tower by President Obama during the campaign then on Friday you got
response to questions from the FBI on this issue of whether they had any
evidence of surveillance there I know you can't say much about it but based on
what you received from the FBI on Friday do you want to amend your statement that
there's no evidence of wiretap no so I actually said this a couple of weeks ago
that it was you know the president doesn't go and physically wiretap
something so if you take the president literally it didn't happen I think the
concern that we have is that our were there any other surveillance activities
that were used unmasking in Ames for example we know the general Flynn's name
was unmasked and so was there a physical wiretap of Trump Tower no but there
never was and and the information we got on Friday continues to lead us in that
direction well I just want to make that point before you you there is no
evidence that there was any wiretap I'm not talking about President Obama doing
it but I've made his administration no evidence of any wiretapping of Trump
Tower no no there was no FISA warrant that I'm aware of to Trump to tap Trump
towers and that's after you received this information that's accurate
okay so then what's your point so the other the other issue though that's
still remaining out there is the unmasking of names and the leaking of
names and so the result you know we have a lot of surveillance activities in this
country and I think the concern that the Trump administration has is you know
were they actually using surveillance activities to know what they were up to
because we know that that happened to a general flint we know that his name was
unmasked and we know that it was leaked out to the press so the question is did
that happen but our understanding of that
is that that was because you had a regular surveillance not you but I mean
the government had regular surveillance of the Russian ambassador Sergei
Kiselyov what I'm asking you about is something
and I'll get back to the unmasking in a second there's this whole question of
whether there was any surveillance not wiretapping but any surveillance at
Trump Tower and I want to play what Donald Trump said this week here it is
we will be submitting certain things and I will be perhaps speaking about this
next week wiretap covers a lot of different things I think you're gonna
find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks
as I say we're gonna get to the unmasking issue which is a serious issue
in a moment but is do you know what he's talking about is there any evidence of
any surveillance electronic surveillance if he's talking about the unmasking of
names and so if there are other surveillance activities where names were
picked up and then unmasking occurred and that was spread throughout the
intelligence community that is very that is very possible and we don't have the
answers to those questions yet I don't know if the president has those or not
but we had a deadline of Friday for the NSA FBI CIA to get us those names that
were unmasked through the FISA system we didn't get those names on Friday so
until we get those names we can't rule this out you're gonna have a hearing
tomorrow we've been talking about FBI director Comey is gonna be there NSA
Chief Mike Rogers is gonna be there what do you hope to learn at that hearing
well we're excited about this because for the first time the American people
and all the political parties now are paying attention to the threat that
Russia poses so we're gonna highlight that we'll highlight the fact that we
know that the Russians were trying to get involved in our campaign like they
have for many decades they're also trying to get involved in campaigns
around the globe and over in Europe so I think I'd be good to highlight that
secondly we're worried about analytical integrity we don't know how
there were information changed and if information change because in December
beginning in December the assessment was that the hey the Russians were trying to
get into our election process and and and caused problems and so doubt in our
in our system but then that changed among
later and it said no no that they were trying to help Donald Trump so we need
to get to the bottom of that and then also you know whether or not they did
try to help Trump and if any Trump associates or anyone else was involved I
I guess because there's a little confusion here you it's clear that
Michael Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador were swept up by
electronic intelligence and as you say unmasked here's the neighborhood of an
America and that's illegal that was leaked to the public do we believe there
was any specific well do we know of anybody else
other than Mike Flynn who was who was swept up in this well you're you're
right to point that out because the one crime we know that's been committed is
that one the leaking of someone's name through the FISA system that is that is
a crime that's been committed we don't know the answer to that that's what
we're trying to get to the bottom of were there any other names that were
unmasked leaked and leaked out we just don't know that yet do we think there
was any surveillance of people in Trump world or do we think that there was
surveillance of other people at like ambassador ki slack and that these folks
who were talking to them were incidentally swept up in the
conversations in the in the intercepts well if you look at the folks that are
working at the White House today that are involved in the in the Trump in the
Trump administration I don't think there's any one there that's under any
type of investigation or surveillance activities at all when you consider when
you look at what happened to general Flynn it's very very concerning this is
this is someone you know look the president had the right to get rid of
them he's got he's not in the administration any longer but he was an
American citizen he was talking to the Russian ambassador talking to diplomats
in this town as you know Chris is something that happened occurs on on a
regular basis I probably talked to dozen a dozen diplomats a week and you know we
should not be going after our diplomats and making them into as if it's if it's
wrong to talk to diplomats in this town that is their job I want to ask you it's
a little bit confusing and I want to put try to button this down to bottom-line
questions first as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee as you sit
here today but were the hearing on March 20th have you
seen any evidence of any collusion between what I'll call Trump world
associates of campaign officials Trump world and the Russians to swing the 2016
presidential election I'll give you a very simple answer
no no evidence of any collisions and this is after talking getting this
information from the FBI up to speed everything I have up to this morning
there's no evidence of collusion do you believe that there are elements inside
the intelligence community or the FBI that are leaking information like the
name of Mike Flynn like perhaps the the fact that Attorney General Sessions met
with the Russian ambassador to undercut the Trump presidency I think that's
pretty clear and in fact I mean there's very separate well it's pretty clear
that that's happening there's even been stories written about it in in numerous
newspapers talking about how they set the left breadcrumbs around to hurt the
Trump administration so you believe that there are people inside these
intelligence community don't think so anymore I think it was largely people
who maybe who were there had classified information who were now no longer there
and decided to leak it to what end I think to hurt I mean clearly to leak
Michael Flynn's name talking to the Russian ambassador that was clearly
designed to hurt general Flynn and in the president's National Security
Advisor do you think this is all gonna be
cleared up with your hearing tomorrow or not well this is the beginning and what
we're trying to get to the bottom of them this is just the beginning another
week from now a week from Tuesday on the 28th we have an additional hearing with
at least three more witnesses so we're trying to get to everyone who for lack
of a better term was at the crime scene and we're trying to bring them all in
see what they knew when they knew it if they knew about the leaks if they knew
about general Flynn's name being unmasked these are all questions that we
need to get to the bottom of but to make it clear when you talk about the crime
scene you're talking about the leaking of names of Americans that shouldn't
have been leaked as part of our electronic surveillance you're not
talking about anything evolving the Trump campaign because
that's the only crime that we know has been committed right now that we know we
know a law has been broken and we need to get to the bottom of it as it relates
to the Russians we are happy to investigate it because I think Putin is
a bad actor on the world stage two quick questions on other issues Secretary of
State Tillerson has been traveling through the Middle East this week
announcing a change in US policy toward North Korea here he is let me be very
clear the policy of strategic patience has ended we're exploring a new range of
diplomatic security and economic measures all options are on the table
but while Tillerson is in China and here's a picture of it north Korea has
just tested a new rocket engine a couple of questions how urgent is the threat
that North Korea is going to be able to put a nuclear warhead on an ICBM missile
that could hit the US and should we seriously consider the military option
whether it's a strike by the US or getting north South Korea and Japan to
boost their military capabilities the closer that the North Korean regime gets
to being able to deliver a nuclear weapon the we're gonna have to be in a
position to take some type of primitive strike we hope that we it doesn't come
to that but this is this is an unhinged regime you have 20 million people you
know living in extreme poverty and so I'm actually very impressed I've never
met the the new Secretary of State yet but I am happy that we're getting off of
this strategic patience which was our last policy towards North Korea and I
think what would but at the end of the day here something may have to be done
because we can't afford to let a nuclear weapon go off in Seoul or Tokyo or the
United States for that matter and briefly there's a news story today from
out of Turkey in Turkey they are saying that the Trump administration is
considering the extradition of Fethullah Gulen a Islamic cleric who has been in
this country and Turkey wants to get back they say he was the architect of
the attempted coup against Turkish president air21 do you know anything
about that yeah I find that hard to believe
the Ergo government he's becoming very
authoritarian a NATO for a long time has been a strong ally of ours they're
becoming more and more worrisome in terms of actually being a reliable ally
and you know I don't know that we would extradite somebody like that I haven't
seen the evidence for that that the Gulen was involved in anything like that
if he was I mean clearly that'd be a different a different issue but our
relationship with Turkey is strained and I think it's going to become even more
complicated as we as we begin to try to get Isis out of Iraq and Syria
Trevin noonas thank you thanks for coming in and covered a lot of territory
today thank you sir
No comments:
Post a Comment