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BARTIROMO: Joining me right now with breaking news is Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham.
He has an exclusive newly declassified document that he says proves the FBI applied that different standard of justice to Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump.
Senator, it is good to have you this morning. Thanks so much for joining us.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Thank you.
Well, so, this is the mother of all double standards. What did we...
BARTIROMO: Take us back to 2015, yes.
GRAHAM: OK.
BARTIROMO: Go for it. Yes, tell us about it.
GRAHAM: So, Hillary Clinton announces for president on April 20 -- OK.
In April of 2015, Hillary makes an announcement: I'm running for president.
It was pretty well-known. In March of 2015, the FBI finds out about a plot by a foreign government to lobby her campaign and funnel millions of dollars into the Clinton campaign illegally. They open up an investigation. They want a FISA warrant against a Clinton operative who is connected to the foreign government.
What happens? The FBI's seventh floor says, we're not going to let you get a warrant until you defensively brief the Clinton campaign. In October of 2015, FBI personnel met with the Clinton campaign to tell her about the problem, so she could fix it. They never issued the FISA warrant. That was the right way to do business.
Forward to 2016. Four counterintelligence investigations opened by the FBI against the Trump campaign, they never tell him about it, so he can fix it. They give him a generic briefing about general threats you need to watch out for as a campaign. Not only did they not mention Flynn, Papadopoulos, Manafort, any of the people.
They sent an FBI agent into the generic briefing to spy on Flynn and Trump to monitor their behavior when they gave them the general briefing and did a 302 summary of the defensive briefing. They used it as a way to spy on Trump. And they informed Clinton about the problem she was facing, so she could fix it, the ultimate double standard.
BARTIROMO: This is unbelievable.
So, we have these documents to show on air. And these documents, which are now declassified, show that they found out in March of 2015 that, in fact...
GRAHAM: Right.
BARTIROMO: ... there was a foreign government trying to get Hillary Clinton elected. Which foreign government was it?
GRAHAM: I can't tell you that, but there was an effort by a foreign government to funnel money into her campaign. They picked it up in March. The FBI wanted a FISA warrant to follow the activity.
The seventh floor, the leadership of the FBI, said, no, you can't get a warrant until you defensively brief her. They did that in October. They gave her a chance to fix the problem. I assume she did.
They never did that to Trump. They never told Trump, oh, by the way, you have got a Carter Page problem, you have got a Papadopoulos problem. As a matter of fact, not only did they not tell Trump. They used a generic briefing to spy on Trump.
And the seventh floor comes into play again in 2017. The FBI field office wanted to close the Flynn investigation out. They wanted to drop General Flynn from Crossfire Hurricane because there was no there there.
The seventh floor, through Strzok, told them, keep it open. So, the seventh floor is insisting that Clinton get briefed before you can get a warrant in 2015. The seventh floor is insisting you keep a surveillance open on Flynn, when the professionals wanted to close it.
The seventh floor at the FBI was a political operation in the 2016 campaign. And people in that seventh floor need to be fired and/or go to jail.
BARTIROMO: And so the seventh floor, meaning the offices of Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe, on the seventh floor. The seventh floor was the leadership of the FBI?
GRAHAM: This is important for your audience.
Foreign governments are going to try to influence our democracy for the rest of our lives. We need to have tools to find out about that. And when you find out about a foreign government trying to influence a campaign, you need to protect the campaign, not spy on it.
They did it right for Clinton. They used the counterintelligence investigation to spy on Trump. That is a double standard. That is political bias. And I'm hoping Durham is looking at this.
I cannot tell you how inappropriate it is to do what they did to Trump. They never told him about the problem. They used the problem as a way to spy on him.
BARTIROMO: And they had four investigations going into the Trump campaign, right? You had George Papadopoulos.
GRAHAM: Yes.
BARTIROMO: You had Carter Page. You had General Flynn. And Sam Clovis, was that the fourth one?
GRAHAM: You had Page, Papadopoulos, Flynn. And let's just put it this way. There was four.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GRAHAM: They never told Trump, by the way, we're looking at people in your campaign, you may have a problem.
But remember this. They found a foreign government wanting to give Hillary Clinton millions of dollars, and they let her know about it, so that didn't happen.
BARTIROMO: Right.
GRAHAM: They did anything to protect Trump.
A counterintelligence investigation is supposed to protect the American interests against foreign influence. When it came to Trump, they didn't try to protect him. They tried to set him up for failure.
So, I hope some Democrat cares about this. If it can happen to a Republican, why can't it happen to a Democrat? This is an abuse of the counterintelligence program designed to protect American from foreign influence.
When it came to Trump, they used this as a tool, a political tool, to get a man they didn't like and didn't want him to be president. This is a very big deal. And I hope Durham is looking at it.
BARTIROMO: So, she -- and she was able to fire that person who was complicit in trying to help a foreigner get money into her campaign. She was able to fix the problem.
GRAHAM: Yes, and they never allowed Trump to fix the problem.
BARTIROMO: That's right. I understand.
GRAHAM: They actually used a generic briefing to spy on him.
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.
GRAHAM: They sent an FBI agent into the briefing to spy on the candidate and General Flynn.
Dianne Feinstein, they found out that one of her drivers was connected to the Chinese intelligence service. They told her about it, so she could fire him. They never did this for Trump. They did it for Clinton. They did it for Feinstein.
Now, why didn't they do this for Trump? Because they were out to get him. How much more evidence do you need that the FBI was a political operation in 2016?
BARTIROMO: All right, real quick, I got to ask you about Bill Priestap, because the last time you were on with us, you told us that you were going to interview him this past week.
That interview didn't happen, did it?
GRAHAM: No, his lawyer contacted us and put conditions on the interview that are not acceptable.
But I'm going to subpoena him. It was Bill Priestap who gave the Senate Intel a briefing about the reliability of the subsource in 2018 that basically whitewashed the actual evidence. They told the Intel Committee the subsource was reliable.
We know, in 2017, it was all a bunch of garbage. So I'm going to turn that over to Durham. And I need the Senate Intel Committee to work with me. You were briefed by the FBI in 2018 about the reliability of the subsource. You had suspicions. And I'm here to tell you, you were lied to.
So, I need word your help to get to the bottom of that. This is a complete double standard from day one.
BARTIROMO: Well, he knew you were going to call. He had initially said, I will come voluntarily.
But then I guess maybe he saw you talking about it. We talked about it just last week. And then he called and said, well, the only way he's coming in, with these conditions.
You said, no, there's not any conditions around this.
GRAHAM: Yes, we want to get to the truth.
Now, I'm not a prosecutor. I can't prosecute anybody. I can't fire anybody. Durham is a good guy. Barr has been great in declassifying this. Director Wray has helped me.
But Director Wray needs to clean house over there. And the bottom line is, I don't know what Mr. Priestap did or didn't do. But I know the briefing given to the Intel Committee was an absolute lie about the reliability of the subsource.
And I'm going to get documents tomorrow to find out how that briefing was put together. And I'm going to turn it over to Durham, because it does sound to me like there was an effort to mislead the Senate Intel Committee a year after the FBI knew better about the subsource.
BARTIROMO: Well...
GRAHAM: If they had told the Senate Intel Committee the truth about the reliability of the subsource, it would expose their lie to the FISA court.
BARTIROMO: Senator, you're doing a great job in terms of unearthing all of these things and communicating it to our audience.
We so appreciate your time this morning, sir. We will be watching your work. Thank you.
GRAHAM: And final -- why am I finding this in August of 2020?
BARTIROMO: Go ahead.
GRAHAM: Why has it taken this long? Why has it taken this long?
I have got a great staff. We just stumbled upon this. There's probably more out there.
BARTIROMO: Your staff did a great job.
But you're right. The FBI has been sitting on documents for years, unwilling to give up any of this stuff. We have finally got them now. And they are being unearthed.
Senator Lindsey Graham, thank you.
We will be right back.
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