FOX NEWS: Ratcliffe discusses Mueller investigation

Vice President Mike Pence agreeing with the president, telling me earlier that it's time for Robert Mueller to wrap up this probe. I just said, for the sake of the country. And I think it's time that the special counsel wrap it up. And I think that's probably an opinion widely shared by people all across America. And Hillary Clinton's former top advisor agrees. He wrote a very forceful piece on this today. Joining me now, Mark Penn, former presidential pollster and advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, very involved in this investigation as well. Gentlemen, good to see you tonight. Thanks for being up here on the rooftop with us. Mark, you wrote today that the deep state is in a deep state of desperation. What do you mean? Well, I think that the inspector general's report is coming out. I think Nunes is finding out, like, what are the origins of the investigation. And there doesn't seem to be a real, concrete intelligence origin for this investigation. And without a foundation, one wonders, what did we spend an entire year on? What did we disrupt everyone who was in the campaign, everyone who was in the administration? And I've seen, in 1998, I spent a year fighting this thing with Ken Stark. And I think this thing is just plain wrong and has got to be ended and stopped. The reaction this morning on a lot of channels to the report that the president wants an investigation into what happened during his campaign and who may have been infiltrating his campaign, perhaps to ensnare people involved in the campaign. The words that were used this morning, an abuse of power. Eric Holder says this inquiry is dangerous and threatening. Well, I don't see it as dangerous and threatening. I think the peers at the FBI ran some sting operations. Look, we've really seen here people indicted for unrelated charges in order to flip on the president. So we found people's lives being totally disrupted and ruined in order to get the objective of get the president. Look, we get the president through elections. And if we don't get back to winning our battles on issues and elections, whether you're Democrat or Republican, it's 1998 all over again. And that's the pattern we've seen. We've seen the less they come up with, the more they investigate instead of the opposite. These folks are very unsettled by this whole thing. John Brennan tweeted this today. Let's put it up on the screen and show everybody at home. He thinks that this is an outrage, what President Trump has done. There it is. Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan, if Mr. Trump continues along this disastrous path, you will bear major responsibility for the harm done to our democracy. You do a great disservice to our nation and the Republican Party. If you continue to enable Mr. Trump's self-serving actions, John Brennan has been on a tear on this for some time. Here's James Clapper. So if there was someone that was observing that sort of thing, well, that's a good thing. He's talking about the people in the campaign. Well, Brennan and Clapper and Comey, they all have a lot at stake here. Their decisions are the ones that are being looked at. They're going, the actions that they took are really at the basis of what Chairman Nunes and Chairman Gowdy are trying to get these documents relating to how did this infiltration of the Trump campaign or folks associated with the campaign begin. Again, not the identity of the informant, but the predicate documents, the FBI 302s and the 1023s that will answer the question of whether or not there was an appropriate purpose behind this as opposed to an inappropriate political purpose. I mean, the big question is whether, is how circular this whole thing was, right? I mean, did they have someone, an informant, because they had evidence that there was something going on or did they have the informant because they were trying to bait people into doing something wrong? Right, and that's ultimately the question that these are fair questions. We have to get the answers to that because right now those answers are in classified documents that members of Congress haven't seen. Apparently some members of the media have seen them and that raises questions in and of itself. But we've got to keep pressing on this. Mark raises fair points. We've seen unprecedented actions taken in connection with political candidates and campaigns and the involvement of our intelligence community and our law enforcement community. These are fair questions that the American people are really concerned about. This is a 400 page document, Mark. I mean, there's a lot in there and a lot of folks are sweating it out. Well, that's why I said the deep state is in a deep state of desperation. If this report is really critical of Comey and others in the intelligence community, it will open a floodgate against them. And if you go back and read the McCabe report, you have never seen anyone document, tick tock, minute by minute as this guy Horowitz does. So either that's going to come out and I think Comey will be knocked out as a witness and gone will be obstruction with justice and a lot of other questions will get asked. 400 pages. Do you think it's about a week out? I think a week out from us seeing if the Department of Justice and the FBI have a draft copy of it. It's being reviewed for classified material and other information that may be incorrect. But I assume members of Congress will see in about a week. And, you know, as Mark said, 400 pages, it doesn't take 400 pages to document if everything went just right. Nothing burger. Good to see you, Congressman Ratcliffe. Mark Penn, thank you very much.