FOX NEWS: Ratcliffe discusses the FISA memo

Joining me right now is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity Committee, member of the House Judiciary and Ethics Committees, Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas. Congressman, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us. You bet. Hi, Maria. I want to get to the FISA memo because I know that you are only one of three members that actually have seen the underlying data. But let me just kick off where we just ended with Blake. Would you support a bill that offers a path to citizenship for the Dreamers without funding for a border wall? Well, I think if we get, as Republicans, if we get border security, if we get an end to chain migration, if we end diversity lottery, we've got to give something in return. And so some sort of, whether it's citizenship or some sort of renewable legal status to some percentage of the Dreamer population, I think Republicans would be on board with that. And so you think that the Republicans will be on board, even if it doesn't include actual funding specifically for the wall? Because isn't that what the president said? Oh, no. This is OK. Yeah. No, no. I didn't think so. It absolutely. So in the past, the mistake that we've made is people have talked about authorizing a wall. We need appropriation. We need a trust fund of money set aside to make sure that the wall is going to be built. Can't be checks in the mail. So I think Republicans would demand that. But to the earlier point, I don't think at the end of the day, the Democrats want to deal on this. They don't want Donald Trump to solve the immigration problem in the country. That'd be the worst thing for Democrats. So I think it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard to at the end of the day for Democrats ultimately to do that. Well, that's what I'm saying. I feel like they're in a box because the president is offering much more than they initially wanted. If they say no now, then you have to question if they actually just just want to resist everything this president offers. Absolutely. I mean, that's been the strategy for 15 months, right? It's been resist and obstruct. And so, you know, I expect that strategy to continue. And again, they do not want Donald Trump to be successful. The economy is booming without the help of any Democrats on tax reform. They certainly don't want Donald Trump to solve the immigration problem and have Latino voters say, huh, maybe we should vote Republican from now on. Yeah. Congressman, let me move on to this market selling that we're seeing. We're seeing renewed pressure this morning after suffering the biggest declines in more than a year on Friday, even though the backdrop to the economy seems pretty good with the two hundred thousand jobs created in the month of January. The Atlanta Fed talking about a five point four percent economic growth and of course wages growing at the fastest pace in more than eight and a half years with two point nine percent move that we saw in the jobs report. Your take on how worried we should be about what's taking place in public markets. Well, I think folks are a little bit skittish, frankly, about some of the other things that are happening in Washington with respect to, for instance, investigations into the Department of Justice and the FBI. You know, the the market drop on Friday coincided with the release of this memo. Right. People's faith and trust in the justice system being shaken can have an impact on the market. But the good news, Maria, is the tax cut and jobs bill, you know, cutting the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. That's a jet fuel in the long term that's going to keep this economy humming. So let me get to the memo and what you've learned, Congressman, because you are one of only a handful, three, in fact, congressman or three members of the GOP who have seen the underlying data and content below this FISA memo. What's most important that we need to focus on in the memo and what and from all of this content that you've actually viewed? Well, from my perspective, it's the fact that there was not full disclosure to the FISA court. And again, the FISA court is one where the government gets to present its case by itself. And so when we give the government strong surveillance tools, law enforcement tools, especially when those are used against American citizens, it comes with an obligation for there to be full disclosure. And the fact that the FISA court here, with respect to the initial application and each of the renewals, was not advised that the central piece of evidence upon which the warrant was granted, the Steele dossier, was paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign and was put together by an avowed anti-Trump person who was bent on making sure that he would not get elected president. Those are facts that the FISA judge should have known before allowing a warrant to be issued against a Trump campaign associate. So they didn't tell the FISA judge that the Democrats and Hillary Clinton campaign paid for what was largely the evidence that they were using to get the FISA warrant in the first place. But they didn't do that once, right? They did that a total of four times, which is really stunning to me. Did they keep using the same FISA evidence, did they keep using that dossier as evidence for four times? Or was there new information to allow them to go back and renew it? Because they renewed it three times, correct? They renewed it three times, right. And each time, the FISA application gets thicker. So I've reviewed all four of the FISA, or the application and all three of the renewals. And essentially, it is four phone books worth of information that was submitted. And it grew each time, because one of the things that they had to do was to tell the court that as a result of the warrant and the information that they were getting, that the investigation was proceeding, that they were essentially fruits of the warrant there. And so that's why more information was involved. But at the same time, I think that's troubling, because in the instance of Carter Page, I think the additional information clearly showed that he was not in a position to influence Trump administration officials with respect to Russian policy. And so I think not just the initial application based on the Steele dossier, but each of the renewals was in question because of the lack of information to support it. So what does this tell us about the special counsel? What does this tell us about this investigation that's ongoing, looking at President Trump and his coordination or lack of with Russians? Well, remember the charge to special counsel Mueller was to look into Russian interference in the election, including any links to the Trump campaign or administration. So what it tells us is that Carter Page is not a link to any Trump-Russia collusion. It doesn't mean that Bob Mueller can't continue to look at other individuals, folks like George Papadopoulos and others. So that's why this does not end the Mueller special counsel probe. But I do think what it shows is that there are still no eggs in the Trump-Russia collusion basket, the basket that Democrats have been counting on for so long, and there's still no evidence of that. And I think, Maria, you and I have talked about this before. Washington's a town that can't keep a secret for 10 minutes, much less for the better part of two years. And if there was evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, Adam Schiff would be holding a press conference about it. And he would have leaked it already. Let me ask you this real quick. What should we be looking for going forward? I know that there are more texts and more memos to come, correct? More texts. There's going to be more interviews. The intelligence investigation is continuing, so they're bringing in more folks. The investigation that I'm doing with the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform, we're proceeding. We've just got to keep our foot on the gas here. We will be watching that, Congressman. Thank you so much, Congressman Radcliffe. We'll see you.