In an extensive interview with Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) went into detail about the events that led to the prosecution of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
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In it, Jordan criticizes former FBI Director James Comey for apparently ethical and potential criminal lapses in the Department of Justice effort.
Transcript as follows:
DOOCY: You know, you’ve kind of been talking about this for a long time. It now looks, now that we’ve seen the documents with our own two eyes, it looks like somebody at the FBI and the Department of Justice was out to get Flynn —
JORDAN: Yes.
DOOCY: Get him — essentially entrap him, have him tell a lie, charge him on that, prosecute him on that so that they could get rid of him and embarrass the Trump administration.
JORDAN: Yes.
DOOCY: A gut punch just at the time of the inauguration.
JORDAN: Yes. No, no, it was worse than we thought.
Remember what happened here, Steve. The FBI, in 2016, spies on two American citizens associated with the Trump campaign. For one of those citizens, they go to the secret court, the FISA court. They take the now famous dossier, the dossier they knew was salacious and unjustified, the dossier that they knew was not — was not true. They used that as the basis to get the warrant to spy on one of these individuals. They don’t tell the court that the dossier is Russian disinformation. They don’t tell the court that it was paid for by the Clinton campaign. And they don’t tell the court the guy who wrote it, Christopher Steele, had already told the Justice Department he was desperate to stop Trump. And now we learn they go after Mike Flynn and set him up just days into the new administration?
What I want to know is why didn’t Bob Mueller tell us this? Remember, in May of 2017, when Bob Mueller’s named special counsel, we were told, this is the greatest guy who’s ever come to Washington. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. He’s the most honest guy since George Washington. Why didn’t he tell us this? And, maybe more importantly, where is Christopher Wray? Why didn’t we learn any of this from him? Thank goodness for Sidney Powell and Bill Barr or we would have never got this information.
BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX HOST: True. So, let me ask you, when you look at these underlying documents that Sidney Powell requested, that the Attorney General Sessions didn’t, that Barr has been offensive (ph), where Sessions seemed to be catatonic. I don’t know what he was doing.
Do you wonder, did Mueller have these documents? And what makes me think he does is because he discovered that Strzok was having an affair with Page and said, these guys got to go because of these text messages. How did he not see these other documents when they were actually working?
JORDAN: Great question, Brian. I have no idea. Bob Mueller had 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, $30 million and two years to do this and we’re just now learning it. Thank goodness Bill Barr put U.S. Attorney Jensen in charge of this to go back and look at the Mike Flynn situation. And, again, thank goodness that — that Sidney Powell has been pushing for this or we wouldn’t get this information.
And, again, I come back to, why didn’t we learn this from Chris Wray? Chris Wray testified in front of the Judiciary Committee two months ago, in February, and he told us with this whole FISA process, you can all sleep well at night. We’ve got it all under control.
Well, guess what, we just learned this information about General Flynn. And, just as importantly, Mr. Horowitz told us just four weeks ago he’s looked at 29 FISA applications, random sample of 29 FISA applications where American citizens have been spied on and he found that in every single one there were major problems.
In four of those 29, they couldn’t even find the Woods file, which is the underlying file they keep of the evidence that they then take to the — to the FISA court. In four of those cases, they couldn’t even find the Woods file. And the FBI director is telling us, oh, we can all sleep well at night.
This — I mean, again, if they can do this to a three-star general, if they can do this to the president of the United States, imagine what they can do to you and me. And, more importantly, imagine what they can do to the 750,000 people I get the privilege of representing in the fourth district of Ohio. That is what’s so troubling about all of this. And Christopher Wray needs to — needs to tell us what he’s been up to this two and a half years that he’s been director of the FBI.
AINSLEY EARHARDT, FOX HOST: Yes, you’re right.
DOOCY: Yes.
EARHARDT: Take politics out of this. This is a man’s life.
JORDAN: Yes.
EARHARDT: This is a general who fought for our country for — for three decades, has two kids, has a family. This has cost him millions of dollars in attorney fees. And he did tweet out the picture of the American flag as to say, the truth will set you free.
JORDAN: I saw that. I saw that.
EARHARDT: Finally, justice in this.
You mentioned that Sidney Powell and Bill Barr, thankfully, they — they’re bringing light to all of this and America will know the truth. But also thank goodness for this guy who wrote down — who wrote down these notes if he was asking questions like, are they asking me to lie because why would you write that down and he put question marks on the end of these sentences, is that what they’re asking me to do?
JORDAN: Yes.
EARHARDT: Almost to say, I’m sitting in a room with my boss. They’re telling me that I have to go and do this and I want don’t agree with it. I want a paper trail. What do you think?
JORDAN: Well — well, first of all, you’re right, the vast — vast majority of FBI agents and personnel are — are fighting hard for the American people every day. But the people at the top — remember what Bill Barr said a year ago. He said there was a failure of leadership at the upper echelon of the FBI. That may be the greatest understatement ever.
Comey, McCabe, Baker, Strzok, Page, I mean, of course there was a failure of leadership. All these people have been fired or let go at the FBI. They’re the ones who coordinated this thing. So that’s where the problem was and that’s what we need to find out. And, again, I come back to this, why didn’t we learn this before? Bob Mueller spent all this taxpayer dollars, did this big, long investigation, was supposed to be the end all, be all. Why didn’t we learn this before?
This is — this is — this so wrong what they did to General Flynn, so wrong what they tried to do to the president of the United States. And the other FISA investigation that Inspector General Horowitz is going, the 29 cases I talked about, this is just — he’s just in the interim. He hasn’t — he hasn’t done his report.
DOOCY: Yes.
JORDAN: This is a major problem. It’s why we need reform in this whole FISA process.
DOOCY: Such a good point. Why didn’t we know this before? Because for the last three years, Jim, this has been Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.
JORDAN: Yes.
DOOCY: And, you know, there is a new sheriff in town. We’ve got Bill Barr. He’s been on the job replacing Sessions ultimately. And — and in January he came out and he said, I’m going to appoint a fellow by the name of Jeffrey Jensen from the eastern district of Missouri —
JORDAN: Yes.
DOOCY: To look into the Flynn case. And that’s where these documents came from ultimately.
JORDAN: Exactly.
DOOCY: Explain how this could be part of a bigger picture on how behind the scenes Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is finally looking into this with Durham and Huber and this Jensen guy to finally give the American people a picture of what happened in 2017?
JORDAN: No. No. Well said. If Bill Barr is not the attorney general, we don’t get this information. It’s plain and simple.
I look forward to Mr. Durham’s investigation being completed. I — I hope there’s going to be a report. The attorney general has indicated he expects something sometime this summer. I look forward to that. I hear good things. But we’ll know when that comes out.
But the bottom line is, what took place before him? What they did, what they did to American citizens, what they did to a three-star general, what they tried to do to the president of the United States, I keep coming back what Emmet Flood said back when — when the Mueller report came out a year — a little over a ago. He said we would all do well to remember, if they can do it to a president of the United States, imagine what they can do to you and I.
DOOCY: Yes.
JORDAN: And that is the bottom– that is why this has to get cleaned up —
DOOCY: Right.
EARHARDT: Yes.
JORDAN: Why we need the reforms put in place so that this doesn’t happen again, so that we can all sleep well at night, which is what Chris Wray told us two months — certainly doesn’t look like that’s the case, but we want to get to that point.
KILMEADE: James Comey’s book, he writes about himself as a hero, talks about how he’s done all these great things in his career and he continues to be — has a lack of self-awareness like I’ve never seen before.
JORDAN: Yes.
KILMEADE: Here he is with Nicole Wallace at “The 92nd Y” reflecting on his wonderful career and how he took down Flynn.
Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You look at this White House now and it’s hard to imagine two FBI agents ending up in the Sit Room? How did that happen?
JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: I sent them.
Something we — I probably wouldn’t have done, or maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration, in the George W. Bush administration, for example, or the Obama administration, there was process. And so if the FBI wanted to send agents into the White House itself to interview a senior official, you would work through the White House Council and there would be discussions and approvals and who would be there. And I thought, it’s early enough, let’s just send a couple guys over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: And those guys had no interest in the story of him talking to Kislyak. They wanted to get the guy out of the White House.
JORDAN: Yes, they set him up.
KILMEADE: And describe — tell me what you make sense of this, Jim. Why would President Obama bring up two things reportedly to President Trump, look out for North Korea and look out for Michael Flynn. What’s going on there?
JORDAN: Yes, no — no, who knows. But the arrogance and the ego of Jim Comey there, that attitude he had, there was process. They should have notified the White House Counsel that they were coming over to talk to Mike Flynn. They should have told him that it was — that they were trying to set — they weren’t square with General Flynn, a guy who served our country, three-star general. It is so wrong what they did. And the arrogance that Comey has. Remember, Comey’s the guy in charge. And all this happened under his watch, McCabe, Baker Strzok, Page, all these key people at the upper echelon of the FBI, to use Bill Barr’s term. This all happened under Jim Comey’s watch. He’s the guy responsible.
And it is — so many Americans are learning now that everything we’ve said now for several years. The only thing we had wrong is it was worse than we thought. And Americans are fed up with this and they want it cleaned up.
KILMEADE: More to come.
EARHARDT: You know, we’ve heard — we’ve had — we’ve had so many people on our show this morning. We had Brett Tolman talking about this. He said they created an investigation. We had Greg Jarrett on. He said this was a setup for perjury. Dan Bongino’s been talking about the FBI saying what they were doing in some of these situations is they would find the criminal and then they’d have to go and find his or her crime.
This is America. This is very scary.
JORDAN: Yes.
EARHARDT: And, you’re right, if — if we don’t hold someone accountable, this could happen to you, this could — anyone who runs for office. We don’t like your politics, we’re going to find a crime that you’ve done. It’s very scary. Will people be held accountable?
JORDAN: I think so. I mean, again, all we can do is highlight what happened.
The other thing we could do, and we’ve been pushing Chairman Nadler to do this, is we can bring in Mr. Horowitz. He’s issued now a couple reports, critical — a scathing report of the FISA process that was used on Carter Page back in December. We have yet to have Mr. Horowitz in front of the Oversight Committee, yet to have him in front of the Judiciary Committee. So he should come in and testify. That should be step one.
As far as holding people accountable, that’s the Justice Department’s job. I trust Bill Barr, I trust John Durham, that they’re going to get that done. But let’s certainly hope so, that someone is held accountable for these major wrongs that took place for — with General Flynn. And, of course, with the whole attack on the president himself during his campaign.
DOOCY: Because, as you just said a moment ago, it’s worse than we thought.
Jim Jordan from the great state of Ohio, joining us today from Columbus. Sir, thank you very much.
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