senate judiciary committee hearing with testimony from justice department inspector general michael horowitz on his report alleging abuses of fisa. mr. horowitz also addressed the justice department's decision to start the investigation into the fbi's russia inquiry. we'll show you how this hearing started beginning with opening statements from judiciary committee chair lindsey graham and ranking member dianne feinstein.

>> thank you all very much and, mr. horowitz, thank you. i really appreciate what you have done. do you have your team here with you? >> i do. >> would it be okay if they raised their hands. is that all right? >> i'm okay with it if they're okay with it. >> thank you all. you have labored hard and your work product is impressive and i just want to thank you all for what you've done for the country and, mr. horowitz, i'm dying to hear from you, but i bet i haven't made 20 minutes of opening statements in a year. i'm going to try to take a little bit longer to try to lay out what i think is before us as a nation. crossfire hurricane was probably the best name ever given to an investigation in the history of investigations, because i think that's what we wound up with, a cross fire and a hurricane. there's been a lot of media

reports about your report before it was issued and i remember reading all of these headlines, lawful investigation with a few irregularities. everything okay, low-level people, kind of got off track. if that's what you get out of this report, you clearly didn't read it. if that's your takeaway that this thing was lawfully predicated and that's the main point, you missed the entire report. how do you get a headline like that? that's what you want it to be. you want it to be that and nothing more. and i can assure you if this had been a democratic president going through what president trump had gone through, that would not have been the headline. the headline would be the fbi takes law into its own hands.

biassed agents cut corners, lied to court, ignored exoneration. so the first thing i want you to know is how the cake is baked here. and my goal is to make sure that people when this is over, whether you like trump, hate trump, don't care about trump, you look at this as more than a few irregularities because if this becomes a few irregularities in america, then god help us all. now, the people that were in charge of this investigation were handpicked by mr. mccabe who's now cnn analyst, high up in the fbi, the number two guy. the first question i will ask in a bit, is this the best of the best? are these people normal

representatives of the department of justice and the fbi? i hope you will say no because i believe it to be no. and if i believed otherwise, i would be incredibly depressed. so, ladies and gentlemen, i'm going to assume something for the sake of argument, that there was a lawful predicate to open up a counterintelligence investigation and i want you to know the standard to open one up is about like that. and i also want you to know a counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. they're not trying to solve a crime. they're trying to stop foreign powers from interfering in america. that a counterintelligence investigation is designed to protect americans from foreign influence. i want the american people to

know there was an effort to affect hillary clinton's campaign by foreign actors. the fbi picked up that effort, they briefed her about it, and they were able to stop it. we will be receiving a defensive briefing tomorrow as a committee from the fbi to tell us all about what we should be watching for and they may be some specific threats against us, i don't know. but i know they're going to brief us to protect us, not to surveil us. and here's what i want every american to know. from the time they opened up crossfire hurricane until this debacle was over, they never made any effort to brief donald trump about suspected problems within his campaign. they had one briefing talking about, you know, the russians are out there, you better be

ware. nothing about carter page, nothing about papadopoulos, nothing about the other people that they thought might be working with the russians. why did they not tell him that? i hope you can give us an answer. bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, a counterintelligence investigation is a good thing until it becomes a bad thing because it doesn't take much to open one and the worst thing can happen is for people to open one up whose real purpose is not to protect an american but to surveil them. senator feinstein found herself in a situation all of us may one day find ourselves in. a long time employee was suspected of having ties to a foreign government. they informed her and she took appropriate action. how easy would it be for somebody to come in our

campaigns as a volunteer. we really don't know who they are. you appreciate any help you could get. i hope all of us would appreciate if you really believe there's somebody in my campaign working with a foreign power, please tell me so i can do something about it. why didn't they tell trump? we'll figure that out later. but i think it's a question that needs to be asked. so for a moment, let's assume that there was a lawful predicate to open up a counterintelligence investigation. what has been described as a few irregularities becomes a massive criminal conspiracy over time to defraud the fisa court, to illegally surveil an american citizen, and to keep an operation open under a sitting president of the united states,

violating every norm known to the rule of law. many of your prosecutors, many of you have been u.s. attorneys, many of you have been defense attorneys, trump's time will come and go. but i hope we understand that what happened here can never happen again because what happened here is not a few irregularities. what happened here is the system failed. people at the highest level of your government took the law in their own hands. and when i say defraud the fisa court, i mean it. to your team, you are able to uncover and discover abuse of power i never believed would actually exist in 2019. how bad is it? it was as if hoover came back to life, the old fbi. the fbi that had a chip on its

shoulder and wanted to intimidate people and find out what was going on in your life and the law be damned. martin luther king and fill in the names. so who ran this thing? the people were handpicked by mccabe, the number two guy at the fbi. the supervisory agent, the deputy assistant director for counterintelligence is peter strzok. he's a big player in all things crossfire hurricane. lisa page, you may have heard of her, who was she? she was an fbi lawyer working for mccabe. these are two central characters in this debacle. let me tell you a little bit about who these people are and where they're coming from.

thanks to a lot of hard work by people from mr. horowitz, the fbi and others, here's what we know. strzok, the front line supervisor, february 12th, 2016, oh, he's abysmal. i keep hoping the charade will end and people will just dump him. the problem then is that rubio will likely lose to cruz. i never quite made it and i ccat understand why they would not consider me a serious candidate. when was the last competitive ticket they offered? march 3rd, 2016, page, god trump is a loathsome human. strzok, oh, my god, he's an

idiot. and newsrooms all over the country are nodding. this representatives the attitude of a lot of people in america and you can have that attitude. but you shouldn't be in the journalism business. you shouldn't be at the fbi. if you were in the military and you said anything like this about a commander in chief, you would be charged with a crime. remember the mccrystal debacle where they had a barroom discussion from a reporter from the rolling stone. what's the takeaway, don't go to a bar with a rolling stone reporter. they started talking about how they didn't like joe biden and i was one of the first people to say that was out of bounds. you can have all the political opinions you want, but if you're an officer in the united states military you will park those opinions and you will not speak ill of the commander in chief. but that obviously is not a rule at the fbi and department of justice. march 16th, 2016, i cannot believe donald trump is likely

to be actual serious candidate for president. july 16th, we're getting closer to when this thing opens. and while donald trump is an enormous douche. a lot of people agree with that. trump barely spoke but the first thing out of his mouth was that they're going to win so big. the whole thing is like living in a bad dream. trump is a disaster, i have no idea how destabilizing his presidency would be. you're entitled to believe that, but you should not be an investigator. july the 30th, the investigation is open. and damn, this feels momentumous about the investigation because this matters. the other one did to, but that was to ensure we didn't "f" something up. this matters because this matters. so superglad to be on this voyage with you. i hope you understand what this voyage was about.

august 8th, 2016, three days before strzok was named the front-line supervisor, he's not ever going to become president, right? strzok, no, no he won't. we'll stop it. these are the people in charge. august 15th, 2016, i want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in andy's office, that there's no way he gets elected, but i'm afraid we can't take that risk that the american people will pick their president is what they're saying. it's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40. august 26th, 2016, just went to southern -- just went to a southern virginia walmart. i could smell the trump support.

people in charge. october 11th, 2016, currently fighting with stew for the fisa. stew was a lawyer who thought this thing was not on the up and up. stood his ground until he couldn't stand it anymore. eventually got run over. october the 19th, i'm all riled up. trump is an "f"ing idiot. is unable to provide a coherent answer. oh, my god, this is "f"ing terrifying, referencing an article entitled a victory by trump remains possible. november the 9th, 2016, are you ever going to give out your calendars? some kind of depressing. maybe it should be the first meeting of the secret society?

november the 13th, i brought all the -- i bought all the president's men. i figure i needed to brush up on watergate. november the 13th, 2016, finally two pages away from finishing all of the president's men. page to strzok, did you know the president resigns at the end? strzok, what? god, that would be so lucky. may 18th, 2017, the date page accepted a position on the special counsel's team. for me in this case, i have a sense of unfinished business. i unleashed with nye, whatever that means. now i need to fix it and finish it. strzok, who gives an "f"?

one more assistant director or whoever. an investigation leading to impeachment. may 2017, you and i both know the odds are nothing. if i thought it was likely, i would be there -- i would be there no question. i hesitate in part just because of my gut sense and concern there's no big there-there. talking about impeachment. may 22nd, 2017, i'm torn. i think, no, i'm more replaceable than you are in this. i'm the best for it. but there are others who can do it okay. you're different and more unique. this is yours talking to page. all right. that's the front-line supervisor and the lawyer to mccabe.

there's a guy named klinesmith who eventually alters an email from the cia to the department of justice and fbi. and mr. horowitz's team found this out and how they did it, i will never know. i'm jumping ahead here. but when you read this report, what they find is that a lawyer supervising the fisa process at the fbi, according to mr. horowitz, doctored an email from the cia to the fbi and he's going to be referred for criminal prosecution. why is that important? carter page who's been on the receiving end of all of this, the foundation to believe he was a foreign agent comes from a dossier that we'll talk about in

a minute. in that dossier provided by christopher steele, and we'll talk about him in a minute, they claim that carter page meets with three people known to be russians, russian agents, people associated with russia. carter page, while be wiretapped by his government, says i don't know two of these people and to this day there's no proof that he ever met two of those three. the third person he says, yeah, i met him. i told the cia about my meeting because i was a source for the cia. so they would have you believe that carter page is working against our government not with our government. so carter page in the summer of 2017 is trying to tell anybody and everybody i was working with the cia.

i reported my contact with this person, and nobody believed him. the cia had told the fbi it was true earlier but it never made it through the system. somebody got so rattled at the fbi, they asked mr. clinesmith to check it out. he checks it out. he communicates with the cia. is carter page a source for you? and in an email exchange, they say, yes, he is. what did mr. clinesmith do, he alters the email to say, no, he's not. and you caught him. i don't know how you caught him because you got to dig into this email chain. it would be like getting a lab report from the fbi, the fingerprints don't match and the agent says they do. that's how bad this is.

so now let me tell you a little bit about mr. clinesmith, if i can find it. this is the lawyer supervising the fisa process. the guy who altered this email because he didn't want the court to know that carter page was a source. if the court had known, then there's a lawful reason for mr. page to be talking to the russian guy. he wasn't working against his country, he was working with his country which undercuts the idea he's a foreign agent. that's why klinesmith lied because he didn't want to stop this investigation. this is after the election. i am so stressed about what i could have done differently. the day after the election, i'm devastated. i can't wait until i can leave

today and just shut off the world for the next four days. i'm sure a lot of people felt that way after trump got elected. maybe still feel that way. but you shouldn't be in charge of supervising anything about donald trump if you feel that way. i just can't imagine the systemic disassembly of the progress we've made over the last eight years. the obama administration. the crazies won finally. this is the lawyer that they put in charge of supervising the warrant process. this is the tea party on steroids. and i'm sure there are newsrooms all over america saying that's absolutely right, what is wrong with that? oh, also, pence is stupid. whatever. this is what the guy is saying. right after the election. and it's just hard not to feel

like the fbi calls some of this, it was a razor-thin in some states. plus, my god damn name is all over the legal documents investigating trump staff. and this is the one that gets me the most, november the 22nd, shortly after the election of donald j. trump, the fbi lawyer in charge of supervising the fisa process tweets out to friends, viva la resistance. what are the odds that this guy might do something wrong? would you have to be part of a right-wing conspiracy to predict in the future maybe this guy will get off script? folks, if these are a few irregularities, the rule of law in this country is dead.

and here's the good news, these are not a few irregularities, these are a few bad people. they couldn't believe trump won, didn't want him to win, and when he won, couldn't tolerate the fact that he won. and all these smelly people elected him. this is bad stuff. if you get out of this report lawful investigation with a few irregularities, it says more about you than mr. horowitz. how the hell did this whole thing start? what got us here today? they open up a counterintelligence investigation in july. we know the russians are messing in our election. and it was the russians, ladies and gentlemen, who stole the democratic national committee emails, podesta's emails and screwed around with hillary

clinton. it wasn't the ukrainians. it was the russians. and they're coming after us again. so to be concerned that the russians are messing with presidential campaigns was a legitimate concern. so they looked around at the trump campaign and said, well, let's see if we can protect the trump campaign? carter page went to moscow a lot, made speeches. if you've ever met carter page, one thing you will not accuse him of is being james bond. this poor guy, papadopoulos, picked by sam cloe vis to be part of the national security team. this team was picked up off the street. if you've had a photo with donald trump, you spent more time with donald trump than papadopoulos and page. they're not paid. they're volunteers. but the fbi thinks we need to

watch these guys so manafort, as well as -- who's the other one? -- flynn. general flynn. they open up a counterintelligence investigation. let's assume for a moment that the small predicate you need has been met. what the hell happened after they open it up? what did they find? were there suspicions validated or did they find at every turn it's really not true and they ignored it? so one of the first things they tried to do was to get a warrant under the foreign intelligence surveillance act to follow carter page, a volunteer for the campaign and american citizen. they apply for the warrant internally in august of 2016 and the lawyers say, you don't have enough. why? because they had nothing. maybe this reasonable articulation is this small, but

to get a warrant from a court, you got to have probable cause. so the lawyer is saying, you don't have it. everybody is now frustrated, folks. that's not the right answer. so mccabe suggests, the number two guy at the fbi, well, let's go look at this steele dossier. maybe that will get us over the hump. just stay tuned. we'll talk about that in a minute. on september the 19th for the first time, they introduce the steele dossier into the warrant application process. it worked. september the 21st, they get a sign-off let's go get a warrant. the dossier got them to where they wanted to go. as you say, mr. horowitz, it was central and basically outcome determinative. without this dossier, they go

nowhere. with it, they're off to the races. who is christopher steele? y you thought these other people were bad, wait until you hear about this guy. christopher steele was a former mi-6, is that right? six, five, whatever it is. he was a british agent. retired. he had a new line of business. he was hired by a company called fusion gps to investigate donald trump. okay. you want to look at foreign influence, you're about to find it. fusion gps is on the payroll of the democratic national party. christopher steele is working for a company to find dirt on trump and the money comes from the democratic party. did they tell the court this?

no. is that a buiit unnerving? it would be to me. so christopher steele is on the payroll of a company funded by the democratic party. here's what bruce ohr tells the fbi about christopher steele. he was desperate that donald trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the u.s. president. this is the guy that gave them the work product to get the warrant. steele told oregon that if trump won the elections, steele's source network may be in jeopardy by a new fbi director and new agency heads appointed by trump who would have a higher degree of loyalty to the president and could decide to take action against steele and his network. let me tell you about christopher steele, ohr was right, he was on a mission to get donald trump. not only did he provide the dossier that made the difference

in getting a warrant, his biases were well known, he was shopping the dossier, do i have it? to anybody and everybody in the media and in politics to see if they would print it. the reason the fbi cut him loose was because they found out he was shopping this thing around to media outlets rather than being a valid source. but after they knew he was shopping around, they kept him around anyway because mr. ohr kept talking to him. bruce ohr's wife worked with christopher steele. she was employed by fusion gps. the wife of the number four guy at the fbi. christopher steele went all over the united states trying to get media outlets to publish this

garbage. the first thing is about the golden shower, about the sexual encounter that president trump supposedly had in a ritz-carlton hotel in russia. let me tell you how i come to find out about christopher steele's work product. in december of 2016, john mccain goes to a national security conference in canada and somebody tells him about the steele dossier and it's bad and you need to know about it. and it gets to john mccain. john mccain puts it in his safe, he gives it to me and i read it. and the first thing i thought of was, oh, my god. one of two things, this could be russia disinformation or they may have something on trump. if you read this document, the first thing you would think of is they got something on donald trump.

it is stunning. it is damning, it is salacious. and it's a bunch of crap. they finally find the guy that prepared all the information but a little bit about steele. in 2015 the british intelligence service said, you need to watch this guy. he's not reliable. they take time to go to london to check steele out. and they're told he demonstrates lack of self-awareness, poor judgment, keen to help but underpinned by poor judgment. judgment pursuing political risk but no intel value. if you had spent 30 minutes looking at christopher steele, you would understand this guy is biassed, he has an ax to grind. he's on the payroll of the opposing party. take anything he says with a

grain of salt. in january 2017 the fbi figures out who the subsource of the steele dossier is. what you need to know, this is not what steele found himself. this is what he gathered from one person. they finally found out who this one person is. they go talk to him in january 2017. where is that summary? five people interview the primary subsource, the guy that provided steele with everything. and they showed him the dossier. read pages 186 to 190. what does the russian guy tell the fbi about the dossier? that steele misstated or

exaggerated the prime subsource's statements, that trump's alleged sexual activities at the ritz-carlton hotel in moscow was rumor and speculation, he went on to say he heard it at a bar, and in the report it suggests that a western employee of the ritz carlton confirmed this escapade by then private citizen trump. he said that's not true. i never told steele that someone working for the ritz carlton confirmed this. i heard it at a bar. the the primary subsource stated that he never expected steele to put the primary subsource's statements in reports to present them as facts. they were word of mouth and hearsay, conversations had with friends over beers, were statements made in jest that should be taken with a grain of

salt. so in january 2017 the person who did all of the assembling of the information for the now-famous steele dossier tells the fbi, i disavow everything in there. now what should happen? time out. let's reassess? maybe we got this wrong? what would you hope would happen? that the fbi would slow down because this is the outcome determinant document that just had a hole blown through it. they don't slow down. they use the document that they now know to be a bunch of garbage twice more to get a warrant against carter page. i hope carter page gets a lawyer and seuss the hell out of the justice department and the fbi. two more warrants were obtained by the department of justice and fbi after being told in january by the russian guys all a bunch

of bull, but it gets worse. here's how they describe the interview to the court. the fbi found that the russian-based subsource to be truthful and cooperative. nothing about -- and oh, by the way, he said everything in there is a bunch of bull. you knew in january 2017 if there was no doubt before, you know by the guy who prepared it that he disavowed everything that's not true. it's a grain of salt, and you shouldn't. i didn't say all these things. instead of stopping, they keep going and instead of telling the court the truth, what they're required to do, they lied to the court. a few irregularities. how would you like this to happen in your life? how would you like to be on the receiving end of this? to our people in the news

business. how would you like this to be your news organization? january 2017, there is no benefit of the doubt to be given. these five people from the department of justice and the fbi have been told by the one guy who did all the work it's a bunch of garbage and the question is how far up the system did it go? why did they apply for warrens twice more, why didn't they stop? everybody wants to know, is there any bias here? what motivated these people? why do you think they kept going? maybe because they were on a mission. not to protect trump, but to protect us from trump. that's what they were trying -- protect all of us smelly people from donald trump. that's what this is about, whether you believe it or not, i believe it.

and you know what? it could happen to you all next time. there are some pretty passionate people on our side that i wouldn't want to be investigating any of you. so what happens next? they get a warrant twice more when they know it's a bunch of garbage. i don't know what mccabe and comey knew, but i'm dying to find out and should they have known? june 2016. -- 2017, this is the next time they take the law in their own hands. mr. kleinsmith. six months after being told the dossier is a bunch of garbage, kleinsmith alters an e-mail from the cia to change it from he is to he's not because if they'd told the court that page was working for the cia it explains the content in the dossier. mr. kleinsmith had a chance in

his mind to make things right and he took it. why did he take the law in his own hands? why did he doctor the e-mail? did it have anything to do with the way he sees donald trump's presidency? you know what? it really doesn't matter what he was thinking it matters what he did, and i'm glad you found out what he did. i'm glad you told the country what he did because i'm hoping nobody will ever do it again. so, mr. horowitz, the 17 irregularities that you found, some of them are earth shattering. some of them should scare the hell out of all of us. i just want to end sort of where i began.

this is not normal. don't judge the fbi and the department of justice by these characters. we're better than this. like many of you, i've worked with the fbi a lot of my time in government. i have a great respect for it. director wray, you've got a problem, and for this hearing to mean anything, we've got to fix it, and the way we fix it is listen to mr. horowitz, and get the director of the fbi in here to try to find out a way to make sure this never happens again to any politician in this country. it's trump today. it could be you or me tomorrow, and imagine, ladies and gentlemen, if they can do this to the candidate for the president of the united states what could they do to you? so the trump presidency will end

in a year or five years, i don't know when. i hope he gets re-elected, but we can't write this off as being just about one man or one event. we've got to understand how the system guide, and i will leave with some optimism here. i think democrats and republicans are willing to make sure this never happens again, that if you open up a counterintelligence investigation on a presidential campaign in the future there needs to be more checks and balances. i want you to audit the fisa process. mike lee and senator leahy are probably the standard bearers for civil liberties. crew, a lot of people, we don't care, and we constantly want to make sure someone is watching those that watch us.

they're worried about meta data. while i may not agree with all of your concerns and all of your solutions, i respect the fact that you care. i hope you won't treat this report as finding a lawful investigation with the irregularities. i'm a pretty hawkish guy, but if the court doesn't take corrective action and do something about being manipulated and lied to, you will lose my support. i know a lot about what's going on out there to hurt us, and they're real threats and they're real agents and they're really bad actors out there. i'd hate to lose the ability of the fisa court to operate probably at a time when we need it the most, but after your report, i have serious concerns about whether the fisa court can continue unless there's

fundamental reform. after your report, i think we need to rewrite the rules of now you start a counterintelligence investigation and the checks and balances that we need. mr. horowitz, for us to do justice to your report we have to do more than try to shave this report one way or the other. we have to address the underlying problem of a system in the hands of a few bad people can do a lot of damage. thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i assume there is no time limit? >> take all the time you need. >> well, i won't take a long time, but, i've been reading these reports, ladies and gentlemen, now for 25 years, and i have great appreciation for this insector general and i want

to make personal remarks. this is a tough arena. as you can see there are very tough people, part of that arena, but to have an inspector general who tells it as they see it and does this year after year is a saving grace, and i hope people will get this report. if i have a grievance, it's that the print is too small. >> i agree with that. >> thank you very much, and it is heavy to carry around, but last year this inspector general pledged to congress that he would examine whether political bias played a role in the fbi's decision to investigate ties between russia and the trump campaign. the inspector general kept his promise. his office conducted a 19-month investigation. they interviewed more than 100

witnesses, reviewed more than a million documents and issued this 434-page report that contains several important findings. first, on a question of bias, inspector general horowitz found no evidence that political or anti-trump bias was at play. according to the ig's report, the fbi complied with existing department and fbi policies in opening the investigation, and the ig, quote, did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced this decision, end quote, or any specific investigative steps taken by the fbi. that's the finding, and this is important. why? in public statements beginning last spring, the attorney

general expressed his belief that senior government officials may have, quote, put a thumb on the scale, end quote, because of political bias against trump. his comments echoed the president who has repeatedly alleged that there is a deep state within the government against him. he's used this to dismiss the entire russia investigation as a witch hunt and a hoax. the ig's report conclusively refutes these claims. this was want a politically motivated investigation. there is no deep state. simply put, the fbi investigation was motivated by fact, not bias. secondly, the inspector general confirmed there was an adequate predicate meaning a legitimate,

factual and legal basis to investigate. the basis was not, as some have claimed, the so-called steele dossier. in fact, reporting for mr. steele played no role in opening the investigation. instead, this report confirms that the fbi opened the investigation after being told by australia, a trusted, foreign ally that trump adviser george papadopoulos that russia had and was willing to release information during the campaign that would be damaging to candidate clinton, end quote. the ig report found that, quote, this information provided the fbi with the factual basis that, if true, quote, indicated activity constituting either a

federal crime or a threat to national security or both may have occurred or may be occurring. the ig also found that when the fbi learned that in late july 2016 the bureau was aware of russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections including russian hacking of democratic campaign computers. materials stolen by russia had been released online including by wikileaks and the u.s. intelligence community assessed in august of 2016 that, quote, russia was considering further intelligence operations to impact and disrupt elections, end quote. against this backdrop, the fbi was obligated to investigate

possible ties to the trump campaign. according to bill prestep, the fbi assistant director who authorized opening the investigations. other officials conveyed a similar obligation and sense of urgency to investigate. david laughminh a national security division chief said, and i quote, a dereliction of duty and responsibility of the highest order not to commit the appropriate resources as urgently as possible to run these facts to the ground and find out what was going on, end quote. the decision to open the investigation was unanimous. not a single official disagreed. as a result, america ultimately learned extensive details about russia's sweeping and systemic

attack on the 2016 election including that the trump campaign knew about, welcomed, and quote, expected it would benefit electorally from russia's efforts. the inspector general's report also identifies several errors made by fbi and justice department line personnel when seeking warrants for surveillance on carter page from the fisa court. fbi director wray submitted a written response accepting the ig's findings, including the key finding that the fbi had sufficient cause to investigate the trump's campaign ties to russia. director wray also said that the ig's findings of fisa errors are, and i quote, constructive

criticism that will make us stronger as an organization, and that he has already taken action to address the ig's recommendations. by contrast, attorney general barr issued a press release that continues to criticize the fbi for investigating the trump campaign. it's really extraordinary that the attorney general continues to make unsupported attacks on the agency that he is responsible for leading. i believe strongly that it's time to move on from the false claims of political bias, and those who showed great interest in the question of politically motivated investigations against president trump should show the same concern about politically motivated investigations requested by the president or his attorney general. inspector general horowitz, i want to thank you on behalf of this side and your staff for the

hard work. we look forward to hearing from you. house democrats move ahead with two articles of impeachment against president trump charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of congress. read the text from the articles of impeachment now on our website, c-span.org slash impeachment and today at 7:00 p.m. eastern, members of the judiciary committee will convene to write the final language. write c-span2 throughout the mark-up process, debate on amendments and the vote to move the proceedings to the house floor. follow the impeachment process live on c-span2 and online at c-span.org or listen live on the free c-span radio app. sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, american history tv looks back at the impeachment against president bill clinton with the december 19, 1998, house floor debate on the articles of

impeachment. >> today republicans, with a small handful of democrats, will vote to impeach president clinton. why? because we believe he committed crimes resulting in cheating our legal system. we believe he lied under oath numerous time, that he tampered with evidence, that he conspired to present false testimony to a court of law. we believe he assaulted our legal system in every way. let tobacco said that any president who cheats our institutions shall be impeached. >> explore our nation's past. watch the clinton impeachment sunday on american history tv. >> president trump and vice president pence were in hershey, pennsylvania. the president urged pennsylvania voters to put him back in the white house in