catch the show live 10:00 a.m. is to eastern on fox news. and start smart every day weekdays six to nine eastern for mornings with maria. right here on foxbusiness, i hope you'll join us as we the challenge for the day weekdays. that will do it for us tonight, thank you for joining us, have a great one. i'll see you next time. ♪. gerry: this is truly a monumental week in history. on tuesday the fourth time there's articles impeachment against the president were announced. democrats charge president trump with his abuse of power due to ukraine and then obstructing his actions. two articles were later passed through judiciary committee along party lines and the full houses willing to do the same. it's the senate will probably

not do such thing. but before the impeachment announcement the jury judiciary to apartment the one of russian collusion with trump campaign you'll remember in 2016. one of directly finding bias, michael horwitz conclusion was a really damning combination of the tactic used by law enforcement agents to start and continue digging for information on district mr. trump and his team. while just a few hours after the democrats went to the podium to make therefore historic announcement. i had the opportunity to speak at length with attorney general william bar with about a speech meant and reports. we began with impeachment. while the attorney general was now willing to discuss it any length cam he did weigh in on one of the chargers to. >> i don't believe it's the case that we, somebody including a branch of government, is asserting a legal privilege that

they have under the law that that constitutes obstruction. gerry: the second article said president tromp had the categorical defiance of pinots and given the constitution gives the house all responsibility for impeachment. this is itself a represent and tatian of obstruction. >> i just said what i said. it was predicated on advancing claims of privilege that have been previously been advanced and other administrations. and i don't consider that obstruction. gerry: is not unprecedented customer. >> no. gerry: let's look at what was occupying her tension yesterday which was the complication of the report of the justice michael horwitz into the origins and the conduct of the investigation of president trump and his associates around the

russia allegations about collusion with russia. mr. horwitz in his report said yesterday, we concluded that the fbi had an authorized purpose when it opened crossfire hurricane, that was the name of the given to the investigation, to obtain information about or protect against national security protects and crime. you said a response that yesterday the fbi and launch an intrusive investigation of the thinness of suspicions which were insufficient to justify the steps taken. could you tell us what exactly, where you disagree with mr. horwitz? >> well first let me say that i think there are three parts or issues, let's say categories of analysis in the report. the first is was the investigation adequately

predicated? the start of it? the second one is how is it conducted? and i break that down into two things. how is it conducted before the election, how is it conducted after the election? the real meat of horwitz's work and the thrust of the report actually deals with the conduct of the investigation. where i think it quickly became apparent that it was a travesty. and there were many abuses, and that by far is the most important part of the report. and i think mike horwitz would agree with that. it's been nine these particularly pertaining to the pfizer application? >> and also from the facts of day one they got exculpatory information and nothing that substantiated in a type of collusion. but put that aside for a minute and go back to the issue.

many ways the issue of whether they were technically adequately predicated the something of academic interest. where i disagree, and by the way mike knows i disagree with him, there are still people in this town where you can have, we can be adults and professionals and have a disagreement without tearing into those hearts out. it's just one of those things, we have disagreements the department of justice. i think the basic, it's a big deal to use the law enforcement and the intelligence resources of the united states government to investigate campaign, especially opposing. the opposing party. i'm sure there are instances in the past, but i can't think of any recent incidents. gerry: really quickly on this, the phis application, again the

report is very crystal. document 17 omissions or errors under the initial three subsequent applications with the fisa court for surveillance of carter page as we know. but the report does say that it resulted in by the reputations that it may appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case. to you think that, given that, those phis application should never been made? >> yes, this is the meat of the issue and if you actually spent time to look at what happened, i think you'd be appalled. your member they say we are not gonna go talk to the campaign, we are can ascend people in wire them up and talk to the individuals. that happened. that happens in august, september, and october. and it all came back exculpatory. people saying oh, you don't know we're talking about. it's not only exculpatory in the relationship to were russians, but to the specific pack facts. and that a, they never did a

thing about that they just pressed ahead. megabyte they'd ever inform the court. they were told they did not have probable cause to get a warrant. so they took the steele dossier, which they had done nothing to verify, and they use that to get the warrants and collapse everything. they withheld from the court all the exculpatory information and they withheld from the court information about the lack of reliability of steel. the real interesting thing here, the major take away, actually is after the election. because in january, steel was dealing with one person. and that's what we call the primary sub source. in it was that person you have the network of sub sources. when they finally got around to talking to him, he said i don't know it steals talking about. i didn't tell him this. it's mostly barroom talk, rumor,

i made it clear to him this was my own suppositions and theories. and at that., it was clear that the dossier was a sham. so what happens? what happens at that.? they don't tell the court and they continue to get pfizer warranted based on that dossier and more damning. and more damning is they actually filed with the court the statement saying that we've talked to the sub source and we found him credible and cooperative. and they put that into bolster. [inaudible] what he is being truthful about is that the dossier was garbage. so it's hard to look at this stuff, and not think it was a gross abuse. gerry: lummi put another way do you think those separate judges in that court were deadly misled? 's. >> yes. gerry: looking into the

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gerry: more noun when i'm my meeting with attorney general william barr. earlier this sure the justice department announced a major investigation of big technology firms. and i asked him when that investigation might happen. >> we started in earnest in july, and it's been moving very quickly. we have a very ambitious schedule and things are keeping up to schedule. we are talking very broadly with people getting a lot of input from people in the industry and experts and so forth. and we are doing our analysis. i would like to have it completed sometime next year. i think it's important to move quickly on things, that

something i can talk about later. but these things have a cost to the marketplace and businesses. and i think at some.the government has to fish or cut bait. gerry: were the issues here these are not enormous countries they don't dominate the economy in the markets, but it's well established that the scale alone that is not sufficient to warrant antitrust enforcement action or even to raise necessary concerns about unfair behavior. so what would be the concerns about what google, facebook, amazon, abelard and others are doing? >> let me just say that our review is not just limited to antitrust. antitrust is of course the front and center, but there are other concerns relating to these companies. that other laws might apply to. there is some pressure, or some people suggested, strong-arming

the antitrust laws to reach things that were not really intended to be covered by the antitrust laws. and i'm not really in line with that. i don't mind updating, making sure that we are properly applying the antitrust laws to new situations, but we are looking at antitrust, and we are looking at behavior across the board. and how that implicates other laws. the problem, obviously, and i said this in my confirmation hearing, big is not bad. i worked for verizon and i really appreciated that. but the question is when you have the kind of market power that some companies have in their markets, then some conduct which may have made sense when they were sort of being the insurgent company in a growing industry. can become anticompetitive because it ends up fortifying the monopoly. and so there's conduct that is

grown up in these businesses that we have to take a look at and see this extent to which it really involves maintaining a monopoly. also, this is particularly true will we have a powerful network like we do in these sectors. and the other thing is these are businesses that operate in multiple submarkets, and you have to do a lot of thinking on how they are potentially leveraging power towards another. and also the role the data plays in that. gerry: a couple of issues again you may or may not want to comment on. but some of the people are raising concerns about things like bias results. they could be the algorithms could possibly conceivably beef favoring either their own products or people who paid. is that a possibility? is it something you'd look into? >> i can take exactly what looking into.

i think google has made public they receive civil investigative demands, but i think it's kind of apparent to everybody the practices that are there. gerry: what about the simple scale of online advertising. is that in itself a scale that they have? is that a source of concern? >> that goes to the market power and then you have to look at particular practice that may essentially exclude other competitors and lock in their market power. just successfully competing in getting into a dominant position is not itself wrong. gerry: up nestlé attorney general raises concerns about liberty in this country. stay with us. (vo) the moth without hope, struggles in the spider's web.

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gerry: at the end of my discussion this week with william barr, the attorney general said he lamented the way government has moved away from supporting religious rights. >> legally speaking there used to be a consensus, it was just ten years ago, 15 years ago, that there should be an accommodation and religion. in fact that pass overwhelmingly in congress, chuck schumer was a cosponsor. i think teddy kennedy and hatch were involved. and which is the maximum accommodations to religion. religion is a good thing and we may have a general role, but for steps on somebody's toes week try to accommodate it. that's done by the boards. and now, some people seem to

take the right enforcing that particular group that would accept something that is in after much to them. i think humans have dealt with an evolved with religion for 50,000 years. and i'm not saying is just utilitarian thing, but it has been a very important part of our ability to live together in a community. and our founders believed that they could provide the kind of freedom they did in the system precisely because they felt the moral values that people had primarily from religion, they would be able to control themselves so we could give them maximum freedom. if they don't have that, then society becomes more and more tyrannical and starts making all the rules.

i feel there has been an in breakdown of self-control, and the government has performed the mediator of consequences of that. subsidizing misconduct and we are getting more and more of that and less and less self-control periods. gerry: chief executives are recently demanded to take public stances on some of these issues in ways that a lot of religious people object to. is that a threat to again the religious freedom? >> my view is i don't think it's a good development to have in all of these social warriors essentially pushing companies to take positions on these kinds of things. but those companies that do, that's fine, that's their choice if the shareholders are happy, that's fine too. but i was saying, and i think i

said this at my confirmation, i personally do not believe that gay people should be discriminated against and work. that's not currently under law, but i have no problem with that. i think that's the right thing. but on the other hand i think there has to be accommodations so that if a catholic school system doesn't want to have a gay person who's leaving in a single marriage is a teacher, they should be able to say that. so my attitude is live and let live. there has to be space for different, real diversity. when people talk about diversity they're not really talking about diversity purity i want real diversity in our society. i want people to be able to find their own communities and live according to their values. i think there is a group in our society that views their mission is going around and bludgeoning everyone into uniformity. gerry: that was attorney general

william barr. just ahead america's not the only place where history was made this week. what happened in britain thursday could have important thursday could have important locations for politics here. ♪ oh, ho! oh, ho, ho, ho! you... you got me. uh, what do you want? i've got uh, ai robots, i've got vr goggles. i want your sled, please. no. [ chuckles ] timmy. it'd be a shame if this went viral. for those who never compromise. the mercedes-benz winter event. whoa. he was pretty good this year.

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history was made in america, the same could also be said of the

united kingdom. the british conservative party under prime minister boris johnson, wanted decisive victory on the general election on thursday. will the vote was driven primarily by british domestic issues as you could expect, the more important is to finally deliver brexit after three long years of delay. there were some parallels to consider for american politics. just as donald trump has been transforming the republican party, and winning over blue-collar workers in parts of the country that republicans haven't won for decades. so mr. john's and his conservative party won similar voters in similar rocksolid labor areas by remaking the party is a party that prioritizes national identity. over issues of naturalization and brexit. there might also be a message for democrats in that vote. british voters emphatically were adjusted and labor party with a far left platform and a far left leader jeremy corbin who was

promising massive public spending increases, higher taxes, and a lot of extreme social liberalism. many of the same ideas of been hearing on the campaign trail for those vying to be the one to face president trump in the 2020 election. the democrats begin to choose their candidate early next year to take on president trump and next year's election may want to take a moche closer look at what just happened across the pond. while that's it for us this week. for the latest show updates be sure to follow me on twitter, facebook, an instagram. i will be back next weekend as we head into the holiday season. i'll be talking to george weikel about how the catholic church has responded to the many challenges of modern times. that's right here on the wall street journal at large. thank you very much for joining.

welcome to barron's roundtable with the sharpest minds on wall street made to get behind the headlines and prepare you for the week ahead. i'm jack otter. we begin witht