 Nick Gillespie of Reason and this is the Reason live stream that we do every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time I am joined by my colleague and co-host Zach Weismiller. Hello. Hi Zach. How you doing? Good. How are you? I'm very good. Thanks, and we are joined today by a very special guest Eli Lake a national security reporter and And Well and goes beyond that who's been harshly critical of the broad topic that we're talking about today Which has to do with the Durham report and the investigation into the collusion or so-called collusion between the Donald Trump presidency and The 2016 election or the Donald Trump in Russia Eli is also recently written very critically of the FBI which is front and center in all of this So we're going to dissect the Durham report Talk about what the main findings were What played out what it says about? Politics in the current moment, but especially about the FBI and law enforcement and intelligence in the country in the country And what we should be doing next so Eli. Thanks for joining. It's great to be here Nick. Thanks for having me Let's say Zach. Hey, yeah. Yeah, Zach You know and the reason magazine family. Yeah, he's a Zach is the bad cop. So it's good that That you say nice thing. So you won't you won't by the end of it He's gonna be all over you like a great on a on a Girl Scout, but let's start talking about the the Durham report which was an investigation into the FBI's investigation Into possible collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia What do you think is the view is the core takeaway from the Durham report? Well, I think the core takeaway is That the people who were leading the FBI when In the night in the 2016 election which had investigations into both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump That that leadership team starting with Jim Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe Were were not Honest good cops. They were bad cops. They were Fundamentally people of low character. They were willing to Not only deceive the public, but they were willing to keep information from the elements of the FBI and the legal system in general such as the surveillance court and parts of the Justice Department That that would somehow, you know undermine their case against or the theory of a case that they could never prove about Donald Trump Saying that does not mean that you think that Donald Trump is a good president or that he should be elected or that There weren't things that Donald Trump said about Russia that were Unpresidential and bad and that there were or even that there, you know, you can say that and say well You know on the outside. I thought there were things that were didn't add up in 2016 and maybe Trump looks suspicious But the FBI had so much information And they were collecting so much exculpatory information in the course of this investigation and that yet they continued it The other thing I would say is that I think it also shows that the real abuse of power was I think that was wrongly opened and I think that John Durham makes a very good case that they didn't have and they didn't have anything when they opened it in the end of July of 2016 the investigation has crossfire hurricane, but the real abuse was after Trump Improbably wins the 2016 election and that's when you really see the FBI doing all kinds of things to try to extend This investigation into a sitting in elected president when they had nothing and again I mean, it's a it's a it's a testament to the failure of The leadership of the FBI and that I would just point out that one of the things about this report is that John Durham makes very few actual recommendations and in part he says he justifies that I don't have it in front of me So I'm not going to quote it verbatim, but he basically says, you know If we have leaders of the FBI and you have people in Responsible positions of the FBI that don't adhere to the motto of fidelity bravery and integrity Well, then it doesn't matter what I recommend Doesn't matter what the org chart look chart looks like it doesn't matter what new Procedures we might put in place if you have people who if you have the people of low moral character in these positions Then there's nothing we can do we're gonna be so that's a damning. That's a damning thing to say Yeah, because every one of these reports including other damning reports about the FBI's conduct in this investigation Such as the inspector general's report Michael hard. They all include at the end You know, we need to have these new procedures We need to do this and and and maybe as if there's something you could fix in the process But sometimes you just need to sort of say No, you had bad people who were making bad decisions who were dishonest and this is what happened And let's make sure that we don't put in bad people in these really responsible positions Sounds like kind of obvious thing that almost anyone could know but it's it's rare to see that in one of these kind of reports We're going to get to Possible reforms, you know Durham doesn't make them But we can talk about what should happen to the FBI and then also and on a bigger picture level How should the American people? You know kind of respond to this like what should we be thinking about and what should we be demanding of our government as well? As you know sub sub parts of that like the FBI going forward Just as a quick starting point before we get into a lot of the specifics here You know you say, you know this shows that James Comey was You know had it in for Donald Trump or was acting unprofessionally, you know going through the 2016 election It you know the rhetoric and the narrative that persists is that comey ruined the election He tossed the election to Trump because he screwed over Hillary Clinton on a nonsense investigation Can you just dispatch that very quickly sure well first of all? Let's let's grant the part of that narrative. That's true 11 days before the election Jim Comey Announced the reopening of the email probe and then we should always remember that two days before the election He then announced that it was closed again and that in the beginning of July of 2016 he announced that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges against Hillary Clinton But what she did was really bad and was I think she very reckless, you know his point was With her email system now that was something that The there was gonna have to be something I mean everybody was well known the FBI was looking into it but it's the FBI like it's not like the FBI just opened it out of I mean this was part of a Originally a congressional investigation that started with Ben Gazi and then because of Gawker It was discovered. I just want to interrupt you to say when you mentioned Ben Gazi I feel like Lawrence Harvey in the Manchurian candidate like suddenly I was triggered and I You know Ben Gazi is this term or this, you know signifier We don't talk about it anymore But there was a multi-year period where it seemed like every other word out of every other political figure and pundit was Ben Gazi, but please continue. No, that's that's that's that's for those who don't remember You're lucky. It's when the US consulate in Libya was overrun by a group of terrorists and the response from the bomb administration initially was that it was a Social media flash mob that got out of hand in response to a movie on YouTube about the Prophet Muhammad. Anyway, yeah, so Gawker at first published emails that were taken by this hacker that went by the name of Gucha for 2.0 That from Sydney Blumenthal. Okay, so those then revealed that Clinton had a private email address that apparently She was using when she was the Secretary of State can Congress gets all over this they subpoena all this stuff Hillary Clinton's tech Who was running this private homebrew server? Then deletes a bunch of back emails Later was determined that it was not nefarious or at least the FBI determined that they didn't do it for any bad reasons, but So then there were this this question of well We subpoenaed all of your archives because you were the Secretary of State using a private email server But then somebody deleted it. So then it becomes like well, did you obstruct our investigation? Now this is all happening in Congress, but FBI doesn't really have much of a choice. It has to sort of look into it, especially since You know and people made this point at the time if you were using a private email server And you were I don't know like a mid-level State Department or mid-level Defense Department person You probably would be at the very least fired and there may even be Let it get you know, you might you might face, you know criminal penalties because there are strict rules about what kind of information You're allowed to put on unencrypted systems and so forth So there's a whole question or a lingering scandal about Hillary Clinton that has nothing to do with what the FBI says or doesn't say That is before the 2016 election season really and sort of going into it And it looks like it's going to be the main Republican attack line Which is was the Secretary of State use it using a private unprotected email system to basically, you know communicate sensitive or classified information and What the that was what the FBI was basically looking at and what the FBI said was well You know is a good chance that foreign governments may have gotten a hold of it But no reasonable prosecutor would really Prosecute Hillary Clinton so in some ways you could argue that the initial press conference from hit Comey was a good thing for Hillary Clinton if you remember The first response from Trump at the time was to attack James Comey and to say they were compromised On the other hand the press conference was a little bit of a split at the baby approach because Hillary Clinton was nonetheless criticized for her private email Server, I would just say one thing at this point. I am somebody who believes that there's way too much emphasis on Protecting too many secrets in the US government and at the time I didn't think it was something that ought of disqualified Hillary Clinton from running and especially since she'd already gotten the nomination from her party So I didn't think that an FBI investigation or Justice Department prosecution Was warranted that would have basically negated the choice of the Democratic Party for their nomination that year but it's not like the FBI or People who were bringing up as a criticism of Hillary Clinton Her use of this private email server, you know this line but her emails, right? It's not like they were making a mountain out of a moham and it was a fair criticism in my view Yeah, why did she use this private email server? But so that's the background of this. That's the argument for why the FBI sabotaged her but what we learn from the dorm report is that there were several Investigations, I should say there were I think there were three separate investigations that were started in some way And they weren't even full investigations But there was information was coming in that looked at foreign governments trying to influence Hillary Clinton or her campaign In two of those cases Hillary received what's known as a defensive briefing. So she was told we Picked up this information be on the lookout for any donations from country X In another situation in one of these investigations There was the field office had asked for surveillance warrants, and they never got They never applied for those surveillance warrants who does headquarters basically didn't act on the request And then there were separately in addition to all of that there were three field office investigations by the beginning of 2016 Into the Clinton Foundation that is the big charitable organization that Clinton set up and They would solicit donations not only from big corporations, but from foreign governments even when Clinton Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State or which he was a senator and so Some of this was based on Peter Schweitzer's book called Clinton cash Peter Schweitzer, you know the criticism of the left is the Peter Schweitzer is a partisan But that doesn't mean everything that he wrote was wrong and also it was the separate it was one thing And it was one strand in a investigation. Anyway, Andrew McCabe Slow rolled the Clinton Foundation investigations in 2016. What did he do? He he tried to consolidate them into one field office. He told them no over Investigative steps without my approval. That was basically hamstring them. Then there was in addition to that There was a phone call from Jim's Jim Comey's office telling the cease and desist the investigation all together based on an unidentified counterintelligence tip. All of this is in the dorm report. All of it is Fairly new and I should say it relates to something else, which is that Andrew McCabe was Just chastised for lying to investigators in a leak investigation. So this is the inspector general's report another inspector general report And You know what he was what he did was he leaked, you know He's talked to the Wall Street Journal about a story about these Clinton Foundation investigations And made it seem like basically to and basically put this on the Justice Department saying the Justice Department didn't want to do anything about it Trying to obscure his own role in slowing it down. And why is that important because his wife Ran for statewide office or I guess for a state delegate office in Virginia and had received money from Terry McCall of who's close to the Clinton so there was potentially a sort of conflict of interest for the deputy FBI director and all this and and he but the but I would say that he specifically Really chastised by the inspector general For lying about talking to the Wall Street Journal claiming he didn't and then pinning it on an underling who did Who he had instructed so he's basically shoving it off on someone who was lower in the pecking order than he was and You know, he didn't really face any consequences of that for that We don't want to go down this or you don't want to get into why but we're gonna get into Yeah, yeah, but my point my point is that is that like You know all of this stuff is relevant And so what dorem concludes with this is that There were two standards for opening investigations and dealing with investigations into the two campaigns Which is if for the Clinton stuff you you know that there there was you know They did everything they could to keep it from becoming a new investigation and they slow rolled stuff and for Trump If you look at what ultimately was The reason for opening this huge investigation It's a joke it is a joke and it's really important that we make this clear to everybody that the initial reason for this investigation, which was a memo from Australian ambassador and some other Australian diplomats to the US Embassy which then goes to the FBI Was not Information it was pure like speculation and finally after all of these years We actually see the relevant what's called paragraph 5 the part of the Australian cable That's relevant to the opening of the crossfire hurricane and you could read it for yourself. It's it's there's no information It says there was a suggestion from this another a junior campaign Volunteer named George Papadal was not a senior figure somebody who just happened to be in a wine bar with Australian diplomats and they're having a random conversation and then the Australians then report this after the news of the hack of the DNC emails comes out, right? He doesn't say We know that the Russians are gonna hack You know the emails from Democrats. He doesn't say anything like that He just simply says there's a lot of baggage that Hillary has and we know we have a lot of stuff I think we're gonna win, you know, the Russians might do something and so it's so the information is conveyed as a suggestion That the Russians might it's like a suggestion of a suggestion Right does it there's no specifics no mention of emails no mention of whether Trump knew anything about or anybody else of the campaign knew anything about it and so That if what Durham basically is saying is if that's all you had why didn't you? Check with the Russia analysts in the FBI. Why don't you check with other people in the intelligence community? Why didn't you interview the diplomats? Why didn't you interview George Papadopoulos? Why don't you do all these things? before opening a full investigation in the middle of an election of The Republican nominee the Republican campaign why why would and that's and that's that's like it's like crazy to think that That was the reason why they launched it, but the Australians do they send the memo after the leak of the DNC Correct, yeah, okay So they're kind of putting it together and saying oh this must be what George Papadopoulos Correct But then what Durham says is that and because he interviews everybody the reason it took so long is he just he did all of the work He did the work. He read his bell hooks. He's an ally. Yeah, he's an ally So he interviewed Alexander Downer the ambassador in London and he said he didn't remember anything about emails He didn't remember anything about whether or not George top Papadopoulos said that the Trump knew about it or was willing it Yeah, so that's the one thing and second thing is and I found this amazing because I always thought They had to be something more to it So he looked in throughout the entire US government State Department CIA and I say he he had the full access and he wanted to find out Was there anything in your holdings meaning had you collected any information that would have supported? The theory that Trump was in a collusory relationship with Russia or his campaign was and they had nothing Not the FBI not the State Department No one in the US the vast US intelligence community for which Russia has been If not the number one target the number two target for the last 70 years So we I mean we're talking about like trillions of dollars worth of like, you know over the years of in of collection Infrastructure aimed at you know one target or a few a few one of a few targets Nothing they had nothing Yes, it was just a cable that was based on a suggestion of a suggestion now If you're to tell me that you still think it was okay for the FBI to want I mean again, it's not like they launched It's not an investigation into Some rando and it doesn't you matter This is it's it really matters if you and then by the way because it's a full investigation as opposed to What he said would would have been a preliminary investigation or even what he or an assessment So there's all these other steps that we're learning about that you do in the FBI. It means that they can send Confidential human sources, you know snitches they can send moles into Meeting with people for the Trump campaign to try to solicit information from them You know where they the surreptitiously where they don't know they're talking to somebody who's going to go right to the FBI They do that And then what do they get back they get back? I don't know what you're talking about. We don't we're not talking any russians We we'd never take so not only was the investigation started on the flimsiest of pretexts. It did not It did not yield It was a bad hunch Not only was it a bad hunch the only information that the FBI gets that would confirm This initial suspicion from this one cable Well, it's the it's the steel dossier, right? which We now know oppo research On trump that essentially its origins were with the hillary clinton campaign She paid for it. Yes. Yeah So that you have and by the way, they lied about it Yeah, they lied about it to the fec and then lied about it And the and the lawyer mark a lie has lied about it for eight months. Zach. What do you mean? I mean this this new information that's come forth in the report that you referenced with regards to The slow rolling of investigations into the clinton foundation or these foreign donations that's either In one case was not investigated at all. The other this defensive briefing Was given it raises the question for a lot of people including someone in our audience who will bring up here of whether this is political bias Rex solz asks does the Durham report give credence to the FBI whistleblowers about bias against Conservatives in government On the other hand, there was the inspector general's report that said there this there were problems with the investigation But there was no Evidence of political bias and if we look at what mccabe said, no, that's that's not what the inspector general said Okay, could you please uh, the inspector general said is that he didn't find evidence of it? Yes, but he didn't clear them of it because he he also said, okay I can't that's what the explanation for all of these errors particularly when he's talking about the Pfizer process Doesn't wash So he didn't find like another explanation For why all the errors went in one direction against trump, right? But what he found was he could he didn't have a like a smoking gun He didn't have an interview with somebody where they said Well, you know, I'm a democrat and I just really loved Hillary Clinton and so I did all the stuff So he didn't get that but he didn't get anything that made sense to him that could explain why they made so many errors in the same direction And like then you add that to what dorm is discovered where they just There were all these things they didn't consider there are all these lines of investigation that they didn't even try So like there was a there were there were people who were lowered down in the fbi, for example This is a very important point at what this wasn't by the way in the Horowitz report He didn't get into this There were people lower down that said because the steel dossier was taken extremely seriously by the fba not just for the Pfizer court there is a kind of A kind of little rhetorical maneuver that has been done by some of the Dead enders on russia gate, which is to try to suggest that the steel dossier was very insignificant to the overall investigation Actually, it was really important to the investigation. So there were there were people. This is when we have the Mueller report There were fbi agents who were looking at it and they said we should start an investigation into someone named charles dolin Charles dolin is a long time clinton ally Who was at the time an unregistered foreign agent for russia Who doram says is probably responsible for the is the origin of the p-tape lie As well as other things that ended up in the dossier And also he charged this the remains the subsource the main collector and the dossier guy named Igor d'Andreco, which I hope we can talk about a little bit. Yeah with lying about his relationship with dolin He was acquitted of those Five counts of of lying by the way, but we should just say Um, so This so the fbi guys wanted to investigate charles dolin Because he was somebody who it looks like who had contributed to the steel dossier who clearly wasn't a russian official was that's not intelligence He's a spin doctor that is actually working for the russians. So and a big-time democrat Okay, and then that was you know, and and the leadership of the of the Mueller team Said no, we're not going to investigate him. Yeah, so it raises this why you know There was so there you didn't pursue any leads that weren't part of The you know theory that trump and his campaign colluded You ignored evidence and you didn't share the evidence with the right people that were as exculpatory on that and Even after you got dead end after dead end you kept this investigation going So those are like I mean so in the answer to the question. Was it politicized? it may not have been politicized in the sense of Everybody at the at the fbi. I mean like I think peter struck it, you know for many years as was comey voted republicans It wasn't like a republicans versus democrats or something like that, but it was certainly politicized against trump Yeah, certainly like ed had a anti trump bias. That's what I yeah What i'm trying to understand better is the motivations of the key decision makers and it's you can kind of Start to see some of it when you look in detail at the report like I pulled this section from This is this is the portion Where they're talking about the investigation into a four an illegal foreign depth Donation to the clinton campaign from some unnamed foreign government And this is where they gave a defensive briefing to hillary's team But hey, we're we're looking into this and this is what mccabe had to say about it according to Durham, uh, he said that uh, you know when we take defensive briefings or when we do defensive briefings We have to take into account whether it will eliminate or reduce your ability to get to the bottom of the threat um another uh assistant director for counterintelligence said that Because the possibility existed that someone on the trump campaign Could have already taken the russians up on their offer. I thought it was wise to open an investigation to look into the situation um, and that Presumably a defensive briefing would undermine that investigation so You know and then later on, you know durham raises the point. Well, Wouldn't that logic equally? Campaign but does it can I ask? Yeah, sure. Oh, I was just gonna say, uh, you know Zach and elie, you know, the difference here is that hillary clinton Was the secretary of state and she had she had been a u.s senator and she Had credibility. I mean she had worked in the government etc. Yeah, whereas donald trump Was a kind of loose cannon. Nobody really knew what he was talking about. His son had said various things He had said various things I mean, I and i'm playing devil's advocate here Yeah, like you know trump you trump has a long history of payouts and and you know lawsuits, etc And shady business ceilings. I could see why I would be like i'm not going to tell trump We're looking into this because he's going to immediately You know react in a way that would destroy evidence. Is that not? I would agree with you if this was like Another political figure if it was like frank church or something It's hillary clinton and i'm not trying to be difficult what i'm trying to say is We know from lots of things that the clinton foundation Had all kinds of pay for playoff operations going on. I mean it was so your argument Yeah, my argument is like is that like I don't see any evidence that like Clinton would somehow I mean I agree with you. Yeah, she was secretary of state And i'm not necessarily accusing her of anything but bill clinton gave Lots of speeches for you know six figures. I think you know fees Yeah, yeah, yeah, like russian banks to kazakhstan all okay, but so your your argument is not that they should have given a defensive briefing to trump It's that they should not have given a defensive briefing brief. My argument is that there's a double standard There's a double standard. Okay. Um fair enough because I could argue it the other way too, which is to say that like well, you know, I mean I I agree that like if you just were looking at what trump was saying particularly about russia and his behavior in general It raised certain flags when he sort of couldn't answer the question straight about whether he thought nadir was a good idea and things like that But we don't live in a country where You are cast under suspicion Or investigated because of an opinion that you bring into the debate no matter how out of left field it is It's not elite. That's in fact undermines our democratic process. I mean we have had a so-called Consensus I am a believer in the consensus by the way that nato is good and russian russia's a rogue a rogue actor and really bad or whatever Trump disagreed. He's running for president. It's like for the voters to decide basically But you can't say i'm not going to give him a defensive briefing because of things that he's Legally protected to say under the first amendment and are part of our democratic process Right, okay fair enough. Um, you know the other thing that I wanted to bring up When when this is going on by this point have the uh, have has the dnc emails been hacked And released because that also seems to feed into it. It's not directly relevant to hillary's email servers and stuff because but That seemed to be or it was very quickly talked about as a function of russian Interference into the election that uh, gucifer You know had a 2.0 had hacked the emails and right they really showed A rotten element in the dnc that among other things besides the fact of being hacked and looking like idiots that the The dnc was really working to throw the uh primary process to hillary clinton Does that have any bearing on any of this stuff? Um, well, they were I don't know that you needed. Um, I mean there's an argument that yeah, that's kind of like what Political parties, you know tend to also and this isn't the first time this has happened So sometimes the left makes that seem like a bigger scandal than it really is Right, um, but certainly hillary had her allies in the dnc But I mean that that happens a lot, you know, where there's an insider candidate who's going to have that kind of advantage The second thing I would say is that it was the hack of the podesta emails um Did reveal some extraordinary things um Such as the like internal correspondence on the clinton foundation Yeah, it was the clinton foundation where like, uh Chelsea clinton was saying I can't believe you guys are, you know, you're you're such gone-ups You know like what are you doing here? You're you're charging it like, you know, you're double booking and charging all the stuff and like, you know Clinton was Clearly there were all kinds of kind of paybacks involved which is supposed to be the sort of charitable stuff and there's a really devastating Uh couple emails on that and then there was another hack of her speeches that she gave to goldman's hacks that bernie sanders was all talking about now I think this gets into a really important point that has been missed In the first part of the 2000 teens up to probably 2016 It was totally normal for journalists to use hack materials if there was a public interest value Class example would be cable gate from wiki leaks, but we saw this with uh, there was a great kind of Victory for the remember the there was the the the climate change emails that were that that was that showed the corruption of You know, so there were all kinds of stories like that and nobody sort of said what did you what we you couldn't print that or Release and that information was really bad because it was hacked by somebody even though it was No, as long as it was true As long as it was true, right exactly. Come on like why why are we talking about how we got at this? These are meaningful documents. Yeah, so they're you know, so the russians did hack These emails and this information, but it was true and right some of it was news Now that standard changes after the 2016 election Again, I I could argue with both ways. Maybe it was good that it changed. Okay, but um, you can't hold the trump people I to account for not for playing by the standards that everybody played by in 2016 That then changes after the 2016 election, right? So oftentimes now, I mean, I I look at this as The I call them the russia gate dead enders, whatever you want to say, but what they're doing is it is what's known as retconning They they started with this idea that clinton. I'm sorry the trump colluded with russia It didn't pan out well or didn't find any evidence of it So they're now clinging to other pieces of information saying no no no see this adds up to that Yeah, and it and so that's part about about like, you know, well roger stone was trying to get the emails Yeah, yeah, yeah from wiki leaks. Are you surprised? Yeah, of course and that doesn't have anything to do ultimately with the facts that we know them This is the broader context of a lot of this stuff is you know that russia gate has emerged as you know The idea that the trump campaign and the russian government or elements in the russian government and elements of the trump campaign were colluding In a way that was nefarious real and effective and it's just there is no Evidence for any of that But people are acting as if it still is in play despite their acting is if it's true If it was obviously true, right and that you are denying reality if you If you if you if you insist on that it's that these reports or whatever say it's not true Let's uh, you know what? Let's let's look at the uh, zack. Let's uh, pull up get on mccabe clips because mccabe is Andrew mccabe the deputy director of the fbi Is is really a point person and elie we want you to look at these clips and then kind of React yeah, I should can I just make a quick plug my podcast the reeducation. Yes. I hope you subscribe to Uh nick has been a guest twice for some classic episodes um I have nothing to do about politics by the way, right that's like uh john lennon and punk rock Yeah, so maybe some of our best politics, but at any i'm sorry But my latest episode is is just about andrew mccabe and uh The fact that he's still that's one of the reasons that we're having you on here your your coverage of this, but yeah Check out elie's uh 30 minute monologue kind of a documentary an essay of kind of you know Andrew mccabe you are a horrible human being it's much more profound than that But let's look at these mccabe clips and then uh, elie tell us what you're thinking This is like a political version of two girls one cup This is gonna be a response to you Yeah, uh, just to set these up the the first clip is from 2019. So this is after kabe mccabe has been dismissed from the fbi and he is on a book tour and I think it He's having conversation with uh, anderson cooper and I think it reveals a little bit of his mindset the mindset of the people at the very top of uh, you know, uh the investigation about how they were thinking about This how this was going to play out. So adam go ahead and play that clip for us Not just one not just two but numerous people in and around the president in and around the campaign maintained contacts with individuals from russia people connected to the russian intelligence services You have a number who have been charged a number who've been already convicted and pled guilty for all kinds of different offenses Do you still believe the president could be a russian asset? I think it's possible. I think that's why we started our investigation and I'm really anxious to see where director moeller concludes that And then this next clip is just from last week So clearly it's you know his belief that trump might have been a russian asset in Early 2019 has not been born out whatsoever But uh, now he's being asked on cnn about his reaction to the durham report as someone who's Named in hundreds of times. Let's talk about it with cnn senior law enforcement analyst andy mccabe He's the former deputy director of the fbi and importantly he oversaw What became known as a crossfire hurricane probe into trump in 2016 john durham Says that you shouldn't have launched it. What's your response? John durham is wrong. Uh, that's not just me that says that every other entity that's investigated Um, our our activities in 2016 agrees and that's of course, as you mentioned Uh, the doj inspector general michael harwitz, uh, as well as the senate intelligence committee led, of course, uh, at the time by a republican Uh, uh, so this is This report poppy stands as an anomaly So, ilai, what's your reaction to now cnn's, uh, senior legal analyst andrew mccabe's Sarsha and that this is just an outlier and everyone else says that the investigation was pretty much justified Well You know and now, uh, let's turn. Um, now that we're talking about the danger to children right now, um at clown parties Let's turn to our senior analyst john wane gasey. Um Tell us what do you think about this new crackdown on child abuse and are you serious? This is i'm just i i i know i should We know it's there, but like let's Let's first of all say we've talked a lot about the uh revolving door from uh the intelligence agencies to keep the news on on previous streams It's uh fairly disturbing but putting that aside. Okay the substance Um, so first of all, we should just point out andrew mccabe did not elect to talk to john dorham And yet he is here talking to cnn. So that's but so okay if you really think you're if you really think it's all just a big persecution That's that's a tell second of all. He's wrong. It's not anomaly. Um, michael harwitz's report in 2019 um Is devastating to the fbi The fbi itself in response to the dorham report said We take it very seriously and we've already put reforms in place and the people who are responsible for this no longer work for us So i mean i was paraphrasing there, but so so the the fbi itself doesn't think it's an anomaly You know and I guess the other point is that you know that first clip he's making that a you know late february 2019 He's talking to anderson cooper We would learn in a few months That the bowler team found no evidence of a trump rusher conspiracy And then we would learn by the end of the year that the fbi had deceived and gained the surveillance court the fiza court and that um, it wasn't an isolated incident And you know, we would learn all kinds of other things about this investigation So what the hell is the former fbi deputy director talking about when he says he thinks that the president of the united states might be A foreign agent which is basically i mean you are You are that's that is john birch society level Invective with and it's just coming from the other direction and it's coming from the fbi And there was no evidence and he knew there was no evidence for it When he was making those remarks there was no evidence when he was like when he was fired from the fbi of that and the I mean the arrogance and the fact that it's like you're pouring your it's it's a kind of like at some I mean listen I don't go in for the disinformation talk that everyone's talking about But if you want an example of disinformation Andrew mccabe and his interview with anderson cooper. That's disinformation and he knew better. That's the thing. It's like listen I forgive other analysts for saying in 2017. It looks like trump has something to hide I thought trump had something to hide I when he fired comey and the way he did There was a lot of information the public didn't have So I mean that's that that happens that you know life, you know, there's but The people at the fbi who are running the investigation they have far more information than us as it should be so for them to then become like public pundits or something and then Use that their positions to create a false Kind of scandal or false crisis in american democracy It's despicable There and it's unbelievable to me that he's still an analyst for cnn How could you be some how could you be on the the journalism side of the of a news outlet as some sort of Analyzing the news. He's he should be the target of a hostile interview You know, I mean like he should he should be like, you know, jake tapper should should do his whole thing By the way, jake tapper is very good on the dorm report. I should say I want to credit him for that and there's a lot of you know, but you know when jake tapper was saying I made a new rule We're not going to have any republicans on they're going to lie about the 2020 election. Okay, great Can we have a rule? We're not going to have anybody who's going to lie about the 2017 investigation into trump Including our our own senior law enforcement analyst So I I just find it incredible that he's still an analyst and he's not the only one I don't want to pick on andrew mckabe all of these people it's particularly true with cnn And really msnbc. I mean half their roster seems to be these former Yeah Yeah, it's uh, I To rebuild their credibility. I really would like to see an editorial policy go into plays that you just don't hire former intel officials to be Commentators for you. It doesn't well It seems I I should say if if if he's if you have on just a generic former senior fbi person as a news analyst Because I don't know we we there was a terrorist attack or something. Yeah I mean, that's fine. That person's going to have perspective on how investigations work. You're probably going to have some old contacts It's when there is a the story is the is is is the bad behavior from the fbi You can't then have these people on as like news analysts. Yeah, it's the bad behaviors that they did, you know Yeah, and and you mentioned I mean the idea that You know the disinformation narrative kind of like flipping and now it is the In the intel agents like putting out the disinformation to the american people I mean, there is a very interesting little moment in the durham report that I've pulled up here You mentioned uh, e-garden chenco earlier and What they say about him who? This is the subsource for the steele dossier and apparently, uh, dan chenco May have had some links to russian intelligence services the fbi had investigated him before and not really Resolved that issue and what? Uh durham says about this is that in not resolving dan chenco status visa v the russian intelligence services It appears the fbi never gave appropriate consideration to the possibility that the intelligence Dan chenco was providing to steele Which again according to dan chenco himself made up a significant majority of the information in the steele dossier dossier reports was in fact was in whole or in part russian disinformation so There's a very disturbing irony there that the For all the talk of russian disinformation the most impactful piece might have been purveyed by The fbi. I mean what what was your reaction to reading that section of the report? Well, I mean or the clinton campaign in this case the clinton campaign kind of filtered it to the fbi. Yeah Can't make it up I mean hilarious, right? Um, it's not by the way. That's not the that's not even the worst of it. I mean um christopher steele himself as well as the firm that hired him fusion gps We're working for Russian oligarch olig dera poska olig dera poska is the aluminum magnate bad guy But olig dera poska is the big connection That has always talked about in context of paul manafort who was also a bad guy Who was briefly the for like two months. He was the campaign manager for the trump campaign um Well, here's like steele who is presenting himself as this, you know former british spy who's You know trying to stop the russians and doing whatever he can on had a side deal working with Dera poska to try to retrieve money that was owed to him by paul manafort So, I mean one would think that's the fbi ought to know that And that would then affect the credibility of the dossier and they wouldn't submit it as evidence in a FISA application for carter page But again, that's just part of this whole pattern that doran exposed Which is that all these steps that you think would be obvious that they would take Um to try to confirm information and all kinds of things like that they didn't take So again, there's so many errors that at a certain point From my perspective, it's no longer a question of Wow, you're such an incompetent Boobs like it's no, it's like I think that was corrupt At a certain point, so too many there's too many mistakes, right? And they're always going in the same direction Always the same having said this and we've talked about this in different contexts elie Both separately and together, but you know the longer you look at the history of the fbi And when you read something like tim weiner's book or the beverly gauge Biography of jagger hoover. I actually uh am more drawn to the You know to the hypothesis or the thesis that the fbi is simply a corrupt not a corrupt organization a fundamentally incompetent one Um, but we're going to get to that more in a second. What what do we do with the fbi after this? Let's talk a little bit about how trump Intersects with all of this both in terms of his behavior that made a lot of people wonder what the fuck is going on But also his reaction to the Durham report and I do want to point out just very quickly That john Durham to me, you know It's ironic that he is investigating crossfire hurricane because that sounds to me like a dubie brother's song And he looks like he could be in he could be the third basis in a Well crossfire hurricane the lyric from a rolling stones. I know that but it's I think it's a dubie brother. I'm saying yes Yeah, but he does look like it'd be a dubie brother or like dr. Hook in the medicine show Yeah, something like that, you know or playing at a local bar In a blues mother cover band. Uh, let's uh, jack you up the uh the trump clips that you want to run. Oh, okay Oh, sorry. Okay. So this uh, this first one is just uh, Generally, this is one piece of evidence that People point to to say well trump kind of had it coming. He in fact openly colluded like Regardless of how these investigations turned out we have evidence on tape that he openly Colluded and here is the smoking gun. Here's the smoking gun He didn't even wasn't behind closed doors. It was open That trump invited and demanded that rush occluded and uh, Eli in your uh, wonderful most recent episode of the reeducation You talk about how uh, a great journalist like jonathan rouch points to this or or says Trump on occasions openly invited the russians to meddle in the election This is the clip that we're talking about. Let's let's run this thing What do I have to get involved with putin for I have nothing to do with putin. I've never spoken to him I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. He doesn't respect our president And if it is russia, which is probably not nobody knows who it is, but if it is russia It's really bad for a different reason Because it shows how little respect they have for our country when they would hack into a major party And get everything But it would be interesting to see I I will tell you this Russia if you're listening I hope you're able to find the 30 000 emails That are missing I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press Was that collusion The dead two rights Get him in an orange jumpsuit frog march him out That's it. You know, where's the justice department? No We've cracked the code Really Really, have you never seen this guy before? I mean, it's just like he's a nightclub comedian who happened to be like I mean, he's This is all like his pattern In some ways and it seems to me. I mean, maybe I'm wrong but I interpreted that as saying I don't have anything to do with the russians. By the way, that was wrong when he said that um his fixer my cone was trying to Uh arrange a deal that never happened to build a trump tower in moscow. Okay And then he says, uh, you know, it would be really bad Uh, if it was the russians because it shows how little respect which is true It does show how little respect they have to united states and then, uh, you know, he's then talking about The missing emails that were the was the the kind of prevailing narrative at the time which was Well, what if she deleted all these emails and they didn't charge the attack or anybody else and like is that unfair and You know, what was in those emails that was so You know, there must have been something so devastating that they got rid of them Which also is not it's not clear, right? Well, it's yeah, it's it's it's like that if you want to That it's kind of that that's a that's a little bit of an innuendo kind of attack to you on the other hand um Again, I look at it as a matter of sort of double standards if somebody in the trump campaign Even if it was a junior junior junior chipmunk like a george popadopoulos had deleted information that was opinioned by congress Do you really think everybody would be like, oh, who cares what a then that's not a big deal I didn't do it for corrupt reasons so, um, but anyway, that's what he was that's what he was getting at He was like, well, you know you can find them and I and we now know because of the muller report That there really was trump was obsessed with finding those emails So he contracted people to you know, he asked mike flinn to go find them and And I think there were people who were willing to go try to get them from anyone But that is not and it doesn't have anything to do with what the russians actually did They hacked the dnc and they hacked john pedesta and they gave It was separate emails. They're both emails, but it's different things and um, again, I don't I I don't think i'll ever convince david from or johnson roush or Lawfare, you know ben widis. I'm probably never going to convince them that this is like, what is this? Like how how is that count of any of anything? But they I mean it was certainly said we also know I mean listen when this started and people thought that trump was going to get nailed by muller So for the nobody said in those first two and a half years of the trump years like Hey, they already got him. Look what he said in july 27th, you know 2016, right? Right? It's right there on tape Why don't we have to do any more investigating? That's collusion everybody. No, they thought that we're going to find But you know was described in the steel dossier well-developed conspiracy and like paul maniford and michael cohen and prog and all this other stuff None of it true Was all you mentioned uh, just briefly george popodopoulos and mike flinn Let's talk a little bit about the uh, you know the band of idiots that trump surrounded himself with or who were working for him Including paul maniford who is a bad guy and was also a bad campaign manager at least for trump You know, he's he's in jail Uh, but it was popodopoulos. Oh, i'm sorry. Okay. Thank you. Um, he was convicted though Well, he was not convicted for anything having to do with russia So the lot of people who got convicted like maniford's convicted because of not paying his taxes right and other things They have nothing to do with absolute sleaze bag and a friend to autocrats You know everywhere as long, you know in order to help them win fake elections, right? Um, but somebody like george popodopoulos. What does it say? I mean, is there any blame on trump that he surrounded himself with a bunch of incompetence who were doing things Like having You know the conversation that popodopoulos had in australia or with the australians or is that simply It wouldn't have mattered that that kind of step would have maybe said I would have maybe been more sympathetic to that point but after looking at the actual memo and what the conversation was I just don't he's a young guy. He was a volunteer He this is really like he had another meeting with this professor named mifsud. It was you know A malty's guy who seemed to have connections to russia Um, he's described as a russian asset or russian. He's connected to russian intelligence in the muller report It's interesting. He was interviewed once he's never subpoenaed sort of disappeared. We don't know what happened to him Um, i'm not saying he's dead. I'm just saying we haven't heard from him and it's sort of this one weird loose end But we also know that nothing Came of whatever this theory about what popodopoulos was into because then What what should have what should have the fbi done in your mind to under the circumstances where popodopoulos this low-level uh foreign policy advisor for trump meets with this weird shady professor and then tells the australian diplomats that There's some sort of russian data dump coming or something and then he didn't say that he didn't say there was a russian data dump He the point is he said i don't know That the russians might have something it was a suggestion of a suggestion. I have to I don't have to get it in front of me Let me see if I can find it but the the suggestion the actual text is really really revealing is my point Okay, so that he makes some sort of suggestion The australian authorities report it right after the russians do Dump something what is what would a more competent or less corrupt fbi do under those circumstances? Well, I think we got into a little bit before but what and i'm just basing this on one term Check the rest of the intelligence committee. Have any information to support this Interview the australian diplomats first to say hey, what can you tell us more about this? This is fascinating. Maybe even interview george popadopoulos Why not? I mean there's no I mean do they have anything like on him that suggests He's somehow dirty Is he so it's like if he's not on your list if you don't have any reason to think that he's somebody And I don't think they did. Why don't you just call him in and straight up ask him, you know um, what about uh, what about people like mike flin? You know, okay. So mike flin who's uh, you know, gonna be trump's national security advisor his the denouement of his post trump You know appointment does not I mean, it's it does he cuts a very disturbing figure right now He seems to be either Certifiably insane or you know just batshit crazy on some level Did mike flin bring Problems to the trump campaign by the way that he acted and the way that he talked Well, there is So There was nothing Other than the fact that mike flin went, you know appeared on rt And got money from rt and I think got money from like some other speaking fee. Okay, right You could have invested they in fact the fbi did investigate this and they found nothing and they were ready to close the investigation Uh like before the end of the election and the lead got I mean we have all that Dead to right There was also, you know, mike flin had a lobbying contract, which is not uncommon that people who are Advisors or or serragates in a campaign will have other kinds of influence contracts that they have it's how people make money when they leave government um, so he had another contract uh for A businessman who was a cut out for the turkish government to defame um, fatula gulen Uh, who is a rival of president erdogan, right? Okay, so it's a sleazy contract that he had and he had filed it under a looser Law known as the lobbying disclosure act as opposed to the foreign agents registration act um, that was fairly common before 2017 for people to do that if they were representing a think tank or a business as opposed for a direct contract to a foreign government And he was following the advice of his attorney But and and by the way as soon as trump wins and he was going to be the national security advisor He ends the contract right um, maybe you know, he there's a whole bunch of things he could have done So that was all like interesting I guess and it was a think totally fair game for the media chuck ross I think broke that story first um So all of that is like interesting Uh, but there was no russia connection with flin And the fbi knew there was no russia connection and then they tried to Make it seem like maybe they missed something because In the transition he called the russian ambassador or the russian ambassador tried to call him And we never knew what was this phone call was until 2020 So there was so for a long time people thought well, they had they must have had a transcript They overheard a phone call with the russian ambassador and it must have been so bad because that was enough to try to Well, then we finally saw the transcript for this And I recommend anybody you can find it online Read it for yourself, uh mike flin That is exculpatory evidence that is evidence. He's not a russian agent That is evidence that you you were right to you should have closed the investigation Not what they ended up doing like to saying this is evidence to keep the investigation open and ultimately Because the Mueller You know, you this is the thing is that once a prosecutor kind of has you You know in their crosshairs they can get you to agree to something in order to that You won't have to roll the dice and go to trial for something else and maybe go away and they threatened his son and he he agreed to um, you know these misstatements and so forth and Then he withdrew his his plea agreement and ultimately the trump administration correctly the justice department correctly after by the way an independent review People get this wrong. It wasn't bill bar looked at it and said He he said I would like someone neutral. So he gave it to another us attorney, um, I think it was representing like Missouri at the time or something to look at it He looked at it and recommended. Okay. You need to withdraw these charges. These were completely unfair I wrote a big piece for commentary about it. It's another um, just injustice in this entire investigation now since then Mike Flynn has said things about the 2020 election, which are absolutely horrible and nobody should you know, they're terrible It's he's he's forwarded this And it's it's utter insanity and it's it's really sinister Um, because it it erodes confidence in our peaceful transfer of power But then that gets to this other point The fbi interfered in the peaceful transfer of our power after a free and fair election It's a disgrace And yet it seems like there's a segment of our country that wants to put up these leaders And praise them as heroes of some sort of resistance. Well, there's there's an interesting and it's it's not quite symmetrical but You know the right does not want to or republicans conservatives don't want to concede certain elections People like carry a lake or still carry on donald trump is carrying on But then there's a version of that on the left And it's you know, these aren't exactly the same thing But it's disturbing and fascinating and it certainly is bad for the country When you have the two major parties filled with people who refuse to admit when they've lost elections and that seems to be part of the You know of the common language right now Zach you want to yeah, i'm curious, you know to that building on that point The way that trump himself has reacted to the durham report is worth talking about a little bit I think because He has a certain manner that he likes to frame things. We all remember, you know hoax Uh, witch hunt crime of the century or the the terms that he generally throws out there And he was recently on dan bonjino's show Reacting to the uh durham report. So let's just play that clip and i'm curious to hear your thoughts Eli as to what trump had to say This was a coup and if i didn't fire comey Probably you wouldn't have made it i wouldn't have made it this great administration that did so much wouldn't have made it Because comey. This was a whole coup. They were ready to go in if i didn't fire comey He would have walked in with stroke and page and this one and mccabe And they were just sir. I'm sorry, but the russia thing. I said what russia thing Can you imagine if you would have been taken out of office as something that you never even heard about? These are bad people. These are sick people Was this uh an attempted coup Uh You know that's over the top I don't like i mean it's not a coup in the sense of there wasn't like a general who You know got a group of officers to Storm the white house But it was certainly Uh an outrageous kind of interference As I said in the in the in the transition uh in the presidential transition Uh the fbi leadership's actions. I mean remember in march of 2017 again The fbi has zero evidence at this point comey Tells the house intelligence committee There's an ongoing investigation in trumpeter's campaign having to do with russia Confirming by the way stories that were already leaked to the new york times in the washington post and everybody else Why would he do that? He mentions the investigation In 2016 initially in july in order to say he's not charging clinton also highly unusual But why would he then bring up this in an open-ended investigation when again the fbi had nothing With the exception of the steel dossier, which was disinformation So and the fbi by the way at that point knew that that den chenco was walking away from it You can go through the list of all of the problems. They offered steel a million dollars. We could corroborate and he couldn't So all of that information is somewhere the cia looked at and said they thought it was junk and shouldn't be included in the intelligence assessment So it's comey out there who's then says i need to confirm this and everything like that And by the way, it was such a moment Such a watergate like, you know west wing drama moment The fbi director is announcing an ongoing investigation into the sitting president holy to heedy and it confirmed so many of the priors of people who still bitter about the the You know trump winning that election That we sort of stopped and and and we didn't really capture like Or examine like what what the hell is the fbi director doing? Why would he make that announcement and now we know there was no reason for him to make that announcement? We now know That that that what he said was I mean, why would you say that? That it should have pretty much been closed at that point. So um I wouldn't call it a coup, but I don't have much sympathy and even though at the time You know Trump couldn't have screwed up more about how he ended up how he fired comey and bragging to You know the russian ambassador or the russian foreign minister in the white house the next day about how he was crazy and everything like that all really that was bad, but Probably one of the best things that trump did was getting rid of jim comey So um in the time that we have left Let's talk about the fbi and how we go about that and then how we deal with this larger question of things Of like how do we rebuild trust and confidence? It's not just in the fbi, but in the political process or in our culture and just as to tee that off the The listener or the the viewer collin For five dollars which you can do at youtube you can pay money and we'll always read your question But he writes we know the fbi is corrupt and doj is controlled by biden Why do you expect anything to change congress won't gut the entire federal government? Eli can you or Can we look at what durham you had mentioned this before? Durham does not come up with um a Series of reforms uh zach do we have some language about what durham? You know what he does kind of suggest Yes in terms of reform for the uh he ultimately suggests uh appointing a um career position for a non-partisan fbi agent or a lawyer to challenge fiza applications and every other stage of any investigation where it's a politically sensitive investigation so that that's the one recommendation that he makes We also have uh, you know an appetite among republicans. This is uh representative andy bigs of arizona Who's on the house judiciary committee saying defund and dismantle the fbi, which um, honestly i'm Open-minded to uh, just a whole sale like do we need to Is this agency even working at all anymore? But i'm curious what you think And we'll also point out that vivek ramaswamy who we interviewed a couple weeks ago was saying that he said that You know the fbi should just be dismantled because it is too far gone and rebuilt from the ground up what that means But yeah, elie what what should happen specifically to the fbi in order to make it less prone to this kind of behavior and other types of Are recurring mistakes at same well the first thing is i think You separate the domestic intelligence function from the fbi from the law enforcement function So i would take out all the intelligence stuff That what that's in the fbi. It's a big part of the fbi It's like hoover build all that stuff in the 20th century against the communist party and the soviets It should go to something else. Um, maybe a new agency But it should not be in under the same roof as the cops Cops and spies should not co exist because spies break laws and rules and cops enforce them So as a very basic point we do not want the same people who are responsible for a sort of uh countering intelligence threats or spying on potential terrorist cells In the same building as the people who are just there to you know catch fraudsters and stuff like that and well, how did 9 11? How did the response to 9 11 including you know the patriot act but not limited to that? How did that um, you know did that uh steroid up uh, jagger hoover's initial conception of the intelligence gathering, uh, you know an infiltration aspects of The fbi or you know That's a great it's a great point um, so in in a piece. I wrote a few months back for commentary magazine You know can can can the x there it is can the fbi be saved from itself and can we be saved from the fbi? um, I get into the fact that I think it's been missing is that right before 9 11 the fbi uh came very close to kind of having the sorts of huge reforms that it so desperately needs but it got out of that because Louis free who was the director? resigned in shame after Robert Hanson was caught who went undetected for 20 years as a Originally a soviet agent and then a russian agent Um, and they sort of went after the wrong nice to see somebody who made a smooth transition from the soviet to the russian side That's only sad that he was an american fbi agent, right, right? So that was a huge blow, but there were several other things the wenho lee case was completely botched They ended up could you briefly describe what the wenho lee case because that was something that was everywhere for a while and then it disappeared and it is a disturbing You know You know personification of when the fbi get something really wrong. Yeah, sure I mean, this is a guy who worked for one of the top secret doe Nuclear labs and he was accused of being a spy for the chinese and the fbi was absolutely convinced of that There were a number of you know, there were a number of cases, you know stories that were written I think in in major elite publications like the New York Times Accusing him of such and then it ended up that they were totally wrong and he sued the fbi and won because They defamed him and even though I think they eventually charged him with Something far less than being I was like taking a Classifier a secured computer home or something like yeah, but it was like it was far less than whatever Yeah, right, but then that's then there's like, you know the screw up Uh at wake. Oh, I mean there's all kinds of things that happen in the 1990s that really were very bad for the fbi And it's traditional friends on the capitol hill Um, usually republicans like the fbi. So chuck rastly at the time You know kind of gives a speech about who was only in his 80s. So he was You know oddly young spry, you know spring chicken Was uh, you know, I mean like to say hey my daddy loved the fbi But I at this point don't think I can trust them and that was in 19 That was in 20 That was in like 2000, you know or 2001 when he said that and it's only kind of gotten worse So what happened is so free's gone And then bob Mueller comes in to be the fbi director So once you have a new guy, you're not going to blame him for everything else and then The fbi is kind of blamed for not putting connecting the dots on 9 11 Again, though, that's that's louis freeze fault. That's not bob Mueller's fault He was only there like a week or two before 9 11 is his first day um And so the problem what they said was that there were too many restrictions And this is very important that fb to the to the faiza the the foreign intelligence surveillance act And that's the system that the fbi uses to try to get the court to issue a warrant to spy on american citizens And so they needed to remove those restrictions and knock down this wall between collecting intelligence and doing law enforcement work And which is what they they thought that was the problem What's rarely mentioned is that before 9 11 there were these faiza scandals which You know produced all this outrage the faiza court rebuked members of the f you know For basically the same kind of thing that we saw with carter page because fbi agents just Totally making false bs statements to the court They were ignoring this time limits on various surveillance warrants So they were continuing to listen to lines when they shouldn't have or even in some cases they were continuing to collect Information on phones after the number had gone to somebody else I mean all kinds of things like this that were violations of like what they were supposed to do and violations of the of the court oversight It looked really bad for a while It was the reason why we have something that was called the woods procedure, which is that now allegedly For every faiza warrant that you submit to the court You have to have a separate file at fbi That shows why every fact in that application Documented is accurate. So as you have to have it's a sort of a another one of these safeguards another one of these reforms But what do we learn from horowitz? What we learn from horowitz is that the fbi ignores the woods procedures all the time And that gets back to the main point of door in which is that if you have an institution that's filled with people Who who aren't who don't have integrity? Then you can have all the reforms you want. It's not going to make a difference So there has to be something that is also in addition to I think removing the intelligence collection from the bureau, which is a no-brainer I mean this is going to sound strange because normally I don't like the idea I'm I'm like you reason magazine and many others and I'm very where I don't like cancel culture But james comey and andrew mccabe and peter struck and lisa page need to be cancelled That I don't want to send them to jail But I think they need to be cancelled. I think they need to be kind of like, you know banished from polite society They should not be asked to you know appear on prestigious think tank panels or to teach at universities or to appear as law enforcement analysts on cnn And something like that would show that there are at least some sort of social consequences for FBI leaders who have fallen so Far of the mark and have been have been so have have lacked so much integrity and Then maybe we have a chance at sort of trying to change what appears to be a really I'm worried about the culture of the FBI at this point because it's not limited to just I mean, listen This is an egregious case, but we see it time and again Um that oftentimes these g-men kind of think there's a law unto themselves And we can't have that so I I'd like to see some some social consequences for some of these folks I think another important aspect to point out here is that with the fiza courts being You know one of the main avenues of abuse in this case and many other cases There was an opportunity during the trump administration to push for reform to The fiza act and that was on the table trump did not get behind that There were some libertarian leaning republicans who were very much in favor of it Trump, you know pretty much rubber stamped that going through So at the top you need someone who's serious about actually reigning in these excesses And also some sort of recognition if the part of the answer is to somehow separate Say the law enforcement aspect Law enforcement from intelligence and not mingle them so much in one like giant blob Everything has been going in the opposite direction since 9 11 as you point out because In that commentary piece, you know, you make you make the very astute point that The f even though the fbi was somewhat blamed for intelligence failures there the result was, you know, they were rewarded more power so these In the wrong direction when these failures happen and I don't know how you kind of flip the script on that but That seems like an important aspect of turning this around Yeah, can I ask is there you know, is there an appetite for reform? and you know think about like we talk about the faiza courts as if you know, we don't even Think about it anymore, but the whole faiza system was a response to investigations in the mid 70s widespread investigations that were horrifying that showed that the nsa the cia and the fbi were just completely Uninterested in limits on their power room. We're engaged in all kinds of illegal surveillance and activity and whatnot So you get the faiza courts Then they become the the avenue of abuse to do more of that you get 9 11 Which then says, okay, you know what? We got to give them more power and less oversight in a profound way And now we have, you know, russia gate, which at least in the news media And throughout it seems like many in the democratic party are saying, you know What the what russia gate shows is that we need, you know, it's not that Our internal investigation apparatuses are completely corrupt or false or dumb They need more power because trump got elected and he was colluding with russia, you know, so it's like it's a self Kind of sustaining operation to just give more power to surveillance in the name of a free society, which is Disturbing, but I wonder if we do get to a pointer or you know, I could you talk about what is that point where the The script starts to flip. I'm talking to you from LA and I was driving around in the showtime series With michael shanahan about Waco the second season is coming out, you know, there was a version of this a couple years ago Waco is, you know, one of those major scandals in the 90s that showed the fbi was not very good at what it You know what it is always lionized for, you know, all of the public relations, you know, the fbi There was a long-running tv show everything you hear about the fbi's the you know, the gmen are the goddamn fucking best people in the world You know, they they are upright. They are boy scouts They are straight hours and they are really really good at what they do and what we learn, you know And again through beverly gauges New biography of jager hoover Tim weiner's enemies that came out a few years ago and where louis free, you know, he says Jager hoover was terrible and he's by far from the worst fbi director of all time. It's really louis free Um, you know, is there how I mean it's how you measure terrible It's I know I know we're talking about with weiner, but it's it's a little bit of yeah I'm just saying like what what are the Accumulations are you know, and is it is it scandal? Is it cultural production? Is it? um, you know serious people in congress because there is a group of Right-wing, you know are people on the right, uh, some of them are libertarians who are actually principled and not just partisan hacks People on the left who are like, you know, what the hell is going on like our intelligence agencies Not only they fail to protect us But then they are constantly breaking the law as well. So that you know, what what has to happen to trigger a real serious set of reforms Well, I think one thing that needs to happen is that there needs to be kind of You know, uh, and I have mixed feelings about it because I'm Center right in my overall politics, but there needs to be some sort of like Revolution in the democratic party I mean, I think it's an anomaly that only can happen right now where If because trump's the leader of the republicans, then it means that you can have A cast of people at the top of the democratic party not and i'm including joe biden, but not just biden but people like adam schiff or Um, it's now like the sort of leadership of the democratic party You know, they're they're censors. They they love the fbi in the national security state um, and They seem to have no compunction about turning these things against their political adversaries whether it's uh social media companies through pressure from congress or by Claiming that everybody who you know has I mean listen I I don't question the validity of the 2020 election But if there are americans who might have questions about it because it was an unusual year in the middle of a pandemic And there were all these new procedures that doesn't make them a so-called insurrectionist or a russian agent and Anyway, these attitudes at the top of the democratic party And i'm not I have lots of problems with the republican party and lots of problems with trump and we can talk about that too Those people need to be um ousted from their positions of power They need to and there is a struggle there can be other people people like rokhana are aware of some of the free speech problems And he needs to be strengthened even though i'm sure I will have huge disagreements with rokhana when it comes to The regular regulatory state or foreign policy I'm I'm acknowledging that I don't agree with a lot of the other more progressive wing of the democrats but I would rather them at this point than this nanny state censorship crew um that are just a bunch of hypocrites and um Obsessed with this idea of disinformation Which is so arrogant and it's so anti democratic to think that americans Are incapable of judging information on their own and so they're gonna It's like their minds are going to be poisoned or something like that Whereas these people minds appear to be poisoned by this lunatic collusion conspiracy um So it's very frustrating and I think those people really need to go And then you know you'll see it's like it's like a tipping point I mean if there's a tipping point where is there is there a gerontocracy problem here as well I'm curious because you know when you think of biden and you think of diane feinstein and you think of You know many of the older people in congress and i'm we're talking very old but you know they have A different you know they forgot the lessons of the 70s really. Oh, they did they clear and it's it's ironic because Well, they they lived that during that and some of them were in an interesting case, right? Yeah, because she was the victim of uh domestic terrorism Yeah, and she becomes the mayor of san francisco because of the assassination of harvey milk. I guess right or right now of Moscone Right, right. So but so she was always like a hawkish democrat in the middle But like you know biden was in the senate for the church committee um And biden, you know and and by the way the democratic party under george w bush. It's not that long ago We're raising questions about warrantless surveillance and the nsa and stellar wind program and But then you had to flip under obama right where obama I mean partly gets elected by saying i'm gonna have the most transparent administration We're not going to illegally surveil people and then when edward stone is like hey, what about all this stuff? obama's response, which was politically brilliant He was like, you know, I am really interested in having a conversation about unwarranted You know our illegal surveillance the ubiquity of all of this stuff But he didn't act that way and it kind of hardened it seemed to have hardened Liberals, I don't think progressives but liberals to be like, oh, you know what the deep state I mean the deep state is what kept us from having donald trump, you know as president or something So well, I mean right, but yeah, I mean, but um just in the you know Last couple of minutes. We're gonna we're gonna stop But I guess you know Can we talk a little bit about how the decline in trust and authority? In institutions generally in political institutions in particular. I'm just looking at gallup in 1975 They have a general index of trust and confidence in major institutions in america was at 48 percent Of people had a great deal or a good deal of confidence and trust in institutions It's down to 27 percent now In this is amazing to me in 1975 gallup 52 of americans had a great deal or a good deal of trust and confidence in the presidency As an institution it is now at 23 percent um, so, you know the The recognition that the fbi and kind of the broader intelligence community and law enforcement community in america is You know is not what it seems to be is part of a Yeah, you know, I'll say two things about it one is that it's it's a you know, it's a concession to reality Everything that we learn about this. It's like, yeah, we shouldn't have as much confidence and trust in these things And it's also, you know that what's going on with the fbi You know and and I think what comes out of the durable important everything is part and parcel of a larger Downward trend for the past 50 or 60 years How do we you know You've talked a little bit about how the fbi like how we might change that around etc Like how do we how do we build back these trusts and confidence in institutions so that we are Not becoming you know, weirdly again given that the way russia Discussions of russia influence all of this but that we don't become the kind of low trust society that russia is which then You know, it doesn't mean people give up on government and stop funding And it really means that governments can get away with anything because people are expecting the worst Well, that's certainly true. I mean one thing I would say is that you know at the time uh I don't think we noticed it, but you know, obama used to say this had this catchphrase that um used to call it the false choice between liberty and security or freedom and security um It's not a false choice And maybe one way to begin to restore trust Is for government leaders To simply say this if you want us to protect you from every possible terrorist attack Then you're going to have to accept That some of your privacy privacy and some of your some of some of your Some of your rights that you you know, you sort of take for granted are going to be infringed upon And that we are going to have a sort of you know panopticon monitor state Uh, if you if you need us to protect and prevent every terrorist attack or something like that If you don't think if you think that it's more important to live With you know with you know some separation and you don't want the government to be that powerful I think I would now I would be on that side Then you have to accept that there's going to be some risk and some bad things are going to are going to happen And it's not the fault of our government. It's because we made a conscious choice that we do not want The kind of awesome power that would be required to prevent future terrorist attacks So that's one area where I do think after 9 11 There was something that happened where we just sort of american the american people just sort of said No, like you know more Not again, and I get I understand that after 9 11. I live through it, but the implication of that was uh these huge expansion of the national security state And empowering the fbi to do all kinds of things now first it was against the muslim community in america And we didn't really like I'm sadly I we weren't as attuned to that that there were american citizens who clearly Had their rights, you know violated in a lot of the way that the fbi approached this sort of approach to preventing, you know future terrorist attacks But now we're seeing that that same approach is done Against domestic extremists on the right and other people like that and when you start looking at and you're like wait a second You know this why is the swat team going to some guy's house because he's a pro-life activist or something like that And that that happens And you know can the fbi get away with this sort of thing And if you if you're upset about that and I would hope a lot of americans are upset about that Then you we should be realistic about it and say all right Well, wait, it's unrealistic to expect our government to prevent all of these kinds of attacks We're gonna have to live with a level of risk Zach final thought yeah for a question for you like and I know I'm also on that side of the Equation if those are the two choices, I'll take a little bit. You're objectively pro-terrorism. That's what that's what I'm getting But you know, I wonder you know as this comes This is kind of like a the closing of a chapter or something like we've had the Mueller report the the Durham report and that it feels like kind of like the final government's word on this at least but You're forgetting something jack What's that when they finally declassify The five percent of the Mueller report which is still remains classified Then we're gonna have proof of collusion And you know This marshal of the supreme court will Will will follow the execution orders for steve bannon and all these other Well, so that's that's kind of like the point I want to get get that is that there's always going to be this sort of You know remainder I guess that still like holds on to it And you mentioned earlier like you're never going to convince david from that the russia gate is more or less like a made-up thing What are Given that that that belief is still just going to linger out there What are the lasting effects of the russia gate narrative on our politics and our culture and society? Well for one, I think it has It's like a little bit of a temporary lifeline to the fbi, which should be wheeling from scandal right now But it won't be reeling from scandal because the leadership of one of our major parties that controls the presidency Will defend it precisely because it's you know, the other side that is so exercising about it so it so so they sort of I don't know the the the lingering of this disinformation Has the effect of blunting and stopping reform And I think the other thing is is that it further just I think it it it kind of further just intensifies the distrust between citizens and between our political parties um And it makes it really difficult to be in a the place where I am and I imagine the two of you are which is that I don't like trump. I think trump's a dangerous demagogue I think there's a lot of bad things about him But I also don't like the these abuses that have been uncovered about the fbi And so If in order to you know, it's like I don't have I don't I don't feel like I need to choose between those two things I can have both of those positions But for a lot of americans and the loudest voices in our discourse It's you have to you have to choose between the two and you know, so So that's a huge problem in that it's I think it it really kind of stupefies us. It makes us dumber And I wish I wish it wasn't the case, but that's where we are All right. Well, we are gonna leave it there. That's where we are at the reason live stream, which uh, please come back next thursday at 1 p.m Eastern time we have been talking with elie lake who is whose brilliant podcast the reeducation is available I tend to listen to it on spotify, but it's on apple. It's Etc. You also write regularly for commentary. Uh, you just had a big piece of the free press new york sun Yeah, so uh, you just google elie lake and uh, put safe search on, you know, yeah But uh, read the articles don't look at the pictures for elie lake Free johnson claire Okay Yeah, thank you, uh, so much, uh, wonderful talking to you and thank you really appreciate the work that you're doing Zach weismiller as always, uh, we will be here next week next thursday Zach, what are you working on just to give people a taste that has emerged over the past decade really but certainly over the past few years as The documentarian in chief. I think of reason uh tv You did well, you did a couple of weeks ago. You did a great piece about um homelessness In in san francisco versus texas or california versus texas, which is brilliant Quarter of a million views deserves twice as much as that. What are you working on these? Uh, thanks And yeah, that was a collaboration with uh, liz wolf and there's a lot of great Documentaries coming out from many people on the platform. Uh, what we most recently Uh, our most recent trip was to miami where the latest bitcoin conference was taking place And so we're gonna give a kind of like what is bitcoin at this point? Like what does it mean? What is this the culture that has emerged around it? I think it's going to be a really interesting piece and i'll also just take a moment to promote a Uh a documentary we made a earlier this year about a supreme court case that was just decided today Uh pertaining to the epa And the way that it regulates waterways. Um, that Is a very important decision that just came out and we have an in-depth documentary about that case Which has been going on for over a decade at this point. So those are what I would point to people too Okay, and then I'm just going to make a quick plug for myself For reason in new york city. If you live in new york city on monday june 5th, uh, you know a week and a half We're doing a live taping of the reason interview podcast in midtown at the blue building Which is the coolest building In manhattan on a bizarre block that's just down the streets from a famous steakhouse where Uh a famous mobster was rubbed out. Uh, it is unlike any place you've ever seen in manhattan, but I'm interviewing cat timp the fox news contributor guttveld regular who has a great new book out called You can't joke about that Go to reason.com slash events to see what we're doing We're popping up all over the place and it's if you like what we do online it's even better in person but Thank you again, elie lake of the re-education zack weizmiller of reason and i'm nickalesby. We'll see you next week