Gingrich: It Was ‘an Attempted Coup D’etat’ — An Effort to ‘Undermine the Choices of the American People’

Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich argued the entire effort by intelligence agencies to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was done so to undermine the choice of voters, which he deemed to be a “coup d’etat.”

Gingrich explained how the situation only validated the public’s belief that those in power are corrupt.

Partial transcript as follows:

HANNITY: It was collusion. It was, now, The New York Times, two and a half years of lying.

GINGRICH: Yes.

HANNITY: Now, they’re saying, it looks like it was probably Russian disinformation.

GINGRICH: Is this going to be wild? It turns out that entire dossier was a plant by the Russians?

HANNITY: Mr. Speaker, they never verified it, and they used it in four FISA, and it was a backdoor of all of Trump campaign.

GINGRICH: If you knew Trump was bad, why would you verify it? It fit all of your previous beliefs.

HANNITY: You say that with a smile. That’s an attempt — remember, they leaked at The Washington Post, David Corn —

GINGRICH: It’s a coup d’etat. Trump’s language when he interviewed you, you interviewed him I guess.

HANNITY: He interviews himself.

GINGRICH: It is sort of a two-way street. But his comments, the news media reacted to as they did because they are his enemies. This was an attempted coup d’etat. This was an effort by a group of people to undermine the choices of the American people because they had arrogated to themselves that they were morally superior and they had the right to deny us the constitutional system. That’s what it was.

HANNITY: Here’s — I look at it in three different phases. Phase one, Hillary’s investigation we know was rigged.

GINGRICH: Right.

HANNITY: Strzok and Page are laughing about it. The attorney general, it’s a matter. It’s not an investigation. And then the tarmac.

And, look, they are saying tough, they’re all Democrats, the fix is in.

GINGRICH: Yes.

HANNITY: They are saying that. Now, the next piece of it, the attempt to spy in the campaign to rig an election, with their favorite candidate that got off the hook, and then aftermath of which is to then undermine a duly elected president and bludgeon him with those Russian lies.

GINGRICH: I think that’s exactly right. To have the nerve to calmly and methodically get everything out in the open. Let the American people see how sick the system has gone.

HANNITY: We know the people are going to have to be held accountable. You can’t rig an investigation for your favorite candidate. You can present to a FISA court, one candidate’s bought and paid for Russian dossier not verified, not tell the court that Hillary paid for it. They knew it. They didn’t tell the FISA court.

GINGRICH: Right. You know, there was a report out I think today or yesterday, that 53 percent of American people think corruption is a major problem. Well, they are right. This is all a corrupt behavior by a power structure, part of the bureaucratic, part of a news media, part of the politicians and lobbyists, but of power structure that decided it could protect its favorite. It could destroy the person it dislikes. And it could do all of it all outside the law in a way that is clearly a total violation.

HANNITY: You are a great historian. How did this happen in America?

GINGRICH: The system has grown steadily and steadily more corrupt.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor