“Some people should go to jail,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) of FBI officials’ misconduct in obtaining FISA court authorizations for surveillance warrants against persons involved with President Donald Trump’s 2016 White House campaign, offering his remarks in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
“Any federal agency or person who abuses their power of government, whether it’s a law enforcement official or a member of Congress, if you abuse your power to carry out your own political agenda, there ought to be consequences to it,” determined Scalise.
Scalise added, “The [inspector general] laid out 17 different abuses of the FISA court process, and even recommended some of that be looked into further by the attorney general, and I hope the attorney general does, and I’m sure he is, because you saw the attorney general and Durham both come out yesterday and push back on the final result, saying it didn’t go far enough, [and that it] didn’t even lay out what they’re seeing.”
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“[William Barr and John Durham] are seeing [much] bigger concerns,” continued Scalise, “and I’m glad there’s a deeper, wider criminal investigation being carried out by Durham, and ultimately, I hope at least charges [are laid], because people need to held accountable.”
Compromising the credibility of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act undermines national security, stated Scalise. “The FISA court is controversial. There are people who don’t support it. It’s an effective tool [against] terrorism, but it’s got to be used effectively and properly, otherwise it can be abused, and was abused, and it jeopardizes the whole program, which means it jeopardizes our national security.”
Scalise went on, “Anybody who abused it ought to be held accountable, and that means some people should go to jail from what I’ve seen, and hopefully you see that come out of the Durham criminal investigation.”
Democrats’ impeachment push is being executed in bad faith, estimated Scalise. “It’s a sham. What you saw yesterday is a continuation of this sham impeachment, the obsession that [Democrats] have with President Trump out of a fear that he will get reelected, not out of a concern that he broke the law. That’s the most important point.”
Marlow said, “It seems like the tactic here is to get Democratic lawyers to explain to Republican voters in the Midwest why the president needs to thrown out of office. These are people that donated to Hillary Clinton in many cases, certainly voted for Hillary Clinton, and they’re explaining to the rest of us why the whole election was illegitimate [and] this president is illegitimate… All of their expert witnesses are Democrat elites. How could that ever work?”
Scalise replied, “I actually felt last week’s hearing was one of the best for us, because you had these four liberal elitist professors. You had this crazy woman from Stanford, who I think disgraced herself and Stanford University by going after, attacking, and trying to bully the President of the United States’ child. If a conservative would have done that to a Democrat president, they would have been fired from their job, and no comity from Stanford.”
“But it shows you what they’re about, the disdain [Democrats] have for the American voter,” added Scalise. “They think they know better than you. That’s what this is all about. They’re scared to death the American people are going to reelect Donald Trump, because he’s done the thing he promised he would, and they don’t believe in the things that he promised. That’s the bottom line.”
“They’re socialists,” continued Scalise. “They don’t want free-market capitalism working. They don’t want people controlling their own destinies. They see families doing better — they don’t need government as much — and that’s a threat to them and everything they stand for. The only thing that they see [as a] recourse is to impeach him, and the public’s not buying it because they don’t see an impeachable offense, because there is not an impeachable offense.”
Last Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee revealed that its chair, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), had subpoenaed the phone records of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) as part of its ostensible impeachment investigation of the president.
“The abuse of power I saw last week was Adam Schiff subpoenaing phone records,” stated Scalise. “We never even knew about any of this, by the way, until the report came out. [Adam Schiff] was spying on members of Congress, the press, on the president’s attorney — I thought there was attorney-client privilege — he’s trying to impeach the president, and at the same time he’s subpoenaing the phone records of the president’s attorney so he can find out how the president’s attorney is carrying out the job of representing the president. This is frightening stuff. Who else is Adam Schiff spying on? I asked that question to the majority leader, Steny Hoyer, last week, and he couldn’t even give an answer. How many other members of the press is Adam Schiff spying on? He couldn’t answer. How many other members of Congress?”
“I heard a story that there’s over 3,800 hundred pages of phone records that Adam Schiff is sitting on, and I asked if [Steny Hoyer] could verify that, and he didn’t know that answer,” added Scalise. “How does the majority leader not eve know the answers to these questions that a committee chairman underneath is carrying out? Is that an abuse of power?”
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