Report: FBI Chief Overstated Clinton Aide Emails; WH Calls Yates Political Opponent of President
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Not only that but emails that were classified were not actually marked classified at the time. With me now, the former Republican chairman of the house intelligence committee. Congressman, welcome back. Good to see you.</s>PETE HOEKSTRA, FORMER HOUSE INTEL CHAIRMAN: Good to see you. Thank you.</s>BALDWIN: So, on James Comey, this is a guy who has prided himself in rushing in to correct the record on multiple occasions, including the infamous letter ten days before the Presidential election. His words have become political talking points. Why do you think James Comey isn't rushing in to correct the record this time?</s>HOEKSTRA: I mean, you have to ask James Comey about that. It's obviously an embarrassing place for the director of the FBI to be, to be that wrong about that kind of a statistic, about that kind of an issue. The thing that happened just before the election. It's a bad place for the FBI director to be.</s>BALDWIN: Although when Sean Spicer was asked does the President still have most confidence in James Comey, essentially Spicer responded, hasn't told me anything differently, so yes. Sean Spicer during the briefing, they were talking about the former acting general, sally yates and of course, her testimony yesterday, and when Spicer was asked about her, he referred to her as a political opponent of the President. Political opponent. What do you make of that characterization?</s>HOEKSTRA: Well, I think that the decision that she made to not defend the President's directive on the immigration effort clearly indicated that she has a partisan bent to her I think that was a political decision.</s>BALDWIN: Congressman, if I may just jump in, if you look back to her record as a prosecutor, there have been Democrats who have balked at her including Congressman John Lewis out of Georgia, because of a totally separate case years ago. The role, the partisan role was entirely flipped back then.</s>HOEKSTRA: It may have been totally flipped back then but this is the relationship and this is the experience that this President and this administration had with the former acting attorney general. They viewed it as a partisan behavior and so their experience with her is yes, she made a partisan decision in not supporting this President and the activities he wanted to conduct to keep America safe.</s>BALDWIN: How was she not supporting him when she was going to Don McGahn, the general counsel at the white house, and saying that the then national security adviser was compromised by Russia?</s>HOEKSTRA: Well, in that instance, she was doing what she thought was the appropriate thing to do. She went to the white house, she issued the warning to the administration, the administration considered the warnings and the admonitions that she provided with them --</s>BALDWIN: For 18 days.</s>HOEKSTRA: For 18 days. Which is an appropriate time. Number one, this isn't someone the President did not appoint. He did not know her. She came in to the white house and said this guy is susceptible to blackmail. Well, as soon as the white house and the FBI are saying that, we know that that's not going to happen because it's now clear everybody knows what the situation is so the immediate danger and the immediate threat of general Flynn being blackmailed, that was gone. So, this then provided the administration time to check all the facts, what he had done, what he said to the vice President, the information that was provided to it by the justice department and to move forward and make a decision. I wouldn't have expected them to fire general Flynn immediately. They went through a process, reached a decision and made a conclusion.</s>BALDWIN: How about Senator Lindsey Graham yesterday, he said one moment surprised him. Watch this with me.</s>LINDSEY GRAHAM, SENATOR, SOUTH CAROLINA: General Clapper, during your investigation of all things Russian, did you ever find a situation where a Trump business interest in Russia gave you concern?</s>JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Not in the course of the preparation of the intelligence community assessment.</s>GRAHAM: Since.</s>CLAPPER: I'm sorry?</s>GRAHAM: At all, any time.</s>CLAPPER: Senator Graham, I can't comment on that because that impacts the investigation.</s>BALDWIN: We also, let me add this, during the press briefing today at the white house, President Trump instructed this D.C. law firm to send Senator Graham a certified letter saying that he has no business connections to Russia. Any concerns here?</s>HOEKSTRA: No. Well, the concern here is that the intelligence community prepared what they call a unanimous appraisal of the situation of which I believe the FBI was a part of and for the FBI as part of the deliberations leading to that document, not sharing with the rest of the intelligence community, I think it was the NSA and the CIA, that there was an ongoing investigation and then putting this document forward seems a little bizarre to me. You would have thought that the importance of putting out a unified intelligence statement is that everybody's sitting at the table, puts all of the cards on the table so that everybody knows all of the facts as they are moving forward. That's the surprising thing, the DNI, director of national intelligence, would not have been aware of this situation.</s>BALDWIN: Congressman, appreciate it. Next, brand new developments just in involving this murder mystery inside a penthouse in Boston. These two doctors engaged to be married were brutally killed. Hear about the suspect's connections to the building.