Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's Quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Representative Rick Crawford, Republican, Arkansas, chairman
of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee
has recently the committee's recently declassified twenty twenty report has
helped exposed the manufactured intelligence behind the twenty seventeen intelligence
community assessment that led to the Russia collusion hoax. Congressman,
thank you so much for joining us on this edition
at the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Absolutely glad to do it.
Speaker 1: Well. You've been on this committee for several years. You
became chairman of this committee in twenty twenty five. Take
us back to twenty twenty because this is the word.
This is why the word bombshell as it relates to
just very significant news, very impactful news. Was created.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this goes back to twenty seventeen, and I even
have to go back just a little bit before then,
after the election of twenty sixteen and before the inauguration
of President Trump in his first term.
Speaker 2: That's when this began.
Speaker 3: So before I joined the committee that was I joined
in January of twenty seventeen. HIPSY had received a brief
in December of twenty sixteen regarding this information, and I
think the first person that sort of raised an eyebrow
was Chairman Devin Nuness, and he said, something doesn't smell
right here, and he did a little digging and found
that this just didn't add up. What they were suggesting
didn't make sense. And after the ICA came out, and
I believe it actually was briefed on January sixth of
twenty seventeen, that's when he initiated an investigation for HIPSY
to go and review those documents and be able to
make a determination on how they arrived at their view
that there was collusion between Russia and Donald Trump, and
of course there was no evidence to support that. And
that goes back, as I said, to twenty seventeen. There
were it was about a year long effort. One, it
was complete. We all had access to it. Those of
us on HIPSY had access to it. I think most
of us that were on the committee went over and
read it. It was difficult to read because of the circumstances.
Number one, it was being held in a CAA reading room,
secure location, and they would give you a limited time
to review the documents and kind of look over your
shoulder while you're sitting there reading the documents. If you've
read the unclassified version, you know it's fairly extensive. But
what made it even more difficult to read was the
number of footnotes and source material that was necessary to
to really undergird the assertions and conclusions on the report.
So it's three hundred and thirty odd footnotes in addition
to the I don't know seventy pages of their findings,
and so it was a fairly difficult read.
Speaker 2: And that was I think when I first read it
was in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Since then, we've been trying to get that document released
back to HIPSY. Chairman Nunez made an effort to get
it done, couldn't get it done. Chairman Turner made an
effort to get it done and also was unsuccessful, and
it wasn't until just this year, with the assistance of
President Trump, that we were able to actually get the
document return to us, our rightful document. It was a
finally returned to us, and it's out there now. After
a classification review by the d and I and her team,
they released it publicly and it's out there for the
entire country to see.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and what we have seen is breathtaking. And this
is the biggest scandal, certainly of our lifetime, and one
of the biggest scandals that we have seen in this
country in the federal government in the history of this
great Republic. I'm just I'm curious what you thought when
you were starting to see these documents, and why do
you think the intelligence community and the Biden administration we're
so committed to keeping this sealed, to keeping this classified.
Speaker 3: Well, because it basically indicts the intelligence community. One of
the things that I have noted over the years of
serving on the committee, and I have.
Speaker 2: Observed this in various efforts.
Speaker 3: One was last Congress, I undertook an investigation in anomalous
health incidents or what we attribute to what we commonly
called Havana syndrome, and we were engaged in an investigation
and there was an ICA associated with his and we
saw the same type of deal where they say, here
is the in state, this is what we want to
tell people. Now you analysts go out there and put
together the analysis that supports our narrative instead of the opposite.
Same thing with COVID origins, we saw that that was
the case there, where they decide, here's what we want
people to think, and analysts go out there and support
our narratives, come up with the information that supports what
we want to share with the American public.
Speaker 2: Those are two fairly recent.
Speaker 3: Fairly high profile examples, but they pale in comparison to
this Russia collusion ICA that was authorized by President Obama,
that was undertaken implemented by his IC team, that is
CIO Director Brennan, Dni Clapper and FBI Director Comy and
so they under their direction, they had a group of
analysts that put this together. Now we know that there
were five analysts that worked on this. This was sort
of a cobbled together Frankenstein like report that supported a
political narrative that they wanted told. And central to this
was the Steele dossier. Now they knew that the dossier
was discredited, and yet with the what pushback they did get,
and there was I will say, in fairness, there may
have been one or two people said, now this doesn't
seem right. We probably shouldn't do this because Steele dossier
was surely discredited, and they said, well, Director Brandan said,
well it rings true. Well if it rings true, then
we're going to use it. It didn't matter if it
was true. As far as he was concerned, it rang true.
So therefore it was going to be central to their assessment.
Speaker 2: And that's part of the problem.
Speaker 3: The other thing was the analytic integrity was lacking completely.
Speaker 2: And what I would like for people to know.
Speaker 3: Is that the intelligence community has a series of directives
that govern the conduct of people who work in the
IC and one of those is ic D IC.
Speaker 2: Directive two three.
Speaker 3: This is the governing document for analytic trade craft.
Speaker 2: And you forgive me for being course.
Speaker 3: But these analysts, for lack of a better term, crapt
all over ic D two three. They did not follow
it in the slightest. It was ignored, and they went
forward with their own narrative that was done simply to
discredit President Trump and to spin a.
Speaker 2: Narrative that was false, and that was that he was.
Speaker 3: Involved with Vladimir Putin in helping to change the outcome
of the election.
Speaker 2: Now, the other interesting thing is.
Speaker 3: If, first off, there was no evia to that end,
there was no evidence to support that Trump was involved
with Putin in any way, shape or form, and they
again relying exclusively on the Steele dossier, but there was
evidence to support the reverse, in fact that if anything,
Vladimir Putin had derogatory information on Hillary Clinton and he
chose to withhold it because he, like everybody else, expected
Hillary Clinton to win.
Speaker 2: Therefore, he withheld the information.
Speaker 3: That he had and chose to use it on the
other side of election so he could manipulate her, viewed
her as a soft target and easily manipulated based on
the d rog that he had on her. And if
in fact there was collusion there, if in fact there
was a favorite outcome that Putin wanted to see a
president Trump, doesn't it make sense that he would have
used that d rog that he had on Hillary to
help affect the outcome of the election, And in fact
he didn't, and the evidence proves that. So what we
see here is a fraud, a hoax perpetrated on the
American people at the expense of President Trump. And this
was nothing more than a psyop, a psychological operation against
the American people, really under the direction of President Obama,
conducted by his ic leadership team.
Speaker 1: It is again, I think the only word is breathtaking,
just what was happening behind the scenes. And this report
from the Intelligence Committee in twenty twenty confirms, you know,
a lot of the reporting that went on from the
Federalist at that time. I think of Mollyway, you know,
at the center, telling the real true story. But you guys,
you guys had hell to pay for knowing the true
story and trying to say, hey, listen, this Russian collusion
stuff is nonsense. But your hands are tied as well,
are they not, because this stuff is classified at that point, well.
Speaker 3: They were for a number of years. And the really
difficult deal, you know, a bitter pill to swallow over
these years, has been to watch the likes of Adam
Schiff and Eric Swalwell and others who would routinely come
out and leak information in an attempt to discredit and
you know, dinnegrate President Trump without a sentilla of evidence
they You know, we heard Adam Shift routinely, almost daily
for a period in time, would come forward and say
that I've got evidence that President Trump is in fact
colluding with or has in fact colluded with Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 2: Never produced any. In fact, what we saw is right
the opposite.
Speaker 3: He had been in contact with Russian assets, and he
had been, whether whether witting or unwitting, engaged with Russian intelligence.
And then we saw Eric Swalwell, who was engaged with
the Chinese spy, right and everything that that implied. And
so I find it ironic that individuals like that number one,
that they were allowed to serve on the Intelligence Committee,
and number two that they would come out and routinely
challenge President Trump with false allegations and nothing was ever
said or done. And it was difficult for us on
our side, because you know, we were trying to conduct
ourselves in a way that you would expect for folks
that have access to classified information to be good stewards
that information. In contrast, what you would see from Adam
Shift was he is the kind of guy that would
come out, walk out of the skiff in the middle
of a proceeding engage the media while a hearing was
still going on, leak information and then walk back into
the hearing while it was still underway. Those are the
kinds of things that we would see from ranking Member
Adam Shift and that proceeded under his tenure as chairman.
Had no regard for the responsibility that he was charged
with in terms of, you know, overseeing the intelligence community,
but only saw it as an opportunity for him to
advance himself personally and also to undermine President Trump.
Speaker 1: And Chairman Nunez was viciously attacked. I mean not just
by you know, the deep staters and the Democrats. He
was attacked by a media that bought all of this.
In fact, you look at what happened in this time
period and now you look at what and how the
corporate media is responding to this, the accomplice media. They're
complicit in this phony manufactured intelligence, this narrative that was
crafted that of course Shift was pushing out there. But
at the same time you have career CIA agents telling
the likes of John Brennan and others. Wait a minute,
there's something terribly wrong with the sourcing and the narrative
that you're trying to put together.
Speaker 2: Well, you just touched on. They were complicit.
Speaker 3: It's not as though the media were just reporting facts
that were being put out there in the public sphere.
They were willing accomplices, in fact, so much so that
the steal doss a was deliberately leaked to Yahoo News,
an outlet that would actually receive and accept it, and
then that leak was used as a predicate to go
after and essentially launched crossfire Hurricane. And so what we
saw was an interaction with elements.
Speaker 2: Of the IC and the media.
Speaker 3: So the media then becomes not an unwitting, you know,
player in this whole deal, but a witting accomplice, like, yes,
give us the information, will help spin this narrative, will
help sell it to the American people, will help take
down President Trump.
Speaker 2: That's not the role of the media.
Speaker 3: And they're not about to admit that they made that
mistake or that they were involved in that, because that
would that would be a huge revelation, it would discredit
all of them.
Speaker 2: But every time you turn on.
Speaker 3: CNN, MSNBC, other elements of the mainstream media, they're spinning
lies that are geared toward discrediting Republicans. It doesn't it's
not always about President Trump. But I mean most recent
example was, you know, this shooting in New York City
where you see Ann comes. You know, they jump to
an immediate conclusion and they start telling people what's going
on as if they have all the facts. But what
they were telling people was what they wanted to be
a fact, not what was a fact. And then they
I guess they feel like they can go and clean
up after themselves after they get it wrong. But what's
most important is to get the story out there first.
Facts be damned. This was the case here, but it wasn't.
It wasn't even about being first. It was about being involved.
It was about playing an active role in helping to
bring down President Trump and help the Democrats essentially build
a case over years that would ultimately result in an
impeachment proceeding.
Speaker 4: Is college even worth it anymore? The Watched Out on
Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps
unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how
it affects your wallet. Young male college grads are jobless
at the same rate as non grads. If the conventional
wisdom is that it's easier to get a job, they
lied to you.
Speaker 2: There Be smart with your choices.
Speaker 4: Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: They thought they were going to be the next Woodward
in Bernstein, every single one of them, from the from
the CNN newsroom into the New York Times and the
Washington Post. They have clowned themselves over and over again,
and they are in progress of beclowning themselves again. Scandal
after scandal, driven by Democrats, you name it, and they
have been, as you said, willing complicit participants in what
has been described understandably so as a coup, a soft coup,
however you want to describe it, treasonous activity that has
been the allegation. And you look at this report and
you say to yourself, I think I understand why people
are making those allegations. Our guest today is Representative Rick Crawford,
Republican Arkansas, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
As you were going through and your staff were working
on this report and you're getting this information and again,
what we are seeing in these declassified documents is CIA
agent career agent after another saying wait a minute, hold
up here, this intelligence is shoddy and more and more
it looks like you're trying to drive a story, a
narrative as opposed to doing what your job is, and
that is to go where the information takes you. Did
you have converse stations in the committee with the with
John Brennan and Clapper and and those individuals who were
really driving this this bus.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In fact, there was an open hearing and I think
one of the most notable exchanges was between Representative Trey
Goudie and John Brennan when he asked him point o, yes,
did the Steele dossier have anything to do with your
with your decision in the i c A. And he
said it was. It was not in the corpus of
intelligence that we reviewed. And that's that's a flat out
why that's not just a misstatement, that's not just say
you know, well I I I misspoke or whatever. He
deliberately lied about that because he commented on and and
and insisted that the discredited Steele dossier actually be included,
and it's fundamental to the conclusions of the I C. A,
So he lied to Congress then and on multiple other occasions.
And so what we have here as an individual who
is perfectly willing to lie to Congress, demonstrably willing to
lie to Congress and did it on multiple occasions. And
then people say, well, how could the Senate report be different,
be so different than the Hipsie report. Well, I don't know,
but let me clarify something that the Sissy staff majority
and minority, as well as hipsy majority of minority.
Speaker 2: Staff, all had access to the same material.
Speaker 3: But if people like Brennan were willing to come to
the House of Representatives and lie, which they did and
he did, then it's reasonable to think that he probably
lied to the Senate as well, whether he lied in
an open hearing or a closed hearing.
Speaker 2: You know ours was open. We also had closed hearings.
Speaker 3: Lied in the closed hearings as well, But I don't
know what took place on the Senate side, but it's
reasonable to think that if he's willing to lie to
Congress in an open hearing in the House of Representatives,
then it's probably reasonable to think that he was willing
to lie to the Senate, and they could have formed
their opinions based on lies that he told them. So
you know, the differences are really in material. Well, what
we know, and our report is solid and fact based,
is that this guy was at the heart of it.
He used bad intelligence, he used non existent intelligent He
cobbled together half truths and in some cases lies fabricated
from whole cloth, and included that to come back and
say Donald Trump's a bad guy. He was colluding with
Vladimir Putin and we think they stole the election. Now, look,
what we also know is that Russia malign influence is
nothing new. It's been going on for decades. As long
as there's been this relationship between the Soviet Union and
the United States. You know, they have been engaged in
that type of effort against Us, against other adversaries and
in their region, in anywhere where they want to project influence.
I mean it could be, could be places like nick Rogwood,
could be you know, other places where they're actively engaged in,
you know, places like Syria. You know, bringing it home
to more contemporary timeline, but the bottom line is the
Russians have always been involved in the line influence and
they're really pretty good at it. Two things can be
true at the same time, Yes, they were involved in
the line influence. Did they alter votes? I don't know that,
but that wasn't the argument. I certainly wasn't making the
argument that they had altered vote totals. But they were
making the argument that Donald Trump was actively engaged in
collusion with Vladimir Putin to affect the outcome of the election.
And that is flat out false. And what's worse about
it is there are people in the United States to
this day who believe that's true because people like John
Brennan and CNN and MSNBC and others perpetrated that myth
and continue to hold that position to this day some
eight years later.
Speaker 1: Well, these people need to be held to account, and
that is going to take some more investigation, some more
deep digging. But what you already have here definitely is
a case to make against John Brennan, to make against
Jim Clapper and Jim Comey, and I would have to
say the former President of the United States, Barack Obama.
You know, we're hearing from spokespeople that the former president
is it says this is all you know, just false,
it's all made up, and you know, just absolutely not true. Well,
he should know a thing or two about false and
made up intelligence, manufactured intelligence. That's exactly what happened here.
How much is the former president of the United States
culpable in this? Was he an innocent bystander, as some
of his defenders have tried to assert.
Speaker 2: Now, and I won't.
Speaker 3: I will never believe that he was not in the loop.
In fact, I believe that he was the one that said, hey,
let's do this. I believe he was acting as an
advocate for Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2: And trying to.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know, rehabilitate her image. I'm not
sure what it was he was doing at this point
the election was over, but clearly if he was engaged
in this level of deception, I don't know what his
in state would have been except to remove Donald Trump,
to throw into you know, some level, some question about
the results of the election and therefore caused potentially a
constitutional crisis and possibly.
Speaker 2: Overturn the election results.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if he had it in his
head that, you know, maybe they could deliver a win
administratively to Hillary Clinton. If that's the case, and he's
got a lot to answer for. But what we do
know is that this was not something that just took
place on his watch and he wasn't aware of it.
He was aware of it, in fact, was an active participant,
I believe. I believe that he authorized his team to
engage in this effort.
Speaker 1: What you found was very damning as well against Hillary Clinton,
the former Secretary of State and the failed presidential candidate.
And you talked about it before, but I think again,
I've written about this at the Federalist. Perhaps the least
surprising information that came from your report in twenty twenty
was that Hillary Clinton was suffering from some extreme emotional issues,
mental illness issues. That is part, just a small part
of what the Kremlin had and yet did not release.
That also includes the health problems that Hillary Clinton had.
The Kremlin had access to that, and it also had
access to some pretty damning information about the Clinton campaigns
involvement in the DNC's involvement in James Comey's investigation into
Hillary Clinton and her emails.
Speaker 2: Of course, yes, no question, and whether or not any
of that was true.
Speaker 3: The report doesn't necessarily assert one way or the other,
is it true is it not. It's not about whether
or not it's true. It's about what the Russians believed
and how that impacted their decisions with regard to the
action they took or didn't take, as the case may be.
Speaker 2: So, if they believed and they know they.
Speaker 3: Had information based on a DNC hack and email hacks
and so on, if they believed, and the evidence supports
that they did believe they had this information on Hillary
Clinton and chose not to use it, Why would they
choose not to use that if in fact they were
supporting and hoping for a president Trump. It doesn't make sense.
And so the only logical conclusion is that they, like
most of the media and a whole lot of others
in the United States, assumed that Hillary Clinton was going
to be the president, and they held that information for
use at a later date. And that's what we believe
to be the case. And there are no assertions made
as to the veracity of the information that the Russians believed,
but there is assertion that the Russians believed it and
it affected their actions, and so they withheld releasing any
of that information because they chose to use it as
at a later date.
Speaker 1: I think time and information good intelligence, good information. I
think they have vindicated you and the Committee, the chairman
at the time, and all you know who were pressing
for the truth. Do you feel even more vindicated now
finally five years later with the release of this report.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: And I think it's important to note too that one
individual who probably suffered the most and the character assassination
that he.
Speaker 2: Endured, and that's Devin Nunez.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was an ethics review, you know, for
which he was cleared. There was no reason for this,
again another Democrat tactic to smear him, to take people's
eyes off of the facts. So we're going to try
to discredit Devin Nuness and so they made that effort.
It was a fruitless effort, but it's still something that
Devin had to go through and we all watched it happen,
and so there was that. So this is completely vindicating
for him. But you know, think about the legal fees
that he incurred because of some of the actual not
just ethics reviews that he had to deal with in Congress,
but some of the legal stuff where he had to
go through and incur all kinds of legal expenses to
defend himself and so.
Speaker 2: On, all at the hands of people like Adam.
Speaker 3: Schiff who it turns out, is you know, maybe one
of the biggest political scumbags in history, and yet he
is a United States Senator now.
Speaker 2: And it just boggles.
Speaker 3: The mind that somebody like that can be in a
position of responsibility and has has the ability to deceive
essentially millions of voters in California and ascend to that
position not only as a member of Congress and the
House of Representatives, but now as a Senator, and that
he was the chairman of that committee, one of the
most sensitive committees in Congress, and a complete travesty and
the amount of you know, the potential vulnerability that he
was a weak spot for national security I can't even
begin to explain. But I'm glad to see that he's
no longer, certainly not in a position of authority as
it applies to intelligence anymore. But that was those were
some dark days for the United States, and he drugged
the American people through this. And there are still probably
millions of Americans to this day that believe that President
Trump was in fact an agent of the Russians, when
exact opposite is true. In fact, if anything, Adam Shift
was an agent of the Russians, whether winning or not.
He was certainly a useful idiot as it applies to
Russian the line influence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it tells you where Trump derangement syndrome really is.
We have people believing the likes of Adam Shift, who
has been so discredited. Your word is scumbag, My word
is weasel. I think they both fit accordingly. Final question
for you, You've been very generous with your time. I
know you have a lot on your plate these days,
even more so now with what's going on with these
declassified documents. Do you believe the people we have talked
about will ever be truly held accountable? And what is
next for your committee in this process?
Speaker 2: I want to believe.
Speaker 3: That our Justice Department, under the leadership of Pam Bondi
and Cash Betel, have that they're going to adjudicate everyone
who is culpable here and bring the full weight of
our justice system against them. Whether or not there is
some loophole, some you know, executive privilege that you know
protects President Obama. I don't know, but I do know
this that there are people that were involved in this,
that were complicit, probably at the GS thirteen level, and
guess what, they're still employed out there at the CIA.
They're now GS fifteen or above. They're now in the
Senior Executive Service. They're now in positions of authority. And
guess what they're doing right now. They're trying to engage
in revisionist history and memory. Hold this whole thing that
didn't happen. Let's just pretend none of this has happened,
and I'll continue to collect my big paycheck and nobody
be any of the wiser. I think we have to
identify those individuals, call them out, hould them to account,
remove them from the ICE, remove their security clearances, and
make sure they never work in national security ever. Again,
that is an in state I can live with.
Speaker 1: This is such a major scandal. It is. And again,
if we had a responsible media that wasn't in the
bag for the Democratic Party, this information would have been
out there, the false information would have been disputed a
lot earlier, and you know, obviously American history would be different.
But at the end of the day, this whole affair,
the whole Russia collusion hoax, it diminished the president's first term,
President Donald Trump's first term in office. It was interference
in an election. And while you have the leftist talking
about Trump being the threat, the existential threat to democracy.
What these documents show is that the Democrats in power,
President Barack Obama, John Brennan, James Clapper, and Jim Comey
and the rest, they were the real threat to democracy.
Speaker 3: And you know, the irony of it is that people
like Brennan, Clapper, you know, even some others like Andy McCabe,
Pete Strock, those type of people, they've gone on to
lucrative careers in the media. If you don't if that's
not irony, it's just amazing to me that the American
people can be fooled at such a scale, on such
a level, and it's only because of a complicit media.
And so what happens the payoff for those individuals is
they put them on the payroll. They give them a great,
big million contract to be contributors at CNN so they
can continue to drive that false narrative over time. That
has continued on from twenty seventeen to date, and none
of those people have been questioned about whether or not
they were right, whether or not they made a mistake,
whether or not they were credible, and they're still on.
You know, those guys are still on CNN. They're still
on MSNBC and still you know, writing editorials for various publications,
in many cases, still hold a security clearance.
Speaker 2: And it's an.
Speaker 3: Absolute travesty because what they've done is, you know, they've really,
in my opinion, perpetrated the largest, you know, deepest, widest
hoax I think we've ever seen in American history. And
they seem to be proud of it. And that's the
thing that bothers me the most.
Speaker 1: Some of them are writing poorly written novels as well.
Isn't that interesting when you think about it, the guy
writing the intelligence since the agency style novels, is the
guy that, based on these documents, appears to be a
manufacturing and writing a narrative for a complicit media to
fully swallow and regurgitate. Thanks to my guest today, Representative
Rick Crawford, Republican, Arkansas, Chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, you've been listening to another edition of
The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent
at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the frame