Congressman Doug Collins, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, spoke with Brian Kilmeade about President Trump set to impose tariffs on Mexico unless they stop the flow of migrants crossing the border, the democrats continuing to pursue investigations and possible impeachment against President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr investigating the investigators to find out how and why the Russia probe on President Trump started.
Watch here:
BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX RADIO HOST: Joining us now, Congressman Doug Collins, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman, great to talk to you again.
REP. DOUG COLLINS (R-GA): Brian, it’s good to be with you.
KILMEADE: So, how’s it resonating right now? We know people like Chuck Grassley, republicans are not happy about these tariffs, some business people getting nervous, the markets certainly not liking it, down 248 points. I understand some desperation at the border but is this the right move?
COLLINS: Well, I think what the President’s doing is drawing attention to it and I think by stating the cause claim and Mick Mulvaney just said that but I think you – you know look the tariffs are the best way probably to go for (inaudible), no but what I do agree is in the large term though the President, he is using something at his disposal to say Mexico you got to step up here. And as we’ve talked about before I just came back from the border and yes, it is a crisis, it is costing us everyday. It is tearing at, you know, the fiber of our system and our cities and everything around there. So, I think this is a way to go about it, I think we need to find the solution to this and we need to sit down in a room and Democrats needs to quit playing games with these immigrants lives, come together with a real solution to the table, like some of us have and say let’s solve this and join the President hand and hand just trying to put an end to this suffering that is un-needlessly going on right now because of our bad walls.
KILMEADE: All right, but were you informed of this?
COLLINS: No, no, not before hand.
KILMEADE: Wow, so does that bother you?
COLLINS: No, not really, I mean it’s something that we – I’ve been working with the White House on a lot of different immigration issues and this is something and I think the President is one of action as you well know and we’re confident that he is one of action he just to the point that he sees the (inaudible). I was down there the other night when the 1,100 came through, we had saw earlier in the evening I’d been with the border patrol and we – you know I had been with them when 30 or 40 were coming up and it just appeared overtime and then I get up the next morning and talk to some of the same (inaudible) we went out before and they said hey, we had 1,100 come over in one group. I mean I think when you start seeing this it really just heightens the frustration level to say what can we do. But the one thing and the President understands this and it’s the bill that we’ve talked about before but it’s the bill that I have on the three loop holes that have to be fixed. When you have folks from Central American, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras coming through and basically, you know every body’s talking about the unaccompanied minors and these family units, they’re coming through and within 24-72 hours a lot of time they’re moving through the system and out all over the United States. In fact, it was a father and a son on my jet plane back from El Paso to Atlanta the other night who had been in the country only a few days. These people are coming because they believe that once they get here they’ll be able to stay because our laws are not being enforced and not able to do stop them.
KILMEADE: And listen, our audience knows this it’s not hard four or five things, we’re not talking about comprehensive, four or five things needs to be done just to change the laws to send the right message to those triangle countries. Couple of like, an example, this is in The Washington Post today, 45,000 unaccompanied minors since October, an example, a ten-year-old boy from Honduras who’s wearing an adult size, an oversized sweatshirt by himself, he’s trying to get to his mother in Lafayette, Louisiana, producing from his pocket a folded piece of paper with a phone number on it. I guess we’re responsible for being them their, a 10-year-old from Honduras said he was en route to reunite with his father in Ohio but was not sure where to go in Ohio. A 16-year-old in rectangle glasses said he was heading to Florida, no where specific and a 17-year-old from Honduras said he hoped to reach his brother in Houston but didn’t know exactly where he was in Houston. So, this is what our men and women are dealing with.
COLLINS: Oh, it’s horrendous, the border patrol agents are like I said earlier today with you, they’re super heroes because they’re sitting – those little pieces of paper you just talked about Brian, I seen them, I was talking with the family units the other night, one’s a lady from El Salvador with a child three-years-old, she’s 20 and really where are you going? She knew account and where she was going, who are you going to a friend? What are you going to do? And basically it’s not asylum from (inaudible), it’s asylum from economic hardship and condition and but they all have the same little piece of paper, really interesting, that they all have a sort of very similar piece of people with a name and a number on it that are their relatives or their contact people. Look, they’re gaming the system, the coyotes know this, they know what our laws are, they know coming in. An example the other night was we saw two groups coming in, one was from Central America, they were – the first thing they said was we’re scared, help us through the problem. Another group, a little smaller group family unit, came through they were from Mexico and they didn’t say hardly anything, they knew the differences in the law, that’s the problem we have on the border right now. And everybody’s got to get behind this President to make sure that this goes through, I am tired of Democrat – like last week we passed the Dreamer Bill, which is opening up even more for people – incentive for people to come across the border and we’re going to pass it on the floor next week. Think about this Brian, we’re going to pass another incentive for people to come to this country illegally without addressing the crisis, that’s a shame, that’s malpractice, Jerry Nadler needs to get off his ideas of investigation and everything else and actually do something on this issue and quit playing politics with these people’s lives.
KILMEADE: Congressman Collins is going to be with us, he’s also going to be with Chris Wallace on Sunday, let me ask you, do you have a relationship with Nadler? Do you guys get along?
COLLINS: We do, I mean, on most, you know, things off policy we get along OK and actually in the previous Congress, and I’ve talked about this before, I didn’t go to Congress to chase wild investigative new stuff, I came to Congress to actually legislate and I’ve worked with him before on legislation but this year is – they are completely mind focused on trying to take down the President, to the extent of the American people.
KILMEADE: So, let’s about what were some revelations. You said there was one thing that really intrigued you and you want to know if Peter Strzok is the name that we need to know. One story has an FBI official taking money from – taking a ticket, a $250 ticket from the member of the media to go to a media luncheon and the inspector general decided not to push forward on that. What else do you have out there that you need answered as we get ready to investigate the investigators?
COLLINS: Well as we’re getting ready and that’s one of the reasons we sent the letters yesterday and it may or may not but the question I have though Strzok and these other two are part of that corrupt cabal is going back to the source here. And this is the part that frustrates about this, well several things that happened this week with the press conference and everything else but as we look forward to this, you know, if the investigation from OIG showed that we have leakers, that they did things wrong, why was that not prosecuted? Why was that not turned over for investigation as we saw in that letter? You know, Jim Comey, is he an investigation? We want to know why and where this investigation is going because this is important. Jim Comey’s 15 minutes of fame is waning quickly and he’s out in desperation because he knows that when the microscope and the sunshine is actually finally put on those events in 2016 into 2017 it’s not going to come back good, he knows it and that’s why the American people need an Attorney General like Bill Barr who’s actually saying we’re going to get into the bottom of this, we’re going to find a solution. We know that the end of the report was no collusion, no obstruction but now we’re going to find out why it started to begin with.
KILMEADE: Right and that’s just it Papadopoulos and Carter Page made them think that businessman Donald Trump was in bed with Vladimir Putin, unbelievable but we got to find out that is indeed the reason. Now, everyone is denying that the dossier meant anything, now they’re finding that Christopher Steele knew and might be dis-information from the Russians. But I want you to hear what Catherine Herridge reported yesterday.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
CATHERINE HERRIDGE: So, Strzok was in a unique position, he was in charge of investigating Trump campaign members and warning the Trump campaign about Russia. Hunting matters because days before the August briefing for the Trump team, Strzok and Page exchanged the controversial insurance policy text and they were also clearly anxious about the prospects candidate Trump could win. Writing on August 8, 2016, Page stated “Trump’s not ever going to be president, right, right?” Strzok responded, “no, no he’s not, we’ll stop it.”
(END AUDIO CLIP)
KILMEADE: Really? I mean why would I be worried about that? I mean I’m being sarcastic.
COLLINS: Well I mean because if you’re part of a cabal that’s basically doing, you know, nothing short of a coo of an election process, this is the part that people have got to get in their heads. They were very bad actors at the highest level of DOJ and FBI who were a concerted effort against the candidate at the time, Donald Trump, and then moved into the President when he won. And this is not a wild goose chase, this is not something – this is why this investigation started completely and when you have Strzok, you have Page, you have (inaudible), all these names that people heard, Comey and all the rest, this is why people lose faith and confidence in their government, especially the Department of Justice and FBI. When they see that people worked hard on (inaudible) but going back to the investigation, the dossier that was supposedly not a part of, it’s amazing to me that even the Mueller report they discredited part of the dossier but we never heard anything else about the rest of it not being verified. There’s just so many inconsistencies here because I believe at the end of the day they were trying to cover their tracks so well that they just didn’t want to address the fact that they had bad actors in this process.
KILMEADE: So, what you understand now the President said to Bob Barr – Bill Barr, hey declassify, go ahead as you, you know, as would in a responsible way, not going to expose things that shouldn’t be exposed. When are we going to start seeing some of this stuff?
COLLINS: I think you’re going to start seeing it pretty soon, again Bill Barr has been one of the best that I’ve seen in the last – you know of all the craziness of the last two and a half years, Bill Barr has came in with a sense of calm that has been really amazing and he doesn’t get rattled, he doesn’t get pushed, nobodies going to push him around and he’s going to do it on his time. That’s why he brought endure(ph) they’re starting to look into this, he’ll be classified as it need be, I think this is why McCabe and Comey and Jim – and Baker are all going out in public making comments they’ve never made before trying to shine a different light on their selves because they know what could come out is going to be damaging in their process. So, I think we’re going to see this come out, this is part of what we need to – it’s really one of the disappointing parts that I had over the frankly the nine minute charade this week, as I was one of the first republicans to say I wanted to see Mueller come in and you know, again he don’t want to answer those questions and the democrats don’t want to be reminded that there was nothing that they can do for impeachment because that’s all they want to do.
KILMEADE: Right, so last week Congressman Collins when you see what’s going to happen with impeachment and evidently there’s 46 members of the House who say we got to do this. If in fact they go forward with an impeachment procedure, what would that look like?
COLLINS: Well they’d have to bring the impeachment resolution and bring that through – to open an impeachment hearing process through the judiciary committee, that’s the only place it can start and it’ll be where it will come. And then they’ve got to convince the American people that what they put in their impeachment charges are actually things that one, they believe are impeachable offenses number one and number two if they can get past the House and then eventually you should have looked at it that they get to the Senate, the part is they don’t have anything. All they have is a theory that Trump won and so everything – if they think they can do better than Bob Mueller in two years and that investigative team who would have done anything to get at the President then they’re just diluting themselves, they’re trying to dilute the American people and that is what is frustrating about this is smearing this President who has done so much good and that’s the problem. So, that’s what they’re doing, it’s all a show, that’s why I’ve been so adamant at all of these contempt hearings, which they don’t have contempt, there’s so many other things here, is – I’m just calling out the hypocrisy on what they’re doing and say do your job, let’s work for the American people but you don’t have anything here and you’re just mad and you want it to look like something you’re not willing to do.
KILMEADE: Congressman Chris Collins I know it’s going to be a busy week when you guys finally get back to work, you still haven’t passed that disaster bill. Doug Collins shows over the past said disaster bill but we’ll see what happens, I would love border security money to be in on that, I just don’t see any sentiment that democrats will go along with that. Congressman thanks so much.
COLLINS: All right, you take care Brian, appreciate it.
KILMEADE: You got it.
