For the Thursday afternoon’s airing of CNN Newsroom, substitute anchor Pamela Brown hosted a discussion on President Trump’s recent Oval Office interview, in which he stated that he may or may not call the FBI if a foreign entity offered information on a political opponent. In that time, CNN senior Justice correspondent Evan Perez suggested the now-infamous Steele dossier wasn’t foreign interference because it made its way to the FBI. At no point did Perez now it was paid for and intended to be used by the Clinton campaign.
Brown asked Perez about whether or not there were any parallels between the Don Jr. Trump Tower meeting and the Fusion GPS’ Democratically funded Steele Dossier. Perez went on to say that it’s different for Hillary Clinton to receive foreign assistance because the British are allies:
Right, and Christopher Steele was a former spy for British intelligence services. The British government is one of the closest allied governments to the United States and what he was doing – what he did was compiled this dossier, these documents which was provided to the FBI to investigate.
They used it as part of their evidence to provide -- to provide to the FISA court, the surveillance court in order to get a warrant on Carter Page. Now, it wasn't the only evidence, but it was part of what the FBI provided and as you said, this is a big difference between, again, a former spy for the British government for the U.K. of intelligence services, one of our closest services, and the Russian government which is an avowed hostile power, wants to damage the U.S. political system.
Perez attempted to portray Steele as a man who just happened upon information regarding Trump, rather than a former spy who was contracted out by Democrats to gather information on Clinton’s political opponents. That was gross negligence in the portrayal of the facts.
Not only was Steele a foreign spy, but he also obtained his information from Russian sources. The media was quick to condemn Trump simply for the rhetoric he used, but completely absolved Clinton of all wrongdoing when her campaign actually engaged in shady activity with a foreign national.
The American Bar Association recognizes that any acceptance of a substance of “value” from a foreign national constitutes a violation of federal election law. In his interview, Trump only suggested that he would be willing to take information from a foreign government. CNN flashed their hypocrisy when they failing to condemn or even acknowledge the Clinton campaign for actually engaging in the same criminal activity that Trump suggested he was interested in.
This is just another instance of the liberal media playing favorites and obscuring facts in-order to continue their crusade against President Trump.
Read the full transcript here:
CNN Newsroom
06/13/2019
2:03 p.m. Eastern
PAMELA BROWN: Just to remind everyone, Lindsey Graham is the person who told John McCain to hand over the dossier to the FBI. So, I want to bring in my colleague Evan Perez. Manu Raju also standing by there on Capitol Hill. I'll get to you in a moment Manu.But let's just do a reality check just to start off with what we just heard from Senator Graham's statement drawing this comparison to the dossier. Are there parallels?
EVAN PEREZ: Look, there are big differences, right. I mean, I think one of the important things that we should remind everybody and what the intelligence community has told us, what everybody around the President has told us all, and what the Mueller report told us was that this was an attack by the Russian military on the U.S. political system, that this was something that was -- it wasn't just, you know, the offer of dirt, which was what that meeting was -- was supposed to be about at Trump Tower, right? That Don Jr., the President's son, got an email about, it was beyond that. It was hacking emails, it was trying to damage one campaign to try to make sure that she did not become president and to help the other candidate which was the President, which who is now our current President. The Russians helped Donald Trump get elected. We don't know if it made the difference, but we do know they absolutely tried to help him get elected. And that is where I think things turn. Right? The President doesn't want to ever acknowledge that because he believes that that goes to the heart of whether or not he's legitimately elected president. I personally believe that the President is been-- he's a legitimate president. But he seems to not really be able to cross that -- that idea off the list. So if you look back at 2017 though, Lindsey Graham was saying something else. He's one of the strongest voices on national security traditionally, and he said that when we first learned about the Don Jr. meeting in Trump Tower he said that, if you have an offer like this from a foreign government, a foreign adversary that you should call the FBI. He begged Chris Wray at the time during his 2017 confirmation to make that loud and clear and Chris Wray has made that clear.
BROWN: And just to kind of simplify it, what is the difference? Because again, you see Lindsey Graham trying to say this is apples and apples.
PEREZ: Right.
BROWN: But there is a difference between a Russian operative offering dirt to a presidential campaign and a spy for an ally – of an allied intelligence agency.
PEREZ: Right, and Christopher Steele was a former spy for British intelligence services. The British government is one of the closest allied governments to the United States and what he was doing – what he did was compiled this dossier, these documents which was provided to the FBI to investigate. They used it as part of their evidence to provide -- to provide to the FISA court, the surveillance court in order to get a warrant on Carter Page. Now, it wasn't the only evidence, but it was part of what the FBI provided and as you said, this is a big difference between, again, a former spy for the British government for the U.K. of intelligence services, one of our closest services, and the Russian government which is an avowed hostile power, wants to damage the U.S. political system. They definitely had an interest in trying to make sure one person did -- did not become president because they were upset at what she had done previously with regard to Vladimir Putin.
