Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript: Russia Investigations

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INGRAHAM: With a war between the DOJ and Congress heating up, two lawmakers join us tonight to make a major announcement exclusively on "The Angle." Here are Oversight Committee members Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. Jim, what do you think about what you just heard from the attorney general?

REP. JIM JORDAN, R-OHIO, HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: I'm almost flabbergasted. What is the attorney general saying? Rod Rosenstein hasn't complied with Devin Nunes' subpoena, hasn't completed with Chairman Goodlatte's subpoena. We've caught them hiding information in the Strzok-Page text messages, redacting the fact that Peter Strzok was friends with Judge Contreras, one of the FISA court judges. They tried to hide that from us.

And today we learned in Catherine's report that in essence the head of the Justice Department, Rod Rosenstein, was threatening members of the House Intelligence Committee for doing their job, for trying to get answers to the American people, and the attorney general says that's OK? We are doing just fine? I didn't know he had said that. When you just played that, I'm like, are you kidding me? This report of Catherine's is unbelievable. When you have the head of the Justice Department Rod Rosenstein say he's going to go after staff members, emails and communications.

INGRAHAM: He wants your BlackBerry.

JORDAN: We are doing our constitutional duty. That's scary.

INGRAHAM: Mark, Congressman Meadows, what I think he's saying is that if you guys hold him in contempt, he's going to have to defend himself. And part of the defense will be he wants discovery. He wants to know who you've been talking to, who you've been talking to. He wants to know your text messages. Maybe they won't redact your documents like they did the Page and Strzok texts.

REP. MARK MEADOWS, R-N.C., HOUSE FREEDOM CAUCUS CHAIRMAN: There's two problems with this, Laura. One is that we're a separate branch of government. They don't have the right to do that unless we are coming under some kind of criminal investigation. And for the attorney general to say he is confident Rod Rosenstein did everything right. I'm confident he doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm here to tell you we are fed up with it. We've been working on a resolution. We have got a resolution here tonight that we're putting the finishing touches on. We plan to file that tomorrow. But the really --

INGRAHAM: What is it?

MEADOWS: It's all about compelling DOJ to turn over documents so that we can do proper oversight. If they have nothing to hide, turn over the documents. Jim is exactly right. This is just inexcusable.

INGRAHAM: OK, so what happens? A resolution to compel the production of documents, haven't you already --

MEADOWS: We have subpoenaed them already.

INGRAHAM: What is that resolution? Tell us what it is.

JORDAN: We're putting together a resolution we would frankly like to bring to the full House and have the House vote on. It's one thing for us to say. It's one thing for the chairman to subpoena. It's another thing if the House of Representatives would actually go on record and say Mr. Rosenstein, we as the House, a majority of the House say you're not giving us the information we need. And frankly, now that we have found out you were threatening members of the committee staff, a standing committee in the House of Representatives.

INGRAHAM: He's going to defend himself against your threatening to call him in contempt. How does he defend himself?

MEADOWS: Laura, let me just say, if he wants to defend himself, let's come on tomorrow night. Let's let Rod Rosenstein come on with Jim and I. We'll lay out the facts. He can lay out his talking points.

INGRAHAM: I have invited them on the show many times.

MEADOWS: You know why he doesn't come on is they would rather do private press releases to spin the narrative at midnight and try to act like they are complying. We've had a document out since November 3rd of last year asking for documents. We still don't have it. We have less than 60 percent of those documents.

INGRAHAM: Is this draft that you have, is it going to call for his removal? What is this?

MEADOWS: No. It just calls for them to really produce the documents.

INGRAHAM: What if they don't release them? What if they give you --

MEADOWS: Obviously.

JORDAN: They've been doing that all along. So if they do it again, then you've at least had the House spoke and say we want this information.

INGRAHAM: Then what? What are you going to do?

JORDAN: Then everything is still on the table. The same issues are still on the table. Contempt and those remedies are still on the table. But look, let's have the House take a vote and send the message that a majority of the House agrees with us that you should give us information. We as a separate and equal branch of government are entitled to get answers.

INGRAHAM: Are we talking impeachment?

MEADOWS: Obviously that is still something we have in our toolbox. But we will have a vote. I'm here to tell you tonight Laura and tell your viewers, we are going to have a vote on the House floor. One way or another we are going to have a vote, and we're going to make sure that we get those documents.

INGRAHAM: Rod Rosenstein last month called this extortion, basically. He will not give in to these demands.

JORDAN: How about extortion when you're threatening members of a standing committee of the House of Representatives for doing their job. We know these individuals. I know who these guys are. They have worked their tail off. These are the guys who helped put together that memo which talked about what went on at the FISA court and the fact they didn't the FISA court who paid for the dossier, they didn't tell the FISA court that Christopher Steele had been fired by the FBI for leaking information. These are the guys who put that together and they are being threatened by Rod Rosenstein. This is as wrong as it gets.

INGRAHAM: What is your general thought of the constitutionality of this whole investigation? We've talked about this generally before. There are a lot of scholars who believe, and Dershowitz and a bunch of us have been talking about this for months, that this entire Special Counsel seems like an unconstitutional undertaking. There is no real oversight. They essentially have a limitless budget, even though Congress appropriates, it seems like they have a limitless --

MEADOWS: They do have a limitless --

INGRAHAM: And the president really can't remove him supposedly because it's bad for politics, so is there really any executive branch oversight if Rod Rosenstein himself is conflicted? He's a witness?

MEADOWS: He should recuse himself. I can tell you just based on some of the facts we've seen, he should recuse himself. But that aside, in this country, you investigate crimes. You don't go in and start to investigate and see what you can find and hope to come up with a crime after you've investigated. And that's not the way this Special Counsel is doing it, and I think it's wrong.

INGRAHAM: Didn't he say he was going to make the documents available to the so-called gang of eight?

JORDAN: That's supposed to happen tomorrow, but we'll see. Every time they say they're going to do something they wind up not doing it or partially doing it.

MEADOWS: Their press release that they were going to do today.

INGRAHAM: Today, it's Tuesday.

MEADOWS: Now it's going to happen Thursday.

INGRAHAM: What are Gowdy and Ryan saying? Are they supporting you? McCarthy, were are the leadership?

MEADOWS: We had discussions with the speaker and Gowdy.

INGRAHAM: Where are they on this? They're nervous.

MEADOWS: Well, I think they want more time. But the facts are on our side is how long is long enough? And I am saying today is long enough.

INGRAHAM: Justice delayed is justice denied.

JORDAN: Well said. Well said.

INGRAHAM: Thanks for coming on.

JORDAN: You bet. Thank you.

MEADOWS: Thank you, Laura.

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