Fox News "The Story" - Transcript: Rep. Collins: Democrats should apologize for insisting Trump colluded with Russia

Interview

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MACCALLUM: All right. So you know Congress doesn't have the power to indict anyone or to charge everyone, but they do have impeachment powers, so it sounds like that is where they are still considering heading. You've got 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, $25 million spent in almost two years of working intensely on this, with a team of 19 of the top crack lawyers they could find.

So, that -- we know now what they found, essentially, haven't seen the whole report yet. But will Maxine Waters and Adam Schiff find what they are looking for, if they are going to continue to look -- who are they going to interview, what will they find that the Mueller report was not able to find. Those questions are coming up.

We've got a packed house for you tonight on this very big story. But first, Congressman Doug Collins, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, one of the four lawmakers that the Attorney General, Bill Barr, sent his Mueller memo to, sir, good to have you with us tonight. Thank you very much for being here.

I'm curious how you look at this whole investigation now, at this point. You know, the President called it a witch hunt, but it has come back to be in his favor, at least, in terms of what we know so far.

REP. DOUG COLLINS, R-GA., RANKING MEMBER, HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, it is, but let's look at this whole thing. This has been a sad part of our history and especially one though that we can actually tell you for some moment here, to say it's a good day for America because the rule of law did prevail. This president was shown not to be colluding. He was shown not to be obstructing.

There are things that the Democrats said they had proof of, they didn't have proof of. And I think it's time for an apology from many of them, instead of calling for more investigation. They ought to be in front of the camera and say, you know, I apologize. I said there was collusion, but we didn't have any proof.

This goes back to a problematic problem at the DOJ which the Senator Graham talked about today that needs to go back to the understanding of how we got there. We got there because we had a corrupt cabal of Strzok, Page, McCabe, and there are others and Baker, who are enabling this investigation to go at a person instead of the problem, and I think that's something we need to look at.

MACCALLUM: All right. So, the letter that was sent to you by the Attorney General Bill Barr, Cory Booker has just said moments ago, he's running for president, has just said that he has some real doubts about the way that that letter was constructed, that he would like to dig into. What did you think? You received the letter before anybody. What did you think?

COLLINS: I think the letter was straightforward. It said exactly what it said. And in no uncertain terms, collusion was off the table. Collusion did not happen. When even to the fact of saying that the Trump campaign was approached but actually rebuffed those approaches.

I'm not sure what Cory Booker is looking for. Maybe he needs to understand, as the old song says, I still haven't found what I'm looking for. But his problem is he's running for president, and he's now has nothing to run on. They lost their first love. Their first love was Mueller.

They thought everything was going to happen to that. It didn't happen because nothing was there. The President was right. And now, they're trying to find anything else that they can to tie to a sustained (INAUDIBLE)

MACCALLUM: You said that you think Democrats should apologize for, you know, saying that there was collusion, saying that the President would be out of office, as soon, because of all of this. Do you think that the President, you know, maybe has something to say to Robert Mueller?

And do you think that Robert Mueller pushed forward this investigation in a way that had integrity in all of the things that have always been associated with him in the past?

COLLINS: We see nothing to doubt that. I think what the President was upset about, and let's be honest here. The President was upset about how this was started. When we started looking into the fact of how this started with the DOJ, coming through the e-mail investigation, to the original Russian investigation, through then, the eight days in May in which Mueller was appointed.

I think what we ought to understand here, the only person -- people that are getting, you know, that are -- the Russians got what they wanted, but they didn't get it out who they wanted it from. They didn't get it out of the Democrats who are continually bringing this up, dragging the American people through something, making them doubt something that happened in November of 2016.

And that was that Hillary Clinton got beat. President Trump is the President. They don't like it. And so they want to keep this going at all possible -- that's the real sadness of this. That the Democrats can't let it go.

MACCALLUM: Let me ask you this, you know, I know there's a lot of frustration on the Republican side that Democrats are clearly going to continue to investigate and investigate and investigate. We listened to Lindsey Graham say that he wants to investigate the origins of this investigation.

Do you think that that is a risky political proposition? Do you think that the American public is going to be tired of hearing about this on both sides, potentially?

COLLINS: Since when did the truth become a risky proposition? I'm not sure. I think what we found is in the last Congress and the things that I've released. In fact, the three transcripts that I've released, and there will be more, Martha, actually go to point out that there was a problem at DOJ, that there was something.

You know, we've got a Mueller report now, there are the headlines of that and we'll see the report later that actually shows there was no collusion, the biggest lie that's been told in a long time. We show that there was no obstruction.

But what we have shown is actually proven, is that you had bias, that you had special treatments, that you had two layers of justice at the department, one for Hillary Clinton, one for candidate Trump and then President Trump.

These are the kind of things that when people see truth, they understand it. What they don't understand is continuing running after the same old thing that has always been proven wrong.

MACCALLUM: Ranking Member Collins, thank you very much. Good to see you here tonight.

COLLINS: Good to see you.

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