Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Doug Collins

Interview

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Joining me right now exclusively this morning is Georgia Congressman Doug Collins. He's the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

And, Congressman, it's always a pleasure to see you. Thanks so much for joining me.

REP. DOUG COLLINS, R-GA: I'm glad to be with you this morning, Maria.

BARTIROMO: So, what are you expecting from the Mueller testimony on Wednesday?

COLLINS: Well, what we're expecting is another round of what we already know.

I have told some people before it's like going back and finding a book on the shelf that looks new, and then all of a sudden you begin to read it and you find out, wait, I already read this before.

And I think that's what the American people are going to find. But really what's happening is it's the Democrats' time to make the case that they have not been wasting our time and millions of dollars in our committee hearings, the clown and farce hearings going on, where they're just harassing the president, going after things that we have already known, and just trying to make press release headlines, instead of legislating and trying to govern our country.

This is really what this sums up for them this week.

BARTIROMO: So the Democrats want to have the narrative of obstruction of justice. What else are the Democrats trying to get out of Robert Mueller, and what's the strategy on the Republican side?

COLLINS: Well, I think the Democrats, what they're trying to do is revive this and make something of it that, after being three months out in the public, everybody that has wanted to know about the Mueller report has looked in the Mueller report.

We see that people are beginning to tire of this. They also see that any thought of impeachment is waning, and they know that because the report said that there was no collusion definitively and there was no charge of obstruction.

Remember what was just interesting you just said. The Democrats wanted to focus on obstruction. The whole investigation started from the discussion of Russian interference in our 2016 election. It's almost like they forgot about that completely.

But let me tell you, the Republicans have not forgotten about where this investigation started, and there's going to be a lot of questions for what he did say, what he didn't say, and how this thing started.

And the people are going to find out, hopefully, some answers this week on that.

BARTIROMO: And, of course, we have been covering this for two-and-a-half years, and you and your colleagues have been exposing the truth in terms of what was the origin of the Russia investigation.

Are you going to be asking specifically if he looked at the origin of that investigation, why they started to investigate Donald Trump in the first place?

COLLINS: I think that's going to be part of our complete strategy.

And, remember, what we're doing here is, we're wanting to show this for what it is, and that is the final episode of the Mueller report and a final episode to hopefully put this behind, so that the president, who has been leading on so many fronts with the economy and everything that we have seen so far, actually can get to governing.

But what we're also going to have is a comprehensive decision to say, are you going to say anything new, are you going to stick to your report, do you find that report truthful, laying that foundation. And then throughout our questioners -- and we have got some great guys on our side and gals that are going to ask some really pointed questions to make sure that the American people understand this is not a vacuum that the Democrats have completely to say the president was doing something wrong.

We're also going to go back to that corrupt cabal and others, I think, as you look at it in general, that need to be part of this picture. Remember, the Mueller report is a one-sided report that has not been questioned from the other side. This is our chance to do that.

BARTIROMO: So lay out how it goes tomorrow. Obviously, Jerry Nadler is the chairman of the committee. He will speak first?

COLLINS: Yes. There will be opening statements from Mr. Nadler, the chairman, and myself.

And I'm going to lay out basically what we're looking at. And then Mr. Mueller will have an opening statement as well. And then it will start with our lines of questioning with Mr. Nadler, then myself, and then we will go down the line from there.

BARTIROMO: And, of course, this is happening Wednesday, first to the Judiciary, and then the Intel Committee.

Let me ask you about the issue of collusion. When did he actually know that there was no collusion? He took over after Jim Comey was fired, what was it, April of 2017, and he ended after the midterm elections just a few weeks ago -- couple months ago, rather.

COLLINS: Yes.

I think he was appointed -- actually, I think it was in May that year when he was actually appointed, after Comey was let go.

What we have seen and looking back at the reports, looking at their timeline of investigations, I think they were looking into this whole issue of Russian interference for most of the time.

I think what I want to focus on is, how did we get there to start with? What evidence were they using. These are questions, Maria, that you and I have talked about before. How did the corrupt cabal of Strzok, Page, McCabe, these folks who we know had a problem coming through the midyear investigation of Clinton, who then, all of a sudden, began to appear themselves in the Russia investigation in July of 2016 -- and then actually, Strzok, we know, had to be removed from the Mueller team because of what him and Page were doing.

So, these are the kinds of questions that need to lay a framework for the entire investigation as it goes forward.

BARTIROMO: Sure.

And you have been continuing your investigation, investigating the investigators, and there are three major investigations happening right now, John Durham obviously looking at the same thing, the attorney general, Bill Barr, in the Senate, Lindsey Graham.

You are looking for Nellie Ohr's research, the wife of Bruce Ohr. Tell me what you're looking for, Congressman.

COLLINS: Well, remember, Nellie Ohr, part of the Fusion GPS team, looking at that opposition research, a lot of which we see were shared with the FBI, but also with the Fusion GPS. And that's the infamous dossier.

When she came before the committee last year, before the Democrats took over, she gave indication that she was willing to share that information. Well, we're now going into, you know, almost nine months since then, and she's not shared. Her attorneys have been very vague about sharing this information.

What she did wasn't only investigate the president. She looked at her -- his family, Melania, the first lady. These are -- you know, there's been too much secrecy among this whole corrupt cabal. They have had their time of being in the background. It's time for their information to come out and for the American people to realize that there was a problem at the FBI.

There was a problem that we see going forward, and it's going to go forward, not only in the Durham investigation, but also the Horowitz investigation into FISA abuse, which we expect that report later this fall as well.

BARTIROMO: So you're saying she investigated the entire family when Donald Trump was just a candidate. Did this happen at the end of '15?

COLLINS: No, I think it was in her time with Fusion GPS, so it would have been in that 2016 time frame.

I know she left in September, I believe it was, of 2016 from there. So, this is that time frame of the election cycle. This was when all this was going forward. We had -- the Democratic Party was looking for things on the president, now president, then candidate.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

COLLINS: These are just ideas. And we have got the latest groundwork to let this say this is not Mueller in a capsule by himself. There are things that we have to look for and there are things that people just need to understand the entire story.

It's almost like trying to -- if you just took the Mueller report by itself, then you're not understanding also what underpinned the actual start of this. And I think there's both sides that will be asking questions, but this is a chance for -- I think I can't go back to this enough.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

COLLINS: This is the time that the Democrats have got to show on their end how much time they have been wasting of our committee and how we have not been getting things done because they simply don't like this president, who was elected by the people in 2016, and they're just trying to derail him for 2020.

BARTIROMO: Yes, I want to talk about this. I want to really take a zero - - zeroing in on what has gotten done this first seven months of the year.

Congressman, stay with us. Congressman Collins, we want to get your take on your challenge to Speaker Nancy Pelosi this past week after she invoked the word racist on the House floor when referring to President Trump's tweets.

Also ahead, Secretary Ben Carson on the president's feud with the Squad. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin is here on his trip to the southern border and the tensions with Iran, Customs and Border Protection acting Chief Mark Morgan, as well as the CEO and chairman of Bank of America.

We will be right back.

Tell us what you would like to hear from our guests. Follow me on Twitter @MariaBartiromo and on Instagram, @SundayFutures on Instagram.

Stay with us. We're taking a look ahead on "Sunday Morning Futures."

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., HOUSE SPEAKER: Every single member of this institution, Democratic and Republican, to join us in condemning the president's racist tweets.

COLLINS: I was just going to give the gentlespeaker of the House, if she would like to rephrase that comment.

PELOSI: I have cleared my remarks through a parliamentarian before I read them.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: ... be taken now.

I make a point of order the gentlewoman's words are unparliamentary and be taken down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: That was Congressman Doug Collins calling out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an explosive showdown this last Tuesday.

The speaker, in a speech on the House floor, labeled as racist the president's tweet telling the progressive Democratic congresswomen known as the Squad to -- quote -- "Go back and fix the crime-infested places from which they came."

The speaker's move declared a violation of the chamber's rules of decorum.

I'm back with Congressman Doug Collins, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, gearing up to question Bob Mueller on Wednesday.

And, Congressman, explain what just went down there. There is a certain decorum that is required on the House floor.

COLLINS: There certainly is.

And as the leader of the House, the speaker is the one in charge actually of our rules. And for someone who very much values the debate and the decorum of the institution, we can have vehement debates. We can disagree violently even in our language, but we can -- there are certain things that we cannot say.

And drawing on the personalities of the president and using that, it just shows how, frankly, degraded the Democratic Party has -- the speaker ought to be the embarrassed right now. She shouldn't look back on this as a victory.

It was a moment of -- frankly, that brought dishonor to House, because we - - the body never voted to say she that didn't break the rule. In fact, she was told she broke the rule. But what she forced her to do was take away her punishment.

So, she basically says, yes, I broke the rules, but I will use my folks to say that I don't have to be punished for that, which meant that the words will be stricken and she couldn't speak anymore on the floor.

This shows you how dysfunctional this Democratic majority has been. They have done nothing, except just run roughshod over the institutional processes in the House.

BARTIROMO: So let's take a look at what they have done.

Here we are in July, seven months into their leadership of the House of Representatives. Give us your priorities. What are the priorities of this -- of this Congress, and what has gotten done so far?

COLLINS: Well, this -- if you're -- my wife of is getting ready for her last year of teaching, and she -- if she was grading this, she would give it an F, because they have absolutely done at this point.

They have done nothing on immigration. They have done nothing on the economic conditions, except try to roll back the gains that we made many times through our tax cuts, through our deregulation plan.

What I'm seeing is, simply, they're playing to a base. We're seeing bills come to floor that have inherent flaws in them that make them unworkable, even if they were signed into law.

They are rushing stuff to floor to feed a press release frenzy that their base wants to see. And really at the end of the day, they're not getting anything done.

And a classic example of this is immigration. They're ready to yell. And earlier this year, they said there was no crisis on the border. Now they say there's a crisis on the border, but yet almost a hundred of them just a couple weeks ago refused to send money to actually help on the border.

That's hypocrisy in its highest. And that's what we have seen in the first seven-and-a-half months. All they want to do is bash the president. All they want to do is talk about how bad he is and what the economy -- but they don't want to focus on the fact that they have got a good -- there's a great economy, businesses are starting, people are moving forward, and our standing in the world has improved.

They have simply failed when it comes to governing in the House.

(CROSSTALK)

BARTIROMO: And, in fact, you have got two major priorities, and the clock is ticking on USMCA, and the clock is ticking on the debt ceiling. What are you going to do? Are you going to raise the debt ceiling?

COLLINS: Good question that Madam Speaker needs to answer, because she runs the majority in the House.

And USMCA needs to pass now. This is a -- and this is something that the president's worked on, that both sides have. There's issues just in any major trade deal. There was stuff I would like to see maybe done a little bit better. There's stuff that I'm sure that the speaker would like to have seen done better.

But Mexico and Canada have went out and been a part of this. The president's been a part of this. They could put it on the floor today and it would pass.

The problem is, they're playing politics because they simply don't like to give this president what they would perceive as a win. And the debt ceiling is something she's going to have to deal with on her Progressive Caucus and others and also the budget caps deal.

The question is, do they want to destroy our military, as they had done previously, or do they want to actually build it up? We have got money in there. But they have got to find a budget caps deal, so we don't shut down the government come September.

BARTIROMO: Exactly. So is that going to happen?

I mean, so far, the markets really haven't reacted, but as we see interest rates coming down in the next two weeks by the Federal Reserve, as we see this deadline, getting closer, I suspect people and markets will react.

I spoke with Senator Mitch McConnell this past week, actually, on USMCA. There are some people who do not think Nancy Pelosi is going to bring this to the floor at all.

I asked Mitch McConnell about that. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY: I can't bring it up first in the Senate. If I could under the procedure, I would. And it would be ratified here in the Senate.

It has to start in the House. I don't think we ought to walk away from NAFTA if we can't get this done. But we ought to get this done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: That's -- that was a break from the president, Congressman, because when I interviewed the president a couple of weeks ago, he said, look, if she doesn't bring it to the floor, and we don't get USMCA passed, we're going to go pre-NAFTA. We're going to get rid of NAFTA. And it will be pre-NAFTA.

You just heard Mitch McConnell break with the president on that point and say, we can't do away with NAFTA right now. That will hit the economy.

COLLINS: Well, I think what the majority leader is talking about, and I think what we all are, is, it's time for Congress to do its job.

It's time for the House of Representatives and the Senate to do its job. I have been part of big bills in the past, in the past few Congresses. They were both bipartisan and actually got signed under President Obama and President Trump.

What he's saying is, he said, let's do our job. Let's do this the way it's supposed to be done. And he's really telling the speaker of the House, instead of worrying about all of the things that you think are grand and press releases to feed a progressive base that is pushing socialist policies all across the agenda, let's work on things that actually make the real difference in Americans' lives.

And if you do that, that is why I say that they have failed in their mission, because we're not seeing the things that actually would help people. Mitch McConnell said, we will pass it.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

COLLINS: Madam Pelosi, Speaker, where are you?

BARTIROMO: Yes.

COLLINS: Why have we not put this on the floor?

BARTIROMO: All right, we will be watching these important developments.

Thanks very much, Congressman. Great to see you this morning. Thank you, sir, Congressman Doug Collins.

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