people. we did a documentary on our border in 2014 but most people weren't even talking about the border in that manner. now we have the majority of americans who think that the border should be secure. the death of lake and riley i've heard from mom's in my area who t is a sanctuary city? i never even knew one existed. you mean college towns have sanctuary cities? they are looking at things differently than they did before. and a lot of that is because there is a huge, striking contrast between how biden rules and how trump ruled as president or governor as president, we are not supposed to have rulers, we are supposed to have people who are more a governing capacity, but there is a striking contrast in the two. and now those two are going elen

rather than an incumbent and the theoretical person who may or may not do a better job. host: cofounder of tea party patriots, you can find out more about them online. washington journal continues. host: welcome back to washington journal. we are joined by the senior communications advisor f welcome, hannah. tell us about the congressional integrity project and how it is funded. guest: the congressional integrity project really started with this congress. so 2022. we saw that republicans that were to be leaving some of the top investigative committee is like jim jordan who is now leading the house judiciary committee said that they were going to use these investigations in order to shore up 2024 and help president donald trump. what the congressional integrity project did wasak at what these

leaders of these investigations are doing and that they are held accountable for telling the truth. that was a part of the january 6 select committee. i feel really strongly about investigations going on in congress to really serve to do a happening in washington.hed a we had a few doubts about what republicans were going to do because of what they said. that is what the congressional integrity project has been focusing on for the past 14 months now. host: let's start with the impeachment of secretary mayorkas, article one charging him with willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law. article to charges him with breach of public tru. why is organization against that impeachment? guest: it's been very clear from folk from both sides of the redit and republican that the impeachment of sec. mayorkas is political. that it is not bas ies or misdey evidence.

that is based on what republicans have policy disagreements with the secretary. impeaching a secretary is very rare. the last one happened over 150 years ago and so with the sec. mayorkas impeachment with no evidence of high crimes nors, we republicans and democrats, former republican secretary of homeland 30 under bushhé came ot and said this is ridiculous. this is a political stunt. there is no evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors and if we be looking atthe crisis at the this bipartisan senate order deal that is being negotiated right now which the republicans in the house said no, instead we are going to go and impeach the secretary for no reason. so the project saw this, saw it as an to lift up both democrats and republicans. this is not an impeachment based in evidence, and really hold their feet to thhost: i guess ws

are telling you is it does put d according to polls and is the biggest issue for the election. so they are showing that you are derelict in your duty. you told us the border was secure, that was a lie. what do you think of that argument? guest: i think that can be policy disagreements between democrats and republicans. policy disagreements are probably what a lot of people wish washington could be right now instead of talking about saving their democracy from donald trump who said he is going to be a dictator if he is reelected. i think when it comes to immigration and the border, you have two different realities. you have president biden who is trying to get past the finish line with a bipartisan border deal but both democrats and republicans came to negotiate because he knows that the border is anssue, and then you have donald trump who instructed senators and houseembers to

say no and say no to this deal so this could be an issue for the 2024 election. we need to solve these problems. president biden actually invited former president trump to talk about solving the crisis at the border but we see two different realities about who actually wants to solve that. host: let's talk about the investigation into president biden, his son hunteriden. guest: it is about time. of the 100,000 bank statements, over 12 people who talked to these committees associated with hunter biden business dealings, no evidence. 14 months of no evidence. an a couple weeks ago we saw everything for the crumble. alexander smirnov who the republicans faced the majority of this investigation on was arrested and indicted for lying

about the claims he made about president biden and his son. and on top of that it was found that it was probably part of the russian disinformation campaign which is extremely scary when you think about however foreign adversaries mightthese republice aligned with donald trump in congress to try to sway our elections. so it was about time. james comer had all the witnesses again and again who provided no evidence and it was frankly long past time for us to call an end to this investigation. host: if you like to call him and asked a question, make a comment, and conducive. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. us and we are watching our social media feeds. your organization launched a campaign. there is a mobile billboard,

there is a website called comerimpeachmentfail.com. national digital advertisement. who is this targeting exactly and tell us more about what is involved with the campaign that you've got on. guest: we want to make sure that the american people know the truth. the digital advertisement you just mentioned is a short video clip calling some of the facts i just mentioned the attentions of whether it be the reporters covering this or that lawmakers that are walking into these questioning sessions and not finding any evidence, it is time to end this. there's also a group of what we worepublicans, republicans weren districts that joe biden won in 2020 who we want to make sure know that we are watching what actions they take and what steps they are taking in congress because we don't think that is what their constituents want them to do. is time to stop wasting

taxpayer dollars on this and start solving things like the crisis at the border■ or trying to make the economy better. these are things that congress should be doing. host: and hunter biden was in front of the house committee. tell us what came out of that testimony. guest: hunter biden last week spoke to james comer and the oversight committee which they have been wanting him to do for a while and he said that he would do that, he would come and answer their questions. ■íand what they found was no evidence that joe biden benefited anything having to do with hunter biden business dealings. james comer, after the witness interview, came out and said nothing, nothing to the press. this was a fail for them if they wanted to find any evidence of impeachment. hunter biden actually got up a few good points about if you inf

family benefit from being in office, let's look at the trump family, how jared kushner any ivanka businesses by being senir officials in the white house. let's look at that instead of what you are doing with me which is coming up with, again, no evidence. host: we've got the full transcript on a website of that discussion with hunter biden. it is on our website, c-span.org. going back to informant smirnov, how did here become a trusted fbi informant if he was possibly a russian asset? isn't this the fbi's■1 fault, fr accepting his intelligence? guest: the number one thing to remember here before i get into the kind of crazy story that ise fbi arrested him for lying about joe biden and hunter biden. when it comes to the world of informants, i'm no intelligence expert.

but just like dan golding who was on the oversight committee has talked about when you're dealing with wn's, sometimes these are people that are involved in crimes and that is why they are able to have information about things that are going on. but when it comes to this informant and this specific allegation, when it was brought to the attention of the fbi, there is no way to verify or corroborate it and the trump justice department actually looked into this and said we don't want to move forward with looking at this because it is unverified and we cannot verify it. these facts were known by the republicans in the senate and the house when they were trusting alexander smirnov at their biggest piece of evidence here, and that is really dangerous. so not only do we need to make sure that this impeachment investigation ends, but we also need to hold these republicans in congress accountable for taking off on a wild goose chase that was probably born of

russian disinformation. host: let's take a look at oversight committee chair james comer from last after hunter biden's testimony. >> this is about public corruption. the american people do not want their public officials families to peddle access to their leaders to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. you may think that is ok but i can assure you that people do not. i've traveled from cnecticut to arizona campaigning for members of congress that are seeking reelection and running for election and everywhere i go i hear the same thing. thank you for trying to find out the truth. thank you for trying to stop this industry. this is what this investigation is all about. the purpose of this investigation if you go back the very first press conference wa'.

the median narrative when we started this investigation was the laptop was russian disinformation, the bidens have legitimate businesses, joe never talked to any of the people who sent him money and none of this happened while he was president. all of that we have proven is false. we've been very effective getting the truth to the american people. now my job is to prevent anything from happening in the future and that has always been the purpose of this investigation, to create legislation, hopefully it will be bipartisan, that stops it from happening. we need to stop the menendezes and the bidens from continuing to enrich themselves in our public offices. host: what do you think of that? guest: i think it is important to look at who is trying to use their position of power to influence or get money. you have to look at the trump family. that is the big unspoken elephant in the room when james comer is speaking. it sounds like he is talking about the trump family. when he ivanka trump went to

china and then received patents businesses that she was trying to execute there. the other thing i will mention is that that comment came right after the interview with hunter biden. you notice he said nothing about finding any evidence about what hunter biden said, about joe biden enriching himself or hunteriching himself. let's read between the lines here about what is actually going on. host: let's talk to callers now. veronica and pennsylvania, republican. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. on: regarding hannah saying trump was a dictator. and no time did mr. trump ever say he s going to be a dictator. he said he would dictate and i don't know if you know what that means, b he was going to -- never did he say

that. yet everybody said he did. he never did. and i wish she would play what he actually said. thank you very much for taking my call. >> i think it's very clear with double drum has done in the past and what he said he was going to land to do in the future. i was on tdonald trump was behie multipronged plan to overturn our democracy. this wasn't just january 6, but you've also heard but donald trump has said since then, where he said that he is going toimple antidemocratic. we need to also call out comments about whahe said he would do in the future to know what we are going to get when he is going to be in office. host:host: i want to ask you quickly about january 6 callersy what happened there could not have been an insurrection

because there were no weapons. you don't plan insurrection and whatever without weapons. what do you say to that? guest: one of the witnesses that we called who is probably one of the most prominent nes that wes actually what we heard from her -- one of the■v reasons she waso big because of what we heard from her. donald trump knew there were when he was getting that speech before the january 6 attack on the capital he was looking at the monitor is behind the screen and said let's bring more people in and he was told that they couldn't because people had weapons in the crowds, that they had to stand beyond that. to hurt me, they are my people, let them in. that shows that trump knew there were weapons in the crowd. host: a firearms, not just pepper spray and baseball bats. guest: weapons that would not allow people to come into the

inside. host: let's talk to tom in illinois, democrat. caller: morning. my question is what is the status of the mueller report? i mean, i think we would get a it should be made public. host: the mueller report? it is public. guest: i believe the mueller report is public. what we remember from that was that the justice department came out and out and tried to get sef a summary of the report that was more political than what the report actually said. host: joseph next, michigan, independent. caller: good morning. i'm just curious what element of the biden corruption in ukraine

is russian disinformation. i mean, h job he wasn't qualified for. biden bragged about firing the prosecutor leveragedgainst $1 he conclusion, but that doesn't take any russian input to come to that conclusion that it is corrupt. guest: so where the russian disinformation comes in is with this informant, alexander smirnov who was just arrested and knighted he was arrested and indicted for lying to the fbi about this attack, that joe biden -- this fact, that joe biden took $5 million from this company. he told the fbi that he was lying and it was part of russian disinformation so that part specifically is what we are talking about. and the reason why it is a big deal is big piece of corroborating evidence that jim jordan said, that they had for

this impeachment investigation. so it mes to why republicans are trying to impeach the president. these claims are just not true and we know that specifically because what we learned about alexander smirnov in the past host: let's talk to jamie in garden city, missouri, good morning. i want to ask about why are you doing this? who is paying you? because the link to the big guy. there was one billion-dollar that was given to fire the prosecutor in ukraine, we all know that. january 6, there was over 200 thugs seated in the crowd. if people were going to take over that government, they had no guns, no weapons. you know it and you are sitting here lying toough to be your mother. host: we are not going to make a personal attack on the guests,

but go ahead and talk about the firing of the prosecutor in ukraine and then she had that january 6 comment as well. guest: gap. the reason why i am si in this and the reason why the congressional integrity project is looking into this is because he want to make sure the truth is out there, so people know what is going on. donald trump in 2020 based his attempted insurrection on what we call the big lie, a lie about what happened in the 2020 election. and he's continuing to lie through his teeth that we learned at least on the january 6 committee through over a year of investigations, we laid out the facts for the american people. i believe it's important that we keep laying out those facts. i think i democracy is worth it and i think we need to try to say that democracy through facts, routes ofleast in congress through the american people and not for a bogus political stunt inst