TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Kim Strassel is on the board of "The Wall Street Journal" editorial page and she joins us tonight.



Kim, so you've just heard Jim Clapper tell us it's a good thing. Do you think it would be worth just putting a permanent FBI or CIA spy in every presidential campaign going forward?



KIM STRASSEL, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Why not? It sounds like it would be a good thing, Tucker.











Look, you and I have been doing this for a long time. Can you think of any time in history when this has happened or when anyone thought it was OK for - by the way, the Department of Justice is being run by one political party, electronically surveilling and then also spying on the leading candidate, for a nominee for opposing party running for the presidency.



CARLSON: It's almost too big to get your head around. And you've got to think -



STRASSEL: It's mindboggling.



CARLSON: - any other moment in the last 50 years, if this came to light, it would be considered a stop the presses moment. It would be a legitimate constitutional crisis and a scandal, people would go to prison. And, yet, this is passing almost without comment, except really on this channel and at your newspaper. Why?



STRASSEL: Well, the mainstream media doesn't want to have to put this the way it is because they still want the Russia collusion narrative to be true.



They still want a pretext to get this president out of office. And so, people are no longer using standard measures.



Look, I'm a libertarian. I don't want a government spying on anybody in any situation that's illegitimate. And so, I try to put that measure out there.



But one other thing too that I think is so astounding and that also deserves some note is the games the Department of Justice is playing in terms of coming clean with this information.



They have now flouted a subpoena from Chairman Nunes for weeks, saying that there is no way that they can give him the information he wants because it might put this source of theirs at risk.



And yet, they have over the past couple of weeks leaked more information about this person than was prior known and would be known and they're doing it all in order to get friendly media to write stories about how they did everything right in 2016, which, of course, we know they didn't.



CARLSON: This person, the mole who fed the information to the feds from the campaign, there has been a lot of talk about this person, whispering about his identity. Apparently, it's an older man.



Do we know who this person is? Can we say with certainty? And if we find out for sure, I mean, what are the consequences of that?



STRASSEL: Well, here's the joke. I'm 99.9 percent sure that I know who this person is.



CARLSON: I do, too.



STRASSEL: I did not get that from any congressional sources, but I also cannot get them to confirm it. So, I haven't used the name.



But the funny thing is, Tucker, one of the reasons I'm so monumentally certain that I'm correct, and I'm sure you are too, is because of the details that the Department of Justice itself has leaked about a source that it claims that it claims to so much want to protect.



CARLSON: Why would - I mean, take three steps back. The president of the United States is at the top of the executive branch pyramid. The Department of Justice is beneath him. He runs that agency. There is a picture of him in the lobby of it.



Why doesn't he pick up the phone at some point and get this information? It's not clear why. Are his lawyers telling him not to? What's the answer? Do you know?



STRASSEL: Yes. My understanding is despite some of the things that the Department of Justice has said is that they have been given an order from the highest ranks to accommodate this request. But they are using that word and the wiggle room that it gives with as much enthusiasm as they can.



And so, what they are doing is Chairman Nunes wants to see the documents. He wants to look at them himself. And he knows exactly what it is he wants to see.



And they're saying, no, you're going to have to be satisfied with us just briefing you on it. Well, we all know what that game is. He will go in with questions. They will dance around. They won't give the whole picture. And we know that's the case because that's how they have reacted every time they have been faced with a request for information that might be potentially embarrassing to them.



CARLSON: This is just so dysfunctional and third world. And your column, by the way, one of the few functional parts of all of this, thank you for your reporting, Kim. And I'll hope you'll keep it up. Thanks for that.



STRASSEL: Thank you.