Here’s the Transcript of the first 5 minutes – the final 90 seconds is a repetition.

During the proceedings, I asked a question that was disallowed, and I’m going to ask that question again this morning. Because the Constitution does protect debate, and it does protect the asking of questions.

I think they made a big mistake now allowing my question. My question did not talk anybody who is a whistleblower; my question did not accuse anybody of being a whistleblower; it did not make a statement believing someone was a whistleblower. I simply named two peoples’ names, because I think it’s very important to know what happened.

We are now finding out that the FISA investigation was predicated upon 17 lies by the FBI, by people at high levels who were biased against the President, and it turns out it was an illegitimate investigation. Everything they did to investigate the President was untrue, and it involved people using the government to do things that should have never been done in the first place.

So I asked this question, and this is my question: Are you aware that the House Committee staffer, Sean Misko, had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella while they were at the National Security Council together? How would you respond to reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings?

Why did I ask this question? Because there are news reports saying these two people, one of whom works for Adam Schiff, and one of them who worked with this person at the NSC, that they knew each other and had been overheard talking about impeaching the President in the first month of his office. In January of 2017, they were already plotting the impeachment.

And you say, well, we should protect the whistleblower, and the whistleblower deserve anonymity. The law does not preserve anonymity.

His boss is not supposed to say anything about him, he’s not supposed to be fired – I’m for that. But when you get into the details of talking about whistleblowers, there’s a variety of opinions around here.

The greatest whistleblower in American history in all likelihood was Edward Snowden. What do people here want to do with him? Half the people here want to put him to death; the other half want to put him in jail forever. So, it depends on what you blow the whistle on, whether or not they’re for the whistleblower statute.

I’m not for retributions on the whistleblower. I don’t want him to go to jail, I don’t want him to lose his job. But if six people who all worked together at the NSC knew each other and gamed the system, knowing that they would get these protections, they gamed the system in order to try to bring down the President, we should know about that.

If they had extreme bias going into the impeachment, we should know about that.

So, I think the question is an important one, and I think we should still get to the bottom of it.

Were people plotting to bring down the President? They were plotting in advance of the election – were they plotting within the halls of government to bring down the President?

Look, these people also knew the Vindman brothers, who are still in government. So, you’ve got two Vindman brothers over there who know Eric Ciaramella, who also know Sean Misko, who also knew two other people now working on Adam Schiff’s staff.

And Adam Schiff throws his hands up and says, ‘I don’t know who the whistleblower is, I’ve never met him. I have no idea who he is.’

So, if he doesn’t know who he is, the President’s counsel doesn’t know who he is, how does the Chief Justice of the United States know who the whistleblower is? I have no independent confirmation from anyone in the government as to who the whistleblower is.

So, how am I prevented from asking a question, when nobody seems to know who this person is?

My point is, that by having such protections, such overzealous protection, we don’t get to the root of the matter how this started. Because this could happen again.

When the institution of the bureaucracy, the intelligence community with all the power to listen into every phone conversation you have, has political bias and can game the system to go after you, that’s a real worry.

It’s a real worry that they spied on the President, but what if you’re just an average American? What if you’re just a supporter of President Trump, or you’re a Republican or you’re a conservative? Are we not concerned that secret courts could allow for warrants to listen to your phone calls, to tap into your emails, to read your text messages? I’m very concerned about that.

So, we’re going to have this discussion go on. It really isn’t about the whistleblower so much, it’s about reforming government. It’s about limiting the power of what they can do as secret courts.