BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Andy, first off, am I wrong, are we wrong to point out this line buried in the middle of the story, “at least one government informant met several times with [Carter] Page and [George] Papadopoulos?” Did they actually put someone undercover to try to bring these guys out? 

ANDREW MCCARTHY (NATIONAL REVIEW CONTRIBUTING EDITOR): They did, Brian. I have written a couple of columns in the last week or so pointing out that there's probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign, and going carefully through the [Peter] Strzok and [Lisa] Page texts to show that they obviously opened an investigation late July, early August of 2016 in which they met with at least someone from a foreign government in connection with an investigation -- with this investigation in England. What we now know from the Times article is that's all true, but the lead that they buried is -- the word that you almost never see in the Times' 4,000-whatever words it is, is “counterintelligence.” What happened here is they did not have a criminal predicate to open an investigation on Trump as they had an immense predicate to conduct the investigation of Mrs. Clinton. And what they did was use their counterintelligence powers covertly to investigate the Trump campaign during the stretch run of the campaign under circumstances where they did not have evidence that anyone had actually committed a crime. 

Related:

LA Times: 5 guilty pleas and 17 more indicted: Pivotal moments in the Mueller investigation’s first year

President Trump on Twitter: “Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI “SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN IMBEDDED (sic) INFORMANT.” Andrew McCarthy says, “There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign.” If so, this is bigger than Watergate!”

Previously:

Here's what you need to know about the right's theory that the FBI planted a spy in the Trump campaign

Fox goes silent as its “secret society” conspiracy theory falls apart

WSJ debunks Murdoch-fueled conspiracy theory on FBI texts and Obama