AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): The left is saying [Attorney General William Barr] was trying to mislead the public. They're all upset because he used the word spying and Rosenstein said I think it's just completely bizarre. He said it'd be different if Barr had said, “I'm not going to give you the report at all.” But instead he wanted to give the top-line conclusions, and that's what we were just trying to do, to try give a summary so that American people didn't have to wait weeks to read the whole thing. 

GERALDO RIVERA (FOX NEWS ROAMING CORRESPONDENT AT-LARGE): I think that William Barr is an impeccable, superb professional. I think that if William Barr had been President Trump's first choice for attorney general, we never would have had Russian collusion, delusion, illusion. I think that what he said was right on, spot on. I have little doubt but that the Obama-era Justice Department spied on the Trump campaign, spied on the president-elect, and I think in many ways engineered and made absolutely probable all of the trauma we've gone through with this whole Russia --

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Well how about this, James Comey, so all six foot 11 inches him disagrees. Watch. 

...

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): And it's key because he said “court-ordered” [surveillance], and all the questions come down to what was told to the FISA court to get the order. 

RIVERA: I have no doubt but that what you just saw is one of the most disingenuous interviews I have heard recently.

KILMEADE: Wow. 

RIVERA: To say that electronic surveillance and spying are different, what is the exact difference? Is it the method? There is no doubt, I believe that they did wiretap Obama's -- or rather Trump's office here in New York. I believe that they turned informants in the way they twisted arms to get people in trouble, get them conflicted. So they had to snitch anything that they knew about the president. 

KILMEADE: You're talking about [George] Papadopoulos. 

RIVERA: Papadopoulos.

KILMEADE: Carter Page. 

RIVERA: Carter, and you know, you have a situation here -- 

KILMEADE: Michael Flynn.

RIVERA: They -- poor Michael Flynn -- they twisted these people, they got them in a perjury trap, they had them by the short hairs, they got them to cooperate, and guess what? There was still no Russian collusion. But there is no doubt that to make a fine distinction between surveillance and spying is, I think, deflecting attention from what's going on.

DOOCY: Let's poll the audience. Show of hands, who thinks there was spying on the Trump campaign?

EARHARDT: Wow.

DOOCY: OK, that's every hand in the house. 

EARHARDT: Wow.

RIVERA: And you know the -- Henry Kissinger once said, even paranoiacs have enemies. Even the President Trump, or President-elect Trump, was totally paranoid, that doesn't mean he did not have people spying on him. And as it turns out everything that he said basically is correct. They went after him full bore, in what, maybe it is overstating. It's not overstating to say spying. Maybe it's overstating to say there was an attempted coup. But they were talking about the 25th Amendment. They were talking about high management getting cabinet-level officials to declare the president in compos mentis (sic). And to take over -- I mean this was very, very serious. I think the blowback from this is going to be way bigger than Russiagate was. The collusion illusion is going to dim into history as we find out how a group of non-elected officials try to overthrow the president of the United States.

Related:

Wash Post.: Timeline: The birth of the Russia investigation

Previously:

Fox & Friends celebrates Barr pushing baseless claim that “spying did occur on the Trump campaign”

Media outlets’ context-free headlines on AG Barr’s “spying” claim help fuel right-wing falsehoods

Fox News political editor compares people who doubt Barr's redacted Mueller report to people who watch Infowars