CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview With California Congresswoman Jackie Speier

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

TAPPER: President Trump also insisting he's not worried about meddling in upcoming midterm elections because he said the U.S. will counteract any Russian operation.

Joining me now from the House Intelligence Committee is Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California.

Congresswoman, thanks for joining us.

What do you make of what you heard from the president?

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D), CALIFORNIA: We shake our head every time he makes a statement about Russia's engagement in our elections in 2016, because he can't ever get it right.

Mueller has just indicted 13 Russians for their involvement in our elections.

The president really has a blind spot here, because it creates a situation where it calls into question his real -- veracity of him being the president of the United States and whether or not there was in fact a rigging of the election, not by Hillary Clinton, as he presumed, but by the Russians.

TAPPER: Now, last week, the director of the NSA, Admiral Mike Rogers, had been asked about whether or not he had taken appropriate measures to counteract Russian cyber-attacks, influence campaign, et cetera.

And he said he had not gotten those instructions. That was a big story. Today, the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, was on Capitol Hill, and he was asked about whether there had been discussions about the U.S. response to Russian meddling in 2016, 2018 and beyond.

Take a listen to that.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

TAPPER: Is that good enough for you?

SPEIER: No.

And, actually, when he was asked further, Mr. Coats said that he was talking about cyber generally.

The truth is that we know that the Russians were able to hack into voting records in over 20 states. And the question is, did they hack into the machines?

If you talk on a hacker, they will tell you there's no way of telling whether or not they hacked into the machines because there's no way of assessing whether or not they left fingerprints.

We have a serious problem on our hands, and it is incumbent on us, particularly in the House Intelligence Committee, to become very aggressive in trying to deal with this issue, because they will do it again. The Russians are not complacent.

They have spent a fair amount of time and talent, not a lot of money, because they didn't have to spend a lot of money, but they have intervened on every level, whether it was in social media, through the hacking of e-mails, to WikiLeaks. They were on every platform imaginable in terms of impacting our elections.

TAPPER: Just to press further on this, do you know of any evidence at all that any votes were tampered with or any vote counts were changed?

SPEIER: I have asked that question from a number of people.

And those who are most savvy will say that our voting machines are so antiquated and that the contracts don't allow us to do what is called red-teaming, where you try to go in and hack them, and that the software is antiquated.

So, the combination of only four companies who provide the machines and the software that are used by counties and states around the country would suggest to us we have never put in place the kind of controls that needed to be put in place to protect the vote.

[16:45:00] REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D-CA), HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: The machines and the software that are used by counties and states around the country would suggest to us, we have never put in place the kind of controls that needed to be put this place to protect the vote. And that's why we need paper ballots, we need scanning of them and we need audits.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: I understand and respect what you're saying in terms of the kind of security that there needs to be but just to press again, do you know of any evidence that any votes were changed at all because I think that's a rather significant point that we need to underline if there is evidence or isn't evidence?

SPEIER: So what I've been told by the computer experts is that there's no way of telling because of the way these machines are configured. The ten machines that were used at DEFCOM last year in Las Vegas, they were hacked into. Each and every one of those machines was hacked into before the weekend was over. That would suggest to me that we have a problem.

TAPPER: But again, you don't know of any evidence.

SPEIER: I do not know of any evidence.

TAPPER: OK. The White House says it's being tough on Russia. Today Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin vowed to implement the new Russian sanctions that you voted for. He says he's going to do it in the coming weeks. Will that be good enough for you?

SPEIER: Well, you know, the proof is in the pudding. The President said we didn't need to impose the sanctions because they were changing their behavior. Well, that was really a silly statement to make. And once again it shows that the president has something to hide about Russia. Russia has something on the President of the United States and we have to look at his relationship with Russian oligarchs in many of his real estate deals to really find out what's really behind it.

TAPPER: Do you - I mean, is that just a suspicion or do you know of something there?

SPEIER: Well, I think if you connect the dots, you can make the case that there is something wrong that so many of his business dealings were with Russians and that many of them were with large sums of cash that were brought into the country. So you would have to argue, there might have been some money laundering and you know, that one property in Florida where he made over 100 percent profit, in less than four years. And by the way, it was in 2008 when the financial markets were careening and all of real estate around the country was absolutely in the toilet and somehow he made 100 percent on that property? And then property was demolished and turned into lot. Something is wrong and we've got to get to the bottom of it. I think the person who will get to the bottom of it is the Special Counsel. I think that's where he's heading.

TAPPER: Congresswoman Jackie Speier, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

SPEIER: Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source