CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes

Interview

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BLITZER: He's moving now very, very quickly together with the administration. Thanks so much, Boris Sanchez at the White House.

Joining us now, Congressman Jim Himes. He's a Democrat who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.

Congressman, what does it tell you, getting back to our top breaking story, that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is now questioning Russian oligarchs as they arrive here in the United States?

REP. JIM HIMES (D), CONNECTICUT: Well, it's not surprising, Wolf, because, remember, Russian oligarchs are oligarchs because Putin lets them be oligarchs.

They are agents, if you will, of the Russian state. So when Vladimir Putin or his intelligence community decides to destabilize, you know, a Western democracy, as they have with lots of Western democracies, one of the things he will do is he will deploy those oligarchs to send money here, to convey messages to this person.

It's sort of hard to fully understand if you think of an economy and of wealthy people the way we do in this country, where a wealthy American obviously isn't an agent of the state. That is not true in Russia.

So it doesn't surprise me at all. The names keep coming up, the businesses keep coming up. In our own investigation on the Intelligence Committee, Russian banks, Russian businesses and oligarchs kept coming up as circling around the campaign and the election in general.

BLITZER: The Trump campaign, you're referring to.

Did you see information or documents in your House Intelligence Committee investigation, Congressman, that would merit questioning these Russians, or do you think Robert Mueller might have on his hands other documents, other secretive information?

HIMES: Well, sure, there's all sorts of intriguing leads.

I will give you one example, you know, because it's in public testimony, testimony before my committee that was made public. You know, Erik Prince is in the Seychelles, Erik Prince, of course, brother of a Cabinet secretary and a supporter of the president.

He is in the Seychelles, and he has a meeting with a Russian oligarch, tells us that it's a meeting of no consequence, but, again, a Russian oligarch just happens to be there, and sits down with somebody closely connected to the administration.

I'm not saying that that necessarily proves anything. And one of the reasons that the House investigation never should have been ended is that we don't know exactly what happened in that meeting, but that's one example obviously of oligarchs in odd places around people associated with the Trump campaign.

BLITZER: Why do you believe the special counsel's team has told White House lawyers, the president's lawyers that the president is not a target in their investigation?

HIMES: Well, first and most importantly, I think that's probably true.

And as you in your previous segment pointed out, you know, a subject -- I guess my colleague Trey Gowdy pointed out -- a subject can become a target in a New York minute. And so I'm not sure this is something to celebrate for the president of the United States, though I'm sure he will.

But the other thing, what I was thinking about when I heard this, look, Mueller has to understand that there is some risk that the president does what we all hope he won't, which is fire him and end his investigation.

And I have to believe that if the president were a target, that it's not something that he would casually throw out there, that he would be very thoughtful about doing something that would potentially cause a national crisis because it might cause the president to fire the deputy attorney general or to end the investigation.

BLITZER: What do you expect from this possible interim report, interim report from the Mueller team on allegations of obstruction of justice?

HIMES: Well, it made me -- I should say it ended one of the worries that I had. Remember Mueller is under no obligation to issue a report. You know, if he finds no wrongdoing beyond the indictments he's already issued, beyond the guilty pleas that he's already secured -- I actually think that's probably an unlikely outcome, given all the work he's doing.

[18:15:07] But he's under no obligation to tell the American people what he's been up to, even if he didn't find something that rose to the standard of a criminal charge. But, my God, where would that leave the country?

And so the notion that just -- you will remember back to the Clinton investigation with special counsel Starr issuing a very, very comprehensive, even salacious report on the Clinton investigation.

I think that having, at the end of the day, whatever the outcome is, no further indictments, no further wrongdoing or shenanigans, this has been enough of a trauma for the American people that a report from Robert Mueller just saying here's what we found is going to be the only way we're going to get closure on this whole chapter in our history.

BLITZER: Congressman Jim Himes, thanks, as usual, for joining us.

HIMES: Thank you, Wolf.

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