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

Interview

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BLITZER: The breaking news tonight, the White House standing by President Trump's claim that the special counsel's Russian investigation is -- quote -- "a witch-hunt."

Let's get more on all of this with Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut. He's member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Congressman, the president and his team say one year of Mueller's probe is enough, that it hasn't been able to produce definitive evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice. He needs to wrap it up, they say.

How do you see it?

REP. JIM HIMES (D), CONNECTICUT: Well, the president, just like anybody else who is being investigated, doesn't get to decide when the investigations of their behavior are up.

Look, by any other standard, the many, many Benghazi investigations we had here -- and I don't mean to associate the two, because the Benghazi investigation in fact produced no indictments, produced no cooperating witness, produced nothing -- that went on three times as long as the Mueller investigation has gone on.

Look, the fact of the matter is that they are still working. The president, of all people, should want the investigation to conclude, so that if it is as he says it is, that there was no collusion, so that Mueller, not him, because, of course, he has lost credibility on this issue, Mueller comes out and says there was no collusion.

Unless the investigators are allowed to arrive at that conclusion because they do the investigation on their own pace and correctly, there will always be a cloud over this presidency. So I am puzzled by the president's behavior, trying to do his best to stop and shut down this investigation.

BLITZER: The president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says he has received assurances from the Mueller team that a sitting president can't be indicted.

Giuliani is also implying that if a president can't be indicted, then he also can't be subpoenaed and compelled to testify. Should that be the standard?

HIMES: Well, first of all, that's just not true, at least the part about the subpoena.

We have never had a situation where a sitting president was indicted. Most legal minds would tell you there's a different remedy where the president is concerned, and that remedy is impeachment, per the Constitution.

So, that's an interesting, but academic debate. We're not there yet. We're in the investigation. And the question about whether a president can be subpoenaed or otherwise compelled to participate in an investigation, Rudy Giuliani is just plain wrong.

Look, Nixon was ordered as part of an investigation to turn over tapes. There was no doubt about that. They said, no, you're going to participate in this investigation, you're going to turn over the tapes.

And, of course, President Bill Clinton was ordered to cooperate and negotiated ultimately to be deposed in the Starr investigation.

So the idea that the president cannot be compelled to participate in an investigation is just not true. BLITZER: Mueller could request what's described as a special

exemption from the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and ask for an indictment due to what are described as extraordinary circumstances.

What should be the bar for such a request?

[18:30:07] HIMES: Well, Wolf, I'm a little hesitant to sort of follow Rudy Giuliani's legal reasoning and public affairs game that he is playing, you know, trying to, as this administration has for a long time raise ancillary issues, you know, create a lot of mud in the water so that we lose sight of the key thing, which is that the investigation must proceed. Let's not talk about indictments until we get through this investigation.

So yes, let's talk about subpoenas, because if it's Rudy Giuliani's position that the president cannot be compelled to provide testimony or to otherwise cooperate, he has to explain to us why courts decided that Nixon did and Clinton did, but somehow he's got a theory that this president does not.

BLITZER: Giuliani also seems to be moving the goalpost somewhat on what would constitute collusion, telling FOX News, for example, last night that it's not illegal to receive opposition research, even if it comes, in his words, "from a Russian, German or an American, it doesn't matter," close quote. What do you think of that?

HIMES: Well again, in this instance, Rudy Giuliani is not acting as a lawyer. Because it is, in fact, illegal to get valuable help, and by that, I mean help that is of value, from anybody and then not report that help on your Federal Election Commission disclosure form. So again, I don't want to get into the fine details of law. Rudy Giuliani is not being correct; he's not right on the face of it.

Obviously -- and it is interesting how he moved the goalpost. Obviously, if it is true that the Russians provided meaningful support to the Trump campaign, and I'm using this language very carefully, because we need the investigation to tell us what actually happened, whether that's a crime or not, it's a profoundly concerning thing.

BLITZER: The president tweeted this morning, and I'll put it on the screen. "Wow. Word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI spied on the Trump campaign with an embedded informant. Andrew McCarthy says there's probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign," close quote. If so, the president says, this is bigger than Watergate.

So that's a pretty extraordinary claim. Have you seen any evidence to back it up?

HIMES: I have seen no evidence to back that up. And remember, it was just over a year ago that the president was tweeting that Barack Obama was spying on him in Trump Tower. And then we went through all of the unmasking controversy within, supposedly, Susan Rice and Obama administration people were acting inappropriately. All of this turns out to be nothing. Now what is possible -- and you had this conversation with Preet

Bharara earlier -- it is possible that, in any criminal investigation, the investigators might have an informant. That happens with the mafia. It happens with drug rings. It happens all the time. You have informants.

Now the president is deliberately using the word "spy." That's not, obviously, what prosecutors or investigators do, but they might have had an informant. I have no information to that effect.

But as Preet said in the earlier segment, if in fact, the FBI cleared the very high bar to get an informant inside a presidential campaign, that is -- I don't know if it's true or not. If it is true, that is a very big problem for the president and his campaign.

BLITZER: You're on the House Intelligence Committee. Let me get your reaction to the U.S. Senate's confirmation just a little while ago of Gina Haspel to serve as the CIA director, the first woman to serve in that role. Do you believe she will be an effective director at CIA?

HIMES: I do. I know Gina a little bit. She is hugely well-respected within the agency. I think particularly at this moment in time, it's important for the agency to have somebody on the inside who they sort of trust and, you know, maybe think that from time to time can act as a -- as a buffer from whatever the tweets are that are coming out of the Oval Office.

Of course, the concern about Gina Haspel was always her participation in that extreme rendition program. If I'd been a senator, I'm not quite sure how I would have thought about that. But I do know that her going to Mark Warner and saying it should never have happened, that was an important statement for her to make.

BLITZER: Congressman Himes, thanks so much for joining us.

HIMES: Thank you, Wolf.

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