MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jim Himes

Interview

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MADDOW: At the time of those happenings, that he was describing right  there, Peter Strzok was the number one official at the FBI in charge of  counterintelligence. Today, he was fired.

Joining us now is Congressman Jim Himes. He`s a Democrat from Connecticut.  He`s a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Congressman, thanks very much for being with us. I really appreciate it.

REP. JIM HIMES (D), CONNECTICUT: Good evening, Rachel.

MADDOW: Good evening.

Peter Strzok has been a political punching bag for a year now, for a long  time. What do you make of his firing today? Was this an inevitability  once he became a political punching bag? His lawyer today is suggesting  that the reason he was removed was not because of FBI procedure but because  of politics.

HIMES: Yes, no question about it, Rachel. I mean, look at the fact  pattern here. The internal disciplinary unit at the FBI recommended that  Peter Strzok be demoted and suspended for 60 days. That was set aside to  fire the man.

Remember back to the firing of Andrew McCabe, the night before he was to  qualify for his first pension, is fired. Remember that the president  admitted that he fired Jim Comey because of the Russia pressure, as he put  it. It is very clear that this president is engineering a fear campaign  within the FBI, saying anybody who is going to stand up against me, anybody  who might testify against me, their career will suffer.

And it`s a little hard to know exactly what`s happening, right? I don`t  know if this is Director Wray who is coordinating this, or the attorney  general, and it`s even possible to imagine that they are trying to appease  the president in order to keep them from firing Bob Mueller, or in order to  keep him in firing the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. But  whatever is happening, it is pretty clear that this is a performance that  has an audience of one, and that one individual sits in the Oval Office.

MADDOW: Now that we have seen the firing of Director Comey, the firing of  Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the firing of the chief of the  counterintelligence division, Mr. Strzok, I mean, three usually makes a  pattern in the news. In terms of oversight of the Justice Department and  the FBI and the question of whether or not this pattern of dismissals and  pattern of sort of persecuting these FBI officials publicly, in addition to  taking these disciplinary actions towards them, is that the sort of thing  that you`d expect Congress to be looking into?

HIMES: Well, you would expect it, but, of course, the Congress, the place  that I work, is actually in league with the president in trying to damage  the credibility of the Department of Justice and trying to damage the  credibility of Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, the FBI. You know,  we`ve now spent a year, as Democrats in the minority, trying to stand up  for these institutions that people like Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan and  remember, those two guys wanted to impeach the deputy attorney general  because he refuses to provide information on an ongoing investigation.

This is all part of a campaign pointed at doing two things. Number one,  and most importantly, trying to pre-but the Mueller investigation  conclusions, you know? And I must say, if you look at the polling, they`ve 
sort of succeeded. Whatever Mueller comes out with, the president will follow that up with a tweet saying, I told you so, it`s the 19 or whatever the number is now, Democrats and angry Bob Mueller, in order to damage the 
credibility of this investigation.

And, of course, to instill fear in the ranks of the FBI. That`s the only  way you can explain the override of the recommended punishment for Peter  Strzok, the only way you can explain McCabe being fired literally the  evening that he was about to get his full pension. It is -- it is a  campaign of delegitimizing the organization and of trying to send a signal  to senior people that you better get onboard with this president.

MADDOW: What`s the cure? What`s the cure of that? If that is what`s  happening here, if it`s an effort to, as you say, pre-but the findings of  the Mueller investigation, ultimately, to delegitimize the FBI, to  delegitimize the rule of law and the justice process, particularly, when it  comes to this issue of counterintelligence and criminal liability, what`s  the -- what`s the cure for that for us as a country?

HIMES: You know, in any -- in any normal world, the cure would actually  be, as you sort of implied, the cure would be the Congress. The cure would  be Republicans in the Congress standing up and saying, hey, I get this  president is of my party, but I also know that the FBI and the Department  of Justice and the CIA and you name it is comprised of people who are  enormously talented and enormously patriotic, and I`m going to stand up and  say, no, Mr. President, you are not going to use, in order to sort of  defend your fantasies and your witch hunt beliefs, you are not going to  damage these institutions, which are so important to the safety and  national security of this country. That, of course, is not going to  happen.

And so, sadly, I think the answer, that it`s going to take us a long time.  You know, maybe we start next year, if the Democrats take control of the  House of Representatives, we will have the power of subpoena, we will be  able to look into these kinds of things. But it`s going to take some time  to re-establish the credibility of these institutions that was very  deliberately damaged by a president who -- let`s just be blunt about it --  who is you know, here, we`re having this long conversation about, did Comey  tell the truth, the president is a serial liar. I know that sounds  partisan and political, but, look, you just need to look at half his tweets  to know that that is true, or half the statements he makes.

He does not care for the truth and he has thrown mud on an awful lot of  people who may have had, you know, poor judgment. Look, Strzok did some  things that deserve punishment. Jim Comey, I completely disagree with his  decision to talk about the Clinton investigation during the presidential  election. But not one of those individuals has ever been accused of being  dishonest.

MADDOW: Congressman Jim Himes, on the Intelligence Committee in the House  -- sir, thank you for your time tonight. I appreciate you being here.

HIMES: Thank you, Rachel.

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