CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Eric Swalwell

Interview

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BLITZER: We will, of course, cover that closely. Evan, thank you very much.

Joining us now, Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California. He's a member of both the Intelligence and the Judiciary Committees.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. I quickly want to begin with the breaking news. The special counsel Robert Mueller's team meeting with the so-called Manhattan Madam, known for her ties to Trump confidant Roger Stone.

Do you see Roger Stone as a key witness in the Mueller probe?

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D), CALIFORNIA: I do, Wolf. And that's because Roger Stone will tell you that he himself is a dirty trickster.

We learned in our House intelligence investigation that he and Donald Trump talked regularly, not just the years before the campaign, when they had talked about him running as president in prior years, but throughout the pendency of the 2016 election.

Roger Stone foreshadowed that these attacks were coming. And of course, he has changed his testimony a number of times to the House Intelligence Committee. They have all the reason to want to know what he knew and whether he passed on his knowledge to candidate Trump.

[17:10:12] BLITZER: And so as part of the interview he granted to your committee, the House Intelligence Committee, do you think he was telling the whole truth looking back? I know you've gone through the testimony.

SWALWELL: No. I don't, Wolf. And we had an opportunity to test his story by subpoenaing his cell phone records, his bank records, his travel records, and the Republicans on the committee were completely unwilling to do that.

You know, this was a "take them at their word" investigation. Come on, in take a seat, answer our questions, and we had no interest from the Republicans in testing those stories.

And now we're left with this, that our only chance of finding out the truth is Bob Mueller's investigation, which the president e day seeks to shut down. I think it highlights all the more reason we need to protect that investigation.

BLITZER: Was he under oath before your committee? If he lied, was that perjury?

SWALWELL: He was under oath, yes.

BLITZER: So do you expect an indictment by Robert Mueller's team against Roger Stone?

SWALWELL: It wouldn't surprise me at all, Wolf, just again, because of the way that he has acted and the way he's bragged about working in the past and the dirty tricks he's used on campaigns.

But again, the bigger picture that I see here with Roger Stone is Donald Trump was willing, as a candidate, to bring onto his team so many people who either use dirty tricks, were close to the Russians, or demonstrated zero judgment in who they were willing to do business with. And so at the very best light for Donald Trump, he had extremely poor judgment. But the evidence suggests that there's is not really innocent

explanations here. It's that those qualifications actually helped them get the job rather than disqualified.

Let's turn to the trial of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman. How important is this trial will is ongoing right now in Alexandria, Virginia to Robert Mueller's overall Russia probe?

SWALWELL: Well, it shows the seriousness of the probe. It's a senior campaign official, the former chairman to the president. And again, it shows that Donald Trump was willing to bring on his team somebody who had prior business relationships with pro-Russian Ukrainians. Again, that would disqualify most people who wanted to work on a presidential campaign. I think with this president, that was actually something that inflated the resume and helped him.

So if there is a guilty plea here, Wolf, I believe that it's going to build a momentum, and the American people are going to start to understand the seriousness of just how close this president has drawn us to the Russians.

BLITZER: Well, based on what you've seen so far, Congressman, how strong is the government's case against Manafort?

SWALWELL: I don't want to, you know, make that decision. That's the jury's decision, and unlike the president, I'm not going to try and tamper with the jury.

But I think they've at least met the standards to go forward and put it in front of jury. And I have faith as a former prosecutor that this jury is not going to listen to the outside noise, and they're going to do the right thing; and justice will be served.

BLITZER: Yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, said he wasn't in a position to, quote, "understand fully" what happened between President Trump and President Vladimir Putin during their summit last month in Helsinki.

It's been clearly three weeks. Shouldn't the top U.S. official here in the United States know that information by now?

SWALWELL: Yes. And I'm not convinced that anyone in the president's cabinet knows what was said, because as we've had opportunities to ask them, they seem to not understand.

Ranking member Adam Schiff and I on the Intelligence Committee tried to subpoena the translator so that we could have some sense of whether national security secrets have been jeopardized.

But what really concerns me, Wolf, and I thought that press conference yesterday was great. It's sad that they had to do it when the president was outside of the building.

But it doesn't matter if Dan Coats and FBI Director Wray and others are doing all they can to try and counter Russian meddling. If the person who is behind the wheel, who's steering the direction of the country, if that person doesn't accept that the Russians are doing this, then we're still helpless, and we're still vulnerable.

And so we need the president to understand it. And we need him to issue the directives. Otherwise, I'm afraid that the Russians are going to keep doing it.

And to say that the president does understand it, if he did, the Russians wouldn't be doing it. The reason they keep hacking and the reason they keep doing these social misinformation campaigns is because they believe he's given them a green light.

BLITZER: And why do you think he -- if he has, why do you think he has?

SWALWELL: Because they helped him, and he likes them. And he likes people who like him.

BLITZER: Congressman Eric Swalwell, thanks for joining us.

SWALWELL: My pleasure.

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