CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Sarbanes

Interview

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BALDWIN: Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes is a member of the House Oversight Committee. He questioned Michael Cohen yesterday.

Congressman Sarbanes, welcome. Good to have you on.

REP. JOHN SARBANES (D), MARYLAND: Thank you. Good to be here.

BALDWIN: So from all that you heard during that testimony, what do you consider an indisputable crime?

SARBANES: Well, there was a couple of things, obviously, that we touched on in the -- in the committee hearing.

There clearly seems to be evidence that the president knew about these e-mails being released ahead of time. So I think that's an area of inquiry that needs to be pursued. There's clearly some concern about how the testimony that Michael Cohen put together before his appearance before the Intelligence Committee, when he lied to Congress, how that came together, who knew about it at the White House, and obviously these hush payments to Stephanie Clifford, AKA Stormy Daniels, where he brought documentary evidence.

I think what Michael Cohen did yesterday -- and I thought his testimony was pretty compelling, just because I can't, at this point, think of any reason why he would lie, what he has to gain at this point by lying -- is that he just put more information the table.

And we now have the oversight machinery working in the House of Representatives, which was not the case a few months ago, before Democrats got the gavel. So we're in a position to follow up on some of his testimony and do further inquiry and investigation and, as Congressman Cummings, the chairman, said, get to the truth.

BALDWIN: So I jotted down potential indisputable crimes on the e-mail dump that it sounds like the president was aware of, the testimony in which he lied, and the conversations he may have had ahead of time on that, and then the hush money.

But what I didn't hear you mention is the inflating or deflating of his -- of his money. And so, in your view, if that is corroborated, should President Trump be prosecuted for bank fraud?

SARBANES: Well, those potential instances are issues of fraud or other ones that we're going to look at.

We don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, because I want to -- I want to say, again, it's only just now, because we have the oversight capacity and authority in the Congress to really do this job well, that we can get moving on these various lines of inquiry.

So we need to do this in a very deliberate and steady way, so that, wherever it takes us, we have confidence that we have arrived in the right place in terms of what the remedy should be.

BALDWIN: Listening to Michael Cohen yesterday as well, he dropped a lot of names. And so my question to you is, who specifically do you think should be summoned to your committee now to testify?

SARBANES: Again, I don't want to prejudge that.

The committee is going to pull together all of the information from yesterday. And, actually, they're going to compare that to evidence that's already been collected from other witnesses, other documents, other subpoenas and other kinds of things out there.

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And they will judge, who are the best people to bring in to corroborate something, to potentially contradict it, et cetera? So this was really a first step in this oversight responsibility that we have, an important first step and an important witness to bring forward, because he obviously has a lot of knowledge about how the Trump operation functions, what Trump world looks like, et cetera.

So he gave the committee, I think, some important information that we can now build on going forward.

BALDWIN: Great. Congressman John Sarbanes, thank you so much for weighing in here.

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