MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "House Committees subpoena Sec of State Pompeo."

Interview

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HAYES: Joining me now is a member of that Senate Intelligence Committee Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. Senator, Richard Burr, the chair of your committee is now undertaking his own inquiry, I guess, into the whistleblower complaint, the logs of the phone call, and everything around the Ukraine scandal. Do you have confidence that this is -- this is a good-faith undertaking?

SEN. RON WYDEN (D-OR): Well, my job is to make sure that we look at all of the issues, for example, it was very difficult to actually get the complaint initially. The federal law is clear, we were supposed to get that right away, that`s number one. Number two, I am not convinced, Chris, that existing federal law is adequate. And I can tell you my phone is ringing off the hook now from people who are frightened about speaking out in the whistleblower community. I`m one of the co-chairs of the whistleblower caucus. There`s tremendous fear. And I want to make sure that in our committee we take the steps to strengthen the whistleblower law and make sure that when it`s needed now more than ever, people will come forward.

HAYES: You`re -- you`ve worked on a report issued today in the Finance Committee which is you`re also on about the NRA, and it`s been getting a lot of headlines essentially something saying that it was acting as a foreign interest if I`m not mistaken in 2016. What did you find in that investigation?

WYDEN: Well, the report turns up the unpleasant fact that the R in NRA really stands for Russian. The fact is that we looked at the run-up to the 2016 election and it was very clear that Russia was using Russian nationals, Maria Butina, Mr. Torshin as a way to try to get NRA insiders in effect promising them lucrative kind of business deals to kind of grease their access into the United States. Also what we were able to expose is this trip in October of 2015 the NRA lied about. They didn`t say that it was an official trip, it was and it was all about NRA insiders trying to enrich themselves personally. And that`s why the next step is I`m going to be looking at whether or not their tax exemption should stand given the fact that this is mostly about self-dealing and personal enrichment.

HAYES: Do you think the things exposed and also things that have surfaced in lawsuits and reporting indicate this as an organization that should not be tax-exempt, that has run afoul of the law?

WYDEN: We have compiled the documents, we looked at more than 4,000 documents, it was an 18-month investigation, I have real questions about whether you ought to be able to keep your tax exemption which is something that is handed out for special considerations in effect working in the public interest. You shouldn`t be just handing those out easily when people are basically using them as a glide path to enrich themselves personally.

HAYES: There was other news about the NRA today. Of course, Wayne LaPierre meeting with the President the White House, reporting initially from the White House indicating that the NRA was going to offer or floated the idea of contributing money to the President`s personal defense on impeachment, but that what they want is the president to drop working on anything -- any new gun safety measures. What do you make of that?

WYDEN: Well, they always look for something that resembles a quid pro quo. It was incredibly brazen based on the report I heard where they in effect said look, you know, we`re interested in helping you. You got to drop things like background checks or something like that. Now, given what my report showed today, I`m about as surprised as the proposition that the sun comes up in the morning this is what the organization is all about. And it was clear based on the press reports that business-as-usual. They`re asking and powerful people have traditionally gifted to them. We`re trying to change that.

HAYES: Final question, do you expect that your committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee which is chaired by Richard Burr with Mark Warner as a minority leader on that, do you expect you will be hearing from witnesses in closed or open sessions pertaining to the Ukrainian issue?

WYDEN: I feel very strongly that there ought to be open hearings on this issue. What I`ve always said is that the big questions and certainly this is another one of the follow the money kinds of -- kinds of questions, that was what the debate was always about, Ukraine getting access to aid that they desperately needed. I think that you can find a way to get those issues discussed in public while protecting what are essentially classified sources, what are called sources and methods.

HAYES: All right, Senator Ron Wyden on the Intelligence Committee and Finance Committee. Thank you so much sharing your time.

WYDEN: Thanks for having me, Chris.

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