CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Sen. Ben Cardin

Interview

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KEILAR: And joining me now is Senator Ben Cardin.

He is a Democrat who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Sir, thanks for joining us this holiday week.

SEN. BEN CARDIN (D-MD): Brianna, it's good to be with you. Thank you.

KEILAR: As we learned from Eddie Gallagher's trial, some of his fellow Navy SEALs had deep misgivings about his conduct.

I wonder what your reaction is to these leaked videos.

CARDIN: Well, first, I think what the president did, interfering with the military justice system, is just wrong.

It hurts America, our strength, our values, what we fight for, who we are as a nation. And the president's actions really trample on American values. So it's a shameful day, when the president issued his pardons.

He should have allowed the process of justice to go forward to show not only Americans, but the world, that we stand by our values.

KEILAR: I want to talk to you about impeachment.

Your Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has taken offense to Mitch McConnell's assertion that he won't be an impartial juror during the Senate trial, that he's coordinating with the White House.

CARDIN: Right.

KEILAR: I know you share that concern. Most all Democrats seem to share that concern.

He was saying something very different back in the '90s shortly before the Senate vote on Bill Clinton's impeachment. Let's listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): The Republican leaders said proudly -- quote -- "I'm not an impartial juror. I'm not an impartial about this at all."

This is an astonishing admission of partisanship.

LARRY KING, FORMER HOST, "LARRY KING LIVE": Anybody taking an oath tomorrow can have a pre-opinion. It's not a jury box.

SCHUMER: Many do. This is not a criminal trial. But this is something that the founding fathers decided to put in a body that was susceptible to the whims of politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, I understand some Democrats are saying, look, this isn't apples to apples, because there were many more witnesses who were heard during the Clinton impeachment investigation and during the trial.

But at the same time, in the one breath now, he's describing this process as more of a sort of criminal trial process, a jury process, but, back in 1999, he was saying it's not.

So what do you make of that one thing that seems to undercut what he's currently saying now?

CARDIN: Well, Brianna, we will take an oath, a separate oath, after the articles of impeachment are presented to the Senate, to be impartial jurors. That's our responsibility.

The president of the United States has been impeached. That's the responsibility of the House of Representatives. The Senate now sits as a jury and decides whether the president should be removed from office.

So, we need to be impartial. The fact that the Republican leader says that he's going to coordinate this with the president's defense team, rather than being impartial, is just -- it defies the oath that he will have to take to be an impartial juror and defies the role of the United States Senate to judge the testimony and witnesses that we receive, the information we receive, as to whether the president's conduct warrants removal from office.

KEILAR: Your fellow Democrat Senator Blumenthal said that he thinks there are five to 10 Republicans who have some concerns, really, who don't fall in line with some of the public statements that we have heard from Republicans.

Do you think, aside from Lisa Murkowski, who we have heard voicing concern about what she feels -- she said she was disturbed by Mitch McConnell saying what he did.

[18:25:05]

Do you understand that there are other Republicans who share her view?

CARDIN: I would hope that we would have many members of the Senate, including many Republicans, who would say, look, for us to be able to judge this case, we need to hear directly from those who have the firsthand information, those that were present as the president made his preparations for that famous July phone call with the president of Ukraine, those who know why the aid to Ukraine was held up, those who have direct information about the presidential visit by the president of Ukraine to the United States, and whether that was conditioned on an investigation to Mr. Trump's potential opponent.

These are -- and also documents that went back and forth. If we're going to conduct a fair trial, we should hear from those parties and that information, so that we can render the proper judgment.

If we don't, there will always be a cloud as to why we did not hear directly from those who had the direct information.

KEILAR: Talk more about that. So there will be a cloud, you say, if we don't hear from key people in all of this, right, John Bolton among them, Michael Duffey.

What will the cloud be?

CARDIN: Well, it will be that the president denied an opportunity for those who had information that could have exonerated him being made available and testifying before the United States Senate.

There will always be the question as to whether that information would have produced a different result, whether it's removal or non-removal of the president.

And in order to remove that doubt, we need to hear directly from those who have the specific facts. Any person who -- who is a lawyer, is going to present a, case would want to have those witnesses present, or those who want to defend themselves would want to have those witnesses at a trial.

So, whether it's the managers of the House who are presenting the case on behalf of the House of Representatives, or the president's attorneys, you would want those who had the direct information to present that in order to get the facts out.

KEILAR: All right, thank you so much, Senator Cardin. We really appreciate you being with us.

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