MSNBC "Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell - Transcript Interview with Katie Porter

Interview

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Joining us now is Congresswoman

Katie Porter, Democrat representing the 45th district of California and a

member of the oversight and financial services committee. Congresswoman

Porter, thank you very much for joining us tonight. You were kind of lucky

that he was already scheduled to testify to this committee and suddenly

became the real - one of the real centers of that scandal over the weekend

involving Jeffrey Berman. What was your sense of his credibility on the

issue of how influenced is he by, say, playing golf with Donald Trump?

PORTER: He was clearly very uncomfortable with that line of questioning.

And if there is nothing wrong with it, he should have been willing to

provide an answer. There is certainly an appearance of impropriety there.

And I think the fact that he was stammering and struggling and really

resisting that line of questioning goes to show you that he understands it

does create at least the appearance of impropriety. The second thing I

would say is that this is somebody who is trying to pretend he`s

nonpartisan. But when I called today and the remainder part of my

questioning was the fact that he`s actually voted in a partisan way

repeatedly as he`s led the SEC.

O`DONNELL: Yes. That was clearly developed in the rest of the testimony.

You - his answer to you when you said, you know, will you affirm that you

have not discussed SEC business, what he said was he didn`t say any - none

of the conversations with Donald Trump made him uncomfortable, but that`s

kind of the point. Corruption discussions don`t make Donald Trump

uncomfortable either.

PORTER: Exactly. The correct answer to that question clearly should have

been, yes, I will affirm to the committee that I never discussed the SEC

business with Donald Trump. The fact that he didn`t give a yes or no to

what was really a softball opportunity for him to affirm his independence

and his ability to separate himself from the President should be a big

point of concern. And I hope the Senate takes up some of this line of

questioning when they consider his nomination to be U.S. Attorney for the

Southern District of New York.

O`DONNELL: Yes, if that ever happens. The - what about your oversight of

what`s happening with these relief funds, the billions of dollars that have

been handed out by the treasury? We now discover today that a lot of dead

people got checks from the treasury because the treasury did not bother to

check Social Security records about who is alive and dead with Social

Security Numbers. What other oversight discoveries are you trying to get?

PORTER: Well, it`s really important that we get full transparency into the

Paycheck Protection Program because this was $650 billion. This was one of

the largest single relief bills we gave. And so we have been pressuring for

six weeks now. I have been pushing and pushing for full transparency, and

we have been making progress slowly with pressure on Secretary of Treasury

Mnuchin. But today we learned from the GAO report that $38.5 billion in

Paycheck Protection Loans were returned by businesses. Why would businesses

return those loans? Perhaps, because they shouldn`t have been applying for

them in the first place but for every loan that got returned, we don`t know

how many got kept. And those are the kinds of questions taxpayers deserve

answers to.

O`DONNELL: What do you think they should be trying to achieve with this

relief money?

PORTER: Well, the point - the name of the program really says it all. It`s

about helping businesses make payroll. It is about preventing massive labor

market disruption. We have already gone back once and doubled the funding

for this program, and we may have to give more help to small businesses.

But before we do that, we need to make sure that we have transparency that

we`ve done the analysis, and that with this program is actually working to

save jobs. And that`s why we need these data, and we needed them yesterday

frankly.

O`DONNELL: Going back to Mr. Clayton`s role at the Securities and Exchange

Commission, how would you characterize it what you`ve seen of the way he

runs the SEC?

PORTER: Well, he`s trying to claim now that he is up for this U.S. Attorney

job that he`s so nonpartisan. But the SEC has historically really worked

hard to take unanimous action because frankly doing things like protecting

investors from fraud shouldn`t be a partisan matter. But today I went

through a number of proposals. Most of them marquee actions of the SEC

under Commissioner of Clayton failed to attract bipartisan support. They

were party line 3 to 2 votes. So as I said to Mr. Clayton today claiming to

be nonpartisan doesn`t make it so.

O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Katie Porter, you`ve done it once again. Thank you

very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.

PORTER: Thank you.

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