CNN "Anderson Cooper 360" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jim Himes

Interview

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House Intel Chairman, Adam Schiff, briefed the committee today. Joining us now, a member of that committee, Democratic Jim Himes of Connecticut, who says he does not believe he was targeted by the Trump investigation. So, congratulations on that front, Congressman. I know you can't tell us much about what happened in this meeting.

But broadly speaking, you know, what were you told about the scope of these records that were seized? What it all means? And what's your initial reaction?

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): Yes, John, well, first of all, we don't know a lot. I don't think I was -- I was targeted, but it turns out that the way Apple notified members was by sending them an e-mail from an account, something like Apple@info or info@Apple or something, so we just don't know.

Needless to say, our Chairman and others have asked the Department of Justice for a complete list of those Members of Congress and associated staff and family members and children that were subpoenaed, whose records were subpoenaed and we have not been provided that information. So, we have no idea.

The answer to your second question, which is how broadly does this go? And, you know, without betraying the confidence of a closed meeting, a lot of us -- what happened was bad enough, John. This is the use of arguably next to the military, the most powerful thing that the Federal government has, the Department of Justice, it was the use of the Department of Justice to advance a quirky political aim of the President.

And so what's horrifying here is, it is good that the Inspector General is going to do his work, but that Inspector General is going to operate inside the Department of Justice. What we're talking about here, of course, is yet another flagrant constitutional abuse. And, we learned about it by reading it, at least I learned about it, and many people learned about it by reading it in the newspaper.

What other elements of the government were compromised? Was the I.R.S. used as a political tool for Donald Trump? Was the C.I.A. used as a political tool for Donald Trump? Unless we have something bigger than an Inspector General, unless we have -- I'm thinking back to the, you know, the Church Committee of the 1970s, unless we have something truly all of government, we may never know the answers to that question. And that leaves us profoundly vulnerable to the next Donald Trump, the smarter Donald Trump doing this all over again.

BERMAN: You're asking for either a select or special committee or a special prosecutor?

HIMES: Well, you know, we've spent the last two months talking about a commission around January 6th. I was there on January 6th. I was very much at risk on January 6th, but if you asked me to choose between a commission to figure out exactly what happened on January 6th, and January 5th and January 7th, or a commission that would look at the abuse of the State Department, which of course got Donald Trump impeached, the first time, the abuse of the D.O.J., and what else happened out there, I would choose the second.

I would like to know, from soup to nuts, because we know that this President had every opportunity to use the tools of the American public, the Federal government for his own personal gain. I want to know where that stopped and that may go beyond a select committee. That is probably a commission.

BERMAN: So, as we played at the top of the program, former Attorney General William Barr often seems fuzzy on recalling certain events, and today he told POLITICO that he was quote, "not aware of who we were looking at in any of the cases," end quote. And that then President Trump didn't ask specifics.

So, do you buy that from Bill Barr?

[20:20:09] HIMES: Well, what we know about Bill Barr is that he was more than willing to break precedent at the Department of Justice to as an Attorney General actually act as the prime defender of Donald Trump. He, of course did that with his letter describing the Mueller report, which then Mueller had to say, wait a minute, that's not what I said.

So, you know, he's not a good -- he is not a particularly good source on this stuff. But clearly, we're going to need to know exactly what happened, because it's not enough to say that we were looking for leaks.

Look, if you tell me that a Member of Congress, you know, took $10 million from the Russian government in exchange for our nuclear codes, by all means, go after that guy. But that is not what is happening here. It's never happened before.

Think about it. There's an old saying that keeps going through my head. I think it was a New York judge who once commented that a skillful District Attorney can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. And my Republican friends need to want -- need to ask themselves if with under a Democratic President, they would be comfortable with their being exposed and their children being exposed because some assistant U.S. Attorney tells the grand jury that we're going after the potential, the potential of a leak within Republican Members of the Intelligence Committee.

It's outrageous that they're not joining us in standing up and saying this cannot stand.

BERMAN: Seventy three phone accounts, 36 e-mail accounts -- Congressman Himes, we appreciate you being with us tonight.

HIMES: Thank you, John.

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