MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Eric Swalwell
Interview
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Joining us now are Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California. He served as a house impeachment manager in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Also with us, David Frum, senior editor at "The Atlantic".
And Congressman Swalwell, let me begin with you. I fear that David is going to have to rewrite this article and republish it roughly every six months or certainly every year now that we live in the age of the big lies.
REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): It`s a great piece, Lawrence. I`m afraid that as we look back on the post-2016 election, all of the evidence was sitting right in front of us, and we were looking for more and more. But at the end of the day everything Donald Trump did was in plain sight, plain view as you would say in criminal law.
He had invested for years in the Russians, and the Russians had invested in him. The Russians offered him help at that Trump Tower meeting. He accepted it. He wanted more help and asked for the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton`s e-mails, and hours after he did that, they did.
And by the way, when he was asked if he had any investments in Russia, he said no, and it was revealed that he sought to build the largest building in Russia, a Trump Tower there. He lied and lied and lied about it.
He has attempted to erase the history of Russia, the history of January 6th and the history of his corrupt, racist, misogynistic presidency. And it`s incumbent on people like David to keep reminding the public what really happened.
O`DONNELL: The Senate report that David references in his article is from the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was published last year.
[22:39:54]
O`DONNELL: Back when the Republicans controlled the committee Marco Rubio was actually sitting as chair at the time. That Senate Intelligence Committee report, bipartisan report says "It is our conclusion based on the facts detailed in the committee`s report that the Russian intelligence service`s assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. election process, and Trump and his associate`s participation in enabling of this Russian activity represents one of the single, most grave counter intelligence threats to American national security in the modern era."
David, in court that`s when they say case closed.
DAVID FRUM, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE ATLANTIC": Well, I think one of the problems we`ve had is that people keep trying to take this case to court. I mean they`re trying to keep turning this into a criminal matter when it`s a counter intelligence matter. It`s a matter of what are the facts?
What motivated me to write this article, and I think what motivates you to talk about it and the congressman to talk about it is there is now a pushback not coming from only pro-Trump people because what do you expect form them, but for many people who have good records in the past four years, where they were trying to score some other points by saying, well, we want to back away from the Russia business.
The Steele dossier wasn`t all that it should have been. It got overplayed. There are many things we still don`t know. and so we want to tell a different kind of story in order to score points off politicians. We don`t like Hillary Clinton, like TV programs like this one that they don`t like for other reasons.
We have to keep in front of us the plain fact that everything you saw, everything that happened that was important you saw it in front of your own -- with your own eyes. You saw the Russians hack. You saw the Trump campaign try to persuade the world that the hackers were not Russians but were poor, murdered (INAUDIBLE). And in fact insinuate that the Clinton people had somehow not only packed themselves but murdered the people who were the instruments of their hack.
You saw Donald Trump on television welcome the help. And all of these things would have been the biggest scandal in American electoral history except that Donald Trump kept creating even bigger scandals than that.
Through the Trump years there have been many secrets but no mysteries. What you know, you know and you are being gaslit and only by pro-Trump people but unfortunately by people with distinguished records who are now trying to score some another political point, a very subtle one, by denying what was true.
O`DONNELL: Congressman Swalwell, there is, of course, the famous Donald Trump moment into a microphone, "Russia, are you listening?" The Mueller report documents exactly what happened in Russia after he said that when they were, indeed, listening and how that amped up their attack processes on the election.
SWALWELL: That`s right. They were listening, Lawrence. And they acted -- at his behest. And you know, it`s important for us to look backward and make sure that history is properly recorded.
But I`m a lawmaker. Our job is to the make sure this doesn`t happen again. Congressman Adam Schiff has legislation called the Protection of Our Democracy Act which would put into law, you know, a number of different policies that would prevent foreign interference.
I have legislation that would put in place a duty to report, that if you receive help from a -- or you`re solicited by a foreign actor that you would have to report it or it would be a crime.
That`s, of course, something that Donald Trump, Jr. did not do after the meeting at Trump Tower. So we have to learn from this. And just because Congress -- prior Congresses did not have an imagination to put in place laws that would protect us against what Donald Trump exploited, doesn`t mean we shouldn`t do that going forward.
And to just talk about one other finer point David referenced trying to score political points. Look what Donald Trump has been able to do by trying to erase race what happened with Russia in 2016 you now have senators like Tom Cotton trying to delay and Marco Rubio delay the National Defense Authorization Act because they want us to put tougher sanctions on Nord Stream 2 against Russia forgetting that the reason Russia was able to advance so much economically and militarily in the last four years is because the person that they covered for and supported didn`t do anything, and in fact enabled Putin.
O`DONNELL: Thank you both very much for joining this discussion tonight. David Frum, thank you for writing this piece. Let`s just pencil in, I don`t know, six months from now we`ll talk about it again because I`m sure we`re going to need to repeatedly on the calendar.
And Congressman Eric Swalwell, I`m not sure you got the memo from Donald Trump. He said that if Joe Biden was elected president you Democrats we`re going to end Christmas and I think that`s a Christmas tree behind you in the shot. I don`t know how --
SWALWELL: Christmas is thriving here.
O`DONNELL: -- I don`t know how Donald Trump explains that Christmas tree.
Thank you both very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
[22:44:51]
SWALWELL: My pleasure.
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