CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal

Interview

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BLITZER: It doesn't sound like a flat denial by any means from the White House. Thanks very much for that, Jim Acosta reporting.

Let's talk a little bit more about the White House turmoil, as well as all the breaking news involving Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and senior adviser. Joining us out, Senator Richard Blumenthal. He is a Democrat who serves on the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees.

Senator, thanks so much for joining us.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D), CONNECTICUT: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Your heard our report on Ivanka Trump. You know our reporting a Jared Kushner, her husband.

What concerns you about this, if something does concern you?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, Jared Kushner has a very sensitive and important roles in negotiating, supposedly, peace in the Middle East.

She has represented the president, most recently in South Korea. These individuals have important roles and responsibilities within the administration. And they could be compromised by these foreign entanglements, particularly since the Kushner holdings evidently are under financial pressure.

The fact of Jared Kushner's experience is a major obstacle. But combining it with these kinds of potentially compromising interests turns the White House into a kind of for-profit enterprise, at the expense potentially of the public interest.

BLITZER: So, you want them out?

BLUMENTHAL: I think that Jared Kushner has no business being in the White House, certainly not in the role that he does now.

Even with the downgrade of his security clearance from top-secret or highly classified, SCI, to the current secret, he continues to be in a potentially compromising role. And in any other administration, in any other past White House, there would be no way that he would continue in this role.

BLITZER: What about Ivanka?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, she has a lesser role, apparently. But I think both of them have to reconsider whether they would be more value to the president outside the White House.

BLITZER: You think they should both leave?

BLUMENTHAL: I think they both owe it to the president, to the ministration and to the country to play another role if they're going to have one in this administration.

BLITZER: You have seen the "New York Times" reporting that Kushner companies, big real estate companies in New York, they got significant loans, hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, after Jared Kushner met in the White House with some executives from those companies, from those lending institutions.

Is there anything that you think needs to be done about what could be seen as a conflict of interest?

BLUMENTHAL: I'm going the writing to the Office of Government Ethics, and I suspect I will be joined by a number of my colleagues, asking for an investigation of these conflicts of interest.

They plainly cry out for some kind of official inquiry. Second, in light of the downgrading of Jared Kushner's status from top-secret to secret, there has to be a debriefing and potentially damage control as to what he knew, what he may have told and whom he have told it in his various travels, because he was having conversations with Russian bankers.

He asked the Russian ambassador to give him a back channel to Russia. And these kinds of contacts with the interim clearance that he had -- apparently it was only interim because of these foreign entanglements -- cry out for some investigation.

BLITZER: There's a "Washington Post" report now that says the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is investigating President Trump's efforts to drive the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, out of his job.

We see that effort apparently continuing with the public humiliation of Jeff Sessions by the president. What would you do if the president were to remove Jeff Sessions from the Justice Department?

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BLUMENTHAL: If the president were to remove Jeff Sessions at this point, I think it would be profoundly important evidence of obstruction of justice, not an act necessarily of obstruction, but clearly evidence, given now the corrupt intent that he has indicated.

There's a credible case against the present right now of obstruction of justice. But, clearly, the motive in removing Jeff Sessions has to be that he recused himself, he refused to stifle or stop the special counsel's investigation.

And the dinner meeting last night involving the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and the solicitor general had to be a kind of show of resolution.

BLITZER: Yes. We just showed a still photo of that dinner. They were having dinner there. We had some video as well -- at a restaurant, by the way, right across the street from the Trump Hotel here in Washington.

Didn't have dinner at the Trump Hotel. They, perhaps pointedly, had dinner at a restaurant across the street.

So you believe that the attorney general having dinner with Rod Rosenstein and the solicitor general was sending a message to the president?

BLUMENTHAL: He was sending a message that everybody knows what's going on here. And so does the special counsel. These threats to fire the attorney general have clearly the intention of intimidating, not just humiliating, but threatening the attorney general and saying to him, in effect, if you're not going to be loyal to me, just as I asked Jim Comey to be loyal to me, you're going to meet the same fate.

And what they were saying back to the president was, in turn, we're sticking together. You fire one of us, and you will need to fire all of us. And that will precipitate the kind of Saturday Night Massacre, the outrage and firestorm, a constitutional conflagration, that either way the Senate will not tolerate.

BLITZER: Senator Blumenthal, thanks so much for coming in.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.

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