CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Legal Team Strategy Against Special Counsel

Interview

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We're joined now by Senator Mark Warner. He's the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Senator, thanks so much for joining us.

SEN. MARK WARNER (D), VIRGINIA: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: How concerned are you, Senator, that President Trump has gone from calling it the Russia investigation to now calling it the Mueller probe?

WARNER: I'm very concerned.

I raised these issues before the beginning of the year, calling on all my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, to stand up for the independence of the Mueller investigation. Many of my Republican colleagues have said that the president will make a grave mistake.

I think Lindsey Graham said it would be the beginning of the end of his presidency. But I continue to be concerned by the president's disregard for this investigation, disregard for the seriousness of the Russia incursion into our elections.

I think there was more than a little bit fishy about the way Andy McCabe was fired, 36 hours before he was to receive his pension. Now, I have not seen the inspector general report and I expect to have a full brief on that. But it was more than a little bit fishy, the fact that they strung him out and then the president was so inappropriate as to be texting about this guy who served our country for over 20 years.

BLITZER: "The Washington Post" is now reporting that the White House has given the special counsel, Robert Mueller, written accounts of some of the important moments Mueller is looking into. What do you make of that strategy?

WARNER: You know, I'm not going to comment on the White House strategy.

But the one thing we know is that, every week that goes on, new information comes out. For example, we find now that Cambridge Analytica, one of the technology firms that the Trump Organization used in the campaign, a firm that claimed in many ways that it helped create the Trump victory, appropriately, or perhaps inappropriately, got access to over 50 million Facebook accounts.

I expect an answer from Facebook, not their lawyer, but from their CEO. I expect to hear more from Cambridge Analytica. And as more and more of this information continues to come out, for any effort to try to limit Mueller or for the president to try to cut off lines of the Mueller investigation would be terribly inappropriate.

And, again, this is about rule of law in this country. And I hope, God forbid, that the president tries to get rid of Mueller or Rosenstein or starts pardoning parts of his family or others, that people will stand up for rule of law, and not, in effect, bow down to this president and his activities.

BLITZER: After President Trump called Andrew McCabe's firing, in his words, a great day for democracy, the former CIA Director John Brennan, tweeted this.

I will put it up on the screen. "When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America. America will triumph over you."

Senator, that is truly scathing to hear what the former CIA director says about the president of the United States. He was the CIA director throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. Does Brennan know something about the president's behavior that we don't know yet?

WARNER: I don't know the answer to that.

If former Director Brennan has additional information, I hope he's sharing it with Mueller. I hope he can come back in and share more information with our Intelligence Committee, the only bipartisan effort still remaining looking into this matter.

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But what I think probably offends Mr. Brennan and I know offends a lot of former FBI agents, former prosecutors, is this president's kind of ad hominem attack against the whole FBI, against the whole Justice Department.

You go back and look at some of his tweets, you go back and look at some of the president's allies who are in effect saying so-called deep state analogies, you know, we live in a nation of laws, Wolf. And one of the things that has disappointed me is that there's not been more members of Congress, frankly, more of my Republican colleagues, and, for that matter, more former U.S. attorneys, judges, and others stepping up and saying, even beyond Mr. Mueller, you just can't go out and attack our basic institutions like the FBI or the Justice Department.

Or you end up with circumstances like we saw a couple of weeks back, where that slightly unusual character was saying that he would not go in and even respond to the Mueller subpoena. When we get to the point where people start saying they're going to pick and choose which laws they want to follow, our country's in a dangerous spot.

And, in many ways, that kind of attitude is reinforced, frankly, by tweets by the president and by some of the president's allies who have even been more outrageous in their broad-based attacks against the FBI and Department of Justice.

BLITZER: Your committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, is having an open hearing on Wednesday, a very important hearing on Wednesday, on threats to the election infrastructure here in the United States.

What are the steps you want to see taken before the midterm elections in November?

WARNER: Well, Wolf, we will have a bipartisan press conference tomorrow. We're going to highlight the work of a number of senators again from both parties, how we can get some resources, reinforcing the fact that elections are state- and local-controlled, but how we can get resources for states to make sure that voting machines have a paper trail, to no longer have the kind of I think absurd answers we originally got from the Department of Homeland Security, when they wouldn't even notify the 21 states that were attacked because they said, in certain cases, the top state election official didn't have appropriate security clearance.

That's a crazy response. Make sure there's more information-sharing. The fact is, Wolf, we're going to have this bipartisan legislation, because in a normal world, with a normal administration, you would have the White House take the lead on gathering all of these entities, DHS, the state election boards, the FBI and others, together.

Because the one thing I will give President Trump's appointees, they all recognize the problem in terms of election security, that we're going into primary season and we're not safer than we were in meaningful ways than we were in 2016.

You have even had the former head of the NSA, the FBI director, and the director of national intelligence in public testimony say in the last two weeks that they have had no indication from the White House that election security has got to be a top priority. So our committee is going to try to make sure it's a top priority by passing legislation.

BLITZER: Glad to see there's some bipartisan cooperation in the Senate Intelligence Committee, vastly different than what's going on in the House Intelligence Committee.

Senator Warner, thanks for joining us.

WARNER: Thank you, Wolf.

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