MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Robert Mueller

Interview

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HAYES: Back in December, Senator Mark Warner, the Vice Chair of the Senate  Intelligence Committee gave this barn-burner of a speech of the Senate  floor that seemed to sort to come out of nowhere in which he warned the  President not to the cross a so-called red line by firing Mueller. Moments  ago, the top aide to that Senator tweeted when Mark Warner delivered his  red line speech to warn against firing Mueller back in December, a lot of  people asked why now, this is why. And she linked to the story breaking  from the New York Times that we just discussed with Michael Schmidt. I  happened to speak to Senator Warner tonight just before that story broke.

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HAYES: Senator, what do you think about Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying the  White House has made the determination the President himself has the power  to fire Robert Mueller?

WARNER: Well, this White House and this President seem to think he can in  effect support some laws and ignore other laws. I'm not the legal expert  here. But I would actually agree with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham  that if Mr. Trump tried to fire Mr. Mueller, that will be the beginning of  the end of the Trump Presidency.

HAYES: The president also said this yesterday about the raid where he  called it an attack on this country. I want you to take a listen and get  your reaction.

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HAYES: Do you think the raid was an attack on our country?

WARNER: Absolutely not. What this President doesn't seem to understand is it that there's no one that is above the law, including the President of United States. And I would remind the President that Mr. Rosenstein who his Deputy Attorney General, long-term Republican, Mr. Wray , the FBI Director a Trump appointee, throughout this whole investigation, Mr. Mueller, a lifelong Republican somehow the notion that it is being caused by political purposes, it is being caused because there are serious questions that need to be answered about Trump Campaign and affiliates --affiliation or collusion with Russians and I think this investigation has to finish. I believe our Senate Intelligence Committee investigation has to finish. And the American public deserves the truth and what scares the dickens out of me is when the President basically depending on his mood wakes up and makes these in effect add whom and in broad-based attacks against the whole integrity of the Justice Department and the whole integrity of the FBI. That gets into very scary territory that would might give license to some to say will consequently they could then choose which laws they want to follow and which laws they don't want to follow. My fear is that Mr. Trump is trying to undermine not only the Mueller investigation but many ways the integrity of our whole Justice Department system.

HAYES: Is he succeeding?

WARNER: I believe amongst some and amongst some of his allies who  reinforce this message. We're getting into uncharted territory here. I  worry. We're a nation -- I've never seen anything like this in my whole  life. I know a lot of my Republican colleagues have privately expressed  real concern and consternation. My hope is for the sake of the country  that someone would rein this President back in and that he would not take  the kind of inappropriate action as firing Rosenstein or firing Mueller  which I believe would put us into a constitutional crisis.

HAYES: You just said the word privately to describe the reservations or  concerns of your Republican colleagues. I've been monitoring closely  public pronouncements today and largely from Republicans they've been  essentially equivocal or we don't need to do anything because they're --  I'm confident they'll say he won't fire Mueller. It won't happen. Don't  worry about it. Do you think that's good enough?

WARNER: You know, I went out before the holidays before Christmas and gave  what I hoped was my red line speech that firing Mueller, firing Rosenstein,  going off and pardoning family members or others would be a bridge too far.  Most Republican who been on -- gone on the record have said yes, they  thought that would go too far, as well. But we seem to be fast approaching  that point. And my colleagues are going to need, God forbid if we have  this event to move past private conversations and take a public stand. I  think all of us will as Americans have to take a public stand and decide  whether we're going to continue to be a nation of laws and that no one  including the President of the United States is above the law and he cannot  arbitrarily stop a duly constituted investigation. But I can tell you from  at least where I stand as a as Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence  Committee there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered.

HAYES: Your counterparts over in the House Intelligence Committee who some  critics have said are sort of conducting a counter investigation of the  investigation, they're -- this comes from Robert Costa of the Washington  Post who says the following, that House Intel Chair Devin Nunes, privately  told several colleagues today it's time for House GOP to hold Rosenstein  and Wray in contempt of Congress, should they refuse to hand over docs  according to two people familiar with the discussions. What do you think  of that?

WARNER: Well I think I think -- I think it's fairly typical of the way the  House Majority has operated. Frankly, outside the boundaries of what most  of us would view would be appropriate, obviously, not in any sense  bipartisan, and I'm going to continue to say -- simply grace over what  we're trying to do on the Senate side which is we've got to follow the  facts, we've got to keep this effort bipartisan. And at the end of the  day, this is about what happened or didn't happen not only in 2016 but in  some of the aftermath and also how we make sure the American public gets  the truth because they deserve the truth.

HAYES: Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, thanks for your time tonight.

WARNER: Thank you.

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