MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Russian Investigations

Interview

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HAYES: Democratic Senator Cory Booker is a Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and one of the sponsors of the bill to protect Mueller is good enough to step out of an event in D.C. to join us live. Let me start on that. What do you make of Members of Congress writing a letter explicitly calling for members of the FBI, the Justice Department and political foes of the President to be prosecuted?

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: This is to me really a bad sign in our democracy. I think it starred in the last presidential election where you hear a whole convention center chanting "lock her up," which tome is things that dictators do, that autocrats do. They go after their political enemies, not through the mechanisms of democracy but threating to arrest them, starting threatening to throw them in jail. This is a very dangerous sign and to me, it is very anti-democratic that people want to try to be pushing to lock up their political opponents.

HAYES: So you're on the judiciary committee. What -- explain to me what the state of play is with this piece of legislation?

BOOKER: Well, back in June, Lindsey Graham and I started talking about hey, this is a problem not just in this moment in history, this moment in time but for the long-term. If you have a President that's under investigation or has principal members of their team being indicted, that that president should have a common sense check and balance on their ability to fire a special counsel. It just makes sense that you should not have -- that you should have checks and balances, that you shouldn't have a president that can be above the law or that could obstruct justice. So this is just a very common sense pragmatic idea. Lindsay and I started working on it, Thom Tillis and Chris Coons came up with their version. We've now married the versions. And I'm very excited that Chuck Grassley understands that this is a bill of merit not only for now but in the ages. And as -- and not only held hearings on it but now, tomorrow, I hope is going to go forward and mark this bill up and vote it out of committee.

HAYES: What do you think has changed? It seemed there was a sort of -- a lot of interest last summer, I remember covering this. I think we may have even had you on to talk about it, that interest waned. It sort of seemed stalled. I was -- if you'd asked me to bet on whether it was going to get a vote on committee, I would have said no. What's changed?

BOOKER: I think that there's a lot of folks of good conscience saying well, we've now seen at least two separate occasions where we're hearing reports that the President was going to move to fire Mueller. We've seen consistent with his behavior that it can be impulsive, that it can be unpredictable. I think that we need this back stop for our democracy as opposed to lurching us into a constitutional crisis. So I think sober minds see this as not at indictment of the President but as a sign of the times and something we're worried about and a responsible thing for us to do as stewards of the republic, as stewards of our -- of our democracy. And look, I would be -- I want to state it plain, clearly, there are Republicans now that are worried that this eventuality might happen. And I think that's why we're getting good people, good heart, good nature stepping up to say let's just do some things and create an insurance policy against a constitutional crisis.

HAYES: Isn't Mitch McConnell just going to put this bill on the part of his office where he stored the Merrick Garland nomination?

BOOKER: You know, I think that that is a well-earned skepticism might say that. But this is something that I think is gaining momentum. And I think that Mitch McConnell is right -- is within his rights to say and do what he's doing right now but he's also within his rights to change his mind. And as we get more bipartisan support, as more activism happens around the country and if Trump continues with the kind of bluster that we've been seeing, here's a President that has been undermining the special counsel, attacking his integrity, undermining the investigation. I think at some point people are going to have to choose from a tribalism party politics between that and sort of a faithfulness to their country and our institutions. And I'm hoping that Mitch McConnell will come around. But right now, we're step by step. We wrote a bill. We got the bill hearings. We got the bill now ready to go into committee. Every step of the way as you yourself said people, didn't think we could make it the next step. I have a feeling that we might be able to get this to the floor.

HAYES: Do you think the President is a criminal?

BOOKER: Look, I'm one of those folks that says let's go where the evidence leads. And right now, we have a special counsel that is doing a thorough investigation. Let's not get ahead of our skis. Let's make sure we support the special counsel's investigation. If the President, like he says he has nothing to worry about, he should backing off on the rhetoric, backing off on the things he's doing to undermine the investigation and let it take its course. And then let's draw our conclusions from the evidence that's gathered. I think it's politically perilous the way we are throwing things around and getting ahead of this investigation. I think we need to let this prosecutor, let the special counsel rather do their job and draw our conclusions after the evidence comes forward.

HAYES: Is that a reference to talk of impeachment when you say politically perilous?

BOOKER: Yes, look, I think that we undermine our position as Democrats if we are reaching out now for impeachment which is just going to whip up more of the political divisions, the political debates. And I know I'll take criticism for that but that's OK. We need sober minds, fact-based conclusions, concussions drawn from evidence as presented. This -- if we protect are the special counsel especially, this investigation is going to come to a conclusion and there are going to be facts and we can base our actions based upon those facts.

HAYES: All right, Senator Cory Booker, all let you get back to your event. Thank you for making time tonight.

BOOKER: Thank you very much. Thank you.

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