CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Senator Richard Blumenthal
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
BLITZER: All right, Jim, thank you, Jim Sciutto reporting.
Let's get some more on all the breaking news.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is joining us. He's a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Senator, thanks for joining us.
Let's talk about what Rudy Giuliani just told our Dana Bash, that the special counsel has told the president's legal team they can't indict a sitting president, won't indict a sitting president. Those are the ground rules. Giuliani says, "All they get to do is write a report."
That's a quote from Giuliani.
What does that tell you?
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D), CONNECTICUT: I, first of all, have a high degree of doubt that the special counsel is going to announce this view on this very consequential and complicated legal issue.
BLITZER: So, are you saying you don't believe Giuliani, what he told Dana Bash, that he was told personally by Mueller that you can't indict a sitting president?
BLUMENTHAL: I'm dubious.
I want to know what the basis is for that statement by Rudy Giuliani, and whether it was just an offhand view by one of the attorneys with the special counsel, or whether it was a pronouncement by the special counsel himself.
It is an enormously and profoundly important conclusion of law.
BLITZER: Well, do you believe that under current law the special counsel or the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, can recommend charges to indict a sitting president?
BLUMENTHAL: My personal belief, based on the review of the law that I have done, is that the president could be indicted.
Whether he could be tried during the time he's president is another issue. But, for example, to prevent a statute of limitations from running on a crime committed by a president, I think the indictment could be returned by a grand jury, and it could be held in abeyance until the conclusion of his term as president of the United States.
BLITZER: So you don't accept the standing Justice Department opinion that has been around for decades now that you can't indict a sitting president?
BLUMENTHAL: I think that there's a good argument for that view.
But I would contest whether it is a sound interpretation of the law. I believe that the president is not above the law. No one is in this country. And just because he's president doesn't mean he can't be indicted.
Maybe the trial should be postponed, because he has foreign policy to conduct. He has weighty matters of the nation to do. And so the trial would be postponed, assuming that it could be done without undue prejudice.
BLITZER: But if there's a report, a concluding report that Mueller has and Rosenstein signs off on it, they can submit it to the House of Representatives, where they can consider impeachment.
BLUMENTHAL: That is an alternative course and a different remedy.
And it involves the House of Representatives proceeding with impeachment and then a conviction in the United States Senate. It is as much or maybe even more a political process as much as a legal one.
But the president is not above the law. And an indictment, if that's the course that Robert Mueller chooses to go, I believe would be upheld by the courts. It would go to the United States Supreme Court. It's an issue that has never been resolved in that way.
There is a Department of Justice opinion to the contrary. I happen to think that he could be indicted, even if the trial is postponed.
BLITZER: Let's talk about the payments to Michael Cohen, the president's longtime personal attorney, his fixer.
Do you believe that $100,000-plus, $100,000-plus, that the president offered or paid to Michael Cohen potentially represents -- and it's in the disclosure statement that was released by the White House today, the president's disclosure statement -- potentially represents a violation of the law?
BLUMENTHAL: Very definitely, it potentially constitutes a violation of law, because the ethics rules and statutes require that that kind of debt be reported on forms that everyone employed by the federal government, no matter who they are -- again, the president is not above that law -- has to report those kinds of loans.
And, clearly, here, he is either repaying a loan that could constitute a violation of the campaign finance laws by Cohen, if it is in excess of the amount permissible for a loan that has be reported --
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: So, what you're saying is, he should have reported this payment to Michael Cohen in last year's, the 2017, financial disclosure statement, and not wait until this year?
By not disclosing it last year, you think potentially that was a violation?
BLUMENTHAL: The failure to disclose is potentially a violation of law.
And the burden is on the president to explain it. Clearly, it was a debt that is required under the ethics form to be disclosed.
BLITZER: Well, we do know that the acting director of the United States Office of Government Ethics has written this letter to the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, saying -- quote -- "I am providing both reports to you, last year's and this year's, because you may find the disclosure relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing regarding the president's prior report that was signed on June 14 2017."
[18:20:10]
So, there's a letter of referral to the Justice Department, to Rosenstein, taking a close look at that.
What do you think Rosenstein is going to do with it?
BLUMENTHAL: I think he will, in turn, provide it to the special counsel. It may be relevant to issues of credibility, of pattern and practice, of ethics violations.
There are a lot of ways this information could be relevant, or it could be pursued independently, again, referred to, as apparently the special counsel did, on an independent matter involving Michael Cohen to the Southern District of New York, the prosecutor's office there.
BLITZER: Let's talk about your committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee today; 2,000 pages of transcripts were released by your committee.
The chairman released it, Chuck Grassley. The Democrats support the release of all these transcripts. Based on the testimony that you have seen now -- and you have gone through all of these transcripts -- what's your best guess when the president actually learned about that controversial Trump Tower meeting in New York City in June of 2016?
BLUMENTHAL: My best guess is that he learned about it from Donald Trump Jr. in a call that right now Donald Trump Jr. seems to have difficulty recalling.
It's the call to the blocked number. But one way the other, my best guess is that he learned about it before he orchestrated a completely false and misleading version of that meeting in the statement that he helped to concoct while he was on Air Force One, and Donald Trump Jr. was asked for a comment by "The New York Times."
And in that now infamous version of the meeting, he said it was just about the Magnitsky Act and about childhood adoptions, when in fact he must have known at the time from Donald Trump Jr. it was about the dirt that Trump Jr. and Manafort and his son-in-law, Kushner, tried to get from Veselnitskaya and other Russian agents.
And, remember, it's not only that he was eager, but he was frustrated when that dirt was not forthcoming. And he arranged the meeting with, again, the now infamous, "I love it," when he was told what the meeting was about.
BLITZER: That dirt. I want to get to that in a second.
But do you believe that Donald Trump Jr. informed the president, his dad, his father, of what happened during that Trump Tower meeting in that 11-minute blocked phone call? We don't know who that blocked phone call went to, but there is some suspicions it have gone to the president.
BLUMENTHAL: I think that is a viable theory that has to be --
BLITZER: But you don't know that for sure?
BLUMENTHAL: We don't know it.
And, Wolf, here is the main response to your question. We have no firm evidence about what happened in that phone call. Donald Trump Jr. has to be called back as a witness under oath and in public.
The whole point of that interview was to prepare for public hearings under oath by Donald Trump Jr. and the others who participated in that June 9 meeting, the extraordinarily significant meeting that the public has to -- has a right to know more about.
BLITZER: Senator Blumenthal, as usual, thanks so much for coming in.
BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source