CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro

Interview

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ACOSTA: And we're back with breaking news on Michael Cohen's new interview declaring his loyalty to his family and his country, but not to President Trump.

The White House is refusing to comment. But Stormy Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, he just had plenty to say moments ago.

Joining me now, Congressman Joaquin Castro, a Democrat who serves on the Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committee.

Congressman, thanks for joining us. We appreciate it.

Do you think Michael Cohen has valuable information to offer federal prosecutors? Is that what you're reading from what we're seeing from Michael Cohen today?

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D), TEXAS: Yes, I'm almost certain that he does, not only as it relates to the one episode with Stormy Daniels and where exactly the money came from, whether it was campaign money, personal money, business money, charity money, wherever Donald Trump may have gotten that money from, but also, on that same front, whether there were other payments made in similar situations that could subject Donald Trump to some kind of tax fraud liability, for example, not just those issues, but also on other business issues regarding Mr. Trump's real estate deals, for example.

ACOSTA: And the special counsel's team still has not interviewed Michael Cohen. Do you think that will change if he ends up cooperating with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York?

CASTRO: Well, I would be very surprised if the special counsel's investigation finishes up and they have not thoroughly interviewed Michael Cohen to figure out exactly what he knows about all of -- about money laundering, about any kind of collusion with Russia and other matters.

ACOSTA: And do you think this is trouble for the president, Michael Cohen sending up these flares this morning that he puts country and family before President Trump? Made a number of statements that sound as if he's putting some distance between himself and the president.

CASTRO: Yes.

You know, Jim, I have tried to think back on the interview that the House Intelligence Committee had with Michael Cohen and square that with where he seems to be now. And it seems like there is this arc of kind of acceptance and resignation on his part that he may have to actually turn on the president to protect himself and his family's future.

And when we had the interview months back, he was not one of the more combative witnesses, not like Corey Lewandowski, who basically cursed out the committee, or even Erik Prince, who went in there and was very brash with the committee.

Mr. Cohen's lawyer at the time -- I think it was Stephen Ryan -- was fairly combative early on in the interview. But Michael Cohen himself was not especially forceful, I didn't think, in how he approached this.

So it didn't surprise me, I guess, is what I'm saying now that he may be accepting that he's going to have to protect himself and his family first.

ACOSTA: And let's turn to immigration and to the aftershocks of the president's controversial family separation policy down on the border.

There are so many kids that have not been reunited with their parents. Do you think the administration is taking this seriously? And are you getting the information that you want in terms of how these kids are doing, where they are, how are they getting back with their parents and so on?

CASTRO: No, we haven't.

The Congress has not gotten a clear answer on whether there was any comprehensive accounting or list kept of the children who were separated from their parents with exact names and information containing the whereabouts of each of the kids and the parents.

We still don't have a comprehensive list like that. I know that there was testimony by somebody from DHS, I believe, last week or the week before, where he said, basically, I can tell you right now where each of the kids is and each of the parents is.

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If that exists, they should present that over to Congress and to the American people, because I certainly have not seen it.

ACOSTA: And some Democrats are calling for the abolition of ICE. They are saying abolish ICE. You have seen the hashtag. You have seen the T-shirts. You probably saw some of that, at least the video from the rallies over the weekend.

Where do you stand on that? Is that something that should be done? Should that agency be done away with?

CASTRO: Well, I think that you see -- what you see is a lot of frustration and a lot of anger about years of abuse and corruption and secrecy by ICE.

Now, ICE is a fairly large organization, so I basically stand with the agents who wrote in to Secretary Nielsen and asked that the Homeland Security investigations piece of ICE be separated out and left to itself.

And I think that we should extract -- in other words, we should take away any kind of enforcement and removal authority from ICE and put it somewhere else. Put it in a place where you will have folks that are doing it in a more responsible way.

But I think we should also mention, Jim, that this is not just about ICE. This is -- when we look at what's going on at the border and the way that families are being separated up and the fact that it doesn't seem like there's any plan to reunite them, it's Border Patrol, it's ICE. It's also HHS.

And also the ultimate solution to this is not just reorganizing or doing away with departments. People have to get out there and vote for people that will clean this up.

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ACOSTA: And, Congressman, let me ask you this. Are you concerned, though, that this abolish ICE movement, this talk of abolishing ICE is going to hurt your party in the midterms, it's going to give the president an issue to run on?

He's going to say, he's for law enforcement, you guys aren't? Doesn't that concern you?

CASTRO: Of course he's going to say that, Jim.

But the president also makes things up. So, whatever you do, whether you play it straight or whether you give him some ammunition, either way, he's going to do everything he can to demonize Democrats for the midterm elections and for 2020.

ACOSTA: OK.

Congressman Joaquin Castro, thank you for coming on and joining us. We appreciate it.

CASTRO: Thank you.

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