NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Mark Warner
Interview
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CHUCK TODD:And joining me now is Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. He, of course, is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is doing its own investigation into the Russian interference. Senator Warner, welcome back to Meet the Press.
SENATOR MARK WARNER:Thank you, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:You just heard from Ambassador Huntsman. You are signed onto a letter with a bunch of other Democratic senators calling for the president to either cancel the summit, or if he doesn't, basically essentially make it a one-issue summit. Ambassador Huntsman, number one, doesn't want to call it a summit, a meeting. Have you been reassured by what you heard from Ambassador Huntsman about what the president will do with Putin?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:Well, Chuck, I'd feel a lot better if Ambassador Huntsman, who I have a lot of confidence in, was actually sitting in on the meeting. I'm very concerned about a one-on-one meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. We know that Trump doesn't do a lot of prep work for these meetings. He kind of goes in and wings it. We saw what happened when he did that with Kim Jong-Un. He ended up saying everything is okay with North Korea, and frankly we've found, since that time, that's not the case. In Putin, you've got a trained K.G.B. agent who does his homework. My fear is that Putin could come in with maps of Ukraine or maps of Syria and try to cut some deal, and frankly, take advantage of this president. So, I really would feel much better if there were other Americans in the room making sure that we make the point that the first and top point of this agenda should be no further Russian interference in our elections.
CHUCK TODD:All right, I understand you don't want the president to do this one-on-one, but let me ask you this. Shouldn't-- let me pick up on a point that Ambassador Huntsman kept making. What's wrong with the two leaders meeting? Yes, we should-- we have some contentious issues to discuss, but regardless of your personal views of President Trump, what's wrong with this meeting?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:Listen, the idea that two leaders of two great nations are meeting absolutely makes sense, but what we have now, which was unprecedented, is Russian intervention in our elections, where they hacked into Democrats' and Democratic officials' emails, released them to benefit Trump and hurt Clinton, where they intervened in over 20 states' electoral systems, where they used social media in ways that were unprecedented. And if an American leader and an American administration wouldn't start a meeting with the head of the country that did that intervention and make that the top priority, then this meeting really shouldn't take place. Remember, Russia massively intervened. They are an adversary. And my fear is this president, in particular, has been really reluctant to call out that activity, has been completely reluctant to call out Putin as a bad actor. And that's why we need to make sure there are at least other people in the room.
CHUCK TODD:Let me ask you, though, about Russia policy. You know, the Trump administration has been tough on Russia. President Trump rhetorically has not. Why does that matter?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:Chuck, Chuck, the-- Chuck, the, the president rhetorically has not been tough on Russia. As a matter of fact, Congress had to take an unprecedented action basically and say, "Hey, when we say sanctions, we mean you've got to actually put those sanctions in place." Trump drug his feet on imposing the sanctions. We had to pass legislation that frankly boxed the president in so we would avoid taking that responsibility.
CHUCK TODD:I want to get into the indictment. Number one, the timing of the indictment on Friday. Do you get the sense that the Justice Department was trying to send a message?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:You know, I had no idea when the indictment was going to come and we're still processing. And first of all, we should say there's an awful lot of very good work done here to have this level of specificity in terms of these Russian spies and how they acted and what they did specifically. We now have the Mueller investigation with over 30 indictments, with five guilty pleas, and who knows what next is to come because clearly, with the number of individuals that have said they're cooperating with the Mueller investigation, I'm sure he's got more to come.
CHUCK TODD:I want to know actually what you'd learned new, and you said you learned a lot new in this. And one of the things I want to ask you about is, in the indictment, we learned that on the same day, on or about July 27th, that these Russian intelligence agents attempted after hours to spearfish for the first time emails associated with Clinton's personal office and the Clinton campaign. And this happened on the day of this infamous sound bite from then-candidate Donald Trump, July 27th, 2016.
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CHUCK TODD:
Was this a new piece of evidence to you, Senator Warner?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:
Well, it appears a rather strange coincidence that the very day that Mr. Trump calls on the Russians to hack into Clinton emails, well, the Russian spies actually try to take that action. And remember, that, that call for the Russians to act came a few weeks after Donald Trump, Jr., his son, his son-in-law, his campaign manager, had all sat down with Russian agents in the Trump Tower, where the Russian agents had offered dirt on Hillary Clinton. Clearly, you take that, you take the efforts to reach out to Trump aide, Mr. Papadopoulos, where Russians were offering dirt, there is a pattern of behavior here that I think, at the end of the day, I hope Mueller gets to the bottom of.
CHUCK TODD:
All right, you brought up the Trump Tower meeting. In fact, we learned about a new piece of, of the timeline in the Trump Tower meeting. In between when the meeting happened and when it was set up, the Russian operatives set up a website called DCLeaks.com, literally the day before the Trump Tower meeting. Perhaps that was a way of a proof of what they had to the folks they were meeting there. Is all of this, July 27th and the Trump Tower meeting, and what we've learned now, is that circumstantial evidence of collusion?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:
Again, I'm going to leave those conclusions to the public, leave those conclusions to seeing what else Mueller has in terms of this investigation --
CHUCK TODD:
What about you? Does that look like collusion to you?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:
And frankly -- what I'm saying, Chuck, is we've got further witnesses we're going to interview. And one thing we do know, just within the public domain, clearly there were a lot of folks affiliated with the Russian government reaching out to a whole series of folks within the Trump orbit, trying to offer information to -- discriminating and bad information about Clinton. And again, just based upon Donald Trump Jr.'s response, where he said he was pretty anxious to get that kind of information.
CHUCK TODD:
It, you know, reading the indictment and realizing this was more than just the stealing of emails, it was the stealing of voter files and things like that, the now October 7th, frankly what has been told to me was a watered down warning to the American public about Russian interference, but that October 2016 assessment now looks awfully, awfully weak. Obviously, in hindsight, this looks weak. What should the Obama administration have done that they didn't do then?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:
Well, Chuck, our committee is going to go -- and it's going through the final stages of a thorough review of what both the Obama administration, and for that matter the F.B.I., did right, did wrong. I think history will show we should have sounded a much stronger alarm. But let's also take the fact, you mentioned, Chuck, the election interference. In a regular or normal administration, when we see that a foreign government had tried to intervene in more than 20 states' electoral systems, and when the current director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, has said the Russians will be back, in a normal administration you would have had a White House designate someone in that White House to make sure election security was a top priority. Again, we've had this administration not step up. The Congress has. Our committee has. And we've put some funds out, we've put some bipartisan legislation out, but I think it's abysmal that this administration has not made 2018 election security a higher priority.
CHUCK TODD:
Do you believe the 2018 elections are going to be fair?
SENATOR MARK WARNER:
I hope they are, but I tell you, I feel - I would feel a lot better if there was a concerted, whole-of-government effort to make sure not only at the state and local registrar level, but on the companies that manipulate and own the voter files and maintain the voter files behind the scenes. I think we need to really step up our game.
CHUCK TODD:
All right. Senator Mark Warner, the vice-chair of the Intel Committee in the Senate, Democrat from Virginia. Thanks for coming on and sharing your views, sir.
SENATOR MARK WARNER:
Thank you, Chuck.
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