CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego

Interview

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BLITZER: Abby Phillip reporting for us, thank you.

Congressman Ruben Gallego is joining us right now. He's a Democrat who serves on the Armed Services Committee.

Congressman, thanks very much for joining us.

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D), ARIZONA: Thank you for having me.

BLITZER: So, you heard the "New York Times" report that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is now taking a very close look at the president's tweets to see if they amount to witness intimidation, obstruction of justice.

Do you think that those tweets rise to that level?

GALLEGO: Certainly.

Look, if this had been the president writing letters, or writing letters to the editor, publishing in "The New York Post," or "The New York Times," or "The Washington Post," I think a lot of people would have actually said, yes, this is a form of intimidation, form of obstruction of justice.

Just because it's done on some modern technology, modern social media does not mean that he's not still trying to attempt the same outcome. So, I think it is relevant, and I think what we should be looking at is what is the intent of this president? His intent was obstruction of justice. That is a worthwhile reason why Mueller should be investigating.

BLITZER: You think your Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives would buy that argument?

GALLEGO: No, but they won't buy any argument at all. They are never going to stand up to this president. They will look away and make excuses for this president up until the last minute.

So you really can't depend on Republicans in Congress at all to be any type of legitimate validator of what is purposely -- or what will be decided as valid vs. not valid.

BLITZER: What is potentially very significant and a serious headache, political headache, legal headache for the president is that the CFO, the chief financial officer, of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, he's now been subpoenaed as a witness to testify before a federal grand jury in New York investigating Michael Cohen.

How important is he potentially as a witness? He's worked with the Trump Organization for decades.

GALLEGO: Well, I think it's going to expose what many of us at least understand, that this Trump administration has been loosely funded by what we should -- many of us would say are nefarious Russian entities.

[18:10:02]

And the only reason we can assume that is because this president has not really given us a reason why he's not shown his taxes. Every other president before that has actually shown his taxes. We know who are the people that are paying him. We know the people that he owes money to.

But this president has repeatedly come up with excuses and lies to not show his taxes. We wouldn't even have this discussion if the president actually just had some form of valor and just say, this is who I am, this is where my money's coming from.

But he knows there's something in there, and I think it's all going to come out now.

BLITZER: So, you think he knows everything about the president's finances over these many years?

GALLEGO: I ceremony believe so.

BLITZER: So this is -- I'm sure this is a source of concern for the president.

A lot of Americans, as you know, believe, you know what, as far as the president and his alleged affairs, treatment of women, they knew about this before the election in 2016. He was still elected president of the United States. All of these new developments, do you think it's really going to have much of an impact among those, the president's base who really supports him?

GALLEGO: Well, let's be clear. We don't know that the president actually used campaign funds to keep these women quiet. If he used hush money from his campaign funds to actually keep these women quiet, then that is actually something that we should be investigating.

If you looked at what happened with Senator John Edwards when he did that with his mistress many years ago...

BLITZER: He was acquitted, though, John Edwards.

GALLEGO: But he was still at least investigated. Right now, we don't even have that.

If we had an actual speaker of the House that was willing to actually investigate this, do this through the regular order process, we could actually have some answers to these questions. Instead, we're going to have to go through this long, drawn-out process. And we do need to know.

The public needs to know if the president used his campaign to launder money to keep his mistresses quiet.

BLITZER: Because the allegation supposedly is an in-kind campaign contribution to keep this quiet just days before the election.

GALLEGO: And at least, the least we should have is this president should actually answer the questions, so the public gets to decide.

BLITZER: Yes, campaign contributions have to be fully disclosed to the FEC.

I know you were at a meeting today with the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen. She met with the Hispanic Caucus in the House of Representatives, I take it all Democrats. How did that go?

GALLEGO: It did not go well.

We were hoping it would be go better. We were very respectful of her time. But we asked some pointed questions. One of the first questions we asked is, when are these children going to be reunified with their parents? And she said they were on track to meet the deadline.

BLITZER: The deadline is, by the way, 12 minutes ago.

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GALLEGO: Right. And I pointed out that that is impossible, and that she was clearly lying to us. And she was insistent they were going to make the deadline.

At a minimum, we expected her to show some level of leadership. She should have just been honest with us and said we're not going to make the deadline, but here's the plan on how to reunify these families.

This administration again has bungled even this effort, which is what was their own effort to basically deter migration to this country. And they have no idea how to put these families together. They don't want to admit that they made a mistake. And because of that, they're now essentially missing the deadline with this federal judge.

BLITZER: What's so worrisome is that there are apparently hundreds of kids whose parents, for whatever reason, have already been deported, and the kids are still here. Did she get into that with you?

GALLEGO: We did get into that. And I think it's really important for us to understand that we as a country have potentially made orphans. We have made hundreds of orphans, for a country that values family and we say we're a family values country.

This administration has separated families, unnecessarily so. And there is no plan. We asked about the plan. How's this going to end? And we did not hear something positive from Secretary Nielsen.

BLITZER: Is it possible some of these kids are going to never see their parents?

GALLEGO: It's entirely possible that...

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BLITZER: Did you ask her about that?

GALLEGO: We -- I can't remember exactly, but we did point out that it is possible that this will never happen. She did not respond to that.

BLITZER: On the basis -- what basis does she say the deadline, which was the top of the hour, on what basis did she say the government would meet the deadline?

GALLEGO: No basis at all. She just basically said that we're going to -- we're on track, we're on track.

She did not give us any indication, any plans. She did point out, you know, how well they have done so far. But we also pointed out that it is very hard for us to trust those numbers and to trust her, considering that they had no plan to begin with to reunify these families and they are basically doing everything ad hoc right now, and mostly just so they can say that they're getting rid of this political problem, because they have no idea what they're doing.

BLITZER: But if the deadline is met -- and apparently it hasn't been met -- the federal judge is limited in what he can do. There's not much he can do, right?

GALLEGO: Unfortunately, from what I understand, there's very little things we can do.

Most importantly, what we could do is actually vote. The reason why this president is acting is not because of the federal judge. It's because the public was against separating families, was against incarcerating children in these cages.

And I think if they don't have this solution, maybe the judge won't be the ultimate decider, but the voters will.

BLITZER: Did she explain why these families can't be reunified?

GALLEGO: She did go into various reasons why. But that's not a really good excuse.

We are the most powerful country in the world with the largest amount of intelligence assets that we can find. If this administration actually put their mind to it and their focus on it, they could get this done. They just haven't.

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Partly it's because the president doesn't have the leadership to do it, and Secretary Nielsen doesn't have her own leadership within Homeland Security to do it either.

BLITZER: Very disturbing situation, indeed.

Thanks very much, Congressman, for coming in.

GALLEGO: Pleasure.

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