CNN "Wolf" - Transcript: Interview With Rep. Jim Himes

Interview

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SCIUTTO: Right. That's one person who doesn't believe it meets the

standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

Shan and Shimon, thanks very much.

Among the mountain of evidence in the Paul Manafort trial is an e-mail exchange with Jared Kushner, President Trump's adviser and son-in-law. Manafort e-mailed Kushner recommending a bank chairman for secretary of the Army. At the time, that bank was providing millions of dollars in loans to Manafort. The e-mail also included two other recommendations for possible Trump appointees. Kushner responded, quote, on it. There's no indication the Trump team, in the end, considered those suggestions or that Kushner was aware at the time of those millions of dollars in loans to Manafort.

Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, he's a member of the House Intelligence Committee, and he joins us now from Stamford, Connecticut. Thanks very much, congressman, for taking the time.

REP. JIM HIMES (D), CONNECTICUT: Good afternoon, Jim.

SCIUTTO: So that e-mail there was an example of Manafort's continued influence or perceived influence with the Trump administration because three months after he left as chairman he felt he had the influence at least to request a job for his banker. How concerning is that to you?

HIMES: Well, it's ugly. It's very ugly. I mean, you know, the American people should have the confidence of knowing that their secretary of the Army or their undersecretary of commerce didn't get that job because he wanted to -- he was willing to extent a loan to Paul Manafort. That's not the way a government should work. And it just really -- I mean talk about the swamp not being drained. It is the ultimate in influence trading.

Now, no surprise, right, no surprise, this is an administration that sort of makes a hobby of influence trading and so I'm not surprised by it. But, again, it's just further example of the reason why the American people have record low regard for Washington, D.C.

SCIUTTO: We're, of course, witnessing a continuing public assault by the president and his allies on the special counsel, the investigation. Just a short time ago, the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, he had some more particularly pointed words for Mueller about this probe. And I'm going to quote him here. He told Bloomberg the following, if he doesn't get it done in the next two or three weeks -- he's speaking about Mueller here -- we will just unload on him like a ton of bricks. Right the damn report so we can see it and rebut it.

What is he threatening here to unload on the special counsel who was appointed, we should remind viewers, by a deputy attorney general appointed by this president. What is he implying there?

HIMES: Well, you know, I mean, my God, so much to unpack there.

First of all, the president has been unloading on Bob Mueller, you know, a Vietnam War hero, respected by pretty much everybody, for over a year right now. So I don't quite know what he means by we're going to unload. I mean we're at the tail end of a year plus of the president and the president's people doing all they can to delegitimize Bob Mueller, to delegitimize the FBI. And this has one objective, Jim. The objective is that when Mueller comes out with his report, which I anticipate he will do in due course, whenever he thinks that justice is served by releasing that report, not whenever Rudy Giuliani or Donald Trump wanted to come out, he will come out with a report that the White House will, over the course of a year and a half, have delegitimized in the eyes of some minority of the American population. That's what's happening here.

But, you know, the American people ought to scratch their head and say, what a minute, what other subject of an investigation gets to decide when the prosecutor wraps up their case? You know, the president is not above the law and neither is his attorney.

SCIUTTO: I wonder, the president has been perpetuating this attack on Mueller for some many months. He's made a lot of veiled and not so veiled threats against the special counsel, against his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, et cedar, but he hasn't pulled the trigger on any -- I mean he could -- he could fire Jeff Sessions. He could fire the deputy attorney general. We know from our own reporting that he's had a lot of internal pressure not to take that step. In light of how long he's done this without actually moving, do you think this is more for public consumption and that these are, in the end, empty threats from the president?

HIMES: Yes, look, at the end of the day, the recourse against the president is political, right? I know we have a long conversation of the legal intricacies of whether a sitting president can be indicted. The bottom line is that that's never been tested. And so the answer to this question of, is Donald Trump in trouble is political. And so, therefore, if his base believes, as they do today, because of his -- Donald Trump's throwing mud at Mueller, at the FBI, at the Department of Justice, if he believes that those entries are corrupt and that Bob Mueller, despite all of the evidence and the many convictions and the many guilty pleas and the many indictments is somehow serving the interest of Hillary Clinton, which is sort of insane on the face of it given what happened prior to the November 2016 election, you know, the president can count on a number of Republicans to, regardless of what happened, this is, remember, I can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue president, the president can rely on Republicans to defend him, regardless of the fact pattern because he has so delegitimized Bob Mueller.

[13:10:48] SCIUTTO: There's a new poll from Quinnipiac University. They do some pretty good polling out there. It says that more than half of Republicans now agree with the president's assertion, alarming assertion, offensive assertion, that the press is the enemy of the people. Just 36 percent say the news media had an important part of our democracy. Now, among Democrats, very different numbers, just 5 percent said the media is the enemy of the people. But I wonder, if you look at these numbers, that's more than half of people who describe themselves as Republicans who say that the media is the enemy of the people. Language from an authoritarian regime. How alarming should that be?

HIMES: Yes, right -- right out of -- I mean you know who says that kind of stuff? Josef Stalin said that kind of thing.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HIMES: Dictators say that kind of thing. And sadly, and I really do mean sadly. I've got lots of terrific Republicans in my congressional district in Connecticut. Lastly, this just demonstrates the extent to which the Republican Party has abandoned all its principles, whether that's fiscal responsibility, whether that's not supporting tariffs, you name it, being decent, and become really a cultive (ph) personality around Donald Trump. And it's a really interesting question to ask yourself, what happens to the Republican Party post- Trump? What are my colleagues who gave up their constitutional responsibility to serve as a check and a balance on the president of the United States. how are they going to answer for that on the -- on the back end of Donald Trump's presidency?

SCIUTTO: Congressman Jim Himes, thanks for joining us today.

HIMES: Thank you, Jim.

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