Fox News "Fox News Sunday" - Transcript: Interview with Senator Chris Coons

Interview

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WALLACE: This week, President Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Brett K, faced two days of grilling by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but did they do anything to slow down his confirmation to the court before it starts its new session in October?

Joining us now, Senator Chris Coons, a leading member of that committee.

Senator, I'll get to that in a moment but I want to start, you just heard my interview with Vice President Pence. Your reaction to his defense of President Trump against critics, some of those critics inside his own administration?

SEN. CHRIS COONS, D-DELA., SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, what I heard the vice president say was that he was deeply disappointed and that he bought the critic within the administration who wrote the op-ed, the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times should resign.

I agree with that position. I think the honorable thing to do is to resign and to go public with the author's concerns about the president's fitness to serve.

WALLACE: And what about just the fact that between the anonymous essay and the Woodward book, you have so many top officials saying that they feel they have to act as a kind of guardrail against some of President Trump's impulsive actions?

COONS: Well, that does raise a concern that I also made the focus of my questioning of Judge Kavanaugh, Chris. I focused on ways in which Judge Kavanaugh has written, has spoken, issued decisions that suggest he has a very broad view of presidential power. Given our current context, that could lead to a shield for President Trump from accountability by the special counsel's investigation and that's something that I tried to make the real focus of my questioning of Judge Kavanaugh.

I think that ought to be a concern for everybody watching, Republican, Democratic, independent, because whether it's this administration or a future one, I think all of us have an interest in the rule of law and in a president who is not above the law.

WALLACE: Well, I want to double down on that because I want to ask you about some comments by the president this week and I'm asking you as a moment member of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the question of the rule of law. The president, as I pointed out to the Vice President Pence, chastised Attorney General Sessions for the prosecution of two Republican congressmen so close to the midterm election.

And then there also was this comment from the president about investigating who wrote the anonymous article.

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WALLACE: Question, Senator, is there any legal basis on the question of national security for a criminal investigation of who wrote that op-ed in the New York Times?

COONS: Not that I'm aware of. I think you asked the vice president exactly the right question. What's the basis in law for investigating who wrote this editorial?

Look, the real issue here across all of these concerns is that we have a president who, in his tweets, and in his statements and speeches suggests that he thinks the Department of Justice should act more like the in-house lawyer department or legal department to the Trump Organization rather than what they are, the independent agency charged with defending our Constitution. The independence of the Department of Justice and its prosecutorial decisions from presidential or political interference is one of the bedrocks of our democracy and the ways in which President Trump continues to harass and to tweet against Attorney General Sessions, as you just cited, this last week criticizing him for the investigation and the indictment of two close allies of the president should be very troubling to all of us.

And the comments from senators, both the Republican and Democrat, that this is a very troubling, very inappropriate break with traditional norms by President Trump.

WALLACE: But, Senator, let's look at the larger picture of this question that we saw this week from the book, from the essay, about resistance to the president inside his own administration. Donald Trump is the duly elected president of the United States. No one voted for Gary Cohn. No one voted for Defense Secretary Mattis and there are stories in the Woodward book of both of them ignoring, or in the case of Cohn, as I pointed out to the vice president, taking a letter that the president could have signed off his desk.

Who are they to thwart the will of the duly elected president?

COONS: Chris, that's right. This does raise some serious concerns.

Every presidential administration has vigorous debates, disagreements on policy priorities, but this is a different sort of thing. This is folks who are alleged to have taken direct action to prevent the president from carrying out some of his worst instincts or worse decisions.

And that should raise some concerns, particularly given the anonymous editorial in the New York Times. I will remind you that the writer of that editorial makes it clear that he supports the president's policy agenda, that he supports tax cuts and deregulation and building of the military and he self-describes as not part of the deep state, but the steady state, someone who's trying to keep this president on course and delivering on his policy agenda.

But it does, as you say, Chris, raise troubling concerns. If we have a president so mercurial, so unable to stick to a decision within one day that his own senior aides think they are called upon as folks who have sworn to uphold the Constitution to prevent the president from carrying out some of his worse decisions. This really does concern me.

WALLACE: I want to move to another development this week, and that is former President Obama returned to the campaign trail and took the opportunity to blister President Trump. Here's just one example.

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WALLACE: Senator, is that smart politics for the November election? Yes, there's no question that Barack Obama is popular with and will fire up the Democratic base, but isn't there also a risk that he will fire up the Republican base?

COONS: Well, Chris, my hope is that this election is going to be about the real needs and concerns of average Americans in districts and states across the country where there's going to be important elections to determine the future of our country. I do think that President Obama respected long-standing norms and how he handled the transition of power. I think he conducted himself graciously in the inauguration of President Trump and he has stayed completely on the sidelines for 18 months.

From what I heard of President Obama, former President Obama's speech, his core message was that we need to do a better job of listening to each other, respecting each other and honoring our institutions and traditions and I think -- not to speak for him but I think former President Obama, because of the ways in which President Trump over the last 18 months has challenged, has broken some of our long-standing traditions about respect for the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the independent media, that he felt compelled to speak out at this point.

WALLACE: Let's turn to your day job and to the Kavanaugh hearings. Some of your Democratic colleagues on the judiciary committee released documents that the committee had deemed confidential, and no one was more dramatic about it then your Democratic colleague, Senator Cory Booker. Take a look.

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WALLACE: But, Senator, Booker knew and you knew that when he made such a big fuss about releasing those documents, in fact the Judiciary Committee had already cleared those documents for release. So, wasn't this just a pretty blatant stunt?

COONS: Chris, I have to be careful what I say here because I'm the vice chairman of the Ethics Committee and in that role I can't comment on anything that may or may not come before the Ethics Committee.

Let me just say this about the whole dispute we had on the committee about documents. I do think that this was an unprecedented process in which significant amount, the overwhelming majority of the documents relevant to Judge Kavanaugh's service in the Bush administration as staff secretary were blocked from review by the committee. And there was a strong disagreement between the majority and the minority.

WALLACE: But, Senator, that's not up to individual senator --

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COONS: Overall, I agree with that concern.

WALLACE: But that's not up to individual senators to just unilateral -- I mean, otherwise, it's chaos. If the committee deemed something confidential rightly or wrongly, can individual senators say, no, I'm not going to play by those rules?

COONS: I really can't comment to whether or not this was breaking the rules of the committee.

WALLACE: I just have to ask you because you brought this up, is this a matter that the Ethics Committee is now considering, Cory Booker's behavior?

COONS: I can't comment on that, Chris.

WALLACE: Why not?

COONS: The rules of the Ethics Committee prohibit any member of the committee on commenting on whether a matter is before the committee or not.

WALLACE: So you cannot deny that this issue of what he did in releasing these documents is not before the committee?

COONS: I can't comment on that, Chris.

WALLACE: OK. I have a final question, and that is a general one about the Kavanaugh nomination. Does the president deserve deference from the Senate when he appoints -- he is elected, he won and he appoints someone to the Supreme Court who is clearly within the judicial mainstream?

COONS: Well, Chris, as I said in a hearing, I've known Judge Kavanaugh for 30 years. And I know him to be an intelligent, decent, thoughtful person, good father, husband, neighbor. We heard a lot about what a good high school basketball coach he is and how he volunteers at a homeless shelter with his parish. All of those are admirable qualities.

I am concerned, as I said before and as I made the focus of my questioning of Judge Kavanaugh, that he is well outside the judicial mainstream. That in a decision he rendered just this year, he refused to follow settled precedent and he made it clear that his views on executive power would lead to a dangerous rewriting of the core policies -- the core constitutional traditions and decisions of the court around presidential power.

I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity today to send some questions for the record to Judge Kavanaugh. I'm going to continue to look over his writings, his speeches. But in the time that I was able to spend over four days with Judge Kavanaugh and with other witnesses in front of the committee, I remain gravely concerned that he's not inside the judicial mainstream on several really important precedents that, Chris, would have a real impact on individual rights and liberties of Americans and on presidential power. And I think Americans of all parties, particularly given our current context, should be concerned about Judge Kavanaugh's decisions on presidential power.

WALLACE: Senator Coons, thank you. Thanks for your time. And we'll follow your committee's vote on the Kavanaugh nominations scheduled for 11 days from now.

Thank you, sir.

COONS: Thank you.

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