Fox News "Fox News Sunday" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Angus King

Interview

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WALLACE: A flurry of court filings this week reveal new information about Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. And now, federal prosecutors are trying to connect the dots between President Trump, his campaign, his company, and the Kremlin.

Joining me now from Maine, Senator Angus King, an independent and a key member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Senator, the special counsel and federal prosecutors in New York issued court filings this week on Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and General Michael Flynn.

Question, what, if anything, did you learn about possible criminal activity by President Trump? And where does this investigation stand out?

SEN. ANGUS KING, I-MAINE, SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, I think the first thing to say is the Mueller filings on Friday with regard to Manafort and the district of New York talking about Cohen and also Mueller, I thought they were less interesting, if you will, or important than the Flynn filing earlier in the week. And what was interesting about that was what wasn't said, in other words, there were very large sections of the Flynn filings that were redacted, that we couldn't see what they were.

And the special counsel went out of his way to compliment General Flynn on the fulsomeness of his testimony and how helpful he had been and basically recommended no jail time. It was a kind of prosecutorial pardon, if you will, based upon a high level of cooperation.

The Mueller and Cohen filings weren't that -- I mean, I'm sorry, the --

WALLACE: Manafort.

KING: The Manafort and Cohen -- yes, Manafort and Cohen filings weren't as -- as revealing. Cohen's basically went over the information that has already been revealed in his -- in this plea arrangement about the payoffs.

WALLACE: But -- but, Senator -- Senator, let me drill down on -- on one point there.

KING: Sure.

WALLACE: On the illegal campaign hush money payments to two women, New York prosecutors write this, Cohen himself has now admitted, with respectable to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual one, who we know to be Donald Trump.

KING: Right.

How damaging is that to the president?

KING: Well, the president has a series of defenses if indeed that is charged to be a crime. I guess in one would be it wasn't willful and knowing, which was what the statute requires. And also the question is, it was his own money. A candidate can spend his own -- as much money as they want. There are no limitations. On the other hand, it wasn't disclosed. And that's one of the key factors here.

And the key word there is at the direction of, which directly implicates the president in what could be a felony. And -- and So that is a significant development, but that was really in -- in Cohen's guilty plea last August. This really sort of amplifies that.

WALLACE: Let me ask you about another thing in the Cohen filing by the special counsel, not the New York prosecutors. The special counsel says in November of 2015 someone who claimed to be close to the Russian government offered, quote, synergy on a government level to the Trump campaign. Cohen says he didn't follow up on that but he did have a series of other meetings with Russian officials. How significant is that?

KING: Well, I think it is significant because it -- it is just one more connection. It appears that that discussion is about the Trump Tower Moscow project, which we now know was underway and -- and being discussed -- not underway in the terms of being built, but certainly they were working on trying to develop such a project from the fall of 2015 into the middle of 2016, which is contrary to earlier reports that there were no relationships with the Russians, nothing going on.

And -- and here's the thing, Chris. If you want to build a big project in Moscow, you've got to work with the government. You've got to have permission. You've got to have a go ahead from the highest levels of the -- of the government, and that means Vladimir Putin. And so this establishes that there were contacts going on during that period and Michael Cohen was in the middle of it.

WALLACE: So, bottom line, at the end of this week, as opposed to if I had spoken to you last Sunday, is there anymore there there when it comes to the president?

KING: I don't think it -- it changes that, although -- well, yes, let me modify that answer. I think, yes, going back to my original comment. I think Michael Flynn, the Michael Flynn filing, was very significant. He met with the special counsel dozens and dozens of time and gave a great deal of information, a lot of which is redacted, which is suggestive that there's information we don't know. I think that's the most significant filing of the week.

I think the Manafort and Cohen finally gave us a little bit of additional information, but I think the Flynn filing, if I were in the White House, would be the one that would make me nervous.

WALLACE: I want to ask you about the president's reaction on Friday night. He tweeted this, totally clears the president. Thank you. Does it?

KING: No. I don't -- I don't see that at all. In fact, the Cohen finally, as you've already pointed out, implicates him in the commission of a felony. I wouldn't call that being totally cleared. Now, it doesn't speak directly to the issue of conspiracy with the Russians involving the 2016 campaign, although, again, the Cohen filing talks about relationships to people in Russia at the highest level with regard to synergy with the Russian government and the Trump campaign. So it's suggestive, but not conclusive.

Chris, there's a lot of talk recently about smoking guns. And in criminal prosecutions you rarely find smoking guns. It's a -- it's an accumulation of evidence. And then that's what's happening here. It's more of a drip, drip than an opening of the firehose. And it continues to develop in ways that aren't favorable to the president, but I think, as you suggest, in the filings this week, there's nothing definitive, but there's nothing that exonerates the president either. I was surprised by that tweet. I was wondering if he read the same documents I did.

WALLACE: The president had two other tweets this week that stirred controversy. I want to put them up. On Michael's Cohen seeking no prison time, the president wrote, he lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence. But on Roger Stone, saying he will never testify against Mr. Trump, the president wrote, nice to know that some people still have guts.

Do you see those tweets, as some other people do, as evidence of witness tampering?

KING: I think it's troubling. And you -- you could add a third instance, and that is when he said last week that a pardon for Manafort is not off the table. I found that very troubling. That's dangling a pardon.

I used to be a governor, Chris, and I had the power of the pardon. And, to me, if I had thought about pardoning a criminal who had some ability to implicate me in some criminal activity, I can't imagine it, frankly. And -- and that's what we're talking about here.

So when you add those three things together, it's very troubling. Again, it's not definitive. It's not a smoking gun, but it's troubling when you're essentially saying, punish the guy who's given information against me, and let the guys off who aren't talking. That's -- that, I think, troubling is the word I keep using. I think that's the -- that's the best characterization of it.

WALLACE: Former FBI Director James Comey testified before two House committees on Friday for a total of almost seven hours and afterwards he had this to say.

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JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: When you read the transcript, you will see that we were talking again about Hillary Clinton's e-mails, for heaven sakes. So I'm not sure we need to do this at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Now, the Republican majority has contended, and what they were trying to find out and asked about four hours in this -- in this hearing was that there was bias both for Hillary Clinton in that investigation, and against Donald Trump in that investigation.

Did you see any evidence of that? Did they -- did they find that?

KING: No. And I think the -- there's a really important point here, and that is the investigation of Donald Trump was completely secret. It wasn't made public at all. There wasn't a whiff or a suggestion of it. Nobody ever even knew about it through the election until well after the election. So if -- if that investigation was undertaken for political purposes, it -- it had no result. It didn't -- it didn't affect the election whatsoever.

On the other hand, the Hillary Clinton investigation was very public and many people feel that Director Comey's statements about reopening the investigation in the later part of October, about a week or ten days before the election, was one of the things that sunk Hillary Clinton's campaign. So the -- the -- I understand the argument, but the conclusion doesn't -- doesn't support it.

WALLACE: Senator --

KING: If -- if the Trump investigation was a -- was political, they certainly didn't pull the trigger on it.

WALLACE: Senator, I've got about 30 seconds left. The Republicans are making a big deal about the fact that FBI Director Comey, former director, said, I don't recall, I don't remember over 200 times in his testimony. I know you probably haven't gone through the 235 pages, but do you think that indicates that he was dissembling or not being candid?

KING: I had probably 20 meetings in the Intelligence Committee with him over the course of five years and I never saw that from him. It would be very surprising to me. I wasn't there. I didn't see it.

But on the question of the political Hillary thing, the inspector general of the -- of the Justice Department did a very long -- I think 150 page analysis of that, concluded there were some judgment calls that they disagreed with, but it wasn't undertaken in any way for political purposes. And that's an independent investigation that was very thorough.

WALLACE: Senator King, thank you. Thanks for your time. Always good to talk with you, sir.

KING: Yes, sir. Glad to be with you, Chris.

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