CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Interview with Senator Angus King (I) Maine

Interview

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COOPER: And the disgraced national security adviser has apparently given the Mueller team plenty to work with, sitting down 19 times with prosecutors, helping in three ongoing investigations.

And right there, you might be saying, three? There's possible collusion, there's possible obstruction, what is number three?

Well, the memo hints at it in several places, most notably in one it talks about the general providing, quote, substantial assistance in a criminal investigation. And take a look at what follows. The rest of the page and some of the next 22 lines in all blacked out. Presumably, they detail the criminal investigation General Flynn is providing substantial assistance with.

What investigation that is and how he's cooperating, we don't know. We only know that it appears to be 22 lines worth of cooperation.

The memo also points to what it calls the timeliness of the defendant's assistance, and I'm quoting again: his early cooperation was particularly valuable because he was one of the few people with long-term and firsthand insight regarding events and issues under investigation by the SCO. That's the special counsel's office.

Now, in other words, he was a person in the room, a direct witness to matters the Mueller team is looking into during the campaign and the transition involving potentially the president's son, Don Jr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, which, of course, is the portion of the investigation along with obstruction of justice that we already know about. That other third investigation, that came out of left field and suggests there may be yet more we just don't know about, in an operation that could be bigger than we once thought. Not only is it hard to know what to make of that until this memo hit, as I mentioned, we didn't even know to ask the questions.

We'll be digging deeper, much deeper tonight into all the clues contained in the Flynn memo, but first, a key player in the congressional end of the investigation has to say about it.

Senator Angus King, an independent of Maine. He caucuses with Democrats. He serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee. I spoke to him right before airtime.

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COOPER: Senator King, the Flynn court filing in its 22 fully redacted lines certainly seems to have left more questions than answers at this point.

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: Well, I -- Anderson, I'm going to answer your question, but you have to understand that whatever I tell you does not relate to anything that I've learned on the Intelligence Committee. I have to lay that --

COOPER: Sure.

KING: -- as groundwork, and having said that, I do think it raises a lot of questions, and we understand that General Flynn spent many, many hours, I think something like 19 meetings --

COOPER: Right.

KING: -- with the special counsel's team, and so it raises questions that he, obviously, had a lot to say.

COOPER: It's interesting because the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says he isn't worried, he said that if Flynn had information to share with Mueller that hurt the president, he said you would know it by now. That's not necessarily true, is it?

KING: Well, the one thing we know about the Mueller investigation is they've been very good at keeping quiet what they're doing. I think they know a lot more than we know they know. And so I don't necessarily agree with that, and apparently, General Flynn did not have any kind of information or legal sharing between his defense team and the White House. So -- as I understand it.

So they may well have some information, and I think, you know, until we find out what it is, we're just not going to have a clear picture, but we do know that General Flynn was in Moscow in I think December of '15, sitting in a dinner with Vladimir Putin.

[20:05:00] And he was involved during the campaign. He was a top foreign policy adviser. And the question is, was there some relationship?

And, of course, the real focus is was there some representation made about the sanctions that President Obama applied on the Crimea invasion that we know that Vladimir Putin hated? And, you know, what was that all about? And were there -- what was the relationship between Mr. Flynn and -- General Flynn and the president, or the president-elect at that time?

So, lots of questions, but the answers will be forthcoming, I'm quite sure.

COOPER: There had been a lot of talk and certainly from people on the Trump administration that Mueller was wrapping up, that the end was in sight on this. Do you get that sense just from what we were able to see in the documents released last night? Jeffrey Toobin said, you know, didn't seem to him like this was something that was just in the end days wrapping up.

KING: I don't get a sense one way or another, Anderson. I don't get a sense that it's wrapping up or it's not. It could be.

I think one of the stories, if you will, out of the Mueller investigation, is the nonstory. The fact that they've done a really pretty amazing job in this town of keeping, you know, very quiet and deliberate about what they're doing.

COOPER: Yes.

KING: So, I don't think you can draw much conclusion one way or the other.

COOPER: Your colleague, Senator Mark Warner, recently said your committee referred a number of people suspected of lying in their testimony to the special counsel for prosecution. Can you say how many other witnesses you believe lied to you and your fellow senators? KING: I can't. I can't give you a number, but I can tell you that

that was one of the things our committee decided to do if there were references that were appropriate to the special counsel, we were going to make them and have done so.

COOPER: Just lastly, I want to ask you about President Bush. Obviously, he loved your state of Maine, had a place up there. I know you spent time with him at Kennebunkport.

I wonder just what today was like for you, what went through your mind today as you honored his life at the National Cathedral.

KING: Well, it was a fantastic service, and all of the speakers were very poignant and George W., President Bush 43, when he spoke, talked -- he said -- it was a very nice moment where he said in his dad's last years when he couldn't play golf, he was in a wheelchair, his favorite place was on the back deck at Walker's Point looking out at the ocean and sort of absorbing this place that he'd spent every summer of his life except for 1944 when he was in the Pacific in the war.

So, Maine was really the geographic center of his family's life moving around the country, but they always came back and toward the end of his life, they were there, he and Barbara were there from May to October. So they were friends and neighbors and I visited down at Walker's Point. They were real integral part of the community. And it -- it touched us particularly hard.

COOPER: Yes, I can imagine.

Senator King, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

KING: Thank you, Anderson.

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