CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Mike Quigley (D), Illinois

Interview

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OUTFRONT now, Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley from Illinois, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

Congressman, thanks very much for taking the time.

Look, the U.S. intelligence has come to this conclusion, but this is significant because it is coming from a Senate Intelligence Committee. This is a bipartisan release, OK? This is bipartisan saying they've evaluated this, and it was done by Russians to help Republicans and specifically Donald Trump. Your reaction?

REP. MIKE QUIGLEY (D), ILLINOIS: It's a bipartisan release, but the response has not been. Look, we've known for a while, the Russians are really good at weaponizing social media.

[19:35:02] It's been part of the Kremlin playbook for decades now. We know how effective and sophisticated they are.

Our response so far, recognizing it's ongoing has been to -- on the Republican side launch another attack against who? The intelligence community. The FBI, the Justice Department.

Other countries have responded this in a much more effective way, bipartisan manner, to educate and inform the American public, to hold the social media platforms accountable for their public responsibility. We're simply not doing this. As a result, the Russians efforts will be ongoing.

BURNETT: Now, to this point about ongoing, right, the report finds that it continue after the election, it continued with the purpose of helping President Trump. I want to put in perspective here the actual effect on the election results, because this is a crucial thing, right, that I feel like people keep revisiting.

Did the interference sway the election? Or did not, right? First it was no, it didn't. And people asking the question whether it did or didn't.

Let's take Wisconsin. President Trump won that state. It was a crucial state. It was close. A big reason that he won was -- black turnout, down 25 percent in the state in 2016 from 2016, which was obviously Barack Obama's second term.

Was the extent of the Russian influence campaign, OK, which we now know from this report targeted African-American voters. Was it enough to swing the election of Trump? I give you the example of Wisconsin. What do you say swing or influence?

QUIGLEY: I think you have to look at three key states that swung that election, the Electoral College -- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Together the vote difference in all three states that amount or a number of people that would fit into Soldier Field in Chicago. It's a really small amount.

The extraordinary effort here by the Russians had some dramatic effect. How to quantify that is extraordinary difficult. I think what tells us is the Russians won, right? No matter what the result was in the election, I think it had a dramatic impact on this, they won because we were so willing to believe all of this.

And it wasn't just their efforts as you reference, the African- American community. Their efforts to, in a positive way, posit the Trump campaign helped as well. I'm not the kind of expert that tells you how effective tweets and other social media platform efforts are, but obviously it had a dramatic impact. I think others have suggested that the election was won because of this.

BURNETT: Yes.

QUIGLEY: If you coupled it with everything else that took place, the Comey statements just weeks before the elections, the fact that the Russians hacked and dumped all these e-mails, had some impact on the election.

BURNETT: OK.

QUIGLEY: I was told you're never going to go forward effectively if you're just going to focus on relitigating the last election. My response is, we're never going to have the democratic, free and open process, if we don't stop this now and recognize the impact we've already faced.

BURNETT: I want to ask you about a development in the investigation. In the "New Yorker", Jeffrey Toobin interviewed your colleague, Congressman Schiff, incoming chair of your committee, as you all been investigating this. And soon-to-be chairman Schiff says he plans to subpoena information on Trump's transactions with Deutsche Bank because of Deutsche Bank's long time relationship with Trump and its past ties to Russians and money laundering.

Now, look, everybody has followed this whole investigation has heard about Deutsche Bank. Do you think there's a smoking gun there that no one has found yet? Is it really possible or people are just saying, oh, Deutsche Bank and there's nothing there?

QUIGLEY: I think Deutsche Bank has a history of being one of the few banks that financed the Trump Organization for the last decade because of their problems with American banks and their own financial problems. I recognize as we know that they were fined $600 million for illegally laundering money for the Russians in New York state.

So, I guess after watching this and being part of the investigation for two years, there are no coincidences. I just began to look at this in Cyprus over a year ago. I think there's a lot more to learn.

And I guess the last barometer here is, how does the president react when the president gets close or even discussions come out about the finances? He calls it the red line, that's when he was first threatening to fire or attempt to fire Mueller. So, there's certainly a lot of smoke there, I think the American public deserves a right to know exactly what was done there, not just because Mr. Schiff recognized the possibility of compromise.

[19:40:05] BURNETT: Yes.

QUIGLEY: I think there's been something even bigger than that's play here, and that is what was the president's interest during the campaign? As a candidate, was he looking out for the American public, Russian oligarchs, his own personal finances? Fair questions.

BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time, Congressman.

QUIGLEY: Thank you.

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