CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Mark Warner (D) Virginia

Interview

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COOPER: With the President focused on the wall, it's been a little while since he's talked about the Mueller investigation. It may not be top of the list on the President's Twitter feed right now, but the investigation certainly continues with some big news in just the past two days.

Today, we learned that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave the Justice Department soon after the President's new nominee for attorney general is confirmed. That's according to a source familiar with Rosenstein thinking who says that Rosenstein is not being forced out.

This is right on the heels, of course, of the other big development in the Mueller investigation. The court filings showing that former Trump campaign chair, according to Mueller's office, shared polling data with a Russian linked operative.

And just tonight we learned the intended recipients of that data, according to a person familiar with the matter, were two Ukrainian oligarchs who paid Manafort for years for his political worked and still owed him millions of dollars. Our Manu Raju caught up with Senator Mark Warner today who put it like this.

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SEN. MARK WARNER (D), VICE CHAIR, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: This appears as the closest we've seen yet to real live actual collusion. Clearly, Manafort was trying to collude with Russian agents. And the question is what did the President know? What did Donald Trump know about this exchange of information?

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[20:35:02] COOPER: Short time before air, I spoke with Senator Warner about what he said to Manu.

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COOPER: Senator Warner, you said this is one of the most significant activities of the whole investigation. Do you believe this is collusion?

WARNER: I believe that clearly Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman, shared confidential polling information with a known Russian agent, Mr. Kilimnik. And what we don't know is what did the Russians do with this information.

Was this then used by the Russian services as they used their voter suppression activities over the internet with the so-called internet research agency? Was it directed at some of the efforts to suppress African-American vote? We don't have those answers.

But we know that sharing confidential polling data with a Russian known Russian spy and someone connected to the intelligence agencies, I don't know whether you call that collusion or what you call that, but to me, that is inappropriate and is one of the most significant items of this whole investigation.

COOPER: We've only really gotten a peek at this. We don't know what else is in this document or what else Mueller knows about this. But as of now, there's no evidence that the Trump campaign itself or the President or the candidate knew what Paul Manafort was doing at the time. It's very possible that Manafort was doing this for financial reasons. Clearly, he's a guy who liked a lot of money.

WARNER: Well, listen, that is a legitimate question to ask. What did the President know? When did he know it? We've had this evidence throughout the whole Trump campaign where Donald Trump refused to ever say a bad word about Russia, about Vladimir Putin.

We've seen now a series of meetings that took place between Russian affiliated entities and Trump officials, not just the campaign chair, but the President's son, the President's son-in-law. But those are questions that we need to answer that hopefully Mueller's got the answers, we continue to investigate as well on the Senate committee.

But the question -- Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, sharing confidential information with a Russian agent, you know, I'm anxious to hear what Donald Trump has to say about this. I'm sure he'll conveniently forgot -- forget, but only time will tell the Mueller investigation. Hopefully the ongoing work that we'll do as well.

COOPER: Well, that's what so significant about this in another respect which is that Trump's surrogates and the White House has long been saying, well, all the things that Paul Manafort is accused of happened long before he had anything to do with the campaign. This occurred, if the reporting is accurate, while he was campaign chairman.

WARNER: Absolutely. And this -- the way we got this information, remember this information came because the Manafort lawyers made a mistake in not redacting certain information in their filing last night. So, clearly Mueller has more information than anyone else.

It's one of the reasons why he has to finish his job. It's one of the reasons why I have real concerns about Bill Barr being the attorney general since he seemed to have lobbied for the job by showing that he wants to undermine the special prosecutor and that he feels that the President is not subject to the laws of the land.

COOPER: And speaking of William Barr, Senator Lindsey Graham said that he got an assurance from Barr that he would let the Mueller investigation finish unimpeded. Does that lay any of your concerns about him?

WARNER: Absolutely not.

COOPER: Just finally, the news that the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein intends to leave the DOJ in the coming weeks, do you read anything into that other than there's likely to be a new attorney general and at some point soon he'll want his own deputy or she want her own deputy?

WARNER: I don't know, Anderson. I'm also hearing stories that Rosenstein may continue until the Mueller investigation is finished. So, I'd like to hear from Rod directly. I think it's important. I think he has been --

COOPER: Would you like to see him stay?

WARNER: I would like to see him stay to make sure that there is someone who is vested in Mueller finishing the job, doing it independently and making sure that the American people get the facts.

COOPER: Senator Warner, thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

WARNER: Thank you, Anderson.

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