CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes

Interview

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BLITZER: Yes, there's a number of mysterious investigations under way right now. And they could go on, as you point out, for quite a while.

Shimon, thank you very much.

Joining us now, a key member of the new Democratic majority in the House, Congressman Jim Himes. He serves on the Intelligence Committee.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

And I quickly want to start with the comments from your new leader, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. She says it's an open discussion as to whether a sitting president can be indicted. You have urged Democrats to be cautious with their new powers.

Are you concerned, Congressman, that the speaker is opening up the door to the indictment of a sitting president?

REP. JIM HIMES (D), CONNECTICUT: Hi, Wolf.

No, I'm not. As you point out, the speaker said it was an open discussion. It is, in fact, from the standpoint of legal experts, an open discussion. It's never been tested. The Justice Department has one view, that the sitting president cannot be indicted. Surprise, surprise.

But there are the legal scholars with other opinions. The important thing -- Wolf, you asked, am I concerned? Look, what are we doing right now? Right now, we are moving a bill -- well, a rules package, first of all, to open up government, to make sure every member of Congress has 72 hours at least to review bills, rules that prohibit members of Congress from serving on corporate boards.

And, very soon, we will be passing a piece of legislation that will reopen the government. And I want to mention, Wolf, that this piece of legislation, this continuing resolution, is precisely the resolution that passed unanimously in the United States Senate two weeks ago. And so we will pass that in the House. We will send it back to the Senate.

We will see if Republican senators are where they were two weeks ago, or whether they're going to go the direction they have said they're going to go, which is, gosh, we're not passing anything that President Trump won't approve.

Now, it's been a while since I was in high school civics, but my understanding was that the Congress of the United States is supposed to be a check and a balance on the president. And the idea that the United States Senate should only act on legislation that the president has pre-approved has our country in a pretty disappointing place.

[18:15:00]

BLITZER: Your Democratic colleague Adam Smith also wants to wait to see the Mueller report. But he also says it's not too soon to be talking about impeachment.

Do you think this is something that House Democrats should be discussing to make sure everyone is on the same page about what would trigger impeachment proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee?

HIMES: Wolf, in my opinion, it's a little early for us to be talking about that meaningfully.

Again, we have got work to do in terms of reestablishing a House of Representatives with integrity, with due process, with what we call regular order, meaning actually committees get to examine stuff. And we have got to reopen the government.

And then, look, I come from the Northeast, where I'm really hopeful we move on very quickly to saying yes to President Trump on what he said he wanted to do with respect to a major investment in our infrastructure.

So, look, at some point, the Constitution provides for impeachment of a president who has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. There is certainly evidence pointing in that direction, but that's an enormous and awesome -- literally, awesome thing that the Congress should do.

So, I want to make sure that we know for sure that there is standing and that there is a basis to do that before we take the country through that.

BLITZER: Another one of your Democratic colleagues, Congressman Brad Sherman of California, introduced articles of impeachment today.

If you think that's counterproductive, shouldn't your party at least have a serious conversation on this issue?

HIMES: Well, Wolf, at least in the Democratic Caucus, the leadership doesn't control each and every member. Most people around here have their own independent ways of thinking and are going to kind of do what they think is right.

So I'm not sure that this had the blessing of anybody in leadership. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it didn't. I saw that Mr. Sherman introduced those articles. Look, you're going to see that kind of stuff.

But what you really need to watch is what gets passed on the floor of the House of Representatives. And I will tell you that, right now, we are still a good, long way from in any serious way considering articles of impeachment.

BLITZER: Democrats are introducing a bill to protect Robert Mueller. Is that an exercise, though, in futility?

HIMES: I don't think so. You know, I think it needs to be there ready to go. I was very disappointed, obviously, that the Senate very narrowly chose not to protect Robert Mueller.

And, again, a lot of Republican senators said, well, gosh, I don't think President Trump is going to -- is going to fire Mueller. Well, look, if you don't think he is, then this is an irrelevant exercise, but it ought to be there. This is an area that is so important, that we shouldn't leave it to chance.

So, again, I think that's important legislation. I don't actually think the president is likely to fire Bob Mueller. With the markets behaving the way they are, with the secretary of defense leaving, with the attorney general up in the air, I don't think this White House needs yet more chaos right in the middle of a government shutdown.

So it's an important piece of legislation to pass, but I suspect the president's advisers would tell him, sir, we don't need yet this car wreck on top of all the other fires we're trying to put out right now.

BLITZER: Speaker Pelosi did what was widely expected. She named Adam Schiff of California the new chairman of your committee, the House Intelligence Committee. What

are your top priorities in the immediate days and weeks ahead?

HIMES: Well, I think, Wolf, our two top priorities need to be to get back into the business of providing oversight to the intelligence community.

The intelligence community is a massive operation. Americans pay $80 billion or so a year for this operation. It is a spectacular operation. But it also operates in a lethal world. It operates in a world of surveillance, where you really have to be looking over their shoulder and making sure that what the intelligence community does is consistent with American values.

And so we have got to get back to that. And a big part of that, of course, is bringing the committee back together. Sadly, Chairman Nunes, when he chaired that committee, as you know, for about two years, used that committee to be a defense committee of President Donald Trump. And that split the committee very badly. I think it caused the committee to lose a lot of trust from the intelligence community. And we have got to rebuild that trust and get back to the business of providing oversight to the intelligence community.

BLITZER: Do you yet know, Congressman, who the first witness you're going to call to appear before your committee?

HIMES: No, I don't, Wolf. And I suspect you're sort of asking whether we sort of resume the Russia investigation.

And I will tell you that there's a long list of follow-ups that we had before the Republicans ended the investigation prematurely, phone calls we want to know about, records that we'd like to see, really missing gaps with big questions.

I do suspect we're going to start the process of looking at some of those things that needed to be looked at. But I think, generally, we're going to wait to see what special counsel Mueller comes up with before we act in any big way with respect to sort of restarting an investigation.

BLITZER: We clearly have no idea when he's going to come up with his report. Could be soon, maybe not so soon. No one clearly knows.

On the whole issue of a government shutdown, the partial shutdown that's under way right now, approaching two weeks, your party is in power in the House.

Do you see a way out of this shutdown without some significant compromise on the issue of funding a border wall? Are you going to have to give the president at least some money for that?

[18:20:00]

HIMES: Well, lots of Democrats are willing to give the president money for border security.

And I said that -- I say that because we all voted -- at least on the Senate side -- in favor of a bill back in 2013 which had billions of dollars in border security. And, of course, we spend a lot of money on border security.

What we're not willing to do is to go with an idea that nobody thought was a good idea, a wall from sea to shining sea. Nobody ever mentioned that. So, now all of a sudden, Donald Trump, who, by the way, is not a security genius, says this is a good idea.

And, of course, the 30 percent of the American public who hangs on his every word and is not critical thinks that it's a good idea.

Look, the president points at Israel. I watched his tweets the other day. He points at Israel. I have been along the Israeli border. And, yes, there is a wall in highly populated, dense areas around the West Bank, but up along the border with Syria, up along the border with Lebanon, down in the Negev, down in the Sinai, you have got fences, you have got technology, and you have got men with guns.

That's what we have got. So the American people need to realize that, number one, the president is using a tool that no government officials should use. That is saying, if I don't get my way, I'm shutting down the government, and I'm going -- taking my ball and going home, to promote a policy, which is just a stupid policy.

And, again, I say that with some authority, because I have been here for 10 years, and nobody has ever said that building a massive 30-foot wall for thousands of miles through the wilderness makes any sense.

Donald Trump believes that. And unless the American people go to him and say, hey, we have got better places to spend our money, he's going to stay where he is.

But, look, the question of a political responsibility for this -- I know you talk about the blame game. There is no blame game here. The president two weeks ago said, "I will take full responsibility for the shutdown."

Now, of course, he's changed his mind on that. But he could end this tomorrow by listening to security experts and spending money in ways that will actually keep this country safe.

BLITZER: But the bottom line is, the Democratic Party, the Democratic majority in the House, you're not going to back down?

HIMES: We are not going to fund a wall. We might fund repairs to walls that currently exist. We might fund better fences. We might fund technology and drones and more vehicles, so the Border Patrol can patrol the wilderness.

The things that we have been doing, we're in favor with. But we can't go -- look, what if Donald Trump had run on giving every American a diploma from Trump University? Just because he wants it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

And that's why, of course, we have a Congress to say, hey, we will work with you on border security, but you can't just make up a crazy idea that security experts know isn't going to work and expect us to fund it.

BLITZER: Before I let you go, Congressman, I know one of your goals for this new Congress is to push forward your bipartisan legislation. It's called the Reclamation of the War Powers Act.

Explain what this bill would actually do.

HIMES: Yes, Wolf, I have been working on this for a long time, and it has only partial relevance to Donald Trump, who, quite frankly, I don't want going around starting wars without doing what the Constitution says he must do, which is consult the Congress of the United States.

This goes back to my dissatisfaction, frankly, with the Obama presidency, when I woke up one morning to discover that we were in war -- we were at war in Libya. Again, the Constitution leaves no room for interpretation here. It is the job of the Congress, of the representatives of the people, to decide when we're going to send our young people to possibly die on our behalf.

That is not a decision that should be made by one man or one woman sitting in an Oval Office. And so I am going to keep pushing to make sure we go back to the constitutional idea that our forefathers had, that that most consequential decision that the government makes should be made by the representatives of the people.

BLITZER: But do you believe the president would actually sign this kind of legislation into law, even if it were to pass the House and the Senate?

HIMES: I don't -- this isn't going to get done with any president in office. There's a long history there -- it goes back decades -- where president, for reasons that we can all understand, don't want their power circumscribed.

And, by the way, we say, look, if we're attacked, if you need to act very quickly, you have got room to act very quickly. But no president is going to agree, in fact, no president has agreed to actually doing what the Constitution says should be done, which is going to the Congress to ask for permission to put our young men and women into harm's way.

BLITZER: Congressman Jim Himes, thanks so much for joining us.

HIMES: Thank you, Wolf.

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