MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Ted Lieu

Interview

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HAYES: Never heard of it, don`t know, nope. The aforementioned Roger  Stone was back in court today. Prosecutor of the Special Counsel told the  judge they are looking to begin Stone`s trial in October. That`s eight  months from now. The judge said she thought July or August might be more  appropriate but did not rule out a false start date. She also warns Stone  not to treat the criminal case against him like a book tour and added she  was considering issuing a gag order to end Stone`s media blitz.

Stone did not comment publicly after the hearing but he repeated his weird  Nixon thing that he has literally been doing since he was a teenager as  seen here in a page from his high school yearbook exclusively obtained by  ALL IN. There is still a bunch of outstanding questions about Stone and  his role in the WikiLeaks e-mail dump that came on the heels of the Access  Hollywood Tape being made public.

It has always been the case that it is highly suspicious that just half an  hour after the worst bombshell moment of any presidential campaign in  recent memory was published, WikiLeaks just happened to start releasing e- mails that furthered a damaging narrative about Hillary Clinton`s campaign,  e-mails that were of course, stolen by the Russian government`s hackers.

Former Stone ally Jerome Corsi says Mueller has evidence the timing was not  a coincidence and Roger Stone`s indictment says that someone from the  campaign texted him well done after the e-mail is posted. The question is  did stone make that happen?

Joining me now is Congressman Ted Lieu of California. He`s a member of the  House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committee. I think I know the answer  but I`ll ask it anyway, Congressman. Do you believe the President when he  denies that he ever instructed Roger Stone to get involved with WikiLeaks?

REP. TED LIEU (D), CALIFORNIA: Thank you, Chris, for that question.  Donald Trump has lied thousands of times. That matters both great and  small. So I don`t think we can take his denial to mean very much. I`m a  former prosecutor and what was interesting to me about the Roger Stone  indictment is that Special Counsel Mueller included information and there  totally unnecessary to the actual charges.

So this sentence that a senior Trump advisor was directed to contact Stone,  that was director phrase was not necessary and I think it`s very  interesting that Mueller included it because it sends a signal that there`s  someone pretty high up that was in on this collusion.

HAYES: I want to play what the President had to say about both the Special  Counsel investigation and the SDNY investigation of him and get your  reaction to both what he`s saying and whether you think he`s telling the  truth and what it would mean if he is. Take a listen.

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HAYES: What do you make of that?

LIEU: Well, again, Donald Trump lies all the time so it`s unclear how much  stock we can put into his denials. But there two -- actually there are  multiple investigations going on, but the one with the Southern District of  New York, we had Michael Cohen under oath in a federal court basically say  that Donald Trump directed him to make these payments that were felony  payments and Trump right now is an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.  So in terms of him being a target, it`s pretty clear to me that in at least  that case he would be a target.

HAYES: There`s a question now about Michael Cohen whether he`s going to  testify publicly at all before a House committee. He will be testifying  the House Intelligence Committee. There`s a question about Roger Stone  being called back because he apparently lied to Congress. How important is  it to you, and I`ve been asking everyone this, to have public hearings on  these matters?

LIEU: I think public hearings are preferred and it will be very important.  I`m at the House Judiciary Committee and we`re going to start holding  hearings on obstruction of justice, abuse of power, as well as witness  intimidation. You can`t really have those hearings if you don`t have key  witnesses such as Michael Cohen or Roger Stone.

HAYES: Wait, say that again. Is that -- is that have been made public  yet? They`re going to have hearings on obstruction of justice, witness  tampering, and what else?

LIEU: Abuse of power. And let me sort of give the background to this.  Before people can even talk about the question of impeachment, you would  need to have a record. Donald Trump and his associates or presumed  innocent like anybody else in America. We have right now really some  newspaper articles, we`ve got some special counsel Mueller indictments.

What we need to do in the house is to have people under oath give  testimony. We need to subpoenaed documents. We create this record with  these hearings and then American people can decide later this year what do  they want to do.

HAYES: So has that been made -- I mean, those hearings, those are not been  noticed yet, right, in terms --

LIEU: Yes. That is correct. Those hearings had not been noticed. The  only hearings that have been noticed are next week we`re going to have Matt  Whitaker, Acting Attorney General come in on Friday and we will question  him. We`re also going to have hearings on HR8, their background checks  bill for guns.

HAYES: Let me ask you this about Whitaker. He said just a few days ago  that it`s wrapping up. There`s this sort of consensus, there`s been  reporting from my own news organization and others that it is wrapping up.  And yet here you see the Special Counsel filing today saying we need till  October. We need a lot of time to go through Roger Stone. What do you --  what do you make of it?

LIEU: It was completely inappropriate for the Acting Attorney General to  say anything about an ongoing criminal investigation. And their reasons  why you don`t want to put a timeline on it because it sends all sorts of  signals to potential targets or witnesses. And as a past -- former  prosecutor, I know that when you get new evidence, you might have to look  at new leads and it extends whatever your timeline is.

So they had have now years of evidence from Roger Stone that they have to  go through in terms of his communications. That`s just going to take some  time and deck of lead to additional witnesses, additional leads, so I don`t  think this investigation is going to end any time really soon.

HAYES: Congressman Ted Lieu, thank you very much.

LIEU: Thank you, Chris.

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