CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Warner

Interview

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COOPER: Senator Warner, how much do you actually expect the White House to cooperate with all these requests from the House? Especially given our reporting today that they intend to try to limit what Democrats can get their hands on.

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, I hope the White House would cooperate. I mean, Congress is a co-equal branch of government. We have a right to receive this information. I'm not going to get into the specifics of all the various requests that some of the House Committees have made. But the fact is the American people deserve the truth and Congress has a rightful role to provide appropriate oversight and again, I hope that the White House would move forward in cooperation.

COOPER: The White House is likely going to argue executive privilege applies here, and I'm wondering what you think about that because the president, he does have the right to withhold certain information from Congress and certainly executive privilege would seem to apply at least in some of the cases here.

WARNER: I'm sure there are appropriate places where executive privilege would dominate. But what I understand is the White House may be issuing in a sense almost a blanket denial and that goes against the very nature of a co-equal branch of government. You know, my hope would be that -- my expectation I guess would be that the house made fairly extensive requests. There will be some back and forth.

But at the end of the day, the Congress has the right to provide oversight, including over all aspects of the executive branch, including the president and the law's got to be followed.

COOPER: President Obama's former senior adviser David Axelrod criticized the scope of the document request. He said the wide- ranging nature of it too easily plays into the witch hunt meme. Do you think he has a point there?

WARNER: Listen, I have not reviewed all of the extensive requests from the House. I know that in --

COOPER: But just the fact that it's so extensive, does that risk certainly just from an optics standpoint --

WARNER: Anderson, all I can tell you is with our investigation in the Senate that's been bipartisan, we've made a series of requests and we've been very successful with having those requests honored.

COOPER: I guess what is the end game in your opinion for Democrats in all these investigations? I mean, certainly a lot of Democrats have expressed skepticism about impeachment, particularly since the Senate's in Republican hands. So, if some wrongdoing is found and impeachment isn't on the table, then what?

WARNER: Well, Anderson, you know, in our investigation we started over two years ago because a foreign power, Russia, massively intervened in our elections and it has been bipartisan shown from the intelligence community. They did that to help Donald Trump and to hurt Hillary Clinton.

Part of our investigation has always been about following the facts, where the truth lies, and was there -- what level of collaboration or collusion was there between Trump officials and Trump campaign and the Russians.

The one thing we know at this point is that there was an unprecedented level of contact between Russians and individuals from both the Trump business organization and from the Trump campaign. Where that all leads, I'm reserving my final judgment until we see all of our -- all the final witnesses and we can reach a final conclusion.

COOPER: Just lastly, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr was asked today if he thought Michael Cohen was truthful in his testimony last week. He said that Cohen certainly has not been truthful in the past and that Cohen made a lot of accusations and (INAUDIBLE) to substantiate them.

Do you agree with Burr's characterization there? I mean, certainly, Michael Cohen has not been truthful in be past. We know that.

WARNER: Listen, Michael Cohen doesn't have a good level of telling the truth. Of course, neither does Donald Trump. Uncertain (ph) on these areas that Mr. Cohen asserted, we'll be able to have background documentary evidence one way or the other, as we get additional documents, and if there was one thing I took away, I can't comment on the private testimony he gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee but from the public testimony, it did appear at times that if in Cohen was simply trying to smear Donald Trump, he could have gone further. He seems, for Cohen at least, relatively restrained.

COOPER: Yes. Senator Warner, appreciate your time. Thank you.

WARNER: Thank you, Anderson.

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