CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Dingell

Interview

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CABRERA: Asha Rangappa, always good to have your take.

Jamie Raskin is a member of the Oversight Committee where Michael Cohen gave that explosive testimony in public. He's on Capitol Hill now, the President saying that Michael Cohen asked him personally for a pardon. Sir, what do you do with this?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D), MARYLAND: Well, one can only regard with some amazement the President's casual disclosure that he's been talking to people about pardons in this process and certainly it piques our curiosity. Of course, before Donald Trump the way that people would approach a President about a pardon was through the office of the pardon attorney in the Department of Justice where there was a whole process for a written submission and, you know, filing of questions and answers and so on.

CABRERA: Right.

RASKIN: The President has bypassed that and he deals it out like a political favor like we saw in the case of Dinesh Da Souza --

CABRERA: Which he has the power to do, I'm curious, who do you believe, Cohen or the President?

RASKIN: Well, you know, the President I think has told over 8,500 lies, that was a week ago. So, it might be up over 9,000 now. I don't know. For him it's just routine. Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying for the President before Congress and we're still trying to get to the bottom of exactly how that particular lie about the President's involvement in the Moscow tower project came about and we will get to the bottom of that, but at this point Michael Cohen has no incentive to lie and all of his testimony before our committee was coherent and consistent and, you know, as I said then and I'll say again, they're not mad at Michael Cohen because he lied for the President. They're mad at Michael Cohen because he stopped lying for the President.

CABRERA: I hear what you're saying, but now there is a question about whether Cohen was completely truthful in front of your committee the second time around when he talked about this issue of the pardon. Do you think the President should be called before your committee to testify as a witness now on this issue?

RASKIN: Well, there are obviously a multitude of issues we'd love to hear from the President about it and I am going to leave that to Chairman Cummins and Chairman Nadler --

CABRERA: If it were up to you, would you call the President?

RASKIN: Let me make one point that causes me real doubt about the President's story right now. The President is obviously an extremely close contact with the Republicans in Congress and had suggested a whole line of questions for them to pose to Michael Cohen when he came there. It seems to me if it were true that Michael Cohen had gone to President Trump to ask for a pardon before that testimony at some point or before he's pleading guilty, the President would have let the Republicans know so they could have asked about it. It does seem one of these whimsical last-minute Presidential inventions.

CABRERA: I know your committee has attempted to get documents about security clearances at the White House. Have you gotten your hands on any documents yet?

RASKIN: I have not seen any yet, but this is something of intense concern to the oversight committee, to the judiciary committee and also, I know to the intelligence committee, indeed to every member of Congress because the security clearance process is serious business and yet what we've heard is that it's been completely trampled by President Trump. Apparently, the officials who were in charge of reviewing Jared Kushner's application for security clearance rejected it and then the President overrode them repeatedly and they were so concerned about that that they insisted on documenting every step along the way. We are trying to get our hands on those documents to figure out what exactly happened and why.

[14:10:04] CABRERA: But you're saying you haven't seen any of those documents just yet, correct?

RASKIN: I have not. There were questions raised about Jared Kushner's relationships to different foreign governments including Saudi Arabia.

CABRERA: Right. I just want to clarify that issue. I have to ask, of course, about the President saying this about that antihate resolution you all passed in the House yesterday. Watch.

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CABRERA: You are one of the lead coauthors on that resolution, what's your response to the President?

RASKIN: It's obviously absurd what the President just said. The statement was one denouncing anti-Semitism and racism and anti-Islamic bigotry. I wish the President would support it. Of course, we tried to bring a resolution after the disgraceful events that took place in Charlottesville. The Republicans wouldn't bring it to the floor and the President, of course, equivocated on which side he favored there saying there were very good people on both sides. The President is lucky that he escaped being named in that resolution because a lot of people wanted to add the last tv campaign ad he ran in the Presidential campaign in 2016 which identified three Jewish people, Janet Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros basically the enemies of the American people and this was denounced by the antidefamation league and was widely seen as the anti-Semitic ad in the history of politics. The President should really be careful about entering into this whole terrain and one can only regard with astonishment the fact that he's attacking a resolution which was bipartisan in nature which the vast majority of members of Congress voted for denouncing racism and bigotry.

CABRERA: But 23 Republicans did vote against the resolution and their reasoning is that it was too watered down, didn't call out a Representative Omar by name. Again, you are one of the lead coauthors, why didn't you call out Omar by name?

RASKIN: We didn't call out Omar by name, we didn't call out Donald Trump by name, despite his statements about Charlottesville, despite that tv ad which still has not been denounced by members of his own party which targeted Jewish Americans for a charge of essentially dual loyalty or opposition to the American people. The President should apologize for that now that he's entered into a debate about anti- Semitism.

CABRERA: Why not name Omar given that this spurred this?

RASKIN: We didn't name Donald Trump and we didn't name representative Omar and we didn't name a number of other individuals. We could have named, why, because the issues are too serious for the usual finger pointing and point scoring that takes place in American politics today. We wanted to lift this up to a level of principle and values and it was a magnificent statement of values that we as the Congress of the United States, we deplore and we oppose in every way and we reject anti-Semitism, we reject racism and we reject attacks on the Muslim community as well. We stand together as Americans e pluribus unum, for many, one. The fact that the President would set himself against that statement which the vast majority of Republicans voted for is just remarkable to me.

CABRERA: Congressman Raskin, thank you for being with us.

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