Fox News "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jerrold Nadler

Interview

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WALLACE: Kevin Corke reporting from the White House -- Kevin, thank you.

Now, let's bring in the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler.

Congressman, welcome to "Fox News Sunday".

REP. JERROLD NADLER, D-N.Y.: Good morning.

WALLACE: Attorney General Barr says he will provide, quote, the principal conclusions of the Mueller report to you and two other top members of Congress. Have you been given any advance notice as to when specifically, and how detailed that summary will be?

NADLER: As to how detailed, no. As to when, in the letter he wrote to us on Friday, he said maybe as early as the weekend. And that's all we know.

WALLACE: Do you expect the White House to get a review of the summary before you do for any executive privilege issues and would you have any problem with that?

NADLER: I certainly hope that does not happen and I certainly do have a problem with that. This is an investigation of the White House, of the president, of the people around them for alleged misconduct in various different ways and for subverting the Constitution in various different ways. As we know from the Nixon tapes case, which the Supreme Court decided 9-0, executive privilege cannot be used to shield wrongdoing and certainly they should not get an advance look at the report. The report should go public in its entirety and see what the chips fall.

WALLACE: Let's do a little tea leaf reading on the little bit we know now. The Justice Department says that the special counsel is not recommending any new indictments. That means that no one will have been or has been or will have been charged with collusion with the Russians and President Trump clearly couldn't do that himself. So, in effect, isn't it a logical assumption that the special counsel did not find any criminal collusion with the Kremlin?

NADLER: Well, the -- all we know is that the special counsel -- what we think we know -- is that the special counsel is not bringing criminal indictments for collusion. There are other investigations going on which he has farmed out to the Southern District of New York, Eastern District of Virginia and they may or may not.

We do know, remember, in plain sight of a lot of collusion. We know, for example, that the president's son and his campaign manager were present in the meeting with the Russians to receive information which they were told in the invitation was part of the Russian government's attempt to help them in the election. We know that the campaign manager give targeting data, political targeting data to an agent of the Russian government.

WALLACE: But --

NADLER: We know a lot of things and maybe it's not indictable, but we know there was collusion. The question is to what degree and for a purpose --

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WALLACE: Excuse me, that's the point I was going to make. Jared Kushner was not charged for that, Paul Manafort wasn't charged. Don Jr. wasn't charged. So it would seem that there was no criminal collusion among them, so it would seem to clear the president, wouldn't it, on that issue?

NADLER: No, it would not. "The Washington Post" has a story today which says that in counterintelligence investigations, because of the way they are done and because of way counterintelligence works, very often, they do not lead to criminal prosecutions. But we -- these are additional reasons we have to see the report. The entire country, the public needs to see the entire report so we can see what the special prosecutor says about these questions. Right now, it's very speculative.

WALLACE: OK, you've made it very clear that you want to see not only the report, but all of the underlying material, all of the investigative material.

Here's what Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said last month.

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ROD ROSENSTEIN, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: If we aren't prepared to prove our case beyond reasonable doubt in court, then we have no business making allegations against American citizens.

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WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, given how upset Democrats were in 2016 when then- FBI Director James Comey said he was not going to recommend charging Hillary Clinton but then that laid out the case against her, why should Attorney General Barr make the same mistake if he's not going to bring a case against Donald Trump and lay out all the information against him?

NADLER: There's a fundamental difference. The Justice Department believes -- normally, that's a very good rule. If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, you shouldn't sully their name.

However, the Justice Department believes that as a matter of law, the president, no matter what the evidence, can never be indicted for anything simply because he is the president. If that is the case, then they can't hold him accountable, and the only institution that can hold the president accountable is Congress and Congress therefore needs the evidence and the information.

Once you say that a president cannot be held -- cannot be indictable the matter with the evidence as a matter of law, to then follow the principle that you can't then comment on evidence or publicize is to convert that into a cover-up.

WALLACE: Well, I want to pick up on that. You say if the attorney general does not turn over everything to the special counsel, that's a cover-up, which is a pretty charged phrase. I mean, couldn't it just be that he reads the regulations differently than you do, that it's not a cover-up of a crime?

And secondly, I understand they're going to be two differences of opinions here, what are you prepared to do to get all the information you want?

NADLER: Well, again, if the president cannot be indicted because as a matter of law, then the only way a president can be held accountable is for Congress to consider it an act if warranted. And Congress can only do that if it has the information. And for the department to take the position that we are not going to give information because he's not indicted like a normal person is not indicted because of lack of evidence is equivalent to a cover-up and subverts the only ability to hold the president accountable. And the president, more than anybody else, cannot be above the law.

As to whether we will use subpoenas, we will if necessary. We, as you know, put out a lot of document requests to people. We are getting a good response on that. Not from the White House, but from a lot of other people.

And we'll use subpoenas if and when we think we have to.

WALLACE: You have made it clear that your committee is going to keep investigating the president regardless of what is in the Mueller report. You just recently sent out a document request 281 people and entities for information.

But if the special counsel -- and I understand this is speculative. If the special counsel after two years basically does not find criminal activity - - obviously, you say they're not going to charge them with a crime. If they find no evidence of criminal activity by the president after this long investigation on collusion or obstruction of justice, how do you think the American people will react to House Democrats continuing to investigate the president for the rest of his time in office, the next two years? I understand why it might be good politically.

NADLER: I don't know -- if I don't know --

WALLACE: Keep him under a cloud. But is it good for the country, sir?

NADLER: I don't know if it's good politically or not, and I don't know if it will take the next few years. But what I do know is that the job of Congress is much broader than the job of special counsel. The special counsel was looking and can only look for crimes.

We have to protect the rule of law. We have to look for abuses of power. We have to look for obstructions of justice. We have to look for corruption in the exercise of power, which may not be crimes. They may be, but they may not be crimes.

We have a much broader mandate and we have to exercise that mandate to protect the integrity of government and protect the integrity of liberty and the country.

WALLACE: As you will know, there are some Republicans who believe the real scandal here is the bias, the misdeeds, overreach by the FBI, by the Justice Department, by the special counsel. Do you have any intention of investigating them, sir?

NADLER: Well, when the Republicans controlled the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight Committee in the last two years, there was an extensive investigation of that. And nothing relevant was found. Yes, it turns out that some FBI agents have political opinions that they didn't like the president. Other FBI agents love the president.

But the inspector general found that no actions were taken that were influenced by political opinions. You know, it's against the law for the FBI or any other government agency to inquire as to the political opinions of people you're going to hire, as a head check. So, no, I don't see the necessity for any further investigation.

It is part of a sustained attack by the administration and its allies on the integrity of law enforcement agencies, the FBI, special prosecutor for the last two years to try to undermine the integrity and the credibility of our law enforcement institutions, and that's something that's very damaging to the country. And one of the things that we have to rectify.

Let me add, again, regardless of whether the special prosecutor finds crimes, we know certain things. The public knows certain things. We know that the president asked the FBI director to go easy and to stop investigating some of his close associates like Michael Flynn. We know that the president fired the FBI director because he wouldn't give him the personal loyalty he demanded and because as he put it to NBC News, of the Russian thing.

We know that a lot of the president's closest associates, his campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, national security advisor have been indicted and convicted of various crimes and we know the sustained attacks on our law enforcement institutions. These are very dangerous to the rule of law and we have to try to rectify it.

WALLACE: So -- and I've got about 30 seconds left, what you seem to be saying is whatever is in the Mueller report, not saying you're going to do it, but that impeachment is still on the table.

NADLER: It's way too early to talk about impeachment or not. We have to look at -- as I said, our mandate is not to impeach the president or anything like that. Our mandate is to defend the rule of law and to vindicate our constitutional liberties and to buck up the institutions that have been weakened by the attacks of this administration, the institutions that we depend on for our democratic form of government.

So, we have to look into abuse of power, we have to look into obstructions of justice. And that we will do and we'll see where it goes -- we'll see where the facts take us.

WALLACE: Chairman Nadler, thank you. Thanks for your time. We'll stay on top of what your committee does now.

NADLER: Thank you.

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