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

Interview

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HAYES:  Today Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee unleashed an incredibly sweeping and wide-ranging investigation into President Trump and his many associates.  The opening salvo in an inquiry that seems like it will very likely move towards impeachment at some point.  So this is it.  This is the thing Democrats said they were going to do in which the President really fear which is to legally compel document production.
 
Now, they are not subpoenaing yet but they can.  And reading through the list of 81 people in organizations is like reading a compendium of presidential scandal, corruption, and abuse of power.  Like Viktor Vekselberg, remember that guy, the Ukrainian born Russian oligarch who showed up at Trump`s inauguration and whose investment firm just happened to pay Michael Cohen $500,000 through the same LLC that Cohen used to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels.
 
That`s Viktor Vekselberg.  Or Rhona Graff, Donald Trump longtime executive assistant at the Trump Organization who has been asked to turn over among other things all documents related to the contents of meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.  It`s been pointed out that while Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Jared Kushner on the list, Ivanka Trump is noticeably absent.
 
Politico though reporting tonight "it also won`t be the only document requests.  Chairman Jerry Nadler staffs said another round of letters will be going out soon and cautioned against reading into why some people didn`t receive letters on Monday.
 
Joining me now one of the members of the Congressional Committee behind the new investigation Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu of California.  What can you tell us about the logic of this list?  What unifies it?  Why these names and these entities?
 
REP. TED LIEU (D), CALIFORNIA:  Thank you, Chris, for your question.  Let me first say that I hope our investigation exonerates Donald Trump.  I don`t want to think that our president is a crook but I fear that our investigation will not that.  We`re going to take the facts whoever it may lead us and we`re going to leave no stone unturned.  This is just a first salvo of 81 organizations and individuals that we want to get documents from.
 
And with regard to Ivanka Trump that you mentioned, I just want to note that running a business into the ground is interesting, I`m not sure that`s a crime.
 
HAYES:  Let me -- let me ask you this.  The argument that you are seeing from folks and allies of the President, Devin Nunes for instance, is that essentially there`s no collusion they haven`t found collusion and so they`re just going to go rooting around all of the president`s other stuff.  This is Nunes saying there`s no collusion.  All these investigations are in search of a crime.  Democrats have no evidence to impeach President Trump, ridiculous.
 
What do you say to the argument that this is fundamentally not a fact- finding mission but politically motivated where the facts are being reverse engineered around what you already feel about the president?
 
LIEU:  Based on public reporting, Donald Trump`s Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort colluded.  He gave the Russians internal polling data and he was working with the Russians based on the public reporting.  So the question of whether Donald Trump knew about what was happening, we don`t know yet.  The special counsel has not concluded his investigation, but it is a limited investigation Mueller`s investigation.
 
They just want to know did someone commit a crime related to Russia and appearance.  The House Judiciary`s oversight mission is far broader.  We want to know that Donald Trump or his associates or family members commit any crime.
 
HAYES:  And is that -- do you think about crime -- to go back to what Gerald -- Jerry Nadler was saying, and what Elizabeth Holtzman told me, do you think about crime in the sense that the U.S. Criminal Code?  Do you think about crime in terms of wrong actions?  Do you think about it in terms of the constitutional provision about high crimes and misdemeanors vis a vis impeachment?
 
LIEU:  Those are great questions.  So first of all, we want to know that Donald Trump, his family or his associates commit any crime.  Second, we want to know, did they commit any unethical misconduct whether or not it rises to the level of a federal offense.  And third, how do we prevent this from happening again and would it be transparent with American people.
 
If it takes us to impeachment, we`re going to go there, if it doesn`t, then we won`t go there.  But we have to build a record and share this with American people before we decide how to proceed.
 
HAYES:  How much are you willing to go to the map my.  Understanding is these are voluntary requests at this point.  Sometimes these are second letters that have been sent because they were sent in the minority.  But at a certain point, there`s a question about how much do you fight this?  Do you issue -- does the chair issue subpoenas?  Do you go to court over this etcetera?
 
LIEU:  It will depend on each individual company.  If you look at the letters we sent, they are not mass form letters.  They`re very detailed individual letters to companies and individuals with very specific requests related to their own set of facts.  And based on what we send out, we hope to get a lot of documents back.  And if people don`t want to send that, then we will negotiate with them.  And then if we have to, we will start looking at subpoenas.
 
HAYES:  Should we expect when you look at this list of individuals, you know, everyone from the NRA to Hope Hicks and Sean Spicer used to work there, too the Trump campaign itself, to Eric Prince who`s implicated in possibly trying to set up this back-channel and this sort of obscure meeting in the Seychelles.  Should we expect that these are also people that are going to come before the committee or be compelled to do so at some point?
 
LIEU:  So we want to talk to all these individuals.  At some point, we certainly want their documents.  Some of these individuals were like before a public hearing, some we can simply interview either with members or with our staff.  Again, it depends on the individual.  I`m glad you mentioned Hope Hicks.  So let`s give an example of Hope Hicks.
 
She lied to the American people basically saying repeatedly that Trump had nothing do with Russia and his associates, had no meetings with Russia.  What turns out now that that was just a lie and we want to know well, did Donald Trump tell her to lie, what does she know about, what happened, what kind of orders was she given or did she just make this stuff up at the time?
 
So that`s why we have all these individuals that we want to talk to because we want to connect the dots and really put out a narrative as to what happened, why it happened, how we prevent this from happening again.
 
HAYES:  All right, Congressman Ted Lieu who`s on the Judiciary Committee, thank you for taking some time.
 
LIEU:  Thank you, Chris.
 
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