MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Reps. Jamie Raskin and Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Interview

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HAYES: Joining me now two Democratic members of the House Oversight  Committee who questioned Michael Cohen at today`s hearing, Congressman  Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of  Florida. Congresswoman, I`ll begin with you. A lot of testimony, we`ve  learned a lot of things, some things we knew and were confirmed, some were  completely new pieces of information. What was your takeaway from today  congresswoman?

SCHULTZ: Well, my takeaway from today, Chris, was that we`ve got a few  more hearings that we have to -- that we have to convene with particularly  for starters with President Trump`s daughter, and son, and son-in-law  because Mr. Cohen`s response to my question today about whether or not they  could have been compromised prior to the election due to their involvement  and lying about the Trump Tower deal certainly created more questions than  then answers and we`ve got two of those three people who are literally  working in the White House every single day. And it`s essential that we  get to the bottom of the deception and the corruption that appears to have  taken place.

HAYES: So just to make sure I`m tracking this, you`re saying Don Jr.,  Ivanka, and Jared, you would like to see them before that committee?

SCHULTZ: I would.

HAYES: Congressman Raskin, your takeaway from today.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D), MARYLAND: Well, the president is a hands-on leader  when it comes to his various schemes and so he was directly involved in  running the Moscow Trump Tower project. He was directly involved in  writing checks and organizing checks for hush money payments that  constituted illegal campaign finance contributions and expenditures.

So I don`t think the President is going to be able to run away from what  we`ve learned about him. I mean, he was directly involved in all of the  criminality that Mr. Cohen was discussing today, and he came off as a very  powerful effective witness precisely because he wasn`t lying. He has no  incentive to lie now and he`s unburdening himself after you know, more than  a decade of being involved with this web of propaganda and deceit that`s  the Trump campaign and the Trump presidency.

So I think our Republican colleagues appeared to be frantic and unhinged at  many points, and you know they kept talking about lying but as I told  Cohen, they weren`t up said because he had lied to Congress about the  president, they were upset because he stopped lying to Congress about the  president and I think that was very clear.

HAYES: I want to ask you about a thing that I think is -- it`s a strange  thing because it`s something that we all know and have known for a while.  It was sort of reintroduced and framed today which is that the President is  just as a matter of the public record implicated in a criminal conspiracy  to violate campaign finance law that has already resulted in a felony plea,  that has been sworn on to by the Southern District in New York and the  judge in that case all of whom agree that there was -- that there was a  violation of a criminal violation of campaign finance law.

And today, Michael Cohen comes out and shows a check the President wrote in  August of his first year of office. Did that surprise you, Congresswoman?

SCHULTZ: It did surprise me. To see the sort of stone-cold evidence that  President Trump did exactly the opposite of what he said which he lied  initially and said that he had not made any payments, knew nothing about  the payments as a result of that interaction. And what was even more  surprising, Chris, was that those payments and those discussions happened  in the Oval Office.

I mean, that was stunning. That was a stunning admission that in the midst  of President Trump running the country, what was he -- what was he most  worried about, making sure that he reimbursed his lawyer who he had you  know, take a loan out on his house, cover up the deed for him and you pay  him back during this entire process and while he`s been lying about it as  president United States. That was stunning to me.

HAYES: Congressman, I want to -- I want to play some testimony with Gerry  Connolly who`s a colleague of yours who I think listened to something  entirely new. It was not in the plea that Michael Cohen entered into. I  don`t think we knew this. This is about whether the President -- how and  if the presidents reviewed -- he and his lawyers reviewed his congressional  testimony. Take a listen.

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HAYES: So now, that`s you there, Congressman Raskin. We should say that  Jay Sekulow issued a denial. It`s a specific denial that the testimony --  that they change anything having to do with the duration of the Moscow deal  is false. He says, "Today`s testimony by Michael Cohen that attorneys for  the President edited or change his statement of Congress to altered the  duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiation is it completely false."  What`s your reaction to Cohn`s testimony about the President and his  lawyers both talking to him, reviewing his testimony that we now know was  false?

RASKIN: Well, the reason we were asking about it is because Michael Cohen  is going to prison for lying to Congress about how long the president was  involved in you know, his business negotiations for the Moscow Tower. And  they -- it was changed from apparently what was accurate which was it went  in you know through most of the campaign or at least until the summer to  January. And what we elicited from him is that the lawyers for the  president, Jay Sekulow, I believe was a personally retained lawyer not a  White House lawyer, and as well as possibly the White House lawyers  reviewed and edited the testimony.

So obviously, that`s one of the many fruitful lines of inquiry that we need  to pursue now. Was this changed by lawyers working for the president? How  involved was the White House in that? And you know, there a number of things like that that came up today which are peaking our curiosity in a very strong way.

HAYES: All right, Congressman Jamie Raskin and Congresswoman Debbie  Wasserman Schultz, thank you both after a very long day for making time for  us this evening. To help decipher the vast legal implications from today`s  hearing, let`s bring an MSNBC Legal Analyst Jill Wine-Banks and MSNBC Legal  Analyst Nick Akerman who are both former assistant special Watergate  prosecutors.

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