MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Adam Schiff

Interview

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HAYES: Congressman Adam Schiff of California chairs one of the committees  that will get a chance to question Michael Cohen this week the House  Intelligence Committee where Cohen will testify behind closed doors on  Thursday. Congressman, it`s good to have you. What are -- what are you  expecting? What are you looking for tomorrow and on Thursday?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well,  we`re certainly hoping in the testimony in both days to get the full facts  from Michael Cohen. In our committee, our particular interest in the false  statements that he made doesn`t go beyond what he testified to in terms of  the Moscow Trump Tower deal. Who was aware that he was going to come and  testify falsely? Was he given encouragement to do so?

Just the allegation surrounding the Trump Tower in Moscow are quite damning  and I find them you know really staggering when you sit back and you think  of that candidate Donald Trump running for president while denying any  business dealings with the Russians was seeking to make the most lucrative  deal of his life, something that would make him hundreds of millions of  dollars and seeking the Kremlin`s help.

That is deeply compromising whether it is criminal or not. It is deeply  compromising of the national security interest of the country. So we  intend to explore that with him. We intend to explore issues of  obstruction of justice, and other light he can shed on the Russia  investigation. So we have -- we have a lot of questions for Mr. Cohen.

HAYES: I should note the prosecutors have already said in one of Cohen`s  criminal information filings that Cohen discussed the status and progress  of that Moscow project with Individual One which is the President on more  than three occasions. Cohen claimed the committee briefed family member of  Individual One within the company about the project.

Now that he has pleaded to lying about the specifics here, do you  anticipate you will get the full story from him? Do you believe you can  trust him as a credible witness?

SCHIFF: I think he`s made the decision to come clean and it`s interesting  to watch the people around the President and including the president attack  him for essentially making retribution for deciding to cooperate with  authorities, to tell the truth. They would much prefer that he kept on  lying I suppose.

But you know, as a former prosecutor who has dealt with witnesses that have  been dishonest in the past, you always look for corroboration. You don`t  rely solely on the testimony. So one of the things that we`ll be asking  about when he makes different statements at odds with what he said earlier  is what documentary evidence exists, what conversations did you have, were  they by phone, were they in person, who else was present. All the kind of  foundational questions that allow you to do follow-up and corroborate what  a witness has to say that`s going to be very important.

HAYES: He finished today with this on the Senate Intelligence slide. How  much interaction are there between your two committees. Obviously, you`re  -- the chairs and ranking members are both in the gang of eight. Do you  talk to them after a day like today? Do you debrief at all?

SCHIFF: You know, there`s certainly some interaction between the two  committees, but they are two distinct investigations. Obviously, there`s a lot of overlap with the scheduling of witnesses but they are really quite 
separate investigations. And that is also true by the way of the Special Counsel`s investigation which brings up another very timely issue and that is you have the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein suggesting that 
maybe they shouldn`t share with Congress or the country the full report and what it has to say about people not indicted.

Well, the Justice Department was sharing hundreds of thousands of pages of  discovery in the Clinton e-mail investigation and we are not about to allow  them to have some kind of a double standard particularly when there is such  intense public need to know. And in addition to that, if the department is  to maintain a policy you can`t indict a sitting president, they cannot also  say and we`re not going to share with Congress the evidence that would  allow you to consider whether other remedies are necessary.

HAYES: One final follow-up here and it goes to something you said earlier  and I want to just make sure I`m clear on this. You talked about his  previous testimony if anyone directed him to. Of course, there was this  sort of wild 24 hours in which BuzzFeed wrote a story in which they said  that the President had directed him explicitly to lie before Congress about  the Moscow Tower project. Its timeline, that was then knocked down by the  Special Counsel`s office. Do you intend to ask about that under oath?

SCHFF: We certainly do. We want to know why he made the false statements  he did, what was the length and breadth of them, who was aware that he was  going to testify to this? After all there were public written copies of  his testimony before he came in. Were those vetted with people in the  White House or elsewhere? And so, absolutely.

Now we don`t know how much of the BuzzFeed report was true or false, but  there is a story there that we want to hear and we want to hear the truth,  and we`ll certainly be asking about that.

HAYES: All right, Congressman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence  Committee, thank you very much.

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