MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Mazie Hirono

Interview

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HAYES:  All right, Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you so much for making the time.  Joining me now, Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee where she voted against the nomination of current Attorney General Bill Barr.
 
Senator, obviously, you had doubts about Mr. Barr.  I think they were broader than just his behavior vis a vis the Mueller report.  Your reaction to the letter he`s transmitted to Congress?
 
SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D), HAWAII:  I think that in his letter he says that he`s going to be as transparent as possible so he certainly will be held to it.  And I agree with Jamie that we need to get the underlying material upon which the Mueller report is made their conclusions.  There`s more to come.
 
HAYES:  Yes.  I mean what how do you view -- if I am not mistaken and I don`t believe I am, the chair of your committee Lindsey Graham is down at Mar-a-Lago right now I believe with the President of the United States.  How do you view obviously Jerry Nadler in the House have their role in this but your serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee that`s chaired by Mr.
Graham who counts himself a staunch ally of the president, how do you view the Senate Judiciary`s role on this?
 
HIRONO:  Yes.  Of late, he is a staunch ally of the President.  That was -- it was not always that.
 
HAYES:  No, but people change, Senator.
 
HIRONO:  I hope that our chairman will do his job you know, for the public good because I know that during the course of Barr`s hearing that there were a number of us who asked about the transparency that will be attached to the Mueller report and even Lindsey asked the question, Chair Graham asked the question.
 
So that`s good.  But as I say, this is a the way I look at, it this is the end of the beginning of the Southern District of New York.  There are a number of other entities that will be looking at other aspects of the Trump Organization`s practices, money laundering or a tax evasion insurance fraud, etcetera.  So there`s more to come.  I think the President should be concerned.
 
And if we look at his tweets of late where he has been all over the place with regard to Poland Heights and Korea, North Korea, and all of that it seems like it`s -- the President is very concern in spite of saying that oh, the Mueller report, oh, I really don`t know about that.
 
HAYES:  I want to tell you -- give you the argument that I think we`re starting to hear from Republicans and possibly we`ll hear that again stipulating no one knows what`s in the report.  What we do know at least is reported number 17 here about no more indictments is that Robert Mueller is not recommending any further indictments according to a senior Justice Department official.  I`ve seen that reported in a number of places.
 
What are you going to say to people that say look, the bar here was whether there were chargeable criminal acts of conspiracy with the Russian conspiracy to sabotage the election.  There are no indictments on that, ergo this is totally exculpatory for the President and clear so.
 
HIRONO:  When you talk about a criminal indictment, the bar is very high.  Well, that was -- it`s beyond a reasonable doubt.  And you can look at the evidence and concluded that while there being a criminal charge, a criminal charge may not lie.  There may -- there may be other avenues accountability to pursue.
 
HAYES:  That is how you`re thinking about it going forward?
 
HIRONO:  First of all, I`d like to see what the underlying basis is and I would very much like to see what kind of analysis or discussion was done with relating to -- relating to obstruction of justice.  Because as we all know the president tried to have Mueller fired through Don McGahn.  He was very upset with his Attorney General Sessions of recusing himself, he fired Comey.  So in my view, there were quite a lot of factors that could that one could conclude there was obstruction of justice.  So I want to know what the analysis was by the Mueller team on that aspect. 
 
HAYES:  All right, Senator Mazie Hirono, I think you will get a chance to see it probably soon.  Thank you very much.
 
HIRONO:  Yes.  Thank you.

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