MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Richard Blumenthal
Interview
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REID: Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time. And for more on this impeachment debate, I`m joined by Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut who`s a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. So, Senator, you heard that very passionate, the Congresswoman. She`s got three co-sponsors for her resolution which is impeachment proceedings not based on what`s in the Mueller report but based on alleged conflicts of interest with Donald Trump`s businesses.
What do you make of that argument? How do you argue that any president can be impeached if the collection of facts that we now know about Donald Trump both through the media reporting and through the Mueller report do not result in impeachment?
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Well, let`s begin with a Mueller report. It presents an indictment in all but name. It is a chilling portrait of massive criminal misconduct and abhorrent wrongdoing. And the American people need to understand it the President must be held accountable for this wrongdoing either through Congress and hearings there or through the ballot box which we`ll have an opportunity to do very soon, or through the courts.
REID: Well, let me ask you this because here`s the challenge with that argument. The election process was not foreseen in the Constitution as a process by which a president who has ongoing wrongdoing is held accountable right? He`s either elected or he`s not. That`s the people`s job.
Only Congress can really hold the president accountable for wrongdoing, alleged wrongdoing and the only way the Constitution gives the Congress to do that is impeachment. Just having hearings, how is that accountability?
BLUMENTHAL: Hearings give us the opportunity to present this case to the American people and that`s the important point here, Joy, I think in the next steps ahead, presenting our case to the American people so they can understand not only the corruption -- and by the way I know something about that corruption because I have sued the President the United States. It`s called Blumenthal versus Trump.
Jerry Nadler is a co-plaintiff as are almost 300 of my colleagues in the Congress saying he`s violating the Emoluments Clause, but also as an investigation, follow the money, and making sure that we present to the American people this really chilling portrait so they understand.
And one more point is very important here, Joy. You`re asking Democrats what are you going to do. The nation ought to be asking Republicans.
REID: Well that would be in the -- Laurence Tribe, obviously a very respected constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe tweeted today. Impeachment hearings now, yes. Voting to impeach now, no. Hearings first, voting after. But don`t pretend it`s just oversight as usual. That sends an awful signal not just to foreign countries but to everyone including all future presidents.
If Congress doesn`t use the one sanction allowed to you, meaning impeachment, and that includes Republicans as well, then why shouldn`t any future president simply go and get information from foreign governments, violate the Emoluments Clause. If there`s no penalty, then why shouldn`t any future president just behave like Donald Trump?
BLUMENTHAL: Impeachment has to be on the table. It has to be a potential remedy here. There have to be hearings to present this case to the American people just as in Watergate.
REID: Right. And those were impeachment hearings, by the way. That`s what the Watergate hearings were.
BLUMENTHAL: And they were impeachment hearings, exactly right. So oversight as usual. We`re talking about a number of House Committees doing oversight here which concern not only violations of the constitutional provision on the Emoluments Clause and other wrongdoing like obstruction of justice which is presented in more than ten specific episodes and which may have impacted the collusion investigation. We`re also talking about oversight hearings that will protect our national security.
REID: Let me ask you this question because for a lot of people listening to this and listening to you and some of your colleagues on the Democratic side, what they hear is saying, we`ll do oversight which is a sort of amorphous term that isn`t very meaningful to most people. Impeachment is an actual sanction against the president. It`s an actual act of oversight that the American people understand to be -- to be taking a strong stance that is in the Constitution.
On the other side, while Democrats seem to be being very magnanimous and said we`re just going to keep on investigating, the other side on your very committee, your chair -- the chairman of your committee Senator Lindsey Graham is saying well, what we`re going to do is we`re going to investigate the FBI, we`re going to investigate the investigators. They`re not being as sort of you know, congenial.
They`re saying that they are going to use their investigative authorities to try to go after who know, Hillary Clinton. So the other side has been going to play the same way.
BLUMENTHAL: I`m really deeply disappointed in my Republican colleagues. Barely a handful if that many have spoken out in criticism let alone outrage. And outrage is what they and we ought to feel because Russia attacked our country. They literally committed an act of war against the United States of America. And the president, then-candidate accept it happily.
REID: Should he be impeached for that then?
BLUMENTHAL: That is a step that we need to take if we take it after being very deliberative, nothing wrong with being deliberative. There`s no deadline for reaching that decision. There should be hearings and we need Mueller and his team along with Don McGahn and others and the unredacted report, and the evidence and the facts underlying that report in presenting our case to the American people.
Ultimately they need to hear this case and be educated because very few are going to read this whole report. And here`s the really important point that I think ought to be bipartisan. We need to protect America against the continuing attack. And the president`s saying he believes Vladimir Putin that he didn`t attack this country.
REID: Let me ask you -- we are out of time but the person who runs the Senate right now Mitch McConnell, when this attack was ongoing warned the President of the United States that if President Obama were to come out forward and tell the public what was going on, that he would deem that to be partisan. He expressed doubt himself about the Russian attack.
Why should the American people believe that the Republican side of the aisle in the United States Senate is going to do anything to help in that regard? It sounds like what they`re gearing up to do is to go after Democrats while Democrats are saying no, no, no let`s play within the rules.
BLUMENTHAL: The American people say have no trust and the Republican leadership or in the Republicans in the United States Senate or the Congress, if they fail to act in this moment of national peril and crisis literally, the Russians are continuing to attack us and on the stage in Helsinki. The President of the United States, he said -- he believed Vladimir Putin over our intelligence community.
And that fits the mosaic the criminal mosaic of wrongdoing in the Mueller report because the president continued to accept Russian help knowing that it consisted of hacked e-mail.
REID: Right, and I`m we are out of time and Senator Richard Blumenthal given what you just said, how do you then argue that this president then should not be subject to the hearings which impeachment is not removal, it`s simply hearings?
BLUMENTHAL: Well, it is more than hearings, just as a trial is more than hearings, and any proceeding may begin and it has to have a conclusion but we shouldn`t in this sense, abandons the opportunity to present this case to the American people.
REID: Senator Richard Blumenthal, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time.
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