CNN "Anderson Cooper 360" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Ro Khanna

Interview

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COOPER: All right. Jim Acosta -- Jim, thanks very much.

More now on how this is all being received by one of the committees the president is defying. California Democrat Ro Khanna sits on the House Oversight Committee. He joins us now.

Congressman, thanks for being with us.

First of all, I just want to get your reaction to the breaking news tonight that the White House may seek to prevent Don McGahn from complying with the Judiciary Committee's subpoena.

REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Well, it's just a delay tactic. Don McGahn has already waived his executive privilege by giving this information to Mueller. And the executive privilege doesn't apply when there are issues of possible fraud or obstruction.

The irony here is that Donald Trump should be thanking Mr. McGahn. I mean, Mr. McGahn is the one who saved him from firing bob Mueller and saved him from a far worse scandal.

COOPER: The president, as you know, is now claiming that everybody there follows his orders, that he doesn't have people who are defying him or ignoring him.

KHANNA: Well, it's very ironic, because the reason he's still president of the United States is because people did defy him. I mean, he had these crazy schemes for folks to blatantly break the law, and the only reason Mueller didn't have a more damning conclusion and left some ambiguity in terms of the obstruction issue is that it was a clumsy and inept attempt because he had people who were willing to defy him and not carry out blatantly illegal orders.

COOPER: Yes. Your committee has had to push back its deadline for subpoena of the president's financial records due to the suit the president filed yesterday against your committee's chairman, Elijah Cummings. Is this delay a victory for the president and is this a strategy you expect them to use to block other requests going forward?

KHANNA: Well, this is the strategy the president has used his whole life, to file lawsuits against whoever he's opposed to. Of course, the lawsuit wasn't in his official capacity as president. It was in his personal capacity, and that's because he knows there's no expectation of privacy in the same way when you're president of the United States.

I mean, I don't have an expectation of privacy in my financial records. He has disclosure requirements for his finances, and the Congress has every right to see whether those disclosures were accurate or not and whether there are conflicts of interest. So, he will lose in a court of law. The problem is that he's delaying, and he knows that by taking this to court, he is kicking the can down the road and preventing people from getting to the truth.

COOPER: About the testimony of the former White House Security Director, Carl Kline, that Jim Acosta was talking about, your committee wants to question him about the White House security clearance process. Chairman Cummings is moving towards holding Kline in contempt for refusing to comply with the subpoena.

If Cummings does hold Kline in contempt, would that be some kind of a tipping point between this Congress and the White House?

KHANNA: I do think so. Let's be clear here, the White House has not given us a single document or a single person to testify on the issue of why people got security clearances when career officials had said not to give them those clearances. And we have bent over backwards to try to get this information. And now, they're not allowing White House officials to testify.

This is unprecedented. It will go to a court. A court will rule for us, because Congress' power to subpoena is at its maximum when you have misconduct in the White House or allegations of misconduct.

But again, the problem, Anderson, is a court process could take months, and the president knows this.

[20:10:00] He knows that he has a 2020 re-election coming up. And he just wants to delay as much as possible.

COOPER: Is your committee, are other committees prepared for that kind of protracted and bitter fights with this White House? Because the message from the White House very clearly seems to be they're not going to comply, they're not going to back down, and it's going to be lawsuits and delays as long as possible.

You talked about months. I mean, with the court system, these things could drag on for a very, very long time, more than just a couple months.

KHANNA: They could. I mean, in George Bush's case with Harriet Miers, when there was a conflict with congress, it was resolved when President Bush was leaving office. And so, it can take months.

We are prepared to fight. But Anderson, here's the problem with our constitutional democracy. I mean, Madison in Federalist 51 when he talked about separation of powers and a check on the system, he assumed that people would be loyal to the branch they serve in, that ambition would counteract ambition, that Congress would check the executive branch because it's in our self-interest.

What's happened now is people are more loyal to their party than to the institution. And that's why the checks and balances system has not been working the way the Founders intended.

COOPER: And just, finally, there is certainly a lot of talk about impeachment of the president, and if your party's going to go that route, are you in favor of moving towards impeachment proceedings?

KHANNA: Not at this point. I'm where Nancy Pelosi is. We need to have a deliberate, methodical process.

We need to have Bob Mueller testify. There's something different about having the American people hear from Bob Mueller. There are not many people who have read a 450, 480-page report.

We need to hear from Don McGahn. And then we need to have the committees do their work and then see where we're at.

COOPER: Congressman Ro Khanna, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

KHANNA: Thank you, Anderson.

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