CNN "Anderson Cooper 360" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Adam Schiff
Interview
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COOPER: All right. Manu Raju, thanks very much. Earlier, I spoke with Congressman Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
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COOPER: What's your reaction to this extraordinary move by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee to subpoena Donald Trump Jr.?
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, it's impressive that on a bipartisan basis, they want to bring don Jr. back before the committee. And I think it's an indication that they have serious questions about his prior testimony or that new facts have shed light on the need to ask additional questions. Given that Don Jr. refused to testify before the special counsel, I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to obstruct the Senate investigation, as well.
[20:05:06] COOPER: Can you see bringing him before your committee, as well? Or would you like to?
SCHIFF: You know, we are discussing which witnesses we need to have come back. Obviously, we brought Michael Cohen back before the committee. He added a lot of important information, insights we didn't before. He was able to tell us why he was able to testify the last time he came before the committee and gave us a great additional leads. Some of his testimony also did call into question whether or not we needed to bring Don Jr. back, but we have yet to make that decision.
COOPER: Just today, in fact, just very late today, it was announced that your committee has issued a subpoena to the attorney general for essentially all documents relating to the Mueller investigation. Is that correct?
SCHIFF: Yes, our focus is on the counterintelligence and foreign intelligence part of this. And that is that this investigation began not as a criminal probe, but as a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether the people around Donald Trump and Donald Trump himself were acting as witting or unwitting agents of a foreign power, that is Russia.
We still do not know whether that counterintelligence is ongoing, whether it stopped at some point. All we know is that when James Comey got fired, we ceased to get briefings on that counterintelligence investigation. So we want all of that information.
By law, the department is required to give it to us, and they have been stonewalling us, as well as other committees. But what I'm getting is, all of this is a counterintelligence problem, whether it's a crime or not. The fact that you have a foreign power intervening an election, you have a campaign knowing that they're doing so, willing to get the help, that compromises Don Jr., it compromises others, and that can influence U.S. policy because the Russians could have exposed it if we didn't learn about this through our investigation.
COOPER: It's also interesting, because Devin Nunes has also been in agreement with you, probably for different reasons, that he wants to see documentation, the underlying documents from the counterintelligence part of the Mueller investigation.
SCHIFF: Yes, it's been a strange irony that after being at loggerheads for so long, that we're in agreement that the Department of Justice needs to follow the law, they need to give us this information so we can see it, whichever way it cuts.
COOPER: And if they don't, what happens?
SCHIFF: Well, then we travel down the same path that the Judiciary Committee just did. We've issued a subpoena within the last hour or so. We will so to speak to enforce it if they don't comply. And that may mean we head down the road of contempt and litigation.
I would hope that won't be necessary. But if they're going to claim executive privilege over everything, as they're asserting today, that means they're going to stonewall, I think, probably each and every committee.
COOPER: Do you agree with Congressman Nadler, Chairman Nadler, that we're in a constitutional crisis?
SCHIFF: We are, we are. We've never had a president who's so blanketly, uniformly said, Congress, you have no business overseeing what our administration is doing. And what my Republican colleagues don't seem to appreciate is, Donald Trump is not going to be the last president. He may want to be, he's not going to be the last president, which means they'll want to oversee a Democratic president in the future.
They're going to have concerns about corruption and malfeasance. And if they prop up this president and say, no, he doesn't have to yield to any oversight or scrutiny, they're going to be giving a green light to all kinds of corruption and malfeasance by presidents of either party.
COOPER: But, clearly, the strategy from the White House is to stonewall, to stop, try to stop everything, as much as they can. Ultimately, that may not work out through the courts. But, just stonewalling long enough for the election, that may be enough.
SCHIFF: I don't think they're going to be able to stonewall through the election. But, yes, they're trying to buy time, they're trying to draw this out and simultaneously blame Democrats for how long the investigation is taking. That's the strategy they used with Mueller and they had some success. They played rope-a-dope with Mueller over the president's own interview, until Mueller essentially said it would take too long to get this resolved.
We're going to press. We're going to seek expedited briefing schedules. We're going to try to make this happen fast and we're going to explore other remedies, like the use of Congress' inherent contempt power, the use of our power to fence funding, if agencies don't comply.
But at the end of the day, we have to make sure that the oversight work gets done. Otherwise, the country is vulnerable. He becomes a completely lawless president. And there's no way of ferreting out corruption or fraud or abuse.
COOPER: Representative Schiff, I appreciate it. Thank you.
SCHIFF: Thank you.
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