CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Lou Correa

Interview

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HARLOW: It is really significant.

And with us now is one of the Democratic lawmakers who will be taking that vote, Congressman Lou Correa of California.

[09:40:04] Thank you for being with us, congressman. And let me just begin there. As you know, the Department of Justice,

the latest development, is that they say the president is prepared to invoke executive privilege over the Mueller report if you guys hold this vote, which it's very clear you're going to in just minutes. How will you vote and what do you make of that threat?

REP. LOU CORREA (D-CA): Well, first of all, you know that this president is very tough. He's going to fight us at every corner. So we're going to have to vote to hold Attorney General Barr in contempt. We want to get to the truth and the truth starts with having that un- redacted Mueller report in front of us.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this, though, is this the right battle -- you've got several battles happening at the same time. You want the president's tax returns, you want to get Mueller to testify, you want Barr perhaps to come back to committee, of course he refused to sit before the House, and this. Is this the most winnable, most important battle here? Because, after all, the attorney general gave you most of the report with minimal redactions. Why go to the mat on this?

CORREA: Well, this is a very important report because what we want to know is the truth, not just for the sake of truth, but the Russians in 2016 tasted victory and Secretary Nielsen of Homeland Security, before she was fired, actually said that she had suspicions that the Russians were back for 2020. So we have to know what happened in 2016, we have to know everything that happened to make sure that we're ready for 2020. So this is not just a fishing expedition to me, this is democracy on the line.

HARLOW: So the chairman of your committee, Jerry Nadler, just made a big headline this morning on CNN when he told our Alisyn Camerota he's not as confident now that Bob Mueller will testify. Are you also wavering in your confidence that your committee will get to question the special counsel?

CORREA: Well, those -- those have been the facts. Mr. Mueller refused to show up last week and it's pretty clear he is not going to show up and so we have to move forward.

HARLOW: Sir -- Mr. -- you mean Barr refused to show up.

CORREA: I'm sorry, Mr. Barr, yes.

HARLOW: I'm talking about the special counsel.

CORREA: Yes. Yes.

HARLOW: OK, so let me just ask you that again, are you -- are you less confident this morning that the special counsel, Bob Mueller, will testify on that proposed date of May 15th?

CORREA: We're hoping that Mr. Mueller shows up and testifies on the 15th. You know, the whole public, everybody in this country wants to know what the Mueller report was all about. We have to hear it from Mr. Mueller himself. What did you mean in your report?

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this, though, congressman. I'm sure you've been watching these numbers. The president's approval rating, it's at 46 percent in the Gallup survey. Those numbers just out yesterday, up 7 points since March. So in the midst of the Mueller report being completed, going out there, the president's support is growing.

I wonder how much you're hearing from constituents that they want you to go down the -- go down to the mat on all of these battles, or are you seeing in those numbers concerns that Democrats have political risk here of moving beyond really the political appetite to investigate this president?

CORREA: And you're absolutely right, the politics have a lot to do with what's going on. But, at the end of the day, I've got to do my job as a member of Congress. And my job is to get to the truth. I want to see what the Mueller report is about and I want to hear from Mr. Mueller.

And, again, we have to learn lessons from the election of 2016, and that's where Mr. Mueller has to tell us what happened, what are the lessons learned for 2020?

HARLOW: Congressman, if I could, just for a moment.

CORREA: Yes.

HARLOW: Perhaps the most important news, of course -- not perhaps -- the most important news of the morning is that kids got gunned down at a school in Colorado less than 20 miles from Columbine.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: You have an 18-year-old who is dead. You have three teenagers still in the hospital, five who got released.

I know what you've done in terms of pushing for universal background checks, et cetera. What are you committed to doing to making -- to make sure that no other child, not a single additional child in America, has to go through this hell?

SCIUTTO: And you're absolutely right, we cannot have any more of these deaths in our schools. I'm a father. I've got four children. They're now out of high school. But I keep worrying about their safety. I worry about the safety of every child in this country while they're attending school, or attending church.

I'm working with the locals, the local school districts, local police officers, local police agencies to do everything we can to harden our schools and our places of worship. And as Americans, we cannot give up on this issue. We have to make sure everyone everywhere is 100 percent safe.

SCIUTTO: But haven't we given up? I mean -- and I appreciate the sentiment and I appreciate the effort and I know that a lot of this runs up against Republican opposition in the Senate, but we and our viewers have heard statements like this repeatedly for years. This is the 13th gun shooting this year. There were 45 school shootings -- there were 45 last year. I imagine folks are frustrated that they hear these comments all the time and that the bar --

[09:45:05] HARLOW: Nothing changes.

SCIUTTO: Nothing changes.

CORREA: Well, we have to move ahead and --

SCIUTTO: How do you get past Republican opposition is the simplest question?

CORREA: Well, I'm hoping that our Republican friends understand that background checks are common sense legislation to protect our communities. At the local level, one of my local school districts is spending a lot of money to build fencing around a school. Why? Because we don't want the bad folks to get into our schools.

So we're doing everything we can at every level of government. We're going -- we're not going to give up. We cannot.

SCIUTTO: Congressman Correa, we wish you luck in that effort. We do. And we're going to keep asking about it because it's important.

CORREA: Thank you very much.

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