CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jerry Nadler

Interview

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BLITZER: Sunlen Serfaty up on Capitol Hill, thank you.

Joining us now, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler of New York.

Mr. Chairman, thanks so much for joining us.

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): Thank you. Great to be here.

BLITZER: Thank you. So you heard the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi say today, she's not feeling any pressure on --

[17:10:00]

BLITZER: -- the question of starting formal impeachment proceedings.

But on your committee alone, as you know, at least 11 Democrats are calling for beginning these kind of impeachment proceedings. That's nearly half of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.

Are you, Mr. Chairman, feeling any pressure from your members to at least open an impeachment inquiry?

NADLER: Well, the question -- let me put it this way. It may come to that. It may very well come to a formal impeachment inquiry. We will see.

And remember what an impeachment is. An impeachment -- an impeachment inquiry. An impeachment inquiry is a formal inquiry into whether you can prove that the president has committed sufficient impeachable offenses to warrant his being impeached by a formal vote of the House, which then sends it for trial to the Senate.

We'll go step by step. First, we're investigating all the things we would investigate in an impeachment inquiry. We are starting with the Mueller report, which shows -- I think it shows ample evidence of multiple crimes of obstruction of justice and abuse of power. And we will have the testimony about that. We will go into that --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Mr. Chairman, why not open a formal inquiry?

NADLER: As I said, it may come to that.

BLITZER: But why not now?

What's the problem if you start it right now and you begin the process?

You'll go ahead with investigations to begin with?

NADLER: Well, right now, there doesn't appear to be the support for it.

BLITZER: In your committee or in the -- among the Democrats in the whole --

NADLER: I'm not going to get into that but there does not appear to be the support for it now. And we will see; the support may develop.

Right now, we have to get the facts out, we have to educate the American people, because, after all, the American people have been lied to consistently by the president, by the attorney general, who have misrepresented what was in the Mueller report. That's why it's important for us to get Mueller to testify.

And remember what Mueller said last week. Mueller said, he characterized the findings of the Mueller report as, number one, that the Russians attacked our elections; number two, that they attacked it for the purpose of helping to elect Donald Trump; number three, that there were many people in the Trump campaign welcomed that interference on their behalf.

And number four, that after the campaign was over, the president, President Trump, when he was president, repeatedly obstructed justice, obstructed the investigation of the attack on our investigation. Those are very serious charges which we have to examine very carefully.

BLITZER: If you opened a formal inquiry, wouldn't that give you better access to witnesses, to documents?

Wouldn't you have a better case to make in obtaining that kind of information?

NADLER: In certain instances, it would give -- it might give us better cases -- better access. And the lawyers argue about the extent of that.

BLITZER: Are you on the same page with the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, when it comes to impeachment?

NADLER: As I said, we are launching an inquiry now and whether we launch an impeachment inquiry, it may come to that. It may come to that.

BLITZER: Well, is there any chance, Mr. Chairman, you would open up an impeachment inquiry without Speaker Pelosi's support?

NADAL: I think that if -- when that decision has to be made, it will be made not by any one individual, it will be made probably by the caucus as a whole. Certainly, Nancy will have the largest single voice in it; various committee chairmen and rank-and-file members.

BLITZER: And you're not there yet but it's potentially over the horizon. Let's move on, Mr. Chairman.

Why are you so confident that the former special counsel Robert Mueller will appear in public before your committee without a formal subpoena?

NADLER: Well, I didn't say without a formal subpoena. Hopefully, it won't come to that. But it may.

BLITZER: Are you confident he will appear, one way or another, with a subpoena or without a subpoena?

NADLER: Oh, sure. Sure. He's an honest, honorable person, unlike the White House, which is defying congressional subpoenas. There's no legal excuse for defying these subpoenas and I can't imagine that Mr. Mueller would defy the law. He's an honorable person.

BLITZER: Mueller says he won't be giving Congress any new information beyond what's already written in his 448-page report.

So why does he need to repeat himself during a public hearing?

NADLER: Well, first of all, he may give information without realizing it. He apparently -- I mean, he is a consummate civil servant and a very honest one and I think he's internalized that people --

[17:15:00]

NADLER: -- read the 448-page report carefully and certainly some lawyers do and hopefully most members of Congress have and other people. But most people don't.

And it's important for him to answer the questions, for example, what was the difference between him and Barr, when he said that the attorney general was misrepresenting the spirit of the -- of the report?

What did he mean?

That's not in the report.

But what did he mean?

And we may want to ask him questions about, Barr said this about the report, is that true?

BLITZER: Yes, I know there are a lot of questions you want to ask him.

But do you think you'll be able to convince him to give you additional new information?

NADLER: I think he's an honest man and he will answer the questions.

BLITZER: You've rejected an offer, I understand, from the Justice Department to drop a contempt resolution against the attorney general William Barr in exchange for additional documents from the Mueller report.

But in a letter to the Justice Department, you also say you're still willing to negotiate.

Can you share with us what you're willing to negotiate, some of your terms?

NADLER: I'm not going to get into specifics. The May 24th letter that we sent in was very specific about our last offer. But the fact of the matter is that the -- that they have tried to play us for fools and we're not fools. We've been through this story before.

We make good faith offers and they make a bad faith offer, which doesn't move at all or moves very little. And then they -- and then this goes on, back and forth for weeks. And then the night before McGahn is supposed to appear at the hearing, they say he won't appear.

The night before, after 10:00. Now they say they'll be willing to reopen the negotiations that they broke off if we will drop the contempt.

Let them give us a good faith offer and maybe we won't need the contempt. But I don't believe they will do that.

BLITZER: You're supposed to vote on the full House floor on that contempt resolution as early as next week, right?

NADLER: Tuesday.

BLITZER: So will it happen?

NADLER: I am almost definitely sure it will happen. It will happen unless they give us a very good faith offer, which I can't imagine they would do, because they've been dishonest throughout the entire process.

BLITZER: What would a very good faith offer mean?

NADLER: To let at least all the members of the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees see the redacted portions of the report, except for grand jury information, an agreement to go with us, as they did in every previous case, to the court to ask for the release of grand jury information.

BLITZER: Well, haven't they basically -- haven't they basically already done that with the exception of the grand jury information?

You can go do into a closed-door room up on the Hill and read that redacted portion of the Mueller report?

NADLER: No. They've said that I can do that and the ranking member but I can't tell anybody on the committee what I read.

Well, of what use is that information?

So I know information but I can't tell anybody.

BLITZER: Have you actually gone and read that?

NADLER: No, certainly not. I'm not going to go there until the members of my committee can go.

BLITZER: So you want all members of the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee to have access to that information because a lot of Republicans have already gone and read that information.

NADLER: A lot have not, because the offer was only to the chairman and the ranking members of several committees.

BLITZER: Right. But the Republicans, who are the ranking members, they -- on those committees, most of them have gone.

NADLER: Sure. Because they don't care. They don't care to communicate the information to anybody else. And they don't care about doing anything with the information.

The fact is, Congress is a collective body. If I know information but I can't share it with members of the committee, the committee can't do anything with that information.

So of what use is it?

It's a completely silly offer. Now we did offer, we made various offers of limiting some of the information, some of the underlying -- more important than the redacted portions of the report is the underlying information, which is what we really want to see.

And we've made various offers as to limiting how much, in essence, be more specific about which parts of the underlying evidence we wanted to see. And they have not been forth coming to even discuss that.

BLITZER: Mr. Chairman, you've been very generous with your time. Thanks so much for joining us. But very quickly, before I let you go, I just want to make sure you're feeling OK. I know you had a little incident a couple of weeks ago.

NADLER: I'm fine, thank you.

BLITZER: All right, good. Good to hear that. Thanks so much and you're always welcome to come back here into THE SITUATION ROOM. Appreciate it very much.

NADLER: Thank you.

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