CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Pramila Jayapal

Interview

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BURNETT: All right. Sunlen, thank you very much.

And I want to go straight now to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, co-chair of the Progressive Congressional Caucus.

And I appreciate your time, Congresswoman.

I know you support opening an impeachment inquiry, and, obviously, Hakeem Jeffries now saying he does, too. Clyburn saying it's inevitable. But now we're now finding out behind closed doors the speaker still says she's opposed.

What do you say to her?

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): Well, look, I think the big point here are Democrats are united on our "For the People" agenda and we're united on holding the president accountable. There's a different opinion within some of the caucus on how best to do that. You're going to see this contempt vote for the attorney general, for others that we might hold in contempt. You're going to see them come to the floor.

We are going to be holding hearings in judiciary. We just announced on Monday, we will have a part two with some very powerful prosecutors there. Many of us on the Judiciary Committee who have been in the details and in the weeds of this day and in and day out for the last six months, we understand exactly what's at stake, and we have more information than some of the other caucus members.

It may take us a while, but I really do believe that we need to have these hearings. I believe we should call them a formal impeachment inquiry, and we need to make sure we get the facts.

BURNETT: Do you think the speaker is moving at all in your direction? I mean, obviously, she keeps having to address. So, in some level it's a thorny problem for her.

But do you think she's moving at all? I mean, do you still have confidence in her making the ultimate decision, which, of course, she does?

JAYAPAL: I do have confidence in her. She's got a different role. She's speaker of the whole caucus. She's got to get everybody to the same place.

And, you know, we don't have that role. We are in judiciary, and I think really this president is the one who controls what happens, because as he continues to just evade, obstruct, ongoing obstruction of justice, stopping witnesses from coming, ignoring legally authorized subpoenas, that is where you see us having to ramp up and say nobody is above the law, not even the president of the United States. That's what makes us a democracy.

BURNETT: Now, you know, back in the Nixon days, people point to the polls that shows less than 20 percent of Americans supported impeachment before formal impeachment hearings. And then when you got those proceedings people tuned in, they listened. It was formal. They could see the evidence. Obviously, that changed dramatically.

Right now, 41 percent of Americans support impeachment, which is way more than back then. But what I take away is actually 33 percent of Americans wanted to impeach Obama at this point in this presidency, 30 percent wanted to impeach George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. So, we're higher than that, but sort of in that range, it just seems to be a more partisan time.

Are you concerned about the public support numbers?

JAYAPAL: What I'm really concerned about is protecting our Constitution. That is what we were sworn to do. That's what we go to bed at night and wake up in the morning thinking about. And for me, you can't compare what has happened with this president,

what's in the special counsel Mueller's report, the ten potential charges of obstruction of justice, the interference by Russians into our elections and the absolute refusal of this president to do anything about it because he and his campaign team were deeply integrally involved.

All of that just makes everything else that's come before us in recent years anyway, not the Nixon years, really pale in comparison. And I think at some point, we are here in office because we were elected by people to lead.

[19:35:05] And we have got to lead. We've got to help Americans understand what is in the Mueller report and lay it out for people. Make sure we have to the facts we need ourselves and then follow them to their conclusion, because in the end, much more important than any specific election result is, do we have a democracy where there are three coequal branches of government holding accountable everybody and not allowing us to have a king instead of a president?

BURNETT: All right. Congresswoman Jayapal, thanks very much for your time.

JAYAPAL: Thank you.

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