CNN "Anderson Cooper 360" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Adam Schiff

Interview

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MURRAY: The announcement overnight of a deal for him to answer questions came only after both the House Judiciary and Intelligence committee subpoenaed him.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Certainly, the outlines of what he's going to talk about are in the report. So, many Americans haven't read the report, but, again, I think we should be realistic about our expectations.

MURRAY: The committees are expected to question Mueller in back-to- back hearings that will be televised gavel-to-gavel, followed by a closed-door session with the House Intelligence Committee.

That hearing will include Mueller's staff to focus on counterintelligence issues. Among the questions Democrats say they want to ask, why Mueller never subpoenaed the president to testify, and why Mueller chose not to say outright that Trump obstructed justice.

Mueller's report concluded there was not enough evidence to charge members of the Trump campaign with conspiring with Russians. But he left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice, writing: "If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state."

REP. MARK MEADOWS (R-NC): Bob Mueller be prepared, because I can tell you he will be cross-examined for the first time. And the American people will start to see the flaws in his report.

MURRAY: Tonight, Republicans say they are jumping at the chance to question the special counsel's conclusions and publicly scrutinize the origins of Mueller's investigation.

REP. DOUG COLLINS (R-GA): The American people deserve a full accounting of what he did, not only just the conclusions, which, in the end, showed nothing. And, again, we're doing a redo of his report. It has been out for two months. But I think now it's appropriate to see where it came from.

MURRAY: One of President Trump's attorneys is already blasting the hearings as political theater put on by angry Democrats and offering a line of questioning to Republicans.

JAY SEKULOW, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The biggest question Bob Mueller is going to have to ask himself is -- or be asked is, do you really think it is the job of the special counsel to exonerate someone?

He specifically said, we're not saying the president committed a crime. We're not exonerating him either.

But the job of the special counsel is not to exonerate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY: Now, it'll be interesting to see how Bob Mueller parries these questions about the origins of the investigation.

Wolf, we know that that is something Attorney General William Barr is already looking into -- back to you.

BLITZER: All right, Sara, thank you, Sara Murray reporting.

Joining us now, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee -- that's the committee that will hear testimony from Robert Mueller, in addition to the Judiciary Committee -- Congressman Adam Schiff.

Congressman, thanks very much for coming in.

SCHIFF: Pleasure. Good to be with you.

BLITZER: Is there a time constraint? I'm hearing suggestions that Mueller agreed to testify in public before your committee and the Judiciary Committee, but he set a strict number of hours he's willing to appear.

Is that true?

SCHIFF: Well, in our committee, he's agreed to appear until all the members have a chance to ask their five minutes of questions.

Now, we may divvy up the time differently than that. But he is committed to making sure that we can have a full hearing and all our members are allotted that kind of time.

BLITZER: So, as long as it takes, he will stay there; is that your understanding?

SCHIFF: He will stay as long as it takes for all the members to get through their five-minute questions.

So that's the commitment, not to do a second round, essentially, but to do a normal hearing, where we have one round of questioning.

BLITZER: And then he will go behind closed doors and continue the discussion with you?

SCHIFF: We will have a continued discussion with his staff, but he will not be present for the closed session.

BLITZER: Is it your understanding the Judiciary Committee has that same requirement, five minutes for each member, he stays throughout? SCHIFF: I will leave it to Judiciary Committee. I think they have a

different arrangement. But that's what we negotiated or worked out in terms of our committee.

BLITZER: And the Judiciary Committee will go first, and the Intelligence Committee goes second?

SCHIFF: Yes, the Judiciary Committee will do their open hearing component with the special counsel, immediately followed by the Intelligence Committee.

And then we will have the closed session with the Judiciary Committee, potentially, but with the Intelligence Committee.

BLITZER: What are some of the most important questions you think Robert Mueller needs to answer?

SCHIFF: Well, we have a great deal of questions.

On the Intel Committee, we will probably focus most on volume one. That is the numerous interactions, over 100 interactions, between the Trump campaign and the Russians, why Bob Mueller reached certain conclusions that he did. What witnesses made themselves unavailable? Why weren't certain people interviewed?

Why did he reach certain conclusions in terms of the conspiracy charges, particularly around the Trump Tower meeting where you had the Russians offer dirt, the president's son accept the offer, an overt act in that Trump Tower, in furtherance of the conspiracy?

[18:10:11]

But will also want to know, what happened to the counterintelligence investigations and what were the findings? And what was the process there? We will want to know, where were you stymied? What other avenues were you not allowed to pursue? Did you follow the money? Were you seeking to follow the money? Did Rod Rosenstein put any restrictions on the scope of your investigation?

We will want to know basically anything that we need to protect the country. Is there still a risk of compromise here, such that the president or people around him are acting for financial interests or other interests and not in the national interests?

BLITZER: What are your expectations? You think we will learn something new, beyond the 448-page Mueller report?

SCHIFF: I think we will.

And, again, underscoring the compromise issues, the president said today that whether he talks about wouldn't about the upcoming election is none of our business.

It is very much our business. And, frankly, we have concerns that they not be talking about his business. And we do know that, during the campaign, Trump was talking to the Russians, or his staff were, trying to make this deal happen and make him money in Moscow, and they were seeking the help of the Kremlin.

So this is very much our business. And that is, is the American president acting in our interests or because he has some financial motivation?

BLITZER: Are you surprised it took a formal subpoena to get him to appear before your committee and the Judiciary Committee, as opposed to simply a letter inviting him to come up?

SCHIFF: I am surprised.

Look, he took the job. We should be grateful he took the job. This comes with the job. The Republicans would like America to believe that when a special counsel or special prosecutor does their investigation and presents it to Congress, that's the end, instead of the beginning.

If it were up to the Republicans, there would have been no Watergate hearings. They would have said, OK, we don't need to look into any of this because the special prosecutor did.

That's not how the process is intended to work. That's certainly not how Bob Mueller envisioned it when he said that he was providing this to Congress because he was not empowered to indict.

And for Jay Sekulow, in that clip you just played, to say it's not the job of a prosecutor to exonerate, he's assuming that the prosecutor can do what they normally do, which is indict. But he was not allowed to indict.

And so this is what Bob Mueller decided to do.

BLITZER: The president says simply you're going after more harassment of him. You simply want a do-over.

What's your reaction to that?

SCHIFF: This is the president, as always, as victim: They're treating me so unfairly. They want to look into whether I broke the law. How dare Congress investigate whether the president of the United States broke the law.

Yes, we're going to look into whether president of the United States broke the law. We're going to look into whether the president is compromised. The president's acknowledged that seeking business in Russia was a conflict of interests. And yet he lied to the country about it.

So you're darn right this is the business of the Congress and the country. And we're not going to be deterred by his mantra of harassment.

BLITZER: Republicans will have very different questions than the Democrats have in your committee and the Judiciary Committee. Are you concerned it will become politically very contentious, and this whole thing could simply backfire? SCHIFF: Look, I think it's going to be the GOP strategy to make a

circus out of these hearings. And you heard some of the clips there of some of my GOP colleagues saying that just wait until we get ahold of Bob Mueller.

That's been the strategy from the beginning. Certainly, in our committee, when we began the investigation, the strategy on the GOP side was, we are an extension of the president's legal defense team.

We're going to see that, I suspect, played out in these hearings. But we're going to do our best to keep them civil, to keep them focused on the facts. They can ask about whatever facts they're interested in.

But we want to make sure that Bob Mueller is not subjected to improper or unprofessional treatment.

BLITZER: Will you rotate, five minutes for a Democratic member, five minutes for a Republican member, five minutes for a Democrat, five minutes for a Republican, go back and forth?

SCHIFF: We're going to sit down among the members and discuss how we want to structure the hearing.

When we have a fact witness, we often do those interviews, sometimes staff-led, sometimes members and staff with one hour for one side, then another hour for the other side. We will have to have a conversation among the members about how we want to proceed.

BLITZER: But you haven't reached an agreement on that yet?

SCHIFF: No.

I mean, it's up to the committee how they want to conduct the hearing.

BLITZER: Because the concern -- a lot of us who have watched these hearings over the years -- and I'm sure you're concerned about it as well -- if every member gets five minutes, a lot of those members simply are going to speak for four-and-a-half minutes, and then ask one question, and it's going to be a waste of time.

SCHIFF: Well, we have to make sure that's not what happens.

And, in addition to making sure that whoever does the questioning, in however and whatever manner we do it, that we get through the most important points.

But, also, we want to make sure that what we do in the Intel Committee is not duplicative of what the Judiciary Committee is doing. We have a limited period of time overall, and we want to make sure we maximize the use of it.

[18:15:07]

BLITZER: Do you think this Mueller appearance will change attitudes as far as launching formal impeachment hearings, an impeachment procedure? So far, you're opposed to that.

SCHIFF: I don't know whether the hearing will have that effect.

I come into this with, I think, a realistic expectation. We know most of what Bob Mueller is going to say. It's in his report. But, nonetheless, hearing from him, not just the dry page, but hearing the prosecutor who looked into this talk about multiple acts of obstruction of justice, that can be powerful.

And the effect on the country, we will have to wait and find out.

BLITZER: Your committee has issued subpoenas for two witnesses to appear, Michael Flynn and Rick Gates.

The deadline for the documents that you wanted from them is today. Have those individuals complied with your requests?

SCHIFF: I'm not prepared to speak to that yet.

But if we have to speak to enforce those subpoenas through court, as we have seen other committees have had to do, then we will take whatever steps are necessary. We're going to make sure that the Congress enforcement power is validated.

If we have to use litigation, we will do that.

BLITZER: It sounds like -- as if they haven't complied, at least not yet.

SCHIFF: I really don't want to comment on that at this point.

BLITZER: What about the situation along the border, the U.S.-Mexico border?

You have seen, we have all seen that horrific photo of that father and that little daughter of his.

There's two different bills now that have passed, a House bill passed by -- largely by the Democrats, a Senate bill passed largely by the Republicans. Are you going to be able to work out a compromise?

SCHIFF: We have to work out a compromise.

And, Wolf, I have to say, every now and then, there are images that just -- that just are shattering. And this is one of them. To see that father and daughter embrace until the end, it just is absolutely devastating.

We're going to have to work this out. But, again, I have to say that the president's effort to deflect responsibility, this is the product of this policy. Part of the point of his policy is to make conditions cruel enough to deter migration, cruel enough to get the Congress to build his wall.

And the results are tragic. They're tragic. And for him to try to deflect responsibility -- he's the president of the United States. The buck stops with him. It's time for him to stop acting like a victim and to start acting like the president of the United States.

BLITZER: He's blaming you, the Democrats. You know that.

SCHIFF: Oh, he blames everyone but himself.

But this is the result, the tragic result, of his policy of making people use -- using metering to force people to wait to try to slow the flow artificially of those who are seeking refuge from violence and hardship.

There's no need for this. And it's had the most disastrous consequences.

BLITZER: Congressman Schiff, thanks so much for coming in.

SCHIFF: Thanks, Wolf.

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