MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: "Boris Johnson to become UK next PM"
Interview
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O`DONNELL: And we are lucky to be leading off our discussion tonight with two members of the committees who will be questioning Robert Mueller tomorrow: Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He`s a member of the House Judiciary Committee. And Democratic Congressman Peter Welch of Vermont. He is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman Raskin, let me go to this issue of will Robert Mueller be testifying alone or how is it going to work? Will it be different?
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): I wasn`t a party to those negotiations but last I heard he is the only witness there. The Republicans undoubtedly will try to draw everybody into it, and, you know, on the assumption that if you`re sitting at the table you`re fair game, but I don`t think that our chair will put up with that.
O`DONNELL: The Republicans seem to be objecting to any version of Mueller being accompanied by anyone to your committee.
RASKIN: Yes. They don`t want him accompanied. They also want to put him in a complete straitjacket and have him operate under a gag rule. But, look, that`s consistent with the whole effort to cover this thing up from the beginning. Remember, the report came out on March 22nd, and Attorney General Barr didn`t get it to us until April 18th, a day or two before Easter and Passover took place. Large parts of the most critical elements were redacted from it and they spent many weeks misleading the country about the contents of the report prompting the special counsel, prompting Mueller to write two letters of protest that the attorney general was confusing the country. So, we`ve got this thick fog of propaganda and deception that`s out there and the most we can hope for now is that Mueller`s testimony in his own voice, in his own words about the actual findings of the report will pierce through this fog of propaganda and let the people see that there were ten episodes of presidential obstruction of justice. And as my colleague will I think help us to get to, that there was lots of interaction between the Trump campaign and the Russians as they opened the doors and threw open the windows to this attempt to undermine and derail our election.
O`DONNELL: In your committee tomorrow, Aaron Zebley`s going to be a sworn witness at this stage. Do you expect committee members to solicit testimony from him as well as Robert Mueller? As much as Robert Mueller?
REP. PETER WELCH (D-VT): Our focus is going to definitely be on Mueller, and our goal is to let Mueller speak because if he just describes what is in the report, that`s very, very damaging to the president. But it is very good that Zebley is going to be there as well because if it`s just to give advice, he`s going to have specific details about all of those interactions you mentioned. Also, we`re establishing the precedent that we`ve been fighting for that some of these investigators, we have a right to call them.
O`DONNELL: Yes.
WELCH: To inquire what`s going on. Mueller is at the top, but a lot of the people doing the details, where they know what the negotiations were, they know what happened, they`re relevant to get the story out to the American people. So we think -- we`re glad that he`s going to be there and we are glad that he`s going to be sworn in.
O`DONNELL: And the -- every member of the committee has a staff member nearby, when you`re not coming up with exactly the right thing in the right moment. And so, the idea that Mueller will have somebody there to also make sure that his answer is focused, you know, it`s one of those situations where Mueller might give an answer and he could easily lean in and say, you know, you might want to add that. And if you watch can hearings, it happens all the time, you know, with the members and with the chairman.
RASKIN: Well, Mueller`s been clear that he`s not going to venture outside the four corners of the report. In other words, there`s not going to be any new factual bombshells, but the report is filled with bombshells for the 99 percent of the American people who haven`t read the report yet. So, it will be astonishing and astounding to people to hear in his own words the description of the president attempting to obstruct justice, attempting to tamper with witnesses, essentially cooperating with the Russians. Not turning any evidence over to law enforcement or the FBI about all of these attempts, you know, to get into the DNC and the DCCC and so on and encouraging this subversion of our election. So I think that this whole hearing could be like a second chance for American democracy. Barr and Trump with their moronic mantra of no obstruction, no collusion, have set the country back. They derailed us. But this is an opportunity for us to try once again. But even up to the last minute, there are all these desperate ploys from the Trump administration to shut it down.
O`DONNELL: If Mueller does confine himself to strictly what`s in the report, that means he will not answer what I think is now -- by now the number one question that people have been saying they want to hear for months now, which is if Donald Trump were not the president of the United States, would he have been charged with a crime?
WELCH: That`s right.
O`DONNELL: According to the -- not going beyond the report, Mueller simply will refuse to answer that question if he`s going to stay confined to the report.
WELCH: Which would show the limitations. I mean, I do believe Mr. Mueller is going to try to get the truth out from his report, and if he is given a chance to do that, we`re going to hear how the Trump campaign actually provided detailed polling information to the Russians knowing that it was intended to sow social media disinformation. And it was the internals, not just the horse race numbers, and that`s just a vivid example of how there was cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russians. And that`s a pretty shocking thing, never before done in American history. A lot of what`s going on now is the drama about the battle that is essentially between Mueller and Barr. Mueller`s job through the report was to get the information out. Barr has defined his job as to conceal it. That`s essentially what`s going on. And these sideshow fights are essentially just the relentless effort on the part of the Trump administration now, unfortunately, with the assistance of Attorney General Barr to conceal the facts through obfuscation.
O`DONNELL: The -- one of the ongoing conditions of this investigation was something we`ve never seen before, which is the president attacking the special investigation of the president. Previous presidents had never gone into that kind of pure attack mode. President in effect threatening to fire them all publicly -- saying publicly I can fire them, I haven`t fired them that, that sort of thing. And then in the course of the investigation, White House counsel Don McGahn testifies to the special prosecutor that I was ordered to fire you and I was ordered to fire you twice, and here is what is not in the Mueller report. What was Robert Mueller`s reaction to that as a prosecutor? Did he take any precautions? Now that the threat of firing was so vivid, did that in any way affect the way he or his staff approached this work after knowing that the president tried to fire them? And if Robert Mueller sticks to the report, he will not answer a simple question like, were you concerned or were any of your staff concerned about being fired by the president?
RASKIN: Well, I think you`re right, he`s not going to answer that question, which goes to his state and mind and subjective impressions and sentiments that he had. He`s not going to go there. He wants to stick to a --
O`DONNELL: It may not necessarily be subjective, meaning the answer -- the true answer could be, and we may discover this some years from now, the true answer could be we sped up the investigation because we were afraid of being fired or we didn`t subpoena the president because we were afraid of being fired or we didn`t subpoena Donald Trump Jr. because we were afraid of being fired. That is not a subjective feelings reaction.
RASKIN: It`s a process question that he`s going to avoid. He`s going to say that goes --
O`DONNELL: But is that -- is that a service to the country?
WELCH: No. No, it is not. It`s not. You know --
O`DONNELL: And not reveal things like that.
WELCH: What we know, Mueller wasn`t afraid of being fired. He`s just got too much credibility, too much integrity, too much respect, but a lot of people working for Mueller might well have been afraid of being fired, and essentially what you saw with the Mueller report being shelved while Mr. Barr put out his four-page summary was the two men were in a fight, and one showed up with a gun and another showed up with a knife, and Barr won. And what the question is for Mr. Mueller, what`s his higher duty? Is it to defend his report and does that have -- does that require him to go out beyond his comfort zone when his report is being so eroded by a take-no-prisoners Attorney General Barr?
O`DONNELL: Yes, and that`s actually why I`m hoping there`s two comfort zones in the hearing. Mueller`s and Aaron Zebley`s comfort zone is a different comfort zone, and possibly a wider comfort zone.
RASKIN: Well, let`s hope that`s the case. I mean, look, we shouldn`t pin everything on Mueller because there`s a lot of other information that needs to come out. And remember, the Mueller report itself doesn`t deal with any financial wrongdoing. It doesn`t deal with money laundering from Russian oligarchs through the office tower in the hotels. It doesn`t deal with financial fraud. It doesn`t deal with repeated and continuing violations of the emoluments clause by pocketing money from foreign governments. So it`s not the be all and the end all. Let`s let him convey what he has to say according to the terms that he set for himself, and I think that that will do a service to the public. I mean, we can be disappointed in some decisions he`s made, but that`s water under the bridge. Let`s let him speak and then we`ve got to look much more broadly at the corruption, the obstruction of justice and the lawlessness of this administration. And that`s up to us. We can`t pin it all on the special counsel. We are Congress. We`re the Article 1 branch. We are the people`s representatives. We are the law-making power. We`ve got the responsibility to move against the lawlessness and the criminality taking place in the White House.
O`DONNELL: And that is something that Robert Mueller could make verbally clear. I think his point makes that clear, that it is your responsibility, especially in the end of the report.
WELCH: That`s right. You know, essentially what I hope we have an opportunity to do is let Mueller talk about his report because what that report shows is that there has been a shattering of important democratic norms. No candidate for president in our history has cooperated with a foreign power, and you can call it whatever you want. I`ll let the lawyers argue about collusion or conspiracy. Just the facts of what the Trump team did knowingly. And then secondly, to have the president leading the charge and trying to cover up what happened and then to launch in to his attacks on fake news on journalism, on the courts, the things that he`s doing as standard procedure, it`s a shattering of norms that the Mueller report really reveals that started from the moment candidate Trump came down that escalator and started vilifying people on the basis of their ethnic origin.
O`DONNELL: You recently came out in support of impeachment. Are you hoping that tomorrow`s hearing helps clarify that for other members of the House?
WELCH: Not really. Because I think that does get it into the partisan aspect of this. What I`m hoping is that just the report gets out because I -- it hasn`t been read.
O`DONNELL: Mmm-hmm.
WELCH: And if people are aware of what the facts are, it`s going to allow them to come to their own conclusion, and that`s what we have to do. So I see this as essentially a duty that we have and see where it leads. But there has been no wide dissemination of the actual details that are in the report. This is an opportunity for Mr. Mueller to do it.
O`DONNELL: Do you think there are any house members who are just in effect waiting for this testimony and then will announce their support for impeachment after it?
RASKIN: I think there are some. You know, Justin Amash is an instructive example of this. I mean, he read the report and he said the conclusion was irresistible, inescapable in his mind that there was substantial or overwhelming evidence that the president had committed high crimes and misdemeanors, and he challenged all of his colleagues to read the report. He was one Republican who did. He`s no longer a Republican. I think that`s an enormously promising sign. You know, The original groups of people to come out for it are the ones on the investigative committees who are most closely connected to the investigation, and we`ve seen real up close and personal the trampling of the norms that Peter`s talking about but also the violation of the laws and the absolute defiance that this administration has shown towards congressional power and our lawful power to get information, even war with it.
WELCH: I was going to say, I did come out for impeachment. It was reluctant. We`ve got to honor the outcomes of elections, but there`s two things that have happened. Our Constitution says no person is above the law and every person is entitled to the full protection of the law. And Donald Trump every single day is repudiating that. He is not submitting to any recognition of Article I responsibility to Congress. And he`s attacking people not for what they believe or what they`re doing, it`s on the basis of who they are. What`s their ethnic origin? What`s their race? What`s their gender? And that is a complete shattering of those norms that hold us together and allow us to make progress in difficult times.
O`DONNELL: Congressman Peter Welch gets the LAST WORD in this round. I don`t think you`re going to get the LAST WORD in the hearing tomorrow. I think that`s going to be Robert Mueller. Congressman Jamie Raskin, Congressman Peter Welch, thank you very much for starting us off tonight. Really appreciate it.
RASKIN: Thanks for having us.
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