MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: "WH releases summary of call with Ukraine President."

Interview

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MADDOW: All right. Joining us is Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. He sits on the Foreign Relations Committee. I specifically want to speak with Senator Murphy tonight because he met with the Ukrainian president and visited with Ukrainian government officials in Ukraine and has some unique insight here. Senator, thank you so much for making time to be with us tonight.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Thanks a lot.

MADDOW: Tell us where you`re at right now on this story, given your sort of unique subject matter expertise in this area and what has unfolded over the course of this last 48 hours. What do you make of this moment that we are in?

MURPHY: Well, way back in spring, I started to hear these concerns raised to me by my Ukrainian contacts that the Trump administration through Rudy Giuliani and perhaps others were engaged in a pretty substantial pressure campaign to get the new president to turn his administration into a vehicle for the president`s political advancement in an attempt to try to destroy the president`s political opponents. And so, I think what we`ve seen in this transcript this morning is really just the tip of the iceberg. And though I haven`t seen this whistleblower complaint, I guess that it may provide some really alarming context to how comprehensive this effort was to try to enlist the Ukrainian president in the president`s 2020 reelection campaign. And so when I went to Ukraine, I raised this with the president, with President Zelensky. I told him that it really was not in Ukraine`s interest to get involved in the 2020 election. He assured me they had no interest in doing so. But it now seems as if the entire U.S./Ukraine relationship over the past several months has been viewed by the president as simply a mechanism to try to advance his political interests, and that`s likely why this becomes an urgent national security concern, because the focus of our relationship with the Ukraine prior to Zelensky`s ascension to the presidency was around sending a message to Russia that their aggression in the region would be met with a firm response from the United States, by turning it into just a mechanism to try to help the president`s reelection, that is of grave consequence to U.S. national security.

MADDOW: Now, the president tried to drag you into this by essentially claiming your contacts with the Ukrainian government, your discussions with President Zelensky themselves should be seen as improper, which is sort of weird what about-ism, he accused you of having threatened the government of Ukraine. I have to ask your response to that.

MURPHY: Yes. I mean, that`s an interesting Jedi mind trick by the president, to suggest that I am engaged in corruption because I`m telling the Ukrainian government to not accede to the president`s corrupt request for them to interfere in the 2020 election. I`m very clear about what I said to the president of Ukraine. I told him that if he`s talking to the United States, he should be talking to the State Department. He should not be engaged in conversations with the president`s reelection campaign. And if he were to do that, he would damage his credibility globally and in the United States, that is not -- undue interference. That is a recommendation that the government of Ukraine stay out of U.S. politics, which is really good advice for any foreign government. So I stand by that belief and would say it again if I had the chance to talk to the Ukrainian president.

MADDOW: You mentioned at the top of our discussion tonight that you feel like this may be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what was going on here between the Trump administration and this, what appears to be a corrupt effort to enlist this foreign government in helping the president get reelected. I know that you were very reluctant to come out and say that you believe the president ought to be impeached on this and on any other matter. But you recently came out and said despite that earlier reticence, you real I do believe impeachment proceedings are warranted here. Given that and given what you know about the circumstance, I wonder what you think about how the House should approach this. Should they just approach this discrete issue of the president asking a foreign government for help with his reelection campaign, and just say it`s basically done and move forward and impeaching him on that? Or do you think this should be sort of a toe hold to investigate these issues more broadly, to try to bring all of this stuff to light, especially if you think there is a lot more here?

MURPHY: Well, I think we have an interest in expediency. The president only has slightly more than a year left on his term, and so I would like to see a process in the House that works as quickly as possible. And I do believe that if the president is shown to have used his office in order to try to get a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 election, that in and of itself is impeachable. And so, I leave it to the House generally to decide the scope of this inquiry, but I don`t know that you have to go much beyond the events that have been uncovered in the last several days. And I frankly think that there`s a lot of questions that need to be asked just about the extent of this corruption. Remember, Mike Pompeo said this weekend, you know, he can`t tell you if members of the State Department itself were not involved in this pressure campaign. There are reports today that our envoy for the U.S. -- Ukraine/Russia dispute, Kurt Volker, may have been involved. So, I think there is plenty of investigation to do here. This may be enough for the House to take on in and of itself.

MADDOW: If those other officials were involved, do you think that impeachment proceedings should be brought against them?

MURPHY: Well, listen, you can`t be serving in the United States government if your chief concern is trying to trade the reputation of the United States to reelect the president. And so, if there are any State Department officials who have facilitated this campaign of corruption, then they need to resign, or they need to face consequence. Kurt Volker is a widely respected diplomat, somebody who did lots of work for years with John McCain. He has been charged with trying to press the Russians to step back from their invasion of Ukraine. If, in fact, he has been spending his time on other endeavors, such as the ones that Rudy Giuliani has been endeavored in, he can`t continue in that position.

MADDOW: Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut -- sir, thank you for your time this evening. Much appreciated.

MURPHY: Thanks.

MADDOW: We`ll be right back.

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