MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Former Vice President Al Gore on impeachment."

Interview

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HAYES: Joining me now Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. He`s the Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Just yesterday, he introduced a bill to stop the federal government for spending any taxpayer dollars at properties owned by the president. Tell me about that piece of legislation.

SEN. GARY PETERS (D-MI): Well, Chris, it`s the hotel act which really would bar federal money from going to hotels that are owned by high-ranking government officials including the president, the vice president, or cabinet secretaries. Certainly, my job as the ranking member of Homeland Security and Government Affairs, we`re the top oversight committee for the United States Senate. My job is to make sure taxpayer money is being spent the way it`s intended and not currying favor or used basically to align the pockets of a president or another high-ranking official. 35 of my colleagues have joined with me on this legislation. We`re hoping to move. We`re hoping to talk with some of my colleagues on the House as well. But clearly, the conflicts of interest, the misuse of taxpayer money, all of those issues are very serious issues and ones that we need to deal with.

HAYES: When you say 35 colleagues, I`m imagining that`s 35 Democrats.

PETERS: That`s correct.

HAYES: It seems to be prima facie obvious that it just should not be the case that any public money is being spent in the private businesses of the President of the United States over and above whatever the security retinue brings down to Mar-a-Lago which itself is problematic. Like do you think this is the kind of legislation the House would take up and pass?

PETERS: I certainly hope so. This is a very straightforward. As you mentioned, this should not be going on. The legislation does create some exceptions as you mentioned for security staff of the president at of Mar-a-Lago and he has Secret Service. They certainly need to be close to him so we`ll deal of that. But you certainly don`t need to have what we are apparently seeing in Scotland where you have Air Force crews staying at the hotel, not likely the lowest-cost hotel in the area and staying there for multiple days. That`s why I`ve requested the I.G. from the Department of Defense to do a detailed study of what exactly is happening so we can get a bit of handle at this. We need to get the facts.

HAYES: Have you gotten a response from the DOD I.G. on that?

PETERS: I haven`t talked to him directly. I did talk to the Air Force I.G. who has also started an investigation. I had a long talk with him last week. He seems to have a pretty comprehensive study in the works. But I`m going to be working closely with him and hopefully, we`ll have those results fairly quickly.

HAYES: You`re on the Senate Oversight Committee for -- you`re on Senate Armed Services. Did you know this was happening? Was it -- do people on Capitol Hill know that it just was the case that the Air Force was you know, when they were stopping at Prestwick which you should note predates this president, that was a deal that was signed to use that at airport, they were sending Air Force crews to the president`s own hotel property?

PETERS: No, I don`t. I certainly had no knowledge. I don`t know of any of my colleagues that knew that. You know, the hotel is further away from the airport as well. It`s a -- it`s a very fancy Golf Resort. You know, I served in the Navy Reserve. I spent time part of my training in places overseas. The military put me up in hotels. But I guarantee you, they were not golf resorts that I stayed in.

HAYES: Do you think that we should have some comprehensive accounting of it all at some point? I mean, I suppose the President`s tax returns. But it just seems to me not a crazy ask as a matter of congressional oversight transparency and democracy just to have an actual sum total of how much this is happening, which foreign governments are spending money in the president`s hotels, and how many public federal employees are.

PETERS: Think so. And that`s -- we`ll see what happens with the I.G. report related to what`s happening at Prestwick and at Turnberry, but certainly, we need to be looking at other areas where federal agencies or folks in the federal government may feel they need to do this in order to curry favor of the president. It clearly is the appearance of conflict of interest, if not an outright conflict of interest. And I know the taxpayers in Michigan want to make sure that that money is being spent in ways that further proper purposes and lighting the pockets of the president is not a government purpose that taxpayers want to fund.

HAYES: Final question. As the President has talked about being locked and loaded in waiting for essentially instructions from the Crown Prince about whether or not to strike in the wake of those strikes and the Saudi oil facilities, I believe two of your colleagues have already made the case Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, if I`m not mistaken, that the president already has the authorization he needs to strike Iran. Do you agree with that?

PETERS: No, I don`t -- I don`t agree with that at all. I don`t know where they`re getting that. I`d certainly like to see that argument because we don`t believe that the president has authority to protect Saudi oil which is what he`s saying, depending what the Saudi government would like him to do. Apparently, he said he they protect Saudi oil. I don`t believe he has that authorization. And if he does, we`re going to fight back very aggressively to make sure that that doesn`t happen.

HAYES: All right, Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, thank you so much.

PETERS: Thank you.

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