CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: "Interview with Rep. Jim Himes"

Interview

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BLITZER: Certainly is not.

All right, Sara, thanks very much for that.

Joining us now, Congressman Jim Himes. He's a Democrat who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

And let's get right to that press briefing. Did the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, actually corroborate some of the whistle-blower's initial report?

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): Well, of course he did. I mean, again, you know, he said that one of the three reasons for

military aid to have been held up was the very political objective of making sure the Ukrainians were assisting on this conspiracy theory that the Ukraine was somehow involved in the 2016 election interference, a point, of course, that our entire intelligence community and anybody who pays attention to this knows is completely specious.

But what's important here is that that is a political interest of the president of the United States. The chief of staff just confirmed that it was a factor in the holdup of congressionally appropriated military aid to a vulnerable country.

Now, quickly let me point out that it's been the defense of the Republicans around here and the president that there was no quid pro quo.

OK, we're past that. There was a quid pro quo. The chief of staff told us that.

But the reality is, Wolf, that you don't need a quid pro quo for the behavior. The president, in the transcript, which is there for all to see, suggesting that the new president of Ukraine investigate a particular company that is associated with Hunter Biden, you don't need a quid pro quo for that to be certainly wildly inappropriate and unethical, but almost certainly illegal as well.

BLITZER: As you know, Mulvaney disputed that the president asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens at his news conference in the White House earlier in the day.

What do you make of that distinction he offered?

HIMES: Well, I just don't understand that, because, again, the White House released the so-called transcript, in which the president very clearly asks for that.

So, again, we sort of need to, you know, touch the walls around us to make sure that we're in a real world here. But it's all part, of course, Wolf, of a much larger effort, I think led by Rudy Giuliani, you know, a fairly unhinged associate of the president who, working with people like Parnas and Fruman, who have now both been arrested, was not doing a shadow foreign policy.

People keep talking about a shadow foreign policy. That was nobody's foreign policy. Rudy Giuliani was leading an effort -- and you saw the opening statement by the ambassador today about how everybody was concerned about this. He was leading an effort to squeeze a very vulnerable country that is under attack day in and day out by Russia to serve the president's political interests, to investigate Burisma, to investigate Biden.

That was what the Ukrainians were being led to believe was important to the president of the United States. That's not a shadow foreign policy. That is an impeachable abuse of power. BLITZER: Mulvaney argued that President Trump had every right to

involve Rudy Giuliani, his personal private attorney, in foreign policy.

How do you respond to that, especially given the reports that are out there -- and a lot of reports -- that Giuliani was making a lot of money from Ukrainian interests?

HIMES: Well, so Mick Mulvaney is just wrong on that point.

The president does not have the right to just decide that so-and-so is going to be my ambassador to do this. There is a reason that, when somebody takes on an official role in the United States government, that they undergoing a background check, that they are -- if they are to be ambassadors, if they are to play a senior diplomatic role, that they are confirmed by the United States Senate.

So, even in the normal approval process of ambassadors, which is pretty standard around here, no, the president doesn't have free rein to decide that so-and-so is going to be an ambassador. The Senate gets to vote on that as well.

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And by no stretch of the imagination -- and, in fact, it may very well be a violation of law -- does the president get to say, hey, my personal attorney, who I just happen to have attorney-client privilege with, so that nobody can ever ask me about the conversations that I had with my personal attorney, and he can't be deposed because he's my personal attorney, well, he's going to be my guy who does this little bit of foreign policy.

Mick Mulvaney really know what he's talking about when he says that the president has the right to do that.

BLITZER: You heard also from Ambassador Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, today.

He's still testifying for hours and hours up on Capitol Hill. He was in direct communication with President Trump on Ukraine policy. What did he tell you about the president's role in all of this?

HIMES: Well, I don't want to go beyond the opening statement that he released publicly. The deposition is still under way. It is closed. So I can't talk about the specific things that Ambassador Sondland has said, beyond what has been made public.

But, as you can tell from the opening statement that he publicly released -- or I guess that his people publicly released -- his basic thesis is that, look, I was just trying to do my job, was just trying to get a meeting, didn't really know what Giuliani was up to, and hadn't seen anything particularly untoward.

So we're obviously going to need to correlate that against the testimony of the people that he was working with, people like Ambassador Volker and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. But you can tell from the opening statement what his approach is,

which is basically, look, I just was head down, trying to do my job, wasn't involved in this stuff.

But it was interesting, of course. The ambassador, who is a political appointee and a supporter of the president, makes it very clear in that opening statement that he was discouraged by Rudy Giuliani's bizarre role -- my word, not his -- and he makes it very clear that -- and, remember, this is an appointment of the president -- that the holding up of military aid to Ukraine would be a very bad thing.

BLITZER: Let me get your thoughts while I have you, Congressman, on the so-called cease-fire in Syria.

The president says this is a great day for civilization. In your view, who are the winners and losers in this deal?

HIMES: Well, I mean, there's not much dispute about that, right? The president succeeded in getting the Turks to stop shooting the Kurds, our allies, the people who died alongside us in the fight against ISIS.

The president succeeded in getting Turkey to stop shooting them for, I guess, 120 hours. A cease-fire usually involves a negotiation between both sides. The Kurds weren't involved in this negotiation. And the price of that apparent 120-hour cease-fire is that Turkey gets to stay on land that the Kurds have occupied for a very, very long time in a country that isn't theirs.

So, again, it doesn't surprise me that the president thinks this is the greatest deal in human history. But it was yet another sellout of the Kurds in favor of Turkey's being able to accomplish something they have been hoping to do for a very long time, which is put the Kurds in precisely this position.

BLITZER: Congressman Jim Himes, thanks so much for joining us.

HIMES: Thank you, Wolf.

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