CNN "Erin Burnett Out Front" - Transcript: "Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin"
Interview
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BOLDUAN: Yes. Fascinating how this is playing out today. Thank you so much, Manu. I really appreciate it. Out front with me now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin. He's a Member of the House Oversight Committee as well as the Judiciary Committee. Congressman, what do you know about this briefing or meeting tomorrow with the State Department's I guess, because we're told it will include staffers from your Committee?
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Yes. I don't know anything about it other than it's happening and it appears to be in response to the letter that Secretary Pompeo sent to Congress and that letter intimates that he thinks that he has some kind of protective privilege blanket that he can draw down over all of the documents that we are requesting and he appears to think that he can stop the witnesses from coming in and testify.
The humorous thing about it is that he's posing now as the great defender of the professionals in the State Department when apparently he was on the phone call listening in with Donald Trump and the President of Ukraine as Trump trashed the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and called her the woman and said that they were going to get rid of her.
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He didn't do anything to defend her at that point. But now that he's basically wants to put the State Department in lockdown in terms of information, he's pretending that somehow he's defending the personnel who work there.
BOLDUAN: I want to ask you more about Pompeo in a second, but about this meeting tomorrow. I know that it's, all of the reporting is that it's going to be attended by Committee staffers. Will you be at the meeting? I mean, why not go to the meeting?
RASKIN: I may go to the meeting. I don't know. I have not spoken to the Chair or the Chief of Staff yet and I'll check in with them.
BOLDUAN: And that might be them right now. I'm just kidding.
RASKIN: Yes, that could be. Yes.
BOLDUAN: OK. About the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and him saying that the House is trying to intimidate and bully State Department employees. I know that you say that it's almost comical, but is that what Committees are trying to do? Are you trying to bully State Department employees to comply?
RASKIN: No. But obviously all of this is about the bullying of Donald Trump who withheld $391 million in military aid that Congress had voted to go to our besieged ally, Ukraine, which is fighting against Russia and Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump held it up. He delayed it and then engaged in the now infamous conversation where he said though there is something that we want from you and that's something, of course, was that information that he thought would be damning about Joe Biden and Joe Biden's son.
BOLDUAN: And Congressman, then the key question, I think, at this moment is if Pompeo doesn't comply, if he stonewalls, if he can, then the real question is what are you going to do about it? What do you propose?
RASKIN: Yes. Well, this is the situation that we've confronted all along now with the Trump administration.
BOLDUAN: With little success.
RASKIN: With little success because we've never seen an administration this lawless or this reckless before in U.S. history.
BOLDUAN: Right, be that what it may, the reality that you're working with is you have an Attorney General who's been held in contempt of Congress and that has gotten you very little on the backside of it.
RASKIN: Right. All right. So here's what we've got, here's what we've got, OK, one; we can hold them in contempt and try to go to court to the U.S. attorney, but that U.S. attorney reports to the Department of Justice, which means reports ultimately to Bill Barr who's clearly part of the new racket operation, so that's not going to work.
We have inherent powers of contempt that we haven't used yet. They go back to the 19th century when the Supreme Court said in Anderson versus Dunn in 1821, that Congress has the exact same powers to enforce its orders that a court does. So he's tempting us, he's essentially inviting us to go back and to dust off those old powers.
BOLDUAN: OK. So that includes fining them or arresting people.
RASKIN: We could fine them on a daily basis and we could arrest them like my constituents who were arrested in the last Congress who were 19 high school kids from BCC and Montgomery Blair and Wheaton High School who are sitting in at Paul Ryan's office over the failure of the Republicans to do anything about gun safety. They were arrested. They were taken down to D.C. jail and I went down and bill them out at one o'clock in the morning, so I know we know ...
BOLDUAN: But do you think there's any realistic chance that that's going to happen?
RASKIN: ... well, I know that we know how to arrest people. We do have police power in the Capitol, but that's not all. We can interpret any obstructionism at this point, one as obstruction of justice so we can go in civilly and we could try to get it prosecuted. We also can interpret it to be an implicit or tacit concession or admission of the factual allegations that they're trying to dispute. In other words ...
BOLDUAN: So you take that and then you move on with your investigation.
RASKIN: ... yes, we say, OK, we're going to take that as an admission from you. The fact that you're doing everything in your power to throw up roadblocks to Congress getting the evidence. We're not messing around. Article One is in our ...
BOLDUAN: Well, I think this is a key. I'm just excited about this, obviously. I'm just excited why I keep cutting you off, because I have so many questions, when do you get to a point that you say enough is enough, we've asked you and you now move forward with the vote regardless of you could be looking at a situation where you get very little more information? I'm just saying because if you get no more information from the administration.
RASKIN: Well, look, all of the information we've got indicts the President of extraordinary crimes against the United States, essentially there was a shakedown of a foreign government to extract or to produce political dirt on an opponent using his leverage, $391 million in military aid.
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Then, that's a total sellout of our Constitution, our election, our system of government and our people and then they try to cover the whole thing up. So we're trying to get more details, so we can have a more complete
understanding. But if that's all they leave us with then we're going to act.
BOLDUAN: When is soon? Like I keep hearing soon. When is soon?
RASKIN: Well, I know the media always wants to know, but we're going to keep you on the edge of your seat because there are still remarkable things that we know are going to be coming out soon about the criminality and the corruption of this White House. The fact that Attorney General Barr is overseas looking for evidence or looking to create evidence in order to debunk the Mueller report produced by a distinguished Republican prosecutor appointed by Republican is just an amazing turn of events.
But you got to ask yourself, what is it they're looking for because the Mueller report said while there was a lot of evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians. In fact, there wasn't enough evidence to indict for conspiracy. So what they're obviously going after is the finding that Mueller made that there was systematic and sweeping evidence of a campaign by Russia to destabilize our election.
They're still doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin. It's the most amazing thing to watch.
BOLDUAN: Well, this adding to the complexity of the very big question before the House of Representatives right now. Thank you, Congressman, for coming in. I appreciate it.
RASKIN: Thank you for having me.
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