Fox News "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: Doug Collins on what to expect as impeachment hearings shift to the House Judiciary Committee
Interview
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WALLACE: Kevin Corke reporting from Mar-A-Lago. Kevin, thank you. Joining us now, the top Republican on the judiciary committee, Congressman Doug Collins, and welcome back, sir, to Fox News Sunday.
REP. DOUG COLLINS, R-GA.: Good morning, Chris. Good to be with you.
WALLACE: So, as we said, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, has written you asking whether or not Republicans want to subpoena any witnesses to testify on the president's behalf. Will you?
COLLINS: Well, we're going to take care of that. We're making sure that we get out witness list in but let me just point out something here. Chairman Nadler sent a letter asking us by Friday to present this list and present all the things that we would like to do. However, we're not even going to see the Schiff report, as it's going to be known, out of committee until Tuesday night, possibly even Wednesday morning before we get to see it. There's a lot of problems here that we have to investigate here. As an attorney if you have a case going forward you want to know exactly what you're facing and Chairman Nadler is simply asking for an arbitrary deadline because we've not seen the Schiff report. We've not seen any -- we've not even heard from him what he actually wants to have for hearings. This is just another example, I think, of him being told I need to do something and we go from there. This is a problematic part for us to have to go forward with.
WALLACE: Okay, but I just want to be clear in the first part of what you said. Will Republicans on the committee call for subpoena witnesses to testify and if so, who are you going to ask to testify?
COLLINS: Oh, of course. We're going to testify. The first and foremost, the first person that needs to testify is Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff is the author of this report. Adam Schiff has been the author of many things, a lot of them found to be false over the past couple of years. But he's going to be the author of this report. He's compared himself in the past to a special counsel. This is what he said he was doing. Well, if we go back to Clinton and even back to Nixon, but in Clinton, Ken Starr was the special counsel, he presented a report that we're going to get his judiciary. He actually came and sat and testified under oath and took questions from all sides, including the White House. My first and foremost witness is Adam Schiff.
WALLACE: So, you want to bring him in before the committee, not just to present a report, but to take questions from Democrats and to be cross-examined, if you will, by the Republicans?
COLLINS: He needs to be. He's put himself into that position. If he chooses not to then I really question his veracity and what he's putting in his report. I question his, you know, the motives of why he's doing it. It's easy to hide behind a report. It's easy to hide behind a gavel and intelligence committees behind closed door hearings, but it's going to be one -- another thing to actually get up and have to answer questions about what his staff knew, how he knew, what he did about the whistleblower report, his interactions that he's had with Ukraine, the other things that he's had over time in this process and also why he has still not released documents to our committee and reports to our committee that we need to actually proceed in our committee of judiciary committee, which is the committee of impeachment. I have a question. Why are they hiding this stuff from us? If they think they have such a case, give us all the materials and don't let Jerry Nadler write a crazy letter that says on the 6th let us know who your witnesses are. We don't even have the information from the intel committee yet. This is why this is a problematic exercise and simply a made-for-TV event coming on Wednesday.
WALLACE: Okay. Chairman Nadler has also written to the White House asking if they want to have a lawyer to represent them at Wednesday's hearing which is going to be with constitutional scholars and to actually mount a defense of the president the next week, a week from Monday. Do you know whether the White House is going to participate?
COLLINS: Well, I think they're still -- we're still looking at that but I'm going to have a question for you, Chris. Why would they want to participate in a -- just another rerun? We're back, by the way, in rerun season here in the Judiciary Committee. We've already had constitutional scholars in the committee talking about from the Mueller report and others is there an impeachable offense? This is a complete American waste of time right here. The problem is is Jerry Nadler and the rest of them have already got in their mind they're writing the articles of impeachment whether they have fairness or process or all. So, if the White House participates with a bunch of constitutional scholars, which by the way, I wrote a letter to Chairman Nadler, why are we doing this on a normal three-to-one ratio? If it's so important like we did in Clinton where we had almost four times as many of these witnesses, why don't we at least get two-for-two? Why don't we at least have more witnesses in this process?
WALLACE: Let me interrupt for a minute here because --
COLLINS: No problem.
WALLACE: --- that's what you're saying is that three of the four constitutional scholars are going to be pro-Democrat, pro-impeachment, and one of the four is going to be basically questioning whether or not there are grounds for impeachment.
COLLINS: That's exactly right. That's what we're seeing here. And look, I think the problem is here is they're on a timeframe. It's an internal kind of timeframe to try and finish this out by the end of the year, because they want to get at this president right now, before the -- before everybody completely sees through the process sham of the elections for next year. So, we're rushing this, Chris. I don't think the American people -- even if they support an impeachment inquiry, or even trying to remove and overturn the votes of these 63 million people for this president -- they don't think this is fair. And I've talked to Democrats who do not believe this is fair. If the Judiciary Committee simply has a constitutional scholar hearing, and then they have a presentation of a report by Adam Schiff, and we go straight to a mark-up, that is a failure on Chairman Nadler of ultimate proportion, because this is a failure of the Judiciary Committee to be able to talk to fact witnesses, to be able to talk to the people that have actually been a part of this, and actually have the president viably participate in his own defense, which he's not had the opportunity to do now.
WALLACE: Okay. Okay.
COLLINS: To simply -- go ahead.
WALLACE: [laughs] Okay. You're pretty wound up, I got to say. You obviously had some --
COLLINS: [laughs]
WALLACE: -- turkey this Thanksgiving. Let's talk about --
COLLINS: And a little bit cranberries as well.
WALLACE: Okay. Well, me too. Let's talk about the merits of this. You say there's no basis to impeach the president. I'd like to play some of the key testimony that the House Intel Committee heard the last couple of weeks, basically making allegations or stating evidence against the president. Take a look:
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
AMB. BILL TAYLOR: The meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.
MALE SPEAKER: It is improper for the president of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and a political opponent.
MALE SPEAKER: Mr. Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
WALLACE: Congressman Collins, before we get to the question of whether this is an impeachable offense or not, simply, do you see anything wrong with that? The president conditioning support for Ukraine -- whether it was a meeting -- whether -- with Zelensky, whether it's military aid -- conditioning support for Ukraine to that country investigating some of the president's political rivals?
COLLINS: Well, I think it's interesting that the premise of your question is based on witnesses who agree with your premise. I disagree and say that Mr. Volker, Mr. Morrison, even Mr. Sondland -- who presumed it was being conditioned -- the president himself told Senator Johnson there was no pre-condition; there was nothing to be presented on this. So, if you want to show one side, then also show the other side as we go along with this. President Trump has always been concerned about foreign aid. He's always been concerned about what's going on in the Ukraine, in Europe, and how is Europe participating, and how our tax dollars --
WALLACE: But --
COLLINS: The question is -- the question is, though, if we're looking at corruption, does it matter who's involved? That's the problem and the policy issue that got discussed in intel. He was looking at the corruption part of this. And yes, if they were -- if the Bidens were involved, then they would have been a part of that. But the problem is is there was never a discussion in Intel, that we saw -- as I just pointed out -- several key fact witnesses who actually said there was no conditioning on this. So, you can put --
WALLACE: But let me --
COLLINS: -- put words [inaudible] --
WALLACE: But let me ask you, if I may, sir, because we're about to run out of time --
COLLINS: No problem.
WALLACE: -- July 25th phone call, where the -- between President Trump and President Zelensky. He never mentions corruption and Ukraine. He never mentions Burisma. He just mentions "investigate two Americans," and he names them: Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
COLLINS: Well, again, if you look at the call itself, there was an overall discussion, which had been had previously, about others in discussion with Ukraine. And also, just go back to the fact of the president looks after our tax dollars, and the president is looking out for the fact -- was there problems there? When we look at this process, we do not see a president who conditioned anything. He just wanted the facts, whether it be the 2016 election, whether we're looking at -- of what was happening. He was looking at the fact of "Is there corruption, so I do not spend dollars that I don't need to spend in the Ukraine because of corruption that was still there."
WALLACE: Okay. Let me just --
COLLINS: This is an issue.
WALLACE: Let me just ask you a thought experiment. Just bear with me for a minute.
COLLINS: Okay.
WALLACE: If you believed that the president had used the power of his office to try to get Ukraine to interfere with our elections, if you believe that, would that be an impeachable offense?
COLLINS: I do not believe it, so that I'm not going to answer a hypothetical in which it's designed to simply say that the president did something improper. Chris, he did nothing improper. There was nothing about a problematic giving aid to another country, in which you're talking about corruption -- which he's required to do by law. And it just so happened that a presidential candidate's son, who was getting a massive amount of money from a company that had been under investigation -- in which even other witnesses that had been favorable -- quote -- to the Democrats in the investigation have said needed to be looked at. This is a problem of overall proportion, but there's nothing here that the president did wrong, and this is a thing that we're going to move forward on.
WALLACE: Okay. I got one last question; I've got a minute for it.
COLLINS: Okay.
WALLACE: A U.S. Senate seat in Georgia comes open at the end of the year. Johnny Isaacson, the senator there, is retiring. President Trump has pushed hard for Georgia governor Brian Kemp to appoint you as the senator. But it appears, from all reports, that the governor is going to go ahead and appoint Kelly Loeffler, a big Republican and a financial executive, to that seat instead. What do you know about where this stands? And if he appoints her and not you, how are you going to feel about that?
COLLINS: Well, the governor still has that appointment to be made. I appreciate the support that I've received from the president and many others. But right now, as you can see, in this interview this morning, I have a big job to do in the next three weeks, and that's impeachment. We'll have to see where the governor goes with his pick, and then we'll have a decision to make after that. But right now, my full focus and attention is on impeachment. And also, as I look forward, it is what it is best for Georgia. Those will be the things that play into my mind. But right now, first and foremost, is defending against this faux sham impeachment that we're going to get started on Wednesday with.
WALLACE: Just real quick: When you say you'll have to make a decision after that if it happens, does that mean that you might potentially run against her when she's up for re-election?
COLLINS: Well, Chris, let's see what the governor does first. I think he's heard from a lot of folks. But if he does, then that'll be a decision we have to make at that point.
WALLACE: Congressman Collins, thank you. Thanks for joining us today.
COLLINS: No problem.
WALLACE: Always good to talk with you, sir.
COLLINS: Yes, Chris. Always good to be with you. Take care.
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