CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)

Interview

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Joining us now, one of the senators who will take part in the impeachment trial, Democrat Chris Murphy.

Senator, thanks so much for coming in.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Yes, thanks for having me.

BLITZER: So, your leader, the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, he's prioritizing. He wants these four current and former White House officials to testify, Robert Blair, John Bolton, Michael Duffey, Mick Mulvaney.

Would you be willing, if the Republicans say, yes, they can testify, but they want to hear, let's say, from Hunter Biden or the whistle- blower? Would you be willing to go along with a deal like that?

MURPHY: No, we're not going to turn the Senate into a circus for conspiracy theories that the right-wing media machine is dreaming up.

Our job, under the Constitution, is to hear the impeachment charges that have been given to us by the House of Representatives. And the impeachment charges surround a set of facts relative to the withholding of aid to Ukraine in order to get them to interfere in an American election.

Now, I don't know what you have an impeachment clause for, if it's not to protect against the chief executive using the massive powers of his office to try to rig an election.

And so we should absolutely hear witnesses who are going to testify to the facts surrounding impeachment. We shouldn't not turn the Senate into some showcase for wild right-wing conspiracy theories.

BLITZER: Even if it means that you're not going to get Mick Mulvaney or John Bolton or these two others who have a lot of firsthand information about what the president is thinking, what the president is doing, as far as his negotiations with the Ukrainian leadership to get so-called dirt on the Bidens?

[18:10:07]

MURPHY: Well, I don't think that there's Republican support to turn the Senate into this right-wing conspiracy circus.

And I think Senator Schumer is right that there are a number of Republicans who you have an interest in getting to the truth. And they say that they don't have enough information.

Well, maybe the White House has more e-mails. Maybe Mick Mulvaney can testify as to what he actually directed people like Bill Taylor and Kurt Volker to do.

And so I actually think there's a potential for Republicans to join us in making sure this is a fair trial and making sure that the Senate doesn't turn into this -- this media circus.

BLITZER: In opposing these witnesses, the Republicans say, hey, look, the House Democrats, they're the majority in the House. They had their chance. They could have fought harder to get these witnesses to show up and testify in the House of Representatives. And they decided to pass.

MURPHY: We have a separate constitutional responsibility.

So we have a responsibility to run a fair trial, where we put all of the facts in front of the senators who are going to make a decision on removal. And I think it stands to reason that the president has stopped people like Mick Mulvaney from testifying, has withheld these e-mails because he knows that Mulvaney is going to testify that he directed this scheme to try to get a foreign country to interfere in an election.

He knows there are e-mails between people in the White House talking about this corruption attempt. And so I think there's a reason why they're trying to stop these documents from coming before the Senate.

And I just want to make sure we have all of the information...

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BLITZER: You think House Democrats should have pushed harder to get these witnesses to testify?

MURPHY: You know, again, I think that they had uncovered plenty of evidence to move forward on impeachment.

And, ultimately, I have to be responsible for the decisions that I make as a trier of fact in the Senate.

BLITZER: Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, he says this in a new interview he granted to "The New Yorker" magazine regarding the ouster of the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

He said this: "I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way. She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."

How significant is that?

MURPHY: I mean, I think it's just a restatement of what we already knew.

I mean, I'm glad he's making it clear on the record that he was going after Yovanovitch, so that he could more likely push the U.S. State Department into pursuing investigations to politically benefit the president.

But for all of us that have followed Ukraine for years, we knew exactly why Giuliani was going after Yovanovitch. We knew that Yovanovitch was not going to let her State Department and her embassy be turned into an appendage of the Trump reelection campaign. And so he needed to get Yovanovitch out of there.

Now, unfortunately for Giuliani, they installed Bill Taylor, who was no more enthusiastic about working for the president's political arm. And so the investigations didn't end up happening.

But I'm at least glad that Giuliani is admitting to us the corruption that we knew he was engaged in.

BLITZER: Two of your more moderate Republican senators, Mitt Romney Susan Collins, they refuse to say today whether they want witnesses to appear at the Senate trial. What does that say to you?

MURPHY: Well, I think it speaks to the fact that there is a potential to get 50 to 51 votes to bring a limited number of witnesses and documents before the Senate.

I mean, if I was a Republican senator, I don't know why I wouldn't want to have all of the evidence before me before making this monumental decision. And I think a lot of Republicans know why the president isn't letting these documents and these witnesses move forward, because they would likely be damning. They would not be exculpatory.

And so I'm hopeful that we can have some conversations behind the scenes. This isn't about making a political point. I mean, we just want to make sure that we have a fair trial.

BLITZER: Senator Murphy, thanks so much for coming in.

MURPHY: Thanks, Wolf.

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