CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) is Interviewed About the Impeachment Trial
Interview
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Joining me now is Republican Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana. He's one of the House members on President Trump's impeachment team. He's also in the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Hey, Jake. Glad to be with you.
TAPPER: So, former Chief of Staff John Kelly says that he believes John Bolton's claim that President Trump directly told him that security aid for Ukraine was dependent upon the country investigating the Bidens. Kelly also said he thinks Bolton is a man of integrity and should be heard from. What do you think?
JOHNSON: I respect General Kelly, but he's not a member of the U.S. Senate. Ultimately, they're the ones that have to decide that.
And I think you've heard a number of senators over the last two days coming out as various pieces of the defense have been presented and they said -- they think it's a very compelling presentation, that they understand that the facts don't change regardless of what Bolton or Kelly or anyone else says, and, of course, the president himself said that he never told John Bolton any of the things that we are hearing have been alleged.
So, look, it does not make any difference at the end of the day as Professor Dershowitz explained so well yesterday. The Senate, first, has to answer the threshold question, whether the articles of impeachment that were sent over are valid on their face, they're not, because abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are not impeachable offenses and it doesn't really matter what anybody says. Those are the facts that are stubborn and you can't get around.
TAPPER: I don't know that that interpretation is a fact, the idea that abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are not impeachable offenses. They certainly were impeachable offenses during the Nixon impeachment. They certainly were impeachable offenses during the Clinton impeachment.
Let me ask you a question, you say President Trump denies that conversation took place. You are aware of how often President Trump says things that are not true, right? I mean, he is known for saying things that are false, lies, misinformation -- it happens quite often.
JOHNSON: I don't agree with that characterization.
But I will tell you that he is not the only person, the only individual who has refuted what has been reported about this Bolton manuscript over the last 24 hours or so. Attorney General Barr said that it's inaccurate as well in terms of the timing and the things that he knew and the rest.
Look, I thought that it was interesting what Senator Lankford suggested, hey, put the manuscript in the SCIF and let people go down and read it. It was interesting. I thought Senator Schumer, when he came out and said, no, that's not right, that's not important, we shouldn't do that. Why, they said, because if you put something on the SCIF, it made (ph) you trying to hide something.
Hello? That's how the House case was put together in the first place. That's what we have been complaining about since all this began. Adam Schiff and those folks --
TAPPER: Right.
JOHNSON: -- had the super secret hearings in the basement.
So, if they had a problem with it, why they didn't have a problem with it in the first stages?
TAPPER: You participated --
JOHNSON: There's a lot of hypocrisy around here.
TAPPER: You participated in that deposition, right? You participated in the depositions in the SCIF because you're a member of the House Judiciary Committee.
JOHNSON: No, that's an important point. Even though we're the committee with jurisdiction, I was not allowed in the SCIF.
[16:20:03]
It was Intel and Oversight that were allowed to do that. Not us.
TAPPER: Well, there were three committees that were allowed.
JOHNSON: Judiciary wasn't and that's the critical point. We're the ones that have jurisdiction over impeachment, and we're the ones that were supposed to have ultimately voted to send the articles to the full House, and we never saw the intelligence, yes.
TAPPER: Oh, it was Foreign Affairs, that's right. It was Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight.
JOHNSON: And Oversight, right.
TAPPER: So let me ask you a question, but you know that there were House Republicans that were in SCIF is really the larger point I was trying to address. You know that there were House Republicans there. So --
JOHNSON: There were, but it was a small subset of the House.
TAPPER: Right, it was 48 -- 48 I think were allowed.
JOHNSON: Right.
TAPPER: So when Pat Cipollone, the president -- the White House counsel, went on the floor of the Senate and said that House Republicans were not allowed in the SCIF, which you know is not true, did that bother you, because you know that there were House Republicans who spent hours and upon hours in the SCIF, Mark Meadows --
JOHNSON: Yes.
TAPPER: -- Elise Stefanik. I mean, you know that what Cipollone said was not true.
JOHNSON: But, yes, you and I have talked about this before. I am the ranking member of the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary, which is the only committee that really has jurisdiction over impeachment. And as we just discussed, I've never been able to see all of this evidence so-called that was gathered in the basement. It's a problem. And what Cipollone said was, the Republicans haven't been able to get in there. A lot us weren't.
You're talking about a small subset, there's 199 Republicans in the House, most of us didn't. And most Democrats didn't either.
TAPPER: Forty-eight Republicans is not nothing.
But the other thing -- let's talk about the House Judiciary Committee, because you are on that committee. And Jay Sekulow told the Senate that the president wasn't allowed to participate in the House Judiciary Committee process at all, that he wasn't allowed to cross- examine the witnesses, that he wasn't allowed to have counsel there, and he was not invited.
You know that that's not true. He was invited to participate in all of those things. And Cipollone wrote a letter saying that we're not going to participate. That's something else that the president's team said to the Senate that wasn't true. Again, that must bother you.
JOHNSON: No, Jake. Here's the reality. This investigation went 79 days, 71 of those 79 days, the president's counsel was blocked out of the proceeding.
Adam Schiff did not allow them in the basement. They were not allowed to be present for the presentation of all this evidence. They weren't allowed to ask questions. Republican witnesses weren't allowed. There's no appropriate cross-examination, because the Republican questions were stifled.
All of that is true and irrefutable and is unprecedented, because in the Clinton proceedings, in Nixon, and even back to Andrew Johnson, as far as I can tell --
TAPPER: Right.
JOHNSON: -- that was not the case. And so, that's what Jay Sekulow and the counsel is complaining about because it was not fair.
TAPPER: No, no, he was specifically talking about the House Judiciary Committee process and I will put the quote up on Twitter so people can see what I'm talking about.
JOHNSON: Do it, but what he means by that, he -- I don't know the exact language, I'm not sure which part are you talking about. I watched all of the proceedings --
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TAPPER: It's when he referred to the trifecta, when he referred to the trifecta. He talked -- he was specifically talking about the House Judiciary process.
We only have time for one more question. Let me ask you and you'll get the last word, and that is you're talking about witnesses -- the need for witnesses, the need for cross-examination. A new Quinnipiac poll finds that 75 percent of the American people say witnesses should be allowed to testify in the impeachment trial, 20 percent say no.
You can't get 75 percent of the American people to believe -- to agree on anything, but they want witnesses, and why block them?
JOHNSON: Well, a lot of those, by the way, are Trump supporters --
TAPPER: Yes.
JOHNSON: -- because they want to hear from the Biden --
TAPPER: Sure.
JOHNSON: -- both the Bidens, and the whistle-blower and maybe Adam Schiff himself.
But look, at the end of the day, the Senate is the body that's given this responsibility and will ultimately make that determination, and I think a majority are going to decide at the end of the day that the summary by Professor Dershowitz was right and the rest of this is not needed, because they know the facts, the facts don't change and I think we have enough here.
If we drag this out indefinitely, Jake, just think about what it will do to the country. It will further divide us perhaps irreparably going into the election year. How does that behoove anyone if we already know the outcome of this? I think commonsense has to prevail here at some point and I hope that it will.
TAPPER: Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, always pleasure to have you. Thank you so much, sir.
JOHNSON: Thanks, Jake.
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