NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript Interview with Mark Warner
Interview
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CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. Perhaps it was by design, but almost lost in all the attention paid to the Democratic Convention last week was the Senate Intelligence Committee's fifth and final report laying out the extensive contacts between Russia and members of the Trump 2016 campaign. The 1,000-page bipartisan report concluded that Russia wanted Donald Trump to win, that his campaign was eager to accept Russia's help, and that the Russians saw campaign members as inexperienced and easy to manipulate. But the committee stopped short of concluding that there was a coordinated conspiracy. Republicans said that proved there was no collusion. Joining me now is the top Democrat on the panel, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. Senator Warner, welcome back to Meet the Press. And we should note that not a single Republican --
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Thank you, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
-- on the Intelligence Committee agreed to come on this broadcast. We wanted to have somebody from each side of the aisle to ask these questions to. But, Senator Warner, we will start with you. So I want to start with simply, I know you've said you think Americans should read this entire report. But I'm curious. Is there a part of the report that you think singularly deserves the public's attention more than any other part?
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Well, Chuck, first of all, I'm very proud of the committee's work, three and a half years, five volumes, all bipartisanly endorsed in a time when there's not a lot of that bipartisanship going around. And as the report laid out in exquisite detail, much more detail than Mueller, and we were a counter-intelligence report, not a criminal report. Unprecedented contacts between Russians and folks on the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign officials welcomed that help. Maybe one of the most stunning was the level of detail of the then-campaign manager Paul Manafort sharing very specific campaign information with a Russian agent. We never know -- we'll never know what the Russians did with that information. But think about that. A campaign manager sharing with a known Russian agent during the middle of a campaign. And as you showed earlier with that kind of rogues gallery of all these individuals that were part of the Trump campaign who've been indicted, I think there have been repercussions from those efforts.
CHUCK TODD:
You guys name Konstantin Kilimnik as a Russian intelligence asset. It went further than the Mueller report did on that front. And it's that specific piece of information that I want to ask you about regarding this statement from the current acting chair of the Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio. Let me play that statement.
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SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
After interviewing over 200 witnesses and reviewing over 1 million pages of documents, we can now say three things without any hesitation. First, we found absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in our elections.
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CHUCK TODD:
It's that specific there. He said that it's definitive. How does an active campaign chair in Paul Manafort sharing information with a known Russian intelligence asset, Konstantin Kilimnik, somehow definitively erase the idea that there was no collusion?
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Respectfully, I disagree with Marco on that. You will see a whole series of other Democrats who wrote a separate opinion where they drew a different conclusion. Richard Burr was chairman for most of that -- most of the investigation, as I was vice-chair. We decided that we would not join any other comments, that we would let the report stand as it is. This is a report that was passed 14-1. It's the fifth volume. The other reports were all virtually unanimous, where we showed Russian interference in social media, their attempts to attack our election system. And, Chuck, one of the things that I think would be really important. You saw that, that put up where did you earlier with all these folks who'd been indicted from the Trump campaign. What we should have also listed were all of the Trump intelligence officials from Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence; to Joe Maguire, the Director of National Intelligence; both their deputies; to Michael Atkinson. Trump intel officials who all told the truth about the Russian ongoing investigation, and they were all fired because this president and this White House doesn't want to hear the truth.
CHUCK TODD:
You also seem to indicate that the president may have lied to Robert Mueller in the print interview when he claimed to have no recollection about conversations about WikiLeaks with Roger Stone. You write definitively in the report, "Despite Trump's recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did in fact speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone's access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions." However, there's a frustrating amount of redactions in the report whenever WikiLeaks comes up. Is this all because of this Julian Assange indictment that nobody has seen?
SEN. MARK WARNER:
The intelligence community chose what to redact. But I think anyone who would review the report and see the amount of contacts between Stone and WikiLeaks and the timing of the release of the WikiLeaks hacked information, again, I will, I would ask any American to read that and draw their own conclusions.
CHUCK TODD:
And finally, there's a footnote in here that I want to ask you about, because it was an intriguing footnote depending on how you read it. When asked about Donald Trump Jr.'s communications with WikiLeaks on this topic, Steve Bannon is quoted as saying this: "I'd describe Don Jr., who I think very highly of, as a guy who believes everything on Breitbart is true." Number one, why is that footnote in the report? And how do you interpret that quote?
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Well, I'm not going to speak to that footnote, but I am going to speak to the fact that the intelligence community ten days ago said that the Russians are back trying to interfere in our elections again, that they have a disinformation, misinformation campaign targeted against Vice President Biden. I think it's incumbent upon the intelligence community to lay out more of the facts of what we know about that disinformation campaign. And my fear is that there may be Americans that are unwittingly promoting that Russian disinformation campaign. And I think they need to be briefed so they don't become frankly --
CHUCK TODD:
Gotcha.
SEN. MARK WARNER:
-- agents, in effect, of this disinformation campaign.
CHUCK TODD:
Has the Senate Intel Committee been officially briefed on QAnon or not?
SEN. MARK WARNER:
I -- we have not received an official brief that I can recall on QAnon, but the community, the committee, the community is fairly clear that this is a fringe group that they feel like they are potentially a threat. And the idea that the president of the United States is embracing these folks and say just because they like him and they love their -- our country is very bizarre. I mean, I don't always agree with Karl Rove, but Karl Rove was right. These guys are wack jobs, and the president ought to disavow them.
CHUCK TODD:
Mark Warner, the vice-chair of the Senate Intel Committee, Democrat from Virginia, really appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective on this.
SEN. MARK WARNER:
Thanks, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
Thank you, sir.
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