CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview with Mark Warner

Interview

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SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): Well, Jake, again, I don't have any details on the Justice Department investigation, but I do know this -- we knew over a year ago, it came out in the first impeachment trial, that Rudy Giuliani was obsessed about trying to find dirt on the Bidens, that he clearly and I felt this was one of the reasons why I vote for the impeachment the first time was taking out our ambassador. Obviously the phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president was inappropriate.

But one thing you've got to give Rudy Giuliani, he does not lack for chutzpah because we knew all this -- a year ago, yet Rudy Giuliani and others, I might add, were continuing to be used by what has now become fairly obvious, Russian agents to spread part of their disinformation campaign against Joe Biden throughout the whole balance of 2020.

I can tell you, Jake, that there were a number of Republican senators who would go to Giuliani and others in the Trump orbit and urge them to back off, that they were being knowingly or unknowingly manipulated. And yet here we are, you know, four, five, six months after the end of the election and Giuliani is still pleading I guess willful ignorance I guess is what his plea is.

TAPPER: Investigators also served a search warrant for a Giuliani associate and subpoenaed his assistant, Jo Ann Zafonte (ph), to appear before a grand jury next month. Does this all seem to you to be in line with an investigation for someone who nearly did not register as a foreign lobbyist, which is in the past deemed a bureaucratic paperwork crime?

WARNER: Jake, again, I'm not going to pass legal judgment on what the Justice Department is doing, but you said at the outset of our conversation that the Justice Department having this kind of raid on somebody as prominent as Rudy Giuliani, someone who had been a former U.S. attorney, someone who had been acting as Donald Trump's lawyer, I think they would have to hit a pretty high bar of certainty to take that action.

[16:25:08]

And, again, it's already in the public record what happened in terms of his involvement with the Ukrainian ambassador.

What I find, again, a bit remarkable in my mind, is even with that forewarning he continued to spread misinformation, disinformation and has been fairly evident by lots of public reporting, a lot of that misinformation and disinformation was the product of a Russian disinformation and misinformation campaign perpetrated by agents of Russia through Ukrainian fronts.

TAPPER: Chairman Mark Warner, thank you so much, sir. Good to see you. Appreciate your time.

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