CNN "CNN Newsroom" - TRANSCRIPT WH: Five More Pages Of Classified Docs Found At Biden's Delaware Home; UGA Football Player, Staffer Killed Hours After Championship Parade; Univ. Of Alabama Basketball Player Charged With Capital Murder. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Interview

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BLACKWELL: Yes. Arlette Saenz, at the White House, thank you. Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois is with us now. He served on the House Intelligence and Oversight and Reform committees, still waiting for those committee assignments to come out for this Congress. But, Congressman, thank you for your time.

Let's start with the request for these visitor logs with White House Counsels say do not exist for the Wilmington home, the secret service says that they don't keep logs of that. How relevant do you think of the list of visitors to this home where classified documents have now been discovered? How relevant do you think that is to the committee's investigation?

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): It may be relevant, but I have to say (INAUDIBLE) he has not requested any similar visitor logs with regard to President Trump's residences. I think at the end of the day, Victor, we have to kind of go bigger here. There's just an issue with regard to mishandling classified documents that's repeatedly happening, and we have to figure out as a committee how to prevent that from happening again.

BLACKWELL: Sure. I think both parties, as you said, would agree that this issue of handling classified documents, the American people, certainly now with a third election cycle where there is some investigation, we're going into 2024, that's what I'm counting, of the handling of classified information. They certainly want answers about how those at the highest levels handle it.

Let me ask you about how cooperative the Biden administration should be with this oversight committee investigation. And let's listen to Democratic assistant leader here, Congressman James Clyburn, on what he thinks the threshold for cooperation should be.

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BLACKWELL: Do you agree with that, that the Biden White House should only cooperate insofar as the committee investigates former President Trump?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, I think that the Biden White House will cooperate with the investigation, and they need to be forthcoming to the extent that the requests are legitimate. Of course, there are big differences now that's been --

BLACKWELL: What determines a legitimate request, Congressman?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I think that anything that goes to, you know, how do we prevent this from happening again? That is really the biggest issue, which is, you know, repeatedly between the Trump and the Biden White Houses, classified documents are not handled appropriately.

[14:10:06]

I'm a member of the Intelligence Committee and one reason why I think that members of Congress don't have that similar issue is the control of these classified documents is retained very tightly by the intelligence community and we only review these documents and classified spaces nowhere else. And that's something that has to be looked at going forward.

BLACKWELL: I don't know if you were listening to the top of the show and heard Evan Perez's report but these additional five pages now that had been discovered on Thursday evening, after -- we were told that that search of Wilmington was stopped after the last page in the morning was reported. Has the White House, has the president, have his personal turn -- attorneys bungled the messaging on this with the kind of drip, drip, drip of disclosure?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I don't know. But I think that they need to continue to be forthcoming now and transparent about everything that they have in their possession. You know, I think that they should not follow the tack of President Trump who refused to turn over hundreds of classified documents after he was notified. And that's why it brings up the issue of criminality because, with regard to criminality, it's about intention. Do you have an intent to remove? Do you have an intent to conceal documents and unauthorized spaces? And there is no evidence of such intent with regard to President Biden.

BLACKWELL: Should that not be the work of the committee? Two questions ago, you said that the scope, and I'm paraphrasing here, correct me if I'm wrong, should be how to prevent this from happening again. Should the committee, the Oversight, and Accountability committee not get to the question of intent as well in this investigation?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I think that if it is it properly bears on their investigation, yes. But I think that the bigger issue that we're seeing over and over again is how do we prevent this from happening again? And I think that right now is the time to figure that out because we see that it's happened on multiple occasions with different administrations.

BLACKWELL: All right. One more -- and let's switch to the debt ceiling now. A couple of days out now from the U.S. reaching the debt ceiling, that's going to happen on Thursday, according to the treasury secretary. The extraordinary measures now go into place to avoid default, push comes to shove in June. The data is the point at which the U.S. will have to default if there is no increase in the debt limit.

Republicans say there have to be spending cuts. The White House says no negotiations, no concessions. Are you willing to negotiate? The president says that he wants to work with Republicans, do you think there can be some negotiations on concessions, on spending cuts to avoid calamity?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I don't think that it should be connected to the debt ceiling, Victor. No -- I know that Kevin McCarthy, after his 15th vote for speaker had agreed that he would not raise the debt ceiling unless he extracts spending cuts. But, you know, if we don't raise the debt ceiling, we go into default.

And only one default is enough to nuke the economy. We can't have 15 defaults mirroring the 15 speaker votes for him to do what's right. And as Dr. King said, the time is right to always do what's right. And today, we have to do what's right, raise the debt ceiling and then deal with the other issues of spending and do it in a proper regular order.

BLACKWELL: All right, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Sir.

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