MSNBC Countdown-Transcript

Interview

MSNBC Countdown-Transcript

OLBERMANN: As promised, I‘m joined now by the senator from New York, who has helped lead the charge in the Senate over the U.S. attorney general scandal, Senator Chuck Schumer.

Great thanks for your time tonight, sir.

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Nice to be here, Keith.

OLBERMANN: So Tony Snow‘s sales pitch on why Congress should take the, quote, "incredibly generous offer" of closed-door, unsworn interviews with White House aides, plus the e-mails, is basically that it lets lawmakers get to what he calls the truth, and avoid what the president called show trials. What‘s your response to all that?

SCHUMER: Well, to paraphrase "the Godfather," the president has basically given us an offer we can‘t accept. If the president wants to get to the truth, what‘s wrong with a transcript? What‘s wrong with oaths? Any lawyer worth his salt will tell you, no legal proceeding is worth the paper it‘s written on unless there‘s a transcript, unless there‘s sworn testimony.

And if the White House wants to get to the truth, and I hope they do, that‘s the obvious way to do it.

OLBERMANN: Are there negotiations going on now? Is that why the House Judiciary Subcommittee issued the authorization to issue subpoenas, but did not, and no one in the Senate has actually gone that—taken that step yet? Are you still leaving that door open (INAUDIBLE)?

SCHUMER: Yes, we are, we, we are hopeful that we can come to an agreement, although Fred Fielding yesterday, and Tony Snow today said they‘re not going to budge on this, which is basically an unreasonable offer. I‘m hoping, as I said, that‘s just sort of a strategy to keep things where they are.

The bottom line is very simple. There‘s been real damage done to the Justice Department, to the integrity of all 93 U.S. attorneys. When people believe that it‘s very possible that cases are prosecuted for political reasons, or not prosecuted, stop prosecuting for political reasons, it really puts a blow to our system of justice, (INAUDIBLE) rule of law, without fear or favor.

We‘re not a third world country where one dictator or one person, any person, can decide, OK, I‘m going to get this person and not that person.

And so this is serious, serious stuff. I hope the White House takes it seriously. And we want to work with them to get to the bottom of this. But we‘re not going to sacrifice the integrity of finding out what really happened for anything.

OLBERMANN: The damage to the U.S. attorneys‘ office that you referred to, do you think that you are being denied, at this point, evidence that the administration may have interfered with investigations, if not prosecutions, of politicians who happened to be in the same party as the members of the administration?

SCHUMER: Well, one of the U.S. attorneys himself, a far better prosecutor than I am, said, When a witness keeps changing their story, then you think they have something to hide. The administration, the Justice Department, the attorney general, have kept changing their story about what happened.

Remember, they first fired them without cause. Then they said they were not competent. We managed, after some real work and diligence, to get hold of their evaluation reports, and they were excellent. So it‘s clear they were not fired because of incompetence.

And then you ask yourself, what‘s the reason? When you asked four of the U.S. attorneys, they believed it was because they were either pursuing a political case that the White House didn‘t want them to pursue, or not pursuing a case that the White House wanted them to pursue. That‘s pretty severe stuff. That doesn‘t happen in America.

OLBERMANN: In response to all this, Mr. Snow from the White House actually cited you in an example of why the White House is trying to preserve confidentiality here. And let me quote off his transcript. "Let me ask you this. Do you think if we said, You know what? We need to get the internal deliberations of Senator Schumer. Who did he talk to? Who on the outside called him? What did his staff tell him? Who called the DSCC? Who decided to put up ads? We don‘t do that."

What‘s your response to that? Is that relevant?

SCHUMER: Well, first, he has it wrong. It was the DCCC that put up the ads.

But having said that, the bottom line is, of course you want some privacy between a leader, whether it‘s the president, a senator, a congressman, a governor, and their staff, and you don‘t want whatever they say to be made public automatically.

But when there‘s a serious case of wrongdoing, when we‘ve had misstatement after misstatement, when there‘s even a possibility among some people, at least two in the Justice Department, and only a possibility of criminality, then the desire to keep things confidential between the president or any other elected official in their staff is superseded. It doesn‘t happen often, but this is one of the cases where it should.

And other presidents have gone along with this. President Clinton had some of his key people testify publicly under oath. We‘ve had the same with other presidents as well. And I hope that this president will see the light, negotiate with us on a fair and reasonable basis, not give us take it or leave it of an unreasonable offer, so we can get to the bottom of it quickly.

And I‘d say one other thing, Keith. There are enough disgruntled people in the Justice Department in particular, because they really resented what happened here, that the information is going to come out. It will either come out drip, drip, drip, or it‘ll come out all at once, we‘ll get to the bottom of it in a complete way, and solve the problem and move on.

It would be much better for the White House itself, as well as the Justice Department and the country, if they let it all come out at once.

OLBERMANN: Last question, Senator. You said over the weekend past that you did not think the attorney general would last the week. Are you still of that mind?

SCHUMER: Well, they seem to be in a bunker mentality. And I—he may last the week. But the way things work around here, and this is the good side of things, the truth comes out, and I think the attorney general will be—will not be attorney general in the near future.

OLBERMANN: The senior senator from New York state, Chuck Schumer.

Great thanks for your time tonight, Senator.

SCHUMER: Thank you. Nice to talk to you.

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