ABC "This Week With George Stephanopoulos"-Transcript

Interview

STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning, everyone. It was another difficult week for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as he faced a double-barrel attack on his credibility. Senator Democrats demanded a special prosecutor to investigate whether Gonzales lied to Congress about the president's warrantless wiretapping program and the attorney general's claim that there was no internal dissent about the program was called into question by his colleague at the Justice Department, FBI Director Robert Mueller. For more on the controversy and where it goes next, we're joined by one of the Democrats calling for a special prosecutor, Chuck Schumer of New York, Senator Chuck Schumer and his colleague on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. Welcome back to "This Week," gentlemen.

SEN. HATCH: Nice to be with you.

SEN. SCHUMER: Good morning.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Schumer, let me begin with you, the White House has called your call for a special prosecutor one more example of out-of-control partisanship that is defining this Congress and they've put together some numbers. They say that since you all were elected the majority in November there have been more than 300 Executive Branch investigations, more than 400 document and testimony requests and over 600 oversight hearings. Right now, the disapproval of Congress is rivaling the president's. Are you worried that the public is going to believe that the Congress is more interested in investigating than legislating?

SEN. SCHUMER: No, I'm not, George. Because certainly we have to do some oversight. That's part of Congress' job. For six years a rubber stamp Congress under the control of the Republicans did nothing, and without us, the U.S. Attorney's investigation wouldn't have come to the floor. The bad treatment of the soldiers at Walter Reed wouldn't have come to the fore, the contracting problems in Iraq, so this is necessary. But we certainly realize our number one job is to do more for the American people, have the government help them. And look what we've done just in the last few weeks. We passed a higher education bill that's made it a lot easier for Americans to pay for college, the greatest change since the G.I. Bill. We passed the 9/11 Commission recommendations to make our homeland safer. Finally, cargo and airplanes and ships and coming into our ports will be inspected. That had languished under the Republican Congresses.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me press --

SEN. SCHUMER: This week, we're going to pass an ethics bill and a children's health bill. We raised mileage standards on cars. We passed a minimum wage. We are doing both, and we can. We're doing oversight, but we're doing things to make American families have better lives.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: On this question of the attorney general, there is a story in The New York Times this morning that says that this dispute over whether or not there was dissent and whether or not the attorney general lied, there may be an answer for it. They say the controversy could be about a separate data mining program that was also being discussed at the time and discontinued. So is it possible, do you accept that it's possible that the attorney general gave technically correct testimony?

SEN. SCHUMER: No, I don't believe so, and here's why. First, I'm not on the Intelligence Committee, so I don't have access to the documents. But many on the Intelligence Committee, the three who called for the special prosecutor with me, Senators Feingold and Whitehouse and Feinstein are all on the Intelligence Committee, and it is regarded as one in the same program, and furthermore, at his hearing, this week, I asked Attorney General Gonzales was there just one program that the president confirmed in December, which is what one of the issues about him and there are many is all about and he said just one. I said not two? No, he said, just one. So it's just one program, and they have other separate parts.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Hatch, it's not just Democrats who are saying that the attorney general wasn't straight with the committee. Your colleague Arlen Specter, a Republican, said that his credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable and his testimony has also been contradicted by the former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, the FBI Director Robert Mueller and the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Doesn't the attorney general at this point have a credibility problem?

SEN. HATCH: Well, of course, this is not really about the attorney general. This is about the Democrats. They're using him as a punching bag to get to the president and in all honesty, James Comey, the former deputy attorney general, six times said that he was not talking about a specific program. I might add that Director Mueller said he wasn't talking about a specific program. When these fellows get into questions --

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: He did acknowledge he was discussing a much discussed program in response to a question at the House Judiciary Committee, the FBI Director.

SEN. HATCH: That's true but he also made it very clear -- if you look at the testimony, you can see that there is room here since they were discussing highly-classified, top-secret information that judge Gonzales was, of course, trying to dance around it as Comey did and as Mueller did. They're not going to get into the top-secret stuff and to trivialize this.

Look, to have a crime of perjury under the Federal Code 18 USC 1621 you got to have a person who makes statements that he really does not believe are true, and, frankly, nobody could say that about the testimony of Judge Gonzales. Furthermore --

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Hatch --

SEN. HATCH: Yeah.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: You say this is about the Democrats, but let me read you something said by the number three Republican Congressman in the House, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, Adam Putnam. He said the attorney general's loss of credibility "diminishes the Justice Department and undermines the president's ability to move some of his most sensitive legal issues through the Hill. It is more than a distraction and the consequences to the president are far greater than any one person." Isn't there a serious management problem now at the Justice Department?

SEN. HATCH: Well, he's talking about the fact that this attorney general has been battered day in, day out by Democrats for partisan reasons. Look, this man was a top partner in one of the major law firms in the country. He was attorney general of the State of Texas. He was a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. He runs the Justice Department. There are 110,000 employees in the Justice Department. They handle everything from criminal laws, criminal cases to civil cases to antitrust cases to intelligence matters and a whole raft of other things. He has all kinds of people who work with him that he delegates to and unfortunately in this matter concerning the U.S. attorneys, it was poorly handled.

But after all these hearings, all of this bluster, all of this moaning and groaning by the Democrats, they have not shown one reason why there was any impropriety and they can't show that. There have been tens of thousands of pages given to them. Countless witnesses have been called before the various committees, Gonzales himself has appeared, the White House has even agreed to make some of the closest confidence of the president, you know, appear before the committee. Look, you think we -- you think we members of Congress would like people prying into what our top advisers say to us? I remember when we had the so-called rogue member of the Republican staffers who was able to get into the Democrat database and get into some of their memoranda. There was such an uproar, you couldn't believe it, as it should have been, but the fact -- let me just make this one point. The fact of the matter is -- is that when the U.S. Attorney wanted to get the memos that he had tapped into, they raised all kinds of hell that they weren't going to give those memos under any circumstances.

You can imagine why the president of the United States does not want to just wholesale allow his top advisers and their top documents interdicted by the Congress of the United States. No president would want that.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me bring Senator Schumer back in here. The New York Times has an editorial this morning saying that if the solicitor general refuses to appoint a special prosecutor in this case, Congress should move to impeach Attorney General Gonzales. Is that on the table?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, I think we have to focus on the special prosecutor. We've asked Paul Clement to do it and let me just say two things, there have been so many instances of the attorney general not telling the truth to the committee, it's not simply on whether there is dissent. He said at this meeting of the gang of eight that it wasn't about the TSP program. Mueller said it was. Negroponte said it was. So many of the senators who were there said it was. He said that he hadn't talked to any of the potential witnesses about the U.S. attorneys investigation. Monica Goodling said not only did he talk to them, but she was embarrassed by the conversation. He said he never got memos about who -- which U.S. attorneys should be fired. Kyle Sampson said he did get memos and that's his own chief of staff. So it's serious.

Now, in answer to your question, George, I think that Paul Clement should appoint an independent counsel, a special prosecutor. I don't think he has much choice. The evidence is overwhelming, as you pointed out, Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican has said it was.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: No, he hasn't joined the call for a special prosecutor.

SEN. HATCH: That's right and neither has Pat Leahy.

SEN. SCHUMER: Yeah, but let me just say this, he said, his words were that it's so questionable, the breach in credibility, that it might be actionable. That seems to me to say we need it. Because there's no other way to do it and this is the main point, George. Every Justice Department official reports directly or indirectly to the attorney general. So the only way to get to the bottom of this is the special prosecutor and I am hopeful that Paul Clement will do the right thing. He will rise to the occasion, like Jim Comey did, like Archibald Cox and Ruckelshouse and Elliott Richardson did. We need a special prosecutor, that's the only way to find out the truth. Has Gonzales breached the criminal standard? There's a lot of evidence that says he does but you need the right type of proceeding and you need a special prosecutor to find out yes or no.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Hatch, you gave a pretty forthright defense of the attorney general there, but I wonder, you know, you talk about all the employees of the Justice Department, the number two and number three positions are vacant right now. You've got --

SEN. HATCH: Guess why. The Democrats aren't they're not going to confirm anybody. By the way, Clement is not going to do this. That would be the last thing they do on what really isn't even skimpy evidence.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But you brought me to my next question.

SEN. HATCH: The fact of the matter is that the White House has said that Gonzales told the truth. And neither Comey nor Mueller, the Director of the FBI, indicated that he didn't.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, you may be --

SEN. HATCH: What they did say is that it was one program they were talking about, but there are various aspects of all these programs.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: You may be the one person the Democrats in the Senate are willing to confirm as attorney general. Would you accept it?

SEN. HATCH: Are you kidding? And give up being able to talk with Chuck Schumer on issues like this?

SEN. SCHUMER: If you're attorney general, we'll still talk all the time. It'll probably be a lot better. You'll do a lot better job than Alberto Gonzales. MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: We're just about out of time.

SEN. HATCH: Well, let me tell you, Alberto Gonzales is not going to retire. He's not going to resign. I have a lot of respect for the man. He's willing to hang in there. I think he's done a lot of good things down there even though, yeah, he's been used as a punching bag by the Democrats and I might add some Republicans who I chatted with and said, yeah, they have gone too far, not just the Democrats but some of the Republicans themselves.

All I'm saying is that, you know, we've had all --

SEN. SCHUMER: But, Orrin, it's not just the Democrats.

SEN. HATCH: We've had all of this bluster. We've had all of these documents and there isn't one evidence of impropriety and yet they've built this like it's some sort of big scandal. And it's not.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: That's going to have to be the last word today. Senator Schumer, Senator Hatch, thank you very much.

SEN. SCHUMER: Thank you.

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