CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Florida Congressman Ted Deutch

Interview

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BLITZER: Could be used potentially as evidence if they go forward in that area.

Pamela, Shimon, guys, thanks very, very much.

Joining us now, Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch. He's the chairman of the -- the new chairman of the House Ethics Committee. He also serves on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees. He's a very busy guy.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

REP. TED DEUTCH (D), FLORIDA: Good to be with you, Wolf. Thanks.

BLITZER: Let's begin with latest news in the Russia probe. And you have been hearing our reporters tell us about that.

The president and his attorneys might be preparing to assert executive privilege, in an attempt to block Mueller's report. If the White House were to do so, were to pursue that kind of a strategy, how should your party, the Democratic majority in the House, respond?

DEUTCH: Well, first of all, Wolf, there is -- there are safeguards in place to make sure that the president can't cover up this entire report.

But think about what he's suggesting. There's no executive privilege over presidential deliberations with respect to possible obstruction of justice, no executive privilege to hide potential witness tampering or the potential cover-up of the commission of a federal crime in order to get elected president of the United States. So what we're going to do is to make sure that the president and his lawyers, however many lawyers there are, can't be allowed to proceed with arguments that aren't permitted by law, and we will continue to stand by that.

BLITZER: The president's former personal attorney Michael Cohen will be testifying in public up on Capitol Hill next month. Cohen is scheduled to report to federal prison on March 7, after pleading guilty to multiple federal crimes, including lying to Congress.

Do you think his testimony will be credible, given his criminal history?

DEUTCH: Well, I think it's a really important moment to have Michael Cohen come to testify, after we have seen the past -- over the past two years the Republican leadership, when they were in charge of the House committees, refusing to hold oversight hearings.

We now have the opportunity. We will have the opportunity to question Michael Cohen, who is the president's cover-up lawyer. That's the role that he has played for Donald Trump.

Remember, Wolf, Michael Cohen is the person that worked with the president, who potentially is an unindicted co-conspirator, in a case to commit a felony violation of campaign law in order to be elected president of the United States.

[18:20:00]

There is an awful lot that Michael Cohen will have to tell us. Obviously ,you always judge the credibility of witnesses. I'm glad that we're going to have the opportunity to ask him some very pointed questions about what the president did right before the election, covering -- potentially covering up a felony in order to be elected, and all of the ways that Michael Cohen might have been involved in the more than 100 connections that exist between the president and Russia.

There's a lot for us to learn.

BLITZER: When you say 100, 100 connections, elaborate. What do you mean?

DEUTCH: Well, if you look -- remember, you go back to the discussion that the president -- the statements that the president made at the very beginning, that there were no contacts between anyone having to do with him and Russia, and you now go through what we have already learned.

You look at the little that we do know from Mueller, you look at Manafort, and you look at the meeting that took place in Trump Tower, and on and on. And what's clear is that there have been meetings.

What's unclear to us is how much the president may have known about, for example, Paul Manafort trying to get sensitive campaign data to someone who can transmit it to Russian officials. We don't know that. Those are the kinds of questions that we are

going to ask Michael Cohen. Those are the kinds of questions, frankly, that the Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, the Intel Committee, all of us, working side by side, will finally try to get to ask the questions to get to the truth, even as we wait for Mueller to complete his investigation as well.

BLITZER: Let's turn to the government shutdown.

Congressman, the Trump administration is exploring declaring a national emergency, using billions of dollars in what they describe as unspent Defense Department disaster recovery funding to construct a border wall.

How should Democrats respond?

DEUTCH: Well, let's start with this, Wolf.

Unspent -- they use these bureaucratic terms. The president wants to take billions of dollars earmarked for recovery from storm-ravaged Puerto Rico. He wants to take that money and use it to fulfill a campaign promise that has nothing to do with national security.

There is something serious that's happening in our country right now. As you pointed out earlier, 800,000 federal workers will not be paid, many of them in the national security area. They work for the DEA. They work for CBP. They work for Secret Service. They work for TSA. These are people who keep us safe.

And because the president shut down the government in order to fulfill a campaign promise, which he's not going to be able to do -- he's already failed on the first part, when he told us Mexico was going to pay for a wall. When he shut that down, he's wreaking havoc on the lives, not just of those 800,000, Wolf, but the contractors whose pay will never be made up, and for all of the loved ones of those 800,000, and ultimately so many others, whether it's -- whether it's people who will suffer because the FDA can't conduct food inspections, or the tens of millions of Americans who are at risk of losing their SNAP benefits if this goes on much longer.

The president likes to talk about how he's done more in all these areas, he's been the best president, he's accomplished things that no other president has accomplished. He lies about that all the time.

In this instance, he will take credit, he has taken credit, and will have to own the longest shutdown in federal government -- in the history of the federal government that he proudly announced he wanted to achieve.

BLITZER: Congressman Ted Deutch, thanks so much for joining us.

DEUTCH: Thanks for having me, Wolf.

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