MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Eric Swalwell

Interview

And joining us now is Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California. He served as a House Impeachment Manager in the second impeachment trial of President Trump, not to be confused with the first impeachment trial of President Trump. And he`s a member of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.

Congressman Swalwell, do you agree with Steve that the Democrats need to use all the levers of power to do everything they can to protect our democracy? Essentially, I think this moment is an inflection point, as I said in the open, and a stress test for the other branches of government.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): Absolutely, Zerlina. And right now we are squarely in extra innings. We thought -- and I`ll use that analogy as the Giants are beating the Dodgers right now here in the Bay Area. But we thought that the 2020 election would resolve this matchup between Trumpism and democracy. Instead, we are in extra innings and everything matters.

And making sure we protect access and voter rights at the polls that matters. Making sure we understand what happened on January 6th so that no candidate can ever aim a mob violently at the capitol. That matters. And those have to be the priority. And I cannot stress enough to our president that getting the Senate to break the filibuster to pass voting rights, we have to do that in extra innings.

Getting this January 6th commission to press these subpoenas, even if it means criminal contempt, we have to do that because if we lose, we don`t just lose an election, we lose everything.

MAXWELL: And when you think about all of the different investigations that are out there, obviously we got new information today from the house oversight committee as well that found that Donald Trump reported his hotel in downtown D.C. brought in $150 million in income while he served as president. But the hotel actually incurred more than $70 million in losses.

And this was an issue that came up during the campaign, in the beginning of his presidency in terms of potentially profiting off of the presidency. He also received in a postponement of payments from Deutsche Bank, the permission to postpone a $170 million loan. What is wrong with this picture? This feels very much against what the founders had intended.

SWALWELL: That`s right, Zerlina. Even though Donald Trump is no longer in office, corruption, sexism, racism, misogyny, they`re still at play. And yes, they were manifested in Donald Trump as president, but there will be more competent, corrupt, sexist, racist, misogynistic president who could take the Oval Office.

And if we don`t learn from what Donald Trump did, it`ll be much worse. And so Adam Schiff`s legislation, the Protecting our Democracy Act actually go a long way to preventing what Donald Trump was able to do financially, benefiting from being president while he was in the Oval Office, having foreign actors stay at his hotels. So, there`s an urgency here. We can`t just say, well, that`s the past, we should move on, because a more corrupt, competent president could come into the Oval Office.

MAXWELL: What do you think your House colleagues on the Republican side would say if President Hillary Clinton profited off the presidency in a hypothetical world?

SWALWELL: That`s right. There would be endless hearings after hearings. We`d never stop hearing about it. And so that`s why I think it`s actually in Republicans` interest to join us in making sure that we have more good government legislation in place. If they have any concerns about Joe Biden, I certainly don`t. I think he`s one of the most honest persons to be president.

But if they have concerns and want to hold him accountable, well, this is not aimed at Donald Trump anymore. It`s aimed at the current occupant and future presidents. So join us and make it bipartisan in our interests to make sure you no longer have a corrupt president benefiting from the Oval Office, not only personally, financially, and politically, but also for what it means in their ability, as I said, to try and aim a mob at the capitol to hold on to power if they were to lose an election.

MAXWELL: And to that point about the insurrection, the January 6th committee has sent out many subpoenas. Steve Bannon defying the subpoena. I mean, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are the two Republicans on that committee, so it`s bipartisan. What do Americans need to know about the rationale behind Steve Bannon defying the subpoena and Donald Trump`s efforts to use executive privilege in a moment where a bipartisan committee is trying to prevent another attack on the capitol?

[22:15:02]

SWALWELL: If he was innocent, he would cooperate. The reason he`s not cooperating is because he does not have an innocent explanation for his conduct that day, plain and simple. It`s a consciousness of guilt. And Americans need to know that Republicans have to own the two deadly lies they continue to spin, the lie that the election was stolen that continues to lead to political violence in this country, and the lies about the vaccines that make our children vulnerable to getting sick where 700,000 Americans have died.

Two deadly lies are what the Republicans must own, and that`s what`s at stake and it`s on us to make sure Americans know when they go to the ballot box next November that those two deadly lines, if we give them the right to govern, will continue to make us vulnerable at the ballot box where we could lose our democracy and at hospital beds where we could lose family members.

MAXWELL: Congressman Eric Swalwell, thank you for joining us tonight on this Friday night and enjoy the game, the rest of the game. Good luck.

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