CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript:

Interview

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Joining me now is Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of the great state of New Hampshire.

Senator, thanks for joining us.

SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN (D), NEW HAMPSHIRE: Nice to be with you.

TAPPER: Now, President Trump has added former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova to his legal team. DiGenova has gone on TV and said, quote: make no mistake. A group of FBI and DOJ people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime. What do you make of this new pick?

SHAHEEN: Well, that's just wrong, that's just not true. The fact is the FBI was looking into what was going on in the 2016 elections and what Russia was doing before the election even happened. When I was, I'm on the Foreign Relations Committee. I called for the committee in September of 2016 to do a hearing on what was going on. So, it's not true.

If Donald Trump has nothing to hide, then he should be interested in seeing this investigation move forward and conclude. We know there have been 19 people indicted. A number of them have already pled guilty, people with ties to the Trump campaign. So he should want this investigation to go forward and see what it produces, if he has nothing to hide.

TAPPER: Senator, we've heard warnings from your Republican colleagues about the possible firing of Mueller. We've heard from Senator Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Jeff Flake, Orrin Hatch, and others, Bob Corker. But House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a short paper statement voicing support for Mueller.

Senate Majority Leader McConnell has stayed virtually silent.

Do you think that your fellow Republicans, more of them, including leadership needs to say more to protect Mueller?

[16:20:00] SHAHEEN: Well, I do. I've been disappointed that more people haven't been willing to speak up and to speak out in a stronger way. I was pleased to see both John McCain and Lindsey Graham over the weekend, along with Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake, all saying that they had concerns about what was happening.

But people need to be very definitive that this is unacceptable. We are, as Lindsey Graham said, a nation of laws. We believe that no one is above the law in the United States, including the president. And if there is wrongdoing found, then he should be held accountable. If there's not, great. We should all go forward. But we need to get the information out, we need to get the truth out, the American public needs to know what's going on.

TAPPER: You've said that if the president fires Mueller, would it spur a constitutional crisis. If it does happen, the president gives the order to the Justice Department and they fire Mueller, one way or another, and if the investigation is scuttled -- what options are left for Democrats and Republicans in Congress? What do you think would happen?

SHAHEEN: Well, I remember the Saturday night massacre when Richard Nixon was president. And that was one of the events that precipitated the impeachment proceedings. So I would hope that people would look at the serious implications of what a firing might mean. But I also hope that it's too early for that. I hope that we're going to continue to see Robert Mueller's investigation go forward as it's intended and that people will continue to support that. TAPPER: The president just wrapped up a speech in your home state in

New Hampshire where he talked about the opioid epidemic. He talked about a lot of issues. And one of the solutions he proposed was the death penalty for drug dealers. Take listen.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If we don't get tough on the drug dealers, we're wasting our time. Just remember that. We're wasting our time. And that toughness includes the death penalty.

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TAPPER: What do you think?

SHAHEEN: Well, we've seen a lot of things that work to address the opioid crisis in New Hampshire. We need resources. We need to get people treatment and frankly to have a death penalty that after all the appeals, 20 years down the road, might make a difference at putting some drug dealer behind bars, and putting them away, is not going to help with the immediate crisis that we're facing.

What we need the president to do is to make good on on his rhetoric. And we've heard a lot from the president in New Hampshire. We've heard him talk during campaign about what needed to be done to address this opioid epidemic. Then we heard him go after New Hampshire because of the challenges that we're facing.

But we haven't heard him do is to put the resources behind his rhetoric, to say this is a crisis and I'm going on put everything I've got against it. That's what we did when we thought we were threatened by Ebola. We're losing over 63,000 people every year to substance use disorders and to overdoses. New Hampshire has the second highest overdose death rate in the county.

We need more than a rhetoric. We need a commitment that funding is going to be there to help law enforcement, to help treatment, to help recovery efforts, to help prevention, and frankly going after Affordable Care Act and trying to get rid of health care is the worst thing we can do for those people with substance use disorders.

The best thing in New Hampshire to help people get into treatment has been the expansion of Medicaid available under the Affordable Care Act.

TAPPER: Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, thank you for your time. Appreciate it, Senator.

SHAHEEN: Thank you.

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