CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

Interview

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BLITZER: Yes, I suspect all those are just beginning.

Thank you very much, Pamela Brown, the White House.

Joining us now, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. He is a Democrat. He serves on the Judiciary Committee.

Senator, thank so much for joining us.

Let me quickly get your reaction to these allegations that the president's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen colluded with Stormy Daniels' lawyer to help President Trump. Does Congress have a role to play here at all in trying to figure out whether any laws were actually broken?

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D), RHODE ISLAND: Off the top of my head, I don't see that.

I think that there's at least a veneer of credibility to the charges, because these two lawyers were engaged on multiple similar cases. And so the idea that they have set up a little system is I think, at least on its surface, credible.

And what that means relative to us is that it puts considerable more pressure on Michael Cohen. And if he uses the added pressure here as a reason to cooperate and the Southern District of New York investigation accelerates for that reason, then that will have some significant impact on the matters that are of interest to us in the Senate, which are the collusion, the obstruction of justice, and potential tampering of witnesses.

BLITZER: All right, let's get to that, because Rudy Giuliani, the president's new personal attorney, now says that the Mueller team -- and he blames what he calls 13 highly partisan Democrats who make up the Mueller team -- he says they are -- quote -- "trying very, very hard to frame the president" and to get him into trouble when he hasn't done anything wrong.

What do you make of that allegation, that these individuals working for Mueller are trying to frame the president?

WHITEHOUSE: Well, I would say two things.

First, with respect to a public audience, this is kind of a gaslight job, in which you just continue to say things that are demonstrably false and test everybody's ability to stand by the reality of the situation.

It's become a recurring Trump administration public relations strategy. And I think we need to be attentive to it when it comes up, because it's a particular strategy, just gaslighting the public by saying things that are false and persisting in saying them.

The other element of this is that, if you deal with defense lawyers in criminal matters and they have got not much left, very often, what they will do is to start saying outrageous things about the prosecution, in the hopes that the prosecution will be baited into responding.

And the zone of misbehavior that a defense counsel can do in the zealous defense of their client is far broader than what a prosecutor is allowed to do. So the baiting a prosecutor into responding strategy is not new.

I do think that Mueller and his team are so professional and so experience that the likelihood of their being taken in by this and seizing the bait is very, very unlikely. But I do think that there is a whiff of desperation coming out of the White House right now, and that the combination of the gaslight job and the attempt to provoke Mueller is what's behind this latest series of just flat falsehoods.

[18:15:11]

BLITZER: Interesting. Very interesting.

The former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, as you know, he was fired only a few days before he was scheduled to start receiving his federal pension. He is scheduled to testify before your committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, next week.

And he's asking for immunity in exchange for his testimony. What do you of that?

WHITEHOUSE: Well, I believe there is a matter pending over at the Department of Justice with respect to him. So that's, I think, fairly standard operating procedure for somebody who has an investigation pending, until that is brought to its conclusion.

Obviously, I think it's an opportunity for the president to make hay about McCabe and about the FBI. And I wouldn't be surprised if there was -- if that weren't the rationale for bringing him in, that people could foresee that he would be likely to ask for immunity, that, when he did, that would kick off this second round of presidential gaslighting.

So he may have been propped up to this, knowing that somebody in his situation is highly, highly likely to take that step.

BLITZER: After the president accused the FBI of spying on him, on his campaign, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, they're both now rejecting that accusation by the president.

They're insisting that the FBI acted appropriately.

How much influence do you believe those comments from these Republican leaders have on the president? And how much influence do they have on your Republican colleagues in Congress?

WHITEHOUSE: I don't think they have much effect on the president.

I think they're into desperate times require desperate measures mode. And having some Republicans agree that these claims that they have made are ridiculous doesn't really change their desperate measures.

I do think, though, that when Representative Gowdy and Senator Burr and Speaker Ryan all line up and say that is a ridiculous assertion, we expect the FBI to come in, in a counterintelligence matter and find out if the Russians are in fact infiltrating a political campaign, that is not spying. That is traditional counterintelligence designed to protect our country.

And if they didn't do that, it would be a scandal. That to me all makes a lot of sense. But you have got to separate the strategy of the Trump White House from what makes sense and what's truthful. I do think that this creates a bit of a buttress for the president trying to push too far with all of this. Desperate people do, nevertheless, have boundaries. And I think as he pushes these desperate boundaries, when he gets pushback from the Republicans, it makes something of a difference in the circles around him.

It has to have an effect on people like Don McGahn, for instance.

BLITZER: The White House counsel.

All right, Senator Whitehouse, thanks so much for joining us.

WHITEHOUSE: Thank you.

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