MSNBC "The Beat with Ari Melber" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse

Interview

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MELBER:  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse so as I mentioned is on the Judiciary Committee.  Your view of this standoff and Roger Stone asserting what he says is every American`s right.
 
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D), RHODE ISLAND:  Well, the Judiciary Committee has a very poor record of issuing subpoenas to push back on phony assertions of privilege of one kind or another.  So the place where I suspect this lands is over at Special Counsel who surprised me if the Mueller investigation were not looking at Roger Stone given his centrality to a lot of these.  And if Stone is making the same Fifth Amendment assertions to special counsel that he`s now made to our Judiciary Committee, then I suspect they`re going to litigate that because mere possession of documents doesn`t give a First Amendment protection to them and I think he`s dramatically overstated his First Amendment rights here.
 
So I would expect that this will continue the Mueller investigation for some time while they sort through how to get access to documents from an important witness like him.
 
MELBER:  So you don`t expect the Republicans who run the committee in the Senate to put force behind this request from Senator Feinstein?
 
WHITEHOUSE:  Have you seen the Judiciary Subcommittee yet -- Judiciary subpoena yet from the committee?
 
MELBER:  I have not.  I see you -- I see you`re turning Socratic on me.
 
WHITEHOUSE:  No, so -- now I think the House may very well decide to take a look into this because now they can issue subpoenas and try to get to the bottom of this, but I think there are a lot of holes in this assertion of his Fifth Amendment privilege. 
 
MELBER:  It is -- Senator, I want to play for your analysis.  It is rather curious the way that some of the ways that Mr. Stone is making his public tour during a time when there`s been more and more that`s come out from him and well as others about him lying to Congress through Mr. Corsi and Randy Credico was saying he lied about the back channel to WikiLeaks.  Here was his discussion of what you referenced Mueller getting in touch with Stone which allegedly hasn`t happened yet.  Take a look.
 
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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST ABC NEWS:  Have you had any contact with Robert Mueller or his prosecutors?
 
STONE:  We have not.  None at all.  That`s correct.  Doesn`t that -- does that suggest to you that you actually are a target?  Usually, they speak with the witnesses first.
 
STONE:  Well, you suggest nothing at all.  Again, where is the crime?  I engaged in politics --
 
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MELBER:  Given the number of people that have been hauled before the grand jury to testify about Mr. Stone, do you think he`s wrong in that claim there?
 
WHITEHOUSE:  I don`t even know if he`s truthful.  I don`t have any reason to believe a word that he says.  So I would be hard-pressed to speculate.  I do think we learned a few things from the Flynn sentencing memoranda and addendum today though.  They said that the investigation is ongoing so all this talk about it wrapping up soon doesn`t seem to be very well supported.  The blackout that you keep showing of the redaction of everything about the criminal investigation suggests that this is a criminal investigation that we don`t know is out there yet.  Because you try to minimize what you redact and there`s no point minimizing say Cohen`s name if that were relevant here because people already know there are criminal investigations to him.
 
MELBER:  Just so we understand.
 
WHITEHOUSE:  It raises the prospect that there`s a whole new criminal investigation we don`t know about --
 
MELBER:  Senator, you`re saying the very existence of that other probe would not be known?
 
WHITEHOUSE:  The identity of who is in that other probe as well as this existence, yes.  And they also talked about the help that Flynn provided so that other firsthand witnesses would testify.  Who`s the first-hand witness?  Do we know they are?  I think that suggests that there may be unknown to the public witnesses that the Special Counsel investigation is talking, has to talk to, and maybe still is talking to and maybe even still is talking to in Trump`s circle.
 
And then finally you`ve got the factual predicate of one of his assertions about Flynn is that Flynn testified firsthand about interactions between the Trump transition team and Russian government officials.  So that maybe not collusion but it certainly makes Trump`s no collusion argument pretty threadbare when they`re asserting as a predicate fact that interactions took place between Trump`s team and the Russians.
 
MELBER:  It`s been fascinating a range of analysis there.  Before I let you go, the other story that broke here post-Midterms was reports of a foreign hacking predominantly of Republican staff e-mails.   What can you tell us about that?  Does the Congress care about that?  Does it feel like a replay of 2016 or something separated?  What are you going to do to get to the bottom of it?
 
WHITEHOUSE:  Well, it feels a little bit like a replay except because it was Republicans and not Democrats perhaps there was no weaponization of it.  So we need to figure out more what happened and was it used for any purpose.  Clearly, the hack on the DNC was weaponized against Democrats and against Hillary Clinton to help Trump.  And so you can draw a bunch of conclusions about how the hacked e-mails were used.  Because we don`t know how these were used yet, you don`t have that first level of conclusions to draw.
 
MELBER:  Understood.  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as always, thank you for your time.
 
WHITEHOUSE:  Thank you, Ari.  Good to be with you. 

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