MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Angus King

Interview

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HAYES: Joining me now, one of the senators who was in that Intelligence  Committee hearing the president says is fake news, Senator Angus King,  Independent from Maine. The President posed today for a photo. A kind of  I guess kiss and make up photo. Just concluded a great meeting with my  intel team in the Oval Office, they told me what they said on Tuesday at  the Senate hearings was mischaracterized by the media and we`re very much  in agreement on Iran, ISIS, North Korea. Their testimony was distorted.  Is that true?

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: Well, this reminds me of the old country song,  Chris, who you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes? I mean, the  testimony is there. I was there. I asked Gina Haspel very directly, is  Iran in compliance with the nuclear agreement and she hemmed around a  little bit but then she said yes it is. And that`s what their findings  are.

As far as North Korea, I just looked up. By the way, you don`t have to  read the transcript. They filed a 42-page report as part of their  testimony and it says the same thing. You quoted it, it says we continue  to assess that North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear  weapons and production capabilities. And what bothered me, Chris, was the  President coming after them and today he says well, they didn`t say that.

Well, maybe he should have figured that out before he issued a tweet  telling him the whole intelligence community should go back to school.

HAYES: Shouldn`t they -- shouldn`t they resign?

KING: Oh, I don`t think so. I hope not. I have a great deal of respect  for those people and they are great public servants. And that`s why I just  got really burned today because I`ve been to a number of these stations of  our intelligence folks around the world, they are patriotic people, they  are taking their lives in their hands every day on behalf of the country,  and to just say they ought to go back to school, I mean, that`s -- it  wasn`t just Dan Coats or Gina Haspel, it was thousands of people that  contributed to that analysis.

HAYES: Here`s my point. I mean Jim Mattis basically said at a certain  point the distance between my own views strongly-held and the president`s  are too much and I cannot abide working for the man. I mean, when the  President says you should go back to school and contradicts your own  intelligence assessments, there`s a real question about at what sense this  could ever be a functioning relationship?

KING: Well, I think you know, I think that`s what each one of those  individuals has to make that decision. But in the meantime, they`re doing  exactly what they`re supposed to do. Dan Coats at the beginning of the  hearing summarized it in as neatly as I`ve ever heard. He said our job is  to seek the truth and speak the truth and that`s exactly what they did.

Now, the President doesn`t have to pay attention to them. He should. But,  Chris, there`s another piece of this that really bothers me. If the  President sends this signal which essentially is don`t tell me what I don`t  want to hear, that could end up skewing and corrupting the intelligence  process altogether because people are going to say, well, we`re not going  to tell him this because he doesn`t -- you know, he`s not going to -- he`s  going to be mad at us. He`s going to tweet at us and we end up with not getting good information up the line and that could be disastrous for this country.

HAYES: I`m old enough to remember Dick Cheney driving over to the CIA to  look over their shoulders to make sure they gave him the Intel that he  wanted so as to justify the Iraq war so we have very recent examples of how  dangerous that can be.

KING: And that`s exactly what I`m talking about. I`m on the Intelligence  Committee as you know and every time one of these people comes up for  confirmation, I beat on them about will you tell the President what he  doesn`t want to hear because that`s your job. Your job is the facts. The  president -- whoever it is their job is to make policy based upon those  facts. But you -- if you`re -- if you`re trying to sort of cook the data  in order to meet the policy preferences of the executive, that`s how you  get things like the Iraq war.

HAYES: Final question. This is some news that broke this evening. There  is a question when Don Junior was making the arrangements for what is now  the infamous Trump Tower meeting in which he was promised dirt on behalf of  the Russian government which was supporting his father, after a phone call  with Emin Agalarov, the pop singer and son of the oligarch who he had made  the arrangements with, there were two blocked calls, the identity which  were unknown and which no one seemed particularly that interested in  finding out at least Republicans the majority.

News tonight that Senate investigators have found those calls and they are  not with his father, they`re with two different business associates of Don  Jr. and the family. Can you confirm that reporting since you`re on the  committee?

KING: I hate to make you ask such a long question and then say no but I am  not going to either confirm or deny the report because I am on the  committee and the work that we`re doing is at this point confidential or  classified, committee sensitive. So you`ll find out when we issue our  final report. I`m sorry but that`s the way we`re trying to run our  committee.

HAYES: Fair enough. I had to ask. Senator Angus King, thank you.

KING: Thank you, Chris. Good to talk to you.

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