CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Mike Lee

Interview

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SCIUTTO: Sure to face some tough questions. Barr will be appearing before both the Senate and the House Judiciary Committees.

Joining us now is a Republican who will get to question him. Senator Mike Lee of Utah. His new book, "Our Lost Declaration" hits shelves today. We've been reading it here at NEWSROOM. It's a good one. I suggest you read it as well.

Senator, thank you for taking the time this morning.

SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT): Thank you, Jim. Good to with you.

SCIUTTO: So responding to the Mueller report, you have said, quote, there's nothing in this report that changes your view of this president. As you know, the special counsel established that members of Trump's team were willing to accept help from Russia during the campaign. They never reported it to law enforcement. And, as you know, the president publically cheered the release of this information.

You, as a candidate, whether for Senate or for higher office, would you accept help from a foreign country, particularly an adversary that at the time was interfering in the U.S. political process? Would you accept that help?

LEE: I'd like to think that I wouldn't. I've never faced that exact scenario. It doesn't seem like a good idea. It seems to me to be something that would cause me to have great pause and to look somewhere else for help rather than a foreign government.

SCIUTTO: Are you disappointed then that President Trump's aides, campaign staff did not make the same decision?

LEE: Oh, sure. Sure. But, look, it's a presidential election. They were in the heat of this moment. I was not. It's difficult for me to cast too much judgement on them. I wasn't involved in the process at the time. I'd like to think that if I had been, I might have raised a word of caution, but hindsight is 2020 and I wasn't there.

HARLOW: So, senator, before we get to the book, which is fascinating, and we'll dive in, in a moment, let me just talk to you about transparency because if the American people don't know one thing about you is when you don't agree with the president, you do speak out. You were at odds with him on declaring a national emergency. You were actually with Democrats like Bernie Sanders when it comes to Yemen and again the president on that.

LEE: Just feeling the Bern on getting us out of the war on Yemen.

HARLOW: There you -- there you go. Well, I would you, would you vote for Bernie Sanders? I don't think you'd go that far.

LEE: Correct.

HARLOW: But you've work with him. OK.

So, the president has lacked transparency and continuing to. And I'm wondering if you have a problem with it. Yesterday we saw the president file a law to prevent Congress from obtaining his financial records. Deadline day that Congress has asked for those tax return is today. The White House isn't going to turn them over. Now the White House is telling Carl Kline (ph), who used to run the personnel security director, he was, to not testify, even though the Oversight Committee has called for him to testify after this whistleblower raised concerns about 25 security clearances. Are you concerned about the not only lack of transparency, but these pushes against it in the face of Congress?

LEE: Look, I can't speak for the president. I'm not going to purport to (INAUDIBLE).

HARLOW: But I'm asking you as a member of Congress, does it concern you?

LEE: As a member of Congress, I see a president who has undergone a very significant, very prolonged two-year investigation. They've taken the White House. They've shaken it every way they possibly can. They've looked into it. And I think it's easy for most Americans to understand why he might not be overly eager to hand over even more information where it's not required by law.

HARLOW: Well, IRS code, as you know, says "shall furnish." So maybe this -- you clerked for a Supreme Court justice. Maybe this will go all the way to the Supreme Court to decide the definition of "shall" there, but it is IRS code. LEE: Perhaps. But, look, this is going to have to be ironed out between his lawyers and the congressional investigators looking for it.

HARLOW: Jim.

SCIUTTO: Senator Lee, I'm going to make your day. I'm going to quote from your book here. And this gets to what is really the core for folks at home who don't know the thrust of the book. It's about the Constitution and what it means and how, as Americans, in effect, we can defend it today. Here's the quote, the steady usurpation of legislative authority by the executive branch is a creeping phenomenon. The people's elected representatives have made countless choices that have steadily diminished their own power and with it that of the people they represent, delegating to others the difficult and contentious task of making law has a tendency to make reelection easier.

I mean you're taking a shot at Congress here for in effect not defending their constitutional powers. You have a president who just bypassed Congress to get money for a wall that Congress, even when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, the president couldn't get that money, tried multiple times, shut down the government. I wonder, do you believe this president is violating the spirit of the Constitution that you're extolling in effect in this book by taking that power away from you and your colleagues in the Senate.

LEE: Yes, look, one of the reasons I wrote this book, one of the reasons I voted the way I did with respect to the resolution of disapproval under the national emergency declaration a few weeks ago, and one of the reasons why I sponsored with my friend Bernie Sanders a resolution to get us out of undeclared, unconstitutional civil war in Yemen is that I believe that Congress has given too much authority to the executive branch, power to make war, power to start trade wars, power to impose tariffs, power to declare broad national emergencies.

[09:45:25] This has been a convenient tool over time by Congress. It was headed by Houses of Representatives, Senates, and, with the assistance of White Houses of every conceivable partisan combination. So it shouldn't be surprising to us that our current president, at any moment, this moment or any moment going forward, would maybe take advantage of some of those. It is our fault as a Congress, and we, as a Congress, need to take that power back.

My whole book, "Our Lost Declaration," is all about the fact that the fight for liberty in America, as from day one, focused on the need to limit the amount of power that any one person or group of people can accumulate. And there are risks today, just as there were two and a half centuries ago, at the time of the American Revolution, with one person being able to exercise too much power.

HARLOW: Let me ask you about something else that struck Jim and I from your book. You write about your party and you write about conservatives. And you say conservatives are still in danger of losing not only the culture war but also the hearts and minds of an entire generation of young Americans. That's why we lost the House of Representatives in 2018. It is why we could lose the presidency in 2020.

That is a stark warning. What's your advice to your own party?

LEE: My advice to my own party is to get back to the basics, get back to the fundamentals of what made us a country. And one of the central themes of this book, a book that I think could be a great give for Mother's Day, for graduation, for Father's Day, any parent who wants to make sure that their child or their children has access to the stories that inform us about why we are our own country can help with this. And they certainly can help with the Republican Party being able to regain that which it purports to stand for.

HARLOW: Because your point is -- and you write more about this -- you know, that you think many in your party have resorted to simple sort of easy phrases like, conservative judges, lower taxes, less regulation. And it seems like you find that disingenuous.

LEE: It's not that it's disingenuous so much as it is incomplete. It's incomplete if we focus only on putting conservative judges on the court, especially if we don't pay attention to what that means. Most people don't even understand what it means to be a conservative judge. I -- a good judge is someone who would just read the law based on what it says.

But even more than focusing on the courts, we need to focus on the legislative branch and what we're legislating, what we're enacting, what we're not enacting. And on the dozens, indeed the hundreds of instances in which we have, as a Congress, handed over defacto law making power, legislative power to the executive branch, that's inexcusable. And we shouldn't rest until we have brought, pursuant to Article One, all that power back to our branch, otherwise we're going to be acting in many ways similar to the way that our government in London behaved prior to the American Revolution.

HARLOW: We appreciate your time. Jim and I are so glad that you could be with us. Congratulations on the book and come back on the show soon.

SCIUTTO: Yes, we'll be watching. We'll be watching.

HARLOW: Senior senator of Utah, Mike Lee.

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