CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview with Del. Stacey Plaskett

Interview

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ACOSTA: OK, Phil Mattingly, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Joining us now is Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett. She is the Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands and a member of the House Oversight Committee, where she has a view of a lot of investigations that are going on right now.

Thank you very much, Delegate Plaskett, for joining us.

President Trump, as you saw in that piece of a few moments ago from Pamela Brown, siding with Kim Jong-un in attacking the former Vice President Joe Biden. Your thoughts on that?

REP. STACEY PLASKETT (D), VIRGIN ISLANDS: Well, I understand that there's a campaign going to be coming up, and the president sees former Vice President Biden as an adversary.

But being in a foreign place and having a discussion about senator -- with Vice President Biden at that time was completely inappropriate. That should be something that should be left for the campaign trail.

And to side with a dictator, an individual who you're negotiating with, who negotiations fell apart with, decide with him against a fellow American seems to be untenable.

[18:10:00]

ACOSTA: And what's your response to President Trump referring to Vice President Biden as a low-I.Q. individual, he put it? Obviously, we don't want to get into the weeds too much on these personal attacks, but, I mean, this is a president on the world stage, taxpayer dollars being used, and he's engaging in some pretty lowbrow political attacks.

PLASKETT: Well, I guess the president believes that it's worked for him in the past, and why not have a go at it again for 2020? We will see what the American people think of that.

I propose that most people are really sick and tired of that. They're much more concerned about finding out what their jobs are going to be, if there's going to be a relief from the tariffs in China. Will the farmers be able to be assisted? What's going to happen with higher education?

Those are the things that most of us that are here in Washington are concerned about and what we have been working on since coming back in January. And it would be our hope that the president would focus on that right now as well, do his job, be president, assist us in getting legislation across the aisle.

ACOSTA: And the president says he's not personally bothered by these recent missile tests by North Korea.

What is the president's motivation here? And do you think he's giving Kim Jong-un a pass here?

PLASKETT: Well, I -- he definitely did by saying that he doesn't know what his motivations are, he doesn't have -- the president doesn't have any problems with it.

This is a violation of sanctions. Whatever Kim Jong-un's are, are -- regardless of what they are, those are meaningless to the tenets of the U.N. sanctions. And so that's what the president should be focusing on.

He could have said, yes, we believe that those are violations, but for the moment, we're going to put those aside while we work forward on these negotiations.

But that wasn't the case.

ACOSTA: And are you getting mixed signals from the White House in terms of what the foreign policy approach is to Iran?

The president contradicted his own national security adviser on North Korea and on Iran, saying he doesn't want regime change. Are you -- are you getting mixed signals from this administration?

PLASKETT: I think what you have seen is, Democrats and Republicans, as you reported just a few moments ago, have given the president quite a bit of latitude in his discussions with Iran. We're concerned about the language that he said. We're concerned about the negotiations that he has with Korea as well.

But we have given him the authority, as president, to engage in those. What we will see in the next couple of weeks is if in fact this back and forth, this seesawing that he does, continues. Then it will be Congress, I believe, the Foreign Affairs Committee and others, who will come in, the Intelligence, and say, wait, we need a clear-cut plan on where you're going with these negotiations.

ACOSTA: And let's turn to your work on the House Oversight Committee.

The president's lawyers have struck this deal with your committee, two other committees to put on hold some of these subpoenas for financial documents as this appeals process takes place. Apparently, we may get some kind of hearing on all this several weeks from now.

Are you worried that this could be dragged out in the courts now and you're not going to get your hands on this information?

PLASKETT: Well...

ACOSTA: You have been trying to get this for some time now.

PLASKETT: First, I think the president should say thank you to us for agreeing to have a...

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: You think he's going to do that?

PLASKETT: Well, we will see. We will see what he tweets about in the next couple of hours.

But we agreed to say that, listen, we won in the lower quote courts. We understand the president and his attorneys want to move for appeals. And so we will wait to see what the court has to say. We, Congress, recognize that there are three branches of government. And we're going to let them work, so that the American -- American people can have confidence that at least one branch is doing its job.

ACOSTA: And how soon do you think you will get access to those documents from Mazars, the president's tax and accounting firm?

PLASKETT: Well, again, that was part of the negotiations.

ACOSTA: You really want to see those documents.

PLASKETT: We do.

There were things that were brought up in several hearings. There are investigations that we're doing that are related to a number of issues, related to his attempted purchase of the Buffalo Bills, related to the Emoluments Clause. Has the president -- is he getting pecuniary benefits from foreign adversaries and foreign countries, which are against the Constitution?

Those are things that oversight -- that is our job, and that's what we're going to be looking at. But I want the American people to know that, at the same time that we're doing those investigations on oversight, we just had a hearing the other day where Chairman Cummings, as well as the ranking member, Jim Jordan, were in agreement about artificial intelligence.

We're having discussions on drug pricing. We're doing other work. We're passing legislation. Our request is that the Senate, the head of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, puts forward the bills that we pass on the House, so that the American people can see that the Democrats are doing their job.

ACOSTA: On impeachment, you said you're against moving forward with impeachment. Would you rather see these proceedings, these almost oversight functions that you have been trying to attempt in the House, move to the courts and have the courts rule on all of these various records that you want to get ahold, the financial records from Mazars, the tax returns and so on?

PLASKETT: I think what we're trying to do is, do our function, and when there is a question of whether we're overreaching or we're outside of the scope of the Constitution, allowing the judiciary branch to do its job and rule on that procedural issue, and then allowing us to move forward.

[18:15:06]

ACOSTA: And if the courts come back and say, hand over the documents, you're going to insist on that?

PLASKETT: We're going to insist on it.

We're going to enforce the subpoenas and we're going to move forward on the investigation. Let the American people see where the information leads, and let them let us know what they want us to do next.

ACOSTA: OK, Congresswoman, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks for joining us.

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