CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: "Interview with Rep. Madeleine Dean"

Interview

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BLITZER: Can't blame him not for not wanting to talk all of this. Kylie, thank you very much with that report.

Joining us now, Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, a Democrat, she serves at the House Judiciary Committee. Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining us. What is your reaction to this strong rebuke of President Trump's Syria policy by the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell?

REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): It is about time. I'm pleased he's speaking up and pointing out the grave strategic disaster that abandoning our allies, the Kurds, is. Giving a green light to Turkey to come in and slaughter. People lost their lives as a result of that capricious decision that President Trump was apparently bullied into. Children lost their lives. And the abandonment of our allies, the Kurds, is just despicable.

BLITZER: Today is the deadline for the White House and the Energy Secretary Rick Perry for that matter to hand over subpoenaed documents. Your committee's role in this inquiry will be to draft articles of impeachment. Is there any doubt in your mind right now that obstruction will be included?

DEAN: I have confidence that obstruction of justice, obstruction of Congress will be tops among articles of impeachment if and when they move forward. I don't want to get ahead of anybody right now. We know that Adam Schiff and the Intelligence Committee is doing terrific work getting at the facts, speaking to courageous people in order to reveal to Congress and then to the American public the extraordinary wrongdoing that we first learned from a whistleblower having to do with the Ukraine issue. And the shakedown of a foreign president whose Democracy was at risk and whose sovereignty was at risk. So I'm looking forward to the completion of those interviews as you pointed out, a couple of important ones coming up this week. He's already completed the committee in a bipartisan way has already completed about eight interviews and so there is a lot of work to be done but it is being done expeditiously and well.

BLITZER: We'll see what Bill Taylor the top diplomat right now in Kiev has to say. He's been called back to testify behind closed doors on Tuesday.

President Trump says his acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has clarified his comments from yesterday when Mulvaney admitted that aid to Ukraine was in fact conditioned on investigations of Democrats. How do you interpret Mulvaney's remarks?

DEAN: I think what we saw yesterday in the press briefing room was the truth and his attempt to take it back today by way of a statement of clarification is more of the same from this administration. You can't say white is black and black is white and the same moment and think you have any credibility. So Mick Mulvaney revealed his colors, showed that that is the way this administration works. It shakes down. It holds up. It provides quid pro quo to foreign leaders, our friends, says you've got to do me a favor though. Investigate my opponent in the upcoming election. Think of the betrayal of his oath of office, think of having people like Mick Mulvaney carry out these betrayals of our national election, of our national security, of global security.

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It's stunning. But you don't get to say one thing one day and then the opposite thing the next day and have anybody believe you.

BLITZER: Let me also get your reaction, Congresswoman, to President Trump, his decision to host the next G7 summit in June at his resort in Doral, Florida. Have you spoken to your colleagues about what your next steps might be in terms of learning how this decision was made because it's raising lots of questions?

DEAN: We will be investigating how it was made but really right now we're very focused on making sure we get all of the facts surrounding the July 25th call with Ukraine. Certainly you saw that we took a vote on the floor of the House yesterday condemning the president for his actions in Syria. With which two-thirds of Republicans joined us. And now you see the leader of the Senate calling it a grave mistake.

Doral is an extraordinary in plain sight abuse of the emoluments clause but apparently this president doesn't understand what this clause means. The founders put that in there, the framers put that in there for two reasons. One, to avoid or to prohibit profit earring by a government official, by a president, by any one of us, frankly, but the other was to eliminate or mitigate foreign influence. Flying folks in from around the world, spending money at his establishments is a clear violation of the emoluments clause. People know that. This man does not believe in his oath of office. I don't believe he's read the Constitution to know that he is bound by these things. He certainly doesn't honor it.

BLITZER: I know we got to run. But I want you to give us a quick reaction to the death of your colleague, your friend and Congressman Elijah Cummings who passed away yesterday.

DEAN: Thank you for giving me a minute to talk about him. I'm a new member of Congress and as heartbroken as I am that we lost Elijah Cummings yesterday, a giant and good and decent man, I mean decent, that kind of great man based in decency and I'm so pleased I had these few short months to serve with him.

I sat down with him one day on the floor of the House as we were voting and you don't have assigned seats but he sits in a particular space. And I had the chance to talk to him. He looked around that chamber with such reverence and said remember years from now, hundreds of years from now, your family, your ancestors will remember that you were here. And I said, well, Mr. Cummings, they're going to remember you were here. I'm not sure about me. But he talked about the place with reverence and as he said so often to us, to anybody who would listen, we are better than this when we get into these ridiculous corruptions or chaos or confusion. America is better than this. And yet we see a president hollowing out department after department, hallowing out diplomacy, hallowing out our standing in the world, hallowing out agencies like the consumer protection financial bureau in front of financial services this day.

Elijah Cummings was a giant and he will be so greatly missed. But I think he will also help us focus on what is right, what is just, and doing the right thing by our Democracy, protecting our Constitution and holding this president accountable.

BLITZER: He was a truly great, great American. Representative Madeleine Dean -

DEAN: Such a great man.

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