MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: "IThe Washington Post reports."

Interview

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O`DONNELL: With more on the breaking news from The New York Times tonight, The Times is reporting that the whistleblower raised concerns about Donald Trump`s Ukraine phone call through separate previously unreported channels. According to The Times, during the preliminary inquiry, a career lawyer learned that multiple people had raised concerns about Mr. Trump`s call. Joining our discussion now is Amy Klobuchar, Democratic Senator from Minnesota, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. She is also a candidate for President of the United States. Senator Klobuchar, The Times is reporting now that this whistleblower was not alone, spiritually anyway. I mean we`ve all been wondering why only one. Turns out the whistleblower, as we saw in Lois Lorenz (ph) report, got a lot of help from other people, and there were many other people concerned.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, I`m not surprised at all, and I think this is going to have to be a lot of their investigation. Because you can imagine that this may not have been the first time this happened. And there are people who used to work in that White House, who work there now, who know things, who have been talking about this, and I think that has got to be key to this investigation. There have to be people there who feel they have a patriotic duty to come forward. And if that doesn`t work, there`s always the subpoena. And I just think they have to, because this is something that we see a pattern from the moment he stood in front of the that sacred wall of the stars of the deceased CIA agents and made a partisan speech too, believing Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence officers, to where we are now, and having visited Ukraine with John McCain and Lindsey Graham and seeing the state of that fragile democracy and how much they depended on our country. McCain`s decision to go there right after Trump was elected, because he knew how important it was to stand by that ally. You can just see how Donald Trump would be able to wield this power to try to get them to do something and that`s what`s reflected in this partial transcript or summary that we see now. So to me, I loved when you brought up the Watergate thing, it is a global modern version of that, digging for dirt in a different era, and then covering it up.

O`DONNELL: Earlier today, before The New York Times reporting tonight on the other people involved in the formulation of the whistleblower`s report, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, your Committee, Lindsey Graham - you traveled to Ukraine with Lindsey Graham - tweeted it is imperative we find out which White House official talked to the whistleblower and why didn`t they lodge the complaint. Now, it would be nice if Lindsey Graham had say a Senate Committee where he could convene a hearing and find out why didn`t they lodge a complaint, which White House officials talked to the whistleblower, or about the whistleblower.

KLOBUCHAR: Yes, and he could - we could be conducting some independent investigations of some of these issues. But as we`ve seen, with regard to the Mueller Report and other things, while the Intelligence Committee did those, our Committee under Senator Grassley and now Senator Graham in my mind have not done enough. And so, this would be right for that. But the other thing that concerns me of course is the President is basically putting out there that this is someone who, and someday at least, would have been executed as opposed to perhaps someone that was voicing a concern to what may be a CIA agent, as being reported that this whistleblower is, and just simply voicing a concern about what happened and the whistleblower goes forward, feels a duty to report it. But then the President puts a threat out there, and I don`t know if Senator Graham`s tweet is part of that, I can`t quite read through the tweet words, to figure that out. But again, this should be taken as an investigation and it should not just be Democrats, this must be done in a bipartisan basis, just as your analogy to Watergate.

O`DONNELL: Doesn`t the whole case come down to the words spoken by the President on the phone to the President of Ukraine?

KLOBUCHAR: Perhaps, but there may be other calls just like this. Just six days later, he called Vladimir Putin, after calling the President of Ukraine. There may be other calls like this, we don`t know. And so, that`s why I think it`s very important now that we know these calls were logged into this super-secret server where they should not have been given their classification, that I know the House Committee has asked for those calls to be preserved, the transcripts or the reports from them, those have to be looked at. So it may come down to that, and then there would be corroborating evidence from other people, or it may be that there be more extensive conversations with even other world leaders.

O`DONNELL: Do you believe that the transcript of that phone call rises to the level of being worthy of an impeachment trial on that evidence in the United States Senate?

KLOBUCHAR: Yes.

O`DONNELL: And in sitting at that trial, do you consider yourself under the obligation of jurors in courtrooms, where you wouldn`t make a judgment about the evidence until the conclusion of that trial, because those rules don`t exist for Senators.

KLOBUCHAR: They don`t.

O`DONNELL: Senators during impeachment trials in the past have gone out and said, there`s no problem here, they announce--

KLOBUCHAR: Yes.

O`DONNELL: --unlike any other jurors in the world, they announce what they`re thinking during the trial.

KLOBUCHAR: Well, Lawrence, I think for all of us, for Sheldon and me or anyone involved in this, we don`t know what all the evidence is yet. We have all - a number of us, I said it months ago that these impeachment proceedings should begin. But of course you`re going to look at all the evidence. There`s going to be different counts, if this comes before us, and we have to make that kind of decision. It`s a very serious constitutional obligation, going way back to our founding fathers, when James Madison actually said, when talking at the Constitutional Convention about why we needed impeachment proceedings and the possibility of them. He said, because a President might "betray his trust to foreign powers." So while it may have been different foreign powers, they were concerned about back then, this really goes to the founding of our country and our Constitution that you must have this check on the President.

O`DONNELL: So with your experience as a prosecutor, your reading of Madison and his - and the role of impeachment, your role as United States Senator, seeing the evidence that you know about today, the transcript of that phone call, you believe that evidence should be incorporated into a bill of impeachment that goes to the United States Senate?

KLOBUCHAR: Yes, the outcome will be on us as a jury, but I think that that evidence is incredible. I mean as you said, it was a smoking gun that you didn`t take a year to find out, you`d found out right away. So then one believes, as a former prosecutor, I look at this and say what are the other smoking guns, and we have to look at this like that, that there most likely are corroborating witnesses that are out there that just must come forward or be found, and that there`s also perhaps other phone calls. At the bottom line, he was trying to get dirt, it`s that simple, on a political opponent from a foreign power and then holding something back that they really needed to do that, and that is not what a President should do. You should be putting your country first, not your own interests.

O`DONNELL: Senator Amy Klobuchar, candidate for President of the United States.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you, Lawrence. It`s great to be here.

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