DPCC Co-Chair Lieu on Democrats’ Oversight Responsibilities
WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Ted Lieu, Co-Chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), appeared on CNN Newsroom With Brooke Baldwin to discuss Congressional Democrats' oversight responsibilities and Michal Cohen's plans to testify before Congress in February. Below are excerpts from the interview. Click here to watch the video
"First, let me thank CNN for putting Rudy Giuliani on TV - would be great if you could keep doing that - because last night he made a stunning admission, denying that he ever denied that anyone in the Trump campaign engaged in collusion, only that Donald Trump didn't and we know that he had to go to this position because Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign manager, gave polling data to the Kremlin. That would be collusion because the Kremlin was doing a cyberattack to influence the campaign and this polling data would have helped give them a road map on how to influence American voters. By the way, collusion is a crime. I'm a former prosecutor. It's just called conspiracy in legal terms."
"It's certainly possible or he is looking at the same public reporting we're all looking at - which is either there were 497 coincidences last two years with Russia or something really bad happened and I think what he's trying to do is to put out into the public that, ‘okay, we understand that members of the Trump campaign, in fact, engaged in collusion' but he's trying to protect Donald Trump from that. What the Democratic controlled Congress is going to do is we're going to try to figure out this year, did Donald trump know of the collusion within his campaign?"
"Absolutely. So in early 2017, Congress Members Stacey Plaskett, Kathleen Rice and I – we're all former prosecutors – wrote a letter to the Department of Justice asking for an appointment of the special counsel because we were reading regulations and it became clear to us that we needed to have a special counsel that who was independent from the President, start investigating and based on those regulations as well as the letter that Rod Rosenstein actually wrote, it authorizes obstruction of justice investigations as well as anything else related to the Russian inquiry."
"That would depend on what the evidence is that is uncovered. I do have to say that subpoena power used in the correct way can be a wonderful thing and the Democrats will certainly use the subpoena power to get relevant documents, to have Administration officials show up. A lot of times the mere fact they know we have that power will cause them to appear. So I'm very pleased that Michael Cohen is coming up to capitol to testify. I'm on the House Judiciary Committee, we're going to have Matt Whitaker come to testify. We want to know why he hasn't recused himself yet from overseeing the Mueller investigation because early on he wanted to defund it."
"So my first thought was we are the most powerful nation on earth and this is just embarrassing. This is just another instance of someone very close to Donald Trump engaging in unethical activities at the direction of Donald Trump and you're right, Brooke, it doesn't matter whether it's $13,000 in a bag of cash or in a check or in a wire transfer, the fact that Donald Trump was telling Michael Cohen to go ahead and rig polls is unethical and it is just something that you sit and think, we're not living in a parody and you wake up and read in those stories and it makes you think you are."
"So he's going to testify before the House Oversight Committee. I'm very sure that our Elijah Cummings is going to make sure that he answers all the relevant, important questions. What I want to know since Michael Cohen was up front and personal and close to Donald Trump – and the Trump campaign – just a straight up simple question, did members of the Trump campaign collude with the Kremlin and did Donald Trump know about it?"