Trump Aide Refuses to Answer Pertinent Questions
LEMON: President Trump's top aide, Hope Hicks, appearing behind closed doors today, in front of the House intelligence committee. She testified for about nine hours, but would not answer questions about her time inside the White House. Until committee ranking member, Adam Schiff said Hicks also refused to answer questions about her role in drafting that misleading statement last year about Donald Trump Jr.'s Trump tower meeting with Russians in June of 2016. Let's discuss now. Congressman Joaquin Castro is here, he is a Texas democrat who is a member of the committee. Congressman, thank you for joining us. As I said, she spent about nine hours testifying before your committee today. Did you learn anything from Hope Hicks?</s>JOAQUIN CASTRO, (D) UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, no, in some ways, of course, the interview was very useful and we did learn new information, but some of the most important questions we had went unanswered, especially questions we had about her time in the White House. Because Hope Hicks has been described by multiple witnesses as the person who is closest to the president outside of his immediate family members. So, we wanted to know what she knew about James Comey's firing, for example. What she knew about that June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and the group of Russian operatives. And she wouldn't answer those questions.</s>LEMON: So what was her rationale for not answering those questions?</s>CASTRO: It varied. Part of it was executive privilege. Even though the White House has not formally invoked executive privilege to the committee. And part of it was, what I thought was quite an arrogant answer from her attorney, which was, we're just not going to answer that question. No reason.</s>LEMON: But isn't it true that only the president can invoke executive privilege? How is she and Steve Bannon, who used the same explanation for refusing to answer questions, how are they able to get away with flouting the committee's authority?</s>CASTRO: That's a great question. They're basically hiding behind a republican-led committee that they believe ultimately is not going to press them or compel them to come in and answer these very important questions for this committee. But really, this committee acting on behalf of the American people. And so really, they're playing a real parlor game. What they do is, we've been instructed by the White House not to answer questions with respect to x, y, z time period. Yet, the White House has not communicated with the committee or exercised that executive privilege as far as we can tell.</s>LEMON: So what are you -- can you compel her in any way? Can you subpoena her testimony?</s>CASTRO: Sure. If the committee leadership was truly doing its job in a fair way, what you would do is now issue a subpoena, because she was here voluntarily, if she comes in under subpoena and continues to refuse to answer certain questions, then you would hold her in contempt and go to court about it and have a judge decide. Unfortunately, I don't know that any of that will happen.</s>LEMON: Yes. So, do you think that will happen? Will the committee subpoena her or compel her to come back or no?</s>CASTRO: I hope so.</s>LEMON: OK.</s>CASTRO: We certainly should. We should issue a subpoena. If she still doesn't answer, then we ought to hold her in contempt. But the White House is betting that the makeup of this committee means that that won't happen.</s>LEMON: That won't happen. So what about her time during the transition or on the campaign. Did she answer questions about that? Did you get information out of that?</s>CASTRO: She did -- she did ultimately answer questions about her time during the transition.</s>LEMON: Were they sufficient?</s>CASTRO: You know, I have to say for the answers that she did give, she gave less of I don't recall or I don't remember than many of the other witnesses. Some of the other witnesses, it felt like half of their answers were, I don't recall. To her credit, when she did answer questions, she usually gave a real answer.</s>LEMON: OK. So then beyond that, I'm wondering, can you characterize the kinds of questions the committee asked her and how she responded?</s>CASTRO: Sure, you know, we asked her, as you can imagine, a wide variety of questions about her time on the campaign, about her time during the transition. We attempted to ask her questions about her time in the White House, but those were unanswered. About how she came to know Donald Trump and his family and how she got started on the campaign. So it was -- you can imagine, nine hours, many of us were in and out, because we had other brief meetings. But, you can imagine, we covered a lot of ground and heard some new information, but in the end, I think got stonewalled on the most important information.</s>LEMON: But the time on air force one, when she and the president and others crafted that misleading response to that infamous Trump tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Steve Bannon and a whole host of Russians, that was she just refused?</s>CASTRO: Yes. That still remains a mystery after nine hours of testimony.</s>LEMON: So what's next, congressman?</s>CASTRO: Well, there are witnesses that we have to continue to interview and also more witnesses that we need to bring back. I think we need to see Donald Trump Jr. again, we need to see Jared Kushner again. And in addition to that, just as important, we have to follow up on many of the leads that were given to us by these witnesses who came and testified. We have to subpoena bank records and travel railroads and other documents that will help us verify what was told to us or understand if somebody was lying to us.</s>LEMON: So when you say you need to see Kushner and Don Junior, are you going to compel them to testify? What does that mean?</s>CASTRO: Yes. Well, if I was chairman of the committee, I certainly would.</s>LEMON: Right.</s>CASTRO: But it's all up to the majority at this point.</s>LEMON: Thank you, Congressman Joaquin Castro. I appreciate your time.</s>CASTRO: Thank you.</s>LEMON: When we come back, much more on Hope Hicks' testimony. She acknowledged today she sometimes tells white lies for the president. Our legal experts will weigh in on what that could mean.