Interview with Sen. Mike Lee.
CUOMO: All right. The Syrian situation is a horror on many levels. We just saw civilians, children killed. The allegation is it was done by the Assad regime and they may have used a nerve toxin. That is the latest reflection of just an intractable situation when it comes to Syria. It is also a very big test for President Trump. How will he respond? Joining us now is Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah. He's a member of the judiciary committee. Senator, it's good to have you. Let's start with the proposition of what you're comfortable with in terms of action in Syria. There has been reluctance from both parties to put boots on the ground there to spend American blood and treasure. Does this attack make you change your opinion?</s>SEN. MIKE LEE (R), UTAH: So, first of all, this is a tragic thing that has happened. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims. People are suffering on the ground in Syria and other places in that part of the world. We don't have any idea at this point what the Trump administration wants to do about this. The one thing I do know and the one thing I think you'll find a great deal of consensus around is that if the Trump administration does want to do anything by way of intervening military, he needs to come to Congress with a plan and present that to Congress.</s>CUOMO: You know, I'll tell you what, that is a unique position, because many in your party, but certainly in your office have abdicated that power of declaring war to the president. We have an AUMF right now that's from 2001. So that would be a legitimate debate if your brothers and sisters in Congress want to take hold of the constitutional responsibility. But in terms of your comfort level with what we've seen out of the White House, they say one week, Nikki Haley, Rex Tillerson, hey, Assad, they'll figure it out in Syria. And right after that, one of the boldest dispatch we've seen from Assad regime in years. Do you see a connection between those two? Something you've chosen to ignore, you've now empowered.</s>LEE: I do think it's a mistake that Congress has chosen to ignore for decades or well over a decade, some would say for many decades, the declaration of war power. The fact that -- although the president of the United States is the commander-in-chief of our armed forces, when it's time to actually send American personnel into harm's way, to put boots on the ground somewhere else on foreign sovereign soil, we need to be authorizing that. We need to pass a declaration of war or at least an explicit authorization for the use of military force. That's why a few years ago when there was talk of deploying U.S. personnel to Syria, right, I was among the first to step up and say we need to do this expressly if we're going to do it. I know that one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who agrees with me on this sort of thing is Tim Kaine, who I believe you had on here just few minutes ago.</s>CUOMO: Yes, he was just on and that was part of the untold story very often of the red line with Obama. Yes. There is reticence to acknowledge the crossing of the red line that seems pretty obvious, but then once the president was in, he seemed to be all in and Congress wasn't there in terms of wanting to get that motivation to be on the ground. It's complicated. And it remains complicated. But does it concern you? Just to circle back to this. That one week, the White House puts out a statement that Assad is serious problem. Basically saying we're not going after Assad anymore. That is not our goal. And shortly there after, we see one of his worst attacks in years.</s>LEE: We certainly don't want to be doing anything that might encourage or embolden him to do this. I don't necessarily think you can draw a connection between them to say that any one in Washington caused Assad to do this. We do need to monitor this very carefully and watch what he does.</s>CUOMO: All right. Now, I want to ask you, did you mean to add fuel to the fire of speculation about Susan Rice when you said that political espionage is too common and too tempting? Did you mean to suggest that Susan Rice may have done her unmasking for political reasons?</s>LEE: Yes, but I have no idea what she did. Those facts are being investigated. I've made this clear in every interview I have done on this point.</s>CUOMO: But Breitbart is using you as a poster boy. And you know that that is the President's, you know, viewing of choice. He loves to see what they put out. They are using you as the poster boy of people who believe that Susan Rice was politically motivated in unmasking. Do they have it right?</s>LEE: I'll tell you what I told them which is that I don't know what happened in this particular instance. I don't know what Susan Rice did or didn't do. I now that's under investigation. And I'm going to watch that very closely because I really do want to know that. What I have said to Breitbart and what I've said to every other media outlet that asked about it, is that I've been expressing concerns about section 702 of FISA over the last six years. In many cases, it's fallen on deaf ears. But the fact remains that we've got this technology, they can do a whole lot of things. And this is a big brother type of problem that we have to watch out for. If we're not careful -- if we don't carefully constrain the limits of the power of those who have access --</s>CUOMO: Understood.</s>LEE: -- on this technology, this is going to really take us into a very strange direction. I've been warning about it for six years. I talked about it in the entire section of my book "The lost constitution." That in every presidential administration from FDR through Nixon, the administration in power used our intelligence gathering agencies to engage in political espionage. Human nature hasn't changed, technology has changed and had made a lot of it simpler and we've got to be on the lookout for it.</s>CUOMO: Right, but you have no reason to believe that any of those concerns are at play with Susan Rice and in fact, you have every reason to believe they were not at play with Susan Rice because as far as you or I know, we've never heard of anybody wanting to leak and doing so by leaving a paper trail of making a request for the information that she got. She unmasked, that's a big procedure, there's no indication she did not follow it. That means she would have created her own paper trail to do political espionage to use the phrase of the political right here on the story. There's no basis for it. So why conflate the two issues of potential of surveillance with the specific instance of incidental surveillance where those risks do not seem to be at play?</s>LEE: I've done no such thing for the third time on your program this morning. And to reiterate something that I've said to reporters every single time I've been asked about this, I don't know what happened with Susan Rice.</s>CUOMO: Right, but you say it's unreasonable -- you did say it is not unreasonable to suggest that it could have happened. Now, that doesn't fly in a court of law. But it does fly in the court of a public opinion. And it does seem as though you're saying Rice has to prove it wasn't politically motivated for me to believe that it wasn't and that's not fair.</s>LEE: That is an absolutely absurd manipulation of what I said. That is not at all what I said. I did in fact say that something like this could have happened. I did in fact say it's not absurd to suggest something like this could've happen and every time I've said anything like that it's been accompanied by I don't know what Susan Rice did, I don't know the facts of this case. I'm sure it will be investigated.</s>CUOMO: Senator Mike Lee. You are on the same page as everybody else with this. We want some facts to back up the allegations. Thank you very much. I appreciate you being on the show.</s>LEE: Thank you.</s>CUOMO: Alisyn.</s>CAMEROTA: Chris, there's global outrage of the apparent chemical attack in Syria that has killed dozens of people, including children. What can be done? CNN's Arwa Damon has seen the carnage there first hand. She has some ideas. She joins us next.