Interview With Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes; Attorney General Takes Hot Seat
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Leaving many key questions unanswered about Mr. Trump's contact with James Comey and his reasons for firing him. Detestable lie. Sessions flatly denies he was involved in or knew about any collusion between the Trump camp and Russia, the former senator trying to explain his recusal of Russia investigation and angrily defending his honor. Nothing improper. Sessions insists he did nothing wrong during his conversations with the Russian ambassador as he is confronted with questions about whether an undisclosed third meeting happened. And I don't recall, the nation's top law enforcement officer invoking the phrase multiple times, couching some answers as he testifies under oath in an investigation that is hanging over his tenure as attorney general and the Trump administration. We want to welcome our viewers from the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in</s>THE SITUATION ROOM. ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>BLITZER: Breaking news tonight, the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, offering a fiery and indignant denial of any collusion between the Trump camp and Russia, calling any claim of wrongdoing on his part a detestable lie. But Sessions repeatedly refused to discuss his private conversations with President Trump during his highly anticipated public testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The attorney general rejected accusations that he was stonewalling, claiming he is protecting the president's right to assert executive privilege down the road in the future. But frustrated Democrats weren't buying his explanation, as they tried to get more information about Mr. Trump's contacts with James Comey, his motives for firing the FBI director and any possible obstruction of justice. Sessions was questioned for nearly two-and-a-half-hours by his former Senate colleagues about his meetings with the Russian ambassador, his recusal from the Russia investigation and the lead-up to Comey's ouster. We're told President Trump watched Sessions' testimony on board Air Force One during a 90-minute flight from Washington to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sessions' remarks under oath coming hours after his deputy testified in a separate hearing. Rod Rosenstein telling senators he saw no reason to fire the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert Mueller. He suggested he wouldn't follow any potential orders to fire Mueller unless there was a legal reason to do so. We are covering all of that, much more this hour with our guests, including House Intelligence Committee member Jim Himes. And our correspondents and specialists, they are also standing by. First, let's go to our senior Washington correspondent, Brianna Keilar. Brianna, some very crucial testimony by Jeff Sessions today, but many questions clearly still unanswered.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's exactly right, Wolf. Sessions testified as if President Trump was watching, and as you just reported, he was. He would not answer questions about his communications, his conversations with President Trump. That is something that we have heard in past testimony from the director of national include and the NSA director. But unlike DNI Coats and NSA Director Rogers, Sessions wouldn't commit to talking about those conversation even behind closed doors.</s>KEILAR (voice-over): Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee tonight, Attorney General Jeff Sessions under oath declared he did not engage with Russian officials on issues related to the 2016 election.</s>JEFF SESSIONS, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Let me state this clearly, colleagues. I have never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election.</s>KEILAR: His defense? Go on offense.</s>SESSIONS: I was your colleague in this body for 20 years, at least some of you. And the suggestion that I participated in any collusion that I was aware of, any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country which I have served with honor for 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process an appalling and detestable lie.</s>KEILAR: Sessions met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016, meetings he did not properly disclose during his confirmation, and may have had another encounter following a Trump foreign policy speech at a Washington hotel.</s>SESSIONS: I did not have any private meetings, nor do I recall any conversations, with any Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel. I did not attend any meetings at that event.</s>KEILAR: When pressed, he said a meeting may have occurred, but he doesn't remember it.</s>SEN. MARK WARNER (D), VIRGINIA: To the best of your memory, you had no conversation with Ambassador Kislyak at that meeting?</s>SESSIONS: I don't recall that, Senator. I guess I could say that I possibly had a meeting, but I still do not recall it.</s>KEILAR: The hearing was at times contentious.</s>SEN. MARTIN HEINRICH (D), NEW MEXICO: You're not answering questions. You're impeding this investigation.</s>KEILAR: With Sessions refusing to answer questions about private conversations he had with President Trump, citing an unspecified Department of Justice protocol.</s>SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman, I'm not able to comment on conversations with high officials within the White House.</s>KEILAR: The president has not exerted executive privilege, as administration officials testified, but Sessions effectively answered questions as if he had.</s>SESSIONS: I'm protecting the right of the president to assert it if he chooses.</s>KEILAR: And sparring with Democrats over matters involving his recusal in investigations into the Trump campaign and the firing of FBI Director James Comey.</s>SEN. RON WYDEN (D), OREGON: Mr. Comey said there were matters with respect to the recusal that were problematic and he couldn't talk about them. What are they?</s>SESSIONS: Why don't you tell me? There are none, Senator Wyden. There are none. I can tell you that for absolute certainty.</s>KEILAR: Some Republicans backed Sessions up, stressing it was an event attended by many people.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Trump campaign did not determine or approve the invitation list.</s>KEILAR: Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton taking a colorful tack.</s>SEN. TOM COTTON (R), ARKANSAS: Have you ever, in any of these fantastical situations, heard of a plot line so ridiculous that a sitting United States senator and an ambassador of a foreign government colluded at an open setting with hundreds of other people to pull off the greatest caper in the history of espionage?</s>SESSIONS: Thank you for saying that, Senator Cotton. It is just like through the looking glass. What is this?</s>KEILAR: An earlier hearing featuring Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the official in charge of appointing special counsel Robert Mueller. He repeatedly made assurances Mueller is not in danger of being fired, even as a Trump friend has said Mueller is.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At this point, have you seen any evidence of good cause for firing of special counsel Mueller?</s>ROD ROSENSTEIN, U.S. DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: No, I have not. As long as I'm in this position, he's not going to be fired without good cause.</s>KEILAR: Another theme in the Sessions testimony, Wolf, was a lack of hard line on Russia. Senator John McCain, of course, a member of the same party as Jeff Sessions and a former colleague of his, is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked Sessions, who had met with the Russian ambassador, we had been told by the administration in his capacity of the Armed Services Committee, asked him about a number of U.S. concerns about Russia. Did he raise think any of these? There was only one, Ukraine that Sessions said that he raised, really bringing into question just how effective Sessions had been on communicating foreign policy to the Russian ambassador.</s>BLITZER: All right, good point, Brianna. Thank you, Brianna Keilar up on Capitol Hill. Now to the Trump administration's reaction to Jeff Sessions' testimony and his refusal to talk about his conversations with the president. Let's go to our senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta. He's over at the White House. Jim, so what are you hearing from the Trump team?</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the White House says Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not discuss with aides over here whether the president was asserting executive privilege, and the president was not invoking it, so Sessions was essentially just dodging those questions today during his testimony, and the Republican-led committee simply allowed Sessions to do that. The president was watching Sessions' testify aboard Air Force One earlier today on his way to some events out in Wisconsin. One moment, though, that the president may have found interesting, Wolf, was when Sessions testified about that speech then candidate Trump delivered at the Mayflower Hotel in April of last year. Here is what Sessions said about that earlier today.</s>SEN. RICHARD BURR (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Would you say you were there as a United States Senator or as a surrogate of the campaign for this event?</s>SESSIONS: I came there as an interested person and very anxious to see how President Trump would do in his first major foreign policy address. I believe he had only given one major speech before and that was maybe at the Jewish event. And so it was an interesting time for me to observe his delivery.</s>ACOSTA: Now, that is not exactly true that Sessions was there as a -- quote -- "interested person." More than a month before the speech, Mr. Trump tapped Sessions as the chair of his national security advisory board. So, he was clearly at the speech, Wolf that Russian ambassador attended as part of his role with the campaign. And how do we know that, Wolf? Because I was there at the speech and interviewed Senator Sessions essentially under the guise that he was the chair of the president's or then candidate Trump's national security advisory board. He was speaking to us live on CNN in that role, in that capacity. So, we know he was there as much more than just an interested person, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Yes, clearly. All right, Jim, you're also learning that the president had some, shall we say, some not-so-nice things to say about the House health care bill. What are you hearing?</s>ACOSTA: That's right. Not to take us off topic, but earlier today, as you know, the president sat down with a group of Republican senators here at the White House to talk about this House health care bill. There are some senators who are concerned that it goes too far in restricting health care access. And we are told by a source familiar with this meeting that during this gathering, the president described the House health care bill that was passed by the House of Representatives and that they celebrated in the Rose Garden over here at the White House, that the president referred to that bill as -- quote -- "mean" during the session with these Republican senators, and he also used a vulgar phrase to describe the legislation, words that I don't know if we can necessarily talk about here on television. But he was clearly making it clear to these senators, Wolf, that he did not see this bill as being compassionate enough for people who don't have health insurance, which is obviously something that Democrats have been saying throughout this whole process, that it leaves too many people uninsured. And the president appeared to indicate that he's listened to that side of the argument earlier today, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Yes, that is pretty amazing. He is going to irritate, clearly anger a lot of those Republicans who worked hard to get that legislation passed in the House of Representatives very narrowly.</s>ACOSTA: That's right.</s>BLITZER: And now very different legislation might, repeat, might emerge from the Senate, the Republican majority in the Senate. Jim Acosta, good reporting, as usual. Thank you very much. We asked multiple Republican members of Congress to join us with their reaction to Jeff Sessions' testimony. But at least so far, they have declined. Maybe they will change their minds. I want to get reaction, though, from a Democratic congressman who is deeply involved in all of this. Jim Himes is joining us. He's a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.</s>REP. JIM HIMES (D), CONNECTICUT: Good evening, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: So, give me your bottom-line reaction, first of all, to what you heard from the attorney general of the United States?</s>HIMES: Yes, three things jumped out at me, Wolf, as important that came out today. Number one, we got the attorney general on record around a lot of things, the Mayflower meeting, which has been a subject of all sorts of speculation. He is on record. And this is kind of how an investigation works. You gets lot of people on record. You compare their statements to other things that you know to be true. That happened. Number two, he actually backed up the account of former FBI Director Jim Comey on a couple of counts. And that's important, of course, because after the Comey testimony, we basically had a he said/he said between Jim Comey and the president. And the third thing, which I hope is of very real interest to all 535 people in this building, is that attorney general asserted a sort of odd privilege to not have to speak to Congress because the president might in the future invoke executive privilege. Now, this is a novel thing. Traditionally, you can do that. You cannot speak to Congress because you don't want to incriminate yourself. You cannot speak to Congress because the president has asserted executive privilege. But on any given day, there are a dozen meetings here where we are doing oversight, where we're asking executive agencies to tell us the truth about what they are doing. And if the attorney general is right and that any executive agent can say, hey, I'm not answering your questions because the president may someday exert executive privilege, we may as well shut down our oversight function here in the United States Congress.</s>BLITZER: Yes, he insisted, as you heard, that there were written guidelines from the Department of Justice that would prevent him from discussing what he described as private conversations he had with the president on any subject. He also insisted he was not stonewalling, just following these policies of the Department of Justice. Are you familiar with those policies? What do you think?</s>HIMES: No, I'm not. And, of course, he was asked by a number of senators to produce these policies. And if these policies exist, we have got to learn a lot more about them. Again, this is -- I would think that my Republican colleagues in this business, though -- this in this building, although there is a partisan moment, would recognize that some day there will be a Democratic president, and they will want to bring them that president's Cabinet members in front of the Congress and ask them questions and get answers. And if there is this idea that you're not going to answer because someday in the future the president may decide to invoke executive privilege, as I said, we may as well shut down congressional oversight as a concept. So, I think it's incumbent on the attorney general, who ought to know something about the law and about the critical oversight functions we do here, to producer whatever this policy is and to be more clear about why he won't answer questions that are pretty important to us.</s>BLITZER: You also heard the attorney general discuss that third supposedly undisclosed meeting he may have had with the Russian ambassador to the United States at the Mayflower Hotel here in Washington. He said, I just don't remember. I don't recall. Do you think that's possible?</s>HIMES: Well, it is a little disappointing, I mean, particularly coming after the precision of Jim Comey, who took copious notes, who made contemporaneous memoranda that were there to help other people understand what happened. That the attorney general asserted that he doesn't keep notes, that he doesn't remember is uncomfortable. Now, you know, that said, as an investigator, somebody forgetting something or not being sure about something is possible. What is interesting to me, again, as one of the investigators, is he is clearly on record now as saying that there was no substantive meeting at the Mayflower. And we will take that forward and hopefully what he is saying is accurate. But we will take that forward.</s>BLITZER: Well, would you potentially hold him in contempt of Congress, assuming the president doesn't exert executive privilege, but he and others continue to avoid answering questions about their conversations with the president?</s>HIMES: Well, it a great question, Wolf, because, of course, the attorney general's assertion of this sort of forward-looking possibility of executive privilege echoes a little bit what we saw with the testimony of Admiral Rogers and DNI Coats, Director of National Intelligence Coats, a week ago, I guess it was, where they said, hey, we're not exerting any particular privilege. We just don't want to discuss confidential conversations. Again, it is our right, as the Congress, Republicans and Democrats, to demand answers unless there is some assertion of privilege. And we have not seen that. And so the next step for us, Wolf, is, if this privilege doesn't exist, if this idea of not speaking to us simply because you have got a policy or you want to keep it confidential, if we don't believe as a Congress that that privilege should exist, we will subpoena these individuals and ask them those questions and hopefully get answers.</s>BLITZER: He also insisted flatly that he believes he did not violate his recusal from the Russia investigation by participating in the firing of James Comey as the FBI director. He said he had never been briefed on any investigative details of the Russia investigation, had no access to any classified or sensitive information about it. Do you believe him?</s>HIMES: Well, I don't want to get into what I believe or what I don't believe. At the end of the day, we need to do an investigation that is based on the facts and how facts comport with other facts we have. But it is disturbing to think that a brand-new attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer in the United States of America, in the context of a belief, a unanimous belief on the part of the intelligence community that there was illegal break-ins, that there was meddling with our elections, that he wouldn't have shown some curiosity about that, not had conversations, not asked about it. So, that is a little bit disconcerting. The recusal is what it is. He self-recused. And, of course, there is a little bit of an echo of this with the recusal of our chairman on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. We're going to need, I think, to get the deputy attorney general and others -- and presumably Bob Mueller is doing this -- to tell us more about the facts around the firing of Jim Comey.</s>BLITZER: Stand by, Congressman. There is more we need to discuss. We're getting more information coming into THE SITUATION ROOM. At the same time, we will continue all of this right after a quick break.