- Your reaction to Attorney General Barr's letter to congress and what he says this investigation found?
“I think it’s excellent for the country because the summary that Barr has put out makes it clear that this was an exhaustive investigation, that after you have the House Intelligence investigation – having concluded there was no collusion – and then the exhaustive work of the Mueller investigation all coming to the same conclusion… it gives the American public the confidence that although the Russians tried to interfere in our election, that there were no Americans that conspired or colluded with Russia and certainly it wasn’t the president or the president’s campaign.”
- Should this full report be made public or how much of it should be made public? What's your stance on that?
“I believe, of course, that all of this information be made public. I have voted in the House Intelligence Committee to make all of our information public from our investigation, it’s currently under the review process for that. Also, in the House Floor voted to call on the Mueller investigation, the Department of Justice to make the report public.
“Attorney General Barr has indicated there will be some information – means, methods, and techniques – that might be withheld throughout the process. I think the bottom line has to be that the substance and the facts that were reviewed, the conclusions and recommendations, all of that information needs to be public so that both congress and the American public can see it and be confident in its conclusions.”
- The one conclusion that Mueller left up in the air was the question of obstruction of justice. He left that up to Barr and Rosenstein, they both said there was no evidence. Are you confident just in their assessment of that decision?
“Well, what the report itself said is that it did not find a sufficient conclusion for pursuing the issue of obstruction and left it up to Rod Rosenstein and the attorney general as to whether or not they concluded differently. They concluded that you can’t have obstruction unless there’s an underlying crime… The whole concept of obstruction is that you’re trying to obstruct or hold from view a crime and if there’s no underlying crime it certainly doesn’t apply.”
- You're on the House Intel Committee; Do you expect to get your hands on this report? If so, when might that be?
“I’m certain we’re going to be reviewing aspects of this in the process while it’s being made public and/or if the information is not able to be made public then we’ll probably occupy some of the work to be done of the committee of the next year. I do think we have a lot of work to do in the intelligence committee that has nothing to do with this investigation and I certainly hope that Chairman Adam Schiff will now turn to some of those issues that affect our national security, and now that we know this exhaustive investigation has come to a conclusion - and its conclusion was there was no collusion.
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