'Couldn't have picked a worse person': Rep. Himes blasts Pulte

[0:00] Let's bring in Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut. He, of course, the franking member [0:04] of the House Intelligence Committee. Welcome, Congressman. Let me quickly start on the reaction [0:10] you have to news of John Bolton's guilty plea. Again, a reminder, sir, that he's going to have [0:14] a fine of $2.25 million. And he faces up to 60 months in jail or prison for his actions. [0:26] Yeah, Alex, you know, one of the challenges of this administration is that so many prosecutions [0:31] have been attempted for obviously partisan and political things. I mean, you were talking [0:35] about Todd Blanche. This is the guy who reindicted James Comey for taking a photograph of a bunch [0:40] of seashells on a beach that said 8647. Like so many of these cases, that one will be thrown [0:46] out. I'm not going to get into details, but I am going to tell you that in this instance, [0:50] John Bolton pleading guilty. First of all, that tells you that there was a there there. [0:54] And secondly, though, I'm not going to get into details based on the information I have. I do [0:58] believe that John Bolton actually very substantially mishandled classified information. So this is [1:03] going to be one of those instances where we can ask how this guy is going to be treated relative [1:08] to General Petraeus. But in this case, there was there was, in my opinion, some pretty significant [1:14] mishandling of classified information. All right. Well, let's circle back to Todd Blanche's [1:19] nomination in the middle of this fight over the anti-weaponization fund. You have multiple [1:24] Republican senators who say they are not satisfied with Blanche's claim merely in words that this fund [1:30] is dead. Take a listen. I just think it's bad. It's bad optics for the president. It's bad optics [1:37] for Republicans in its current form. We got either eliminate it, streamline it, guardrail it. It can't [1:44] go in its current form. And if that's the only choice we should have, we should eradicate it. [1:48] I want to make sure it's not mostly dead. I want to make sure it's completely dead. [1:52] Again, they're going to have to take Blanche's word for it because there's nothing in writing [1:56] to support this. But given all these concerns, do you expect Republican senators to vote against [2:00] Blanche when push comes to shove? Yeah, you know, I don't know. It's hard for me to climb into the [2:07] head of a Republican senator who isn't Tom Tillis or Bill Cassidy, you know, two guys who no longer [2:13] need to fear the wrath of Donald Trump. I have no idea how the Senate vote is going to go. What I can [2:18] tell you is that this fund that was designed to provide payouts, arguably, to people who attacked [2:25] police officers and defecated in the halls of Congress and tried to find people to hang on [2:31] January 6th. This is the kind of thing that is rightly beyond politically toxic. So what the [2:37] Congress needs to do is not just, you know, take Todd Blanche's word for it, but to actually pass [2:41] legislation forbidding the use of one penny for that fund. If I'm sounding a little personal about [2:48] this, that's because I was one of the last people out of the chamber on January 6th, 2020. [2:52] I saw these people up close and personal. And no matter what the president says about how they [2:56] were patriots or friends of his or peaceful visitors, they were not. They were insurrectionists. [3:01] They never should have been hardened by the president of the United States. And of course, [3:04] there's not a single penny of taxpayer dollars that should find their way to that group of people. [3:10] Well, Congressman, it is not just the weaponization fund that the president has his hand in. Blanche has [3:15] made it perfectly clear that this DOJ is Trump's DOJ. Take a listen. [3:20] We have thousands of ongoing investigations and prosecutions going on in this country right [3:25] now. And it is true that some of them involve men, women, and entities that the president in [3:32] the past has had issues with and that believe should be investigated. That is his right. And [3:37] indeed, it is his duty to do that. What can Democrats do to ensure the DOJ does not become [3:46] even more of an arm of the president's vendetta machine? And what damage has been done to the [3:51] DOJ's reputation as an independent entity free of political influence? [3:58] Well, I'll tell you, a pretty good first step would be to play that last 10 seconds of Todd Blanche [4:04] saying that the president has the right and, in fact, the duty to direct the Department of Justice [4:09] to prosecute his opponents. I mean, any non-terrified Republican and every single Democrat [4:14] should look at that. Because for generations now, the idea has always been that the Department [4:18] of Justice, with its power to destroy American lives just through an investigation, forget [4:23] about it, a prosecution, you know, has to be independent. It cannot be used as the tool, [4:28] a political tool of the president. And there's Todd Blanche nominated to be attorney general [4:32] saying, no, it's the political tool of the president. And we know that that's what he's doing. [4:36] Again, back to what I pointed out at the start of this interview, this guy decided to prosecute [4:40] Jim Comey for taking a photograph of a bunch of seashells, which might be interpreted as being [4:45] angry at the president of the United States. And look, let me take it to my world right now, [4:49] because in my world, intelligence, you know, this president nominated as acting director of [4:54] national intelligence, Bill Pulte, right? Bill Pulte, who has precisely zero national security or [5:00] intelligence experience, but has distinguished himself for using his sort of esoteric and bizarre [5:06] office atop an agency that no American has ever heard of, the FHFA, to go after Adam Schiff, to [5:12] go after Letitia James, to go after a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. What we're seeing here [5:17] is an absolute 100 percent priority put on people who will prosecute the president's enemies. This [5:23] is the kind of stuff that we expected in Bolivia in 1965, not in the United States of America in the [5:29] 21st century. A couple questions there, because isn't it a law that the person who serves in this [5:36] kind of a role must have some sort of intelligence experience. And also, your counterpart on the [5:42] Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner, is urging Senate Majority Leader John Thune to [5:47] get Trump to revoke Pulte's appointment, saying Democrats could take a spy powers deal. If not, [5:53] would you support that move? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're right in pointing out, Alex, the statute which [6:01] establishes the office of the director of national intelligence. I'm sort of chuckling because the law [6:06] shouldn't need to say that the most important intelligence official in the United States of [6:09] America at a moment in time when the Iranians would like to orchestrate terrorist attacks against [6:14] us, when Russia is doing all they can to sort of go after us. Yeah, the law does happen to say that [6:19] this person should have some national security experience. But again, duh. Now, you know, how much [6:24] emphasis are you going to put on the law in an administration that doesn't care about the law? [6:28] That's a whole other question. But look, Mark Warner is right. And I've been talking to him. [6:31] Quite apart from the insanity of this appointment, the timing at a moment in time when we're working [6:36] really hard to reauthorize a controversial collection authority, FISA 702, they couldn't [6:44] have picked a worse person or a worse time to make this nomination because it has now jeopardized [6:49] the single most important collection authority we have to keep us safe from terrorists and cartel [6:54] members and that sort of thing.