State of the Union: Interview With Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)

Interview

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Well, we all recall the horrors that took place on January 6 spurred on by then-President Trump.

I think the fact that he's calling for protests again -- I have been briefed by the FBI. They say they are fully prepared, but this kind of outrageous behavior, this man obviously has very little moral compass. And if he spurs on additional violence, it would be one further stain on his already checkered reputation.

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I got briefed before the supposed Tuesday indictment. That didn't come to pass. We have had an update. They have seen no specific strains.

But the level of rhetoric on some of these right-wing sites has increased. Again, I would hope that some of your Republican guests on your show this morning would also say, you have got a right to have a First Amendment protest, but that right should not pass into violence. And the horrific activities that took place on January 6, God willing, we will not see them repeated this week, should any one of these cases move forward on Trump.

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Well, I do, Jake.

I think that whichever of these prosecutions move forward -- and lord knows, this guy appears to have as many things -- done lots of things inappropriately. But I hope whoever moves toward has a rock-solid case.

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Right.

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Well, Jake, remember our interest from the Intel side is not about the mishandling by Trump, Biden, Pence. That's a criminal investigation.

Our job is to oversee the intelligence community. And while we have some sense of what some of these documents are -- and, clearly, I want to make sure that, if they fell into the wrong hands, there's been mitigation efforts -- we have an obligation to see these documents and, again, make sure that, if there's any potential compromise, it's mitigated.

We took the first step. I'm not satisfied. We have expressed that. And it just makes no sense to me that, somehow, the special prosecutor's equities on the criminal proceeding somehow takes precedence over our Article 1 responsibility to oversee the intelligence community.

We have made that clear. We have some additional ways we can ratchet up the pressure on the I.C., Senator Rubio and I. And, frankly, this is completely bipartisan. All the Democrats, all the Republicans on the committee feel the same. We also are going to try to press the Justice Department harder to make sure that we do -- can do our job as well.

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My response is twofold.

Putin is a dangerous man. We have always known that. We have seen that the Russian offensive in Bakhmut -- that's a city in the eastern part of Ukraine -- seems to have stalled out. I'm hopeful that the Ukrainian counter offensive is going to be successful.

And I think it also drives home the point that any wannabe American political leader that refuses to acknowledge how dangerous Putin is or that somehow that, if Putin is success useful in Ukraine, that is against our national interest, what that would do in terms of threatening the Baltic states, what it would do in terms of threatening Poland, what it would do in terms of giving President Xi more of a green light to potentially take action against Taiwan, anyone who doesn't understand that is remarkably naive or not understanding the kind of geopolitical, challenging times that we live in.

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There has been this low level of violence in Syria literally over the last year. And the strikes that the administration took that took out and caused casualties among some of these Iranian-backed groups, I think, was appropriate.

And I think, if they continue, they ought to -- we ought to up the ante in terms of the strikes that we send back. But, remember, we have a couple of troops there in both Iraq and Syria working with the Kurdish forces, who still are in the process of wiping up the final remnants of the ISIS folks.

And there are a number of ISIS prisoners being held. It's a dangerous area. But I do think the administration's response so far has been appropriate.

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Thank you, Jake.

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