Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) Agrees Obama Officials Should Testify Under Oath Over Flynn Unmasking

Texas Senator John Cornyn joined the Guy Benson Show in a wide ranging interview to talk about the the latest in the ‘Unmasking’ of Gen. Flynn. Senator Cornyn when asked if former Obama administration officials should testify under oath. He said,

“Absolutely. I talked to Senator Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He’s absolutely determined to bring those witnesses forward. I have I trust that a lot of this information is already in the hands of the attorney general bar and his designated U.S. attorney, Mr. Durham. And this could well result in criminal charges against some of the people involved.”

Listen To The Full Interview Below:

Full Transcript

Guy Benson: It’s Thursday, May 14th, 2020. This is the Guy BENTSON Show. I’m Guy Benson Broadcasting live. Thank you all for listening. Seriously. Thanks for being here. We appreciate it. Every single day, listening live through to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time. And if you miss any of it, the podcast is free always at Guy Benson’s show dot com or on i-Tunes or on Spotify. We have two U.S. senators on the show today, including Senator Bill CASSIDY, a medical doctor from Louisiana. He’ll be here later. Plus, our upcoming guests in just a moment. We will also speak with Josh Cross, our of National Journal, breaking down and really digging into the numbers of the Republicans significant victory out in California, picking up a House seat from the Democrats and a Hillary one district on Tuesday night. And the margin is significant, 12 points right now as they continue to count ballots because it takes them days and weeks to count ballots in California, which is something that always mystifies me. Let’s begin with a Fox News alert as we kick off today’s edition of the program. Confirmed cases of Corona virus in the United States. One million four hundred thousand five hundred one point four million almost on the dot. Confirmed deaths from Corona virus in the United States eighty four thousand nine hundred eighty five. And we’ve seen President Trump now again talking about a death toll north of 100000 into the six figures, which is awful. And some people I see are dunking on him saying, well, just a few weeks ago, he was talking about 60 to 70 thousand less because that’s what the model was showing. It’s what Dr. Faci was even saying by saying he’s got to follow the evidence and the data and the doctors and the experts. That’s what he was doing. And unfortunately, the death totals, the models have gotten worse. So the president has adjusted his rhetoric accordingly. I think you can fault him for a number of things. This seems like a cheap shot to me. The Dow has been brutalise this week, a very tough week on Wall Street, but today it is up at this hour, 214 points in green territory to twenty three thousand four sixty. And with the tables set, let’s dig in. By welcoming U.S. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. Senator, great to have you back on the show.

Sen. Cornyn: Thanks, guy. Good to be with you.

Guy Benson: Well, your colleague, Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, gave a pretty tough speech today on the Senate floor regarding the piece of legislation unveiled by House Democrats. Three trillion dollars. They’re calling it the Heroes Act. It’s been very clear from McConnell and the president that it is D.O.A. in terms of viable legislation, among other things. There’s all sorts of stuff packed into this very expensive law, including a tax cut for wealthy people in blue states. We finally found a tax cut for the rich and the Democrats like her. Also, tax cuts and checks for illegal immigrants, rebates for illegal immigrants, eliminating state voter I.D. requirements when it comes to elections, legalizing ballot harvesting, which is a very controversial electoral process and procedure that is legal in a place like California. Illegal most other places, I think, for good reasons and required diversity reports for cannabis related businesses. The word cannabis appears more than a dozen times in this legislation, more so than the word jobs appears in their legislation. That is quite an interesting document that they have dropped. Your overall reaction as Nancy Pelosi makes her move?

Sen. Cornyn: Well, guy, that was never intended to be a serious attempt at legislating. As you know, this the House has been in recess for the last two weeks while the Senate’s been here doing the people’s work. And I think Nancy Pelosi had to produce something. And this does appear to be kind of their ideological checklist of things they want, which they know will never happen as long as Republicans are in the majority in the Senate. So we’re we’re busy working on other aspects of the of the of the covered 19 response, monitoring the situation. For example, the paycheck protection program that we’ve replenished once in, which was proven to be enormously popular and successful. And we’re trying to see what else we need to do next. One of the things we know we need to do is remove the disincentive from reopening that’s caused by exposure to opportunistic and nuisance litigation. So we’re working to provide businesses who are in good faith following the guidelines that the public health authorities and the government is giving them and provide the safe harbor from that kind of litigation. Hopefully this will give them some confidence.

Guy Benson: Let me ask about that, because I’m in favor of those types of protections for businesses and for health care workers who are truly acting in good faith. I have been concerned about a blanket indemnification against people who might actually do things. And it actually might benefit them if they do things that are wrong or unethical. I just want to make sure that the way that you’re going to try to craft that legislation, you’re making sure that folks behaving properly in good faith are protected. But bad actors aren’t. Right.

Sen. Cornyn: That’s that’s exactly right. You know, I spent I spent about 13 years of my career as a judge in Texas, both in the trial courts and the Texas Supreme Court. Our goal is to make sure that the people who are hurt by the misconduct of others are compensated and meritorious claims are successful. But we know that there’s going to be a lot of folks are going to take their best shot and up and just try to extort a nuisance settlement, even though. And even though some even though you may win the lawsuit after you’ve been through a jury trial or multiple appeals, it may be enough to basically put you out of business or discourage you from reopening in the first place. And we want to avoid that.

Guy Benson: I want to ask you a political question about what Pelosi has done just briefly here, because you’re saying it’s an unserious piece of legislation. I tend to agree it has no chance of becoming law. It probably has a chance of passing the house. So if the Democratic House passes this huge leviathan monstrosity packed with all these ridiculous ancillary goodies and then the real work is happening in the Senate, I feel like the Democrats are planning to say, we have a plan, we’ve passed something, and it’s Mitch McConnell in those awful Republicans and Donald Trump, they are obstructing. I mean, you can see it coming a mile away. That’s going to be the playbook. A lot of people are going to carry their water in the press. What are you guys prepared to do to counter that?

Sen. Cornyn [00:07:04] Well, I think you’re I think you’re right. And of course, Pelosi depends on the mainstream media to uncritically evaluate what they’re doing and not to call them out when they are clearly showboating. I think what we will do, by contrast, is try to be serious and do what we’ve done to this point, which is to treat this as an emergency, not a political. Fatuity, but one that requires us to all rally together to respond both to the public health and economic crisis. I think it’ll be quite a contrast and the American people will. We’ll get it.

Guy Benson: Senator, you were quoted recently talking about people who may have lost their health care coverage as they lose their jobs and you directed them to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. Some of your critics and I know Democrats in Texas are saying, well, hang on. John Cornyn has voted to repeal Obamacare and he voted against Obamacare. And he’s done this. He’s tried to defund it all these times. Why is he sending people to a program that, if it were up to him, wouldn’t exist anymore? They’re saying that’s hypocritical. What’s your response to that type of criticism?

Sen. Cornyn: Well, guy, I’ve always believed that we could do better than Obamacare, which basically takes young, healthy people and have to sub subsidize others, raises enormous amounts of taxes and is very and eliminates the freedom to choose a health care policy coverage that you can afford and that you actually want. But the fact of the matter is that we lost that battle in Congress. There’s a case now on its way to the United States Supreme Court. Actually, it’s already there that will decide the constitutionality. What I was doing is answering the question, when somebody loses a job, where did they get access to health care? Medicaid’s one choice. The Affordable Care Act is another. People may choose some of the other options, like temporary insurance plans or even COBRA benefits from their previous employer. But I get it. People want to take the shot when they see an opportunity, but I think they clearly took this out of context and tried to make it a political or a political matter.

Guy Benson: Look, I agree with you on Obamacare and everything that you said. You were also conveying factual information. Ryan, you’re asked a question. Shame. Shame on me. So I want to. I want to shift to the other major story that broke yesterday, this list of unmasking people from the previous administration, the intelligence community, at least folks who had access to the information after General Flynn had been unmasked and some of these phone calls. This was during the transition after President Trump, then President elect Trump had one, was getting ready to succeed Barack Obama. Joe Biden’s name cropped up a lot of familiar names on that roster. Comey and Brennan and Clapper. Samantha Power, the Obama White House chief of staff, was on there. We we don’t exactly know who requested what or why or when and who saw what. But it’s definitely eye opening. You’re on the Judiciary Committee. We had one of your colleagues on this program yesterday, Marsha Blackburn. What would you like to see in terms of oversight from the Senate? Because I doubt we’ll get much from the House on this issue. What what do you think your Congress, your committee, rather, might be able to do what the role could be in getting further and closer to the bottom of this matter?

Sen. Cornyn: Well, Guy, I’m also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And I’ll tell you that there’s a lot of suspicion when it comes to government intrusion into our private lives. And and there’s a lot of checks to make sure that these tools are used only for a proper purpose, and that is only against foreign agents and others who are trying to trying to hurt our country and make us less safe. This is clearly an abuse of that public trust, I think undermines people’s confidence and in the U.S. government’s ability to neutrally apply these tools in a way that will keep us safe instead. It looks like this was purely designed to rub to be part of a political takedown of a successor administration. The president looks like it went all the way to the top. And then, of course, once the once the identity of General Flynn was unmasked and so many different people had access to it, lo and behold, it started being leaked into the mainstream media. So this is leaking of classified information, which is actually a crime. And we have to and we will get to the bottom of it.

Guy Benson: Do you think some of the names that I mentioned should come and testify under oath?

Sen. Cornyn: Absolutely. I talked to Senator Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He’s absolutely determined to bring those witnesses forward. I have I trust that a lot of this information is already in the hands of the attorney general bar and his designated U.S. attorney, Mr. Durham. And this could well result in criminal charges against some of the people involved.

Guy Benson: Senator, since you mentioned that you sit on that intelligence committee, I just want to get your reaction to the chairman of that committee, Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, stepping down from that position. He’s now under investigation. We know that the FBI has seized his phone. There are questions about possible insider trading regarding Corona virus. Do you support his decision to step down from that position during this? Active investigation. And who who’s going to take that spot?

Sen. Cornyn: Well, I do support Senator Burr’s decision. He’s doing this not for himself, but for the Senate. And he believes that this is a distraction from our other important work. So I certainly respect that. I think just. Just like Joe Biden is entitled to a presumption of innocence. By the way, Brett Kavanaugh apparently was not that Richard Burns, too. And so he’s cooperating with the with the law enforcement authorities in their investigation. And he’s also asked the Ethics Committee in the Senate to review his records. And he believes he operated based on publicly available information and did nothing wrong. And to a proven otherwise, I believe him.

Guy Benson: Since you mentioned Brett Kavanaugh, here’s my last question. I want to play for you a sound bite. This is from Senator Schumer just the other day talking about Joe Biden and the allegation against him of sexual assault. And it calls back certainly to the 2018 events that you witnessed in the Judiciary Committee.

Video Clip: Cut 35 before the metoo movement. Women were not listened to who were telling what had happened to them since me two women are listened to. Now, I’ve heard Joe Biden’s explanation. I think it’s sufficient. I think he will be a great candidate. I think he will be a great president. And I think they’ll take a step to take. Help us take back the Senate.

Guy Benson: All right. So Schumer now says, I’ve heard what Biden says. He denies it good enough for me. He’s going to win the presidency and help us win back the Senate. And let’s just move on. That was very much not the standard that I recall from basically all of the Senate Democrats, your colleagues on the other side, especially in that Judiciary Committee in 2018. You had a front row seat to that. When you hear that quote, that sound bite from Senator Schumer. What goes through your mind?

Sen. Cornyn: Well, what goes through my mind is that there’s one thing people may not otherwise understand all of the details or be paying that much attention to the fights here in Washington. But one thing they can see from a mile off is blatant hypocrisy. Those just did the way the bread cabinet was treated was one hundred and eighty degrees, the opposite from the way that Senator Schumer and other Democrats are treating Joe Biden. And I just think everybody everybody who’s paying attention gets it and understands that.

Guy Benson: And I think that’s part of the reason why I’ve put so much of my attention on these Senate races in 2020, because a majority leader Schumer would be a very, very different look than Majority Leader McConnell. I think it would be far worse for the country, in my opinion. And John Cornyn is one of those Republican senators up for reelection in the Lone Star State of Texas, a Republican senator. Always a pleasure. Thanks for joining us.

Sen. Cornyn: Thanks, guy. Have a good day.

Guy Benson: You bet. You, too. We’ll take a break. Come back as we kick off the Guy Benson Show. We’re just getting started. Stay there.