weeknights on kpix 5 captioning sponsored by cbs >> brennan: it's sunday, february 17th. i'm margaret brennan, and this is "face the nation." congress makes a deal to keep the government open. but wall funding falls short of the president's request. >> the answer is no, i'm not. i'm not happy. >> brennan: firing back, president trump declared a national security crisis at the border to access money to build a wall, brushing off critics who say it's unconstitutional. >> they gave the presidents the power. there's ra b pblem. they sign it. nobody cares. >> brennan: but that's not so. in this case, democrats, and some republicans, are trying to stop the president. delaware democratic senator chris coons and texas republican

congressman will hurd will weigh in. plus the stunning "60 minutes" interview with former acting f.b.i. director andrew mccabe and his charge that deputy attorney general rod rosenstein brought up the possibility of invoking the 25th amendment against president trump. we asked the chairman of the senate judiciary committee, lindsey graham, about it. >> the underlying accusation is beyond stunning. >> brennan: all this analysis on the news of the week is just ahead on "face the nation." >> brennan: good morning and welcome to "face the nation." we have a lot to get to today, d we're going to begin with senate judiciary committee chairman lindsey graham. he joins us from germany where he is attending the munich security conference. ht this conversation. my colleague scott pelley had on "60 minutes" with former acting

f.b.i. director andrew mccabe where he described a conversation about the 25th amendment, the mechanism through which to push the president out of office, and he said it was brought up to him by the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein. >> discussion of the 25th amendment was simply rod raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort. >> rosenstein was actually openly talking about whether there was a majority of a cabinet that would vote to remove the president? >> that's correct, counting votes. >> what seemed to be floating through the mind of the deputy attorneyetting of the president of the united states, one way or another. >> i can't confirm, that but what i can say is the deputy

attorney general was definitely very concerned about the president, about his capacity, and about his intent at that point in time. >> how did he bring up the idea of the 25th amendment to you? >> honestly, i don't remember. it was just another kind of top thank he jumped to in the midst of a wide-ranging conversation. >> seriously? just another topic? >> yeah. >> brennan: senator, that's a tremendous allegation to make. have you ever asked rod rosenstein if, in fact, that conversation happened? >> well, he's publicly denied it, but the whole point of congress existing is to provide oversight of the executive branch. so through good reporting by "60 minutes," there's an allegation by the acting f.b.i. dirut rn genas basically trying to do an administrative coup, take the president down through the 25th amendment

process. the deputy attorney general denies it. so i promise your viewers the following: we will have a hearing about who is telling the truth, what actually happened. mr. mccabe, you remember, was dismissed from the f.b.i. for leaking information to the press, so you got remember the source here. >> brennan: there has been some parsing, though, of whether these were extended discussions versus conversations about the 25th amendment. >> right. >> brennan: do you know whether those conversations have taken place? >> no, but i think everybody in the country needs to know if it happened. it's stunning to me that one of the chief law enforcement officers of the land, the acting head of the f.b.i., would go on national television and say, oh, by the way, i remember a conversation with the deputy attorney general about trying to find if we could replace the president under the 25th amendment. we're a democracy. people enforce the law. they can't take it into their own hands. and was this an attempted bureaucratic coup?

i don't know. i don't know who is telling the truth. i know rosenstein has vehemently denied it. but we'll get to the bottom of business about fisa warrants being issued against carter page, about dossiers coming from russia that were unverified. mr. mueller will look at the trump campaign, as he should, to see if they violated any laws during the 2016 election, and i will do everything i can to get to the department of -- to the bottom of the department of justice attitude toward president trump during his campaign. >> brennan: even by framing it as you did, senator, are you concerned that by investigating the investigators you are adding to some damage of the credibility of the f.b.i.? >> quite the opposite. if it happened, we need the clean it up. the f.b.i. has gotten off track it's one of the greatest organizations in the world. the hoover years have proven to be pretty dark periods for the f.b.i., the latter part of the hoover days where politicians were being blackmailed. there is no organization beyond

scrutiny, there is no organization that can't withstand scrutiny. f.b.i. will come out stronger, but we got to get to the bottom of it. what are people to think after they watch "60 minutes" when they hear this accusation by the acting f.b.i. director that the deputy attorney general encouraged him to try to find ways to count votes to replace the president? that can't go unaddressed, and it will be addressed. that's what oversight is all about. >> brennan: will you subpoena mccabe and rosenstein to appear? >> how can i not if that's what it takes? you're doing your job. the first amendment allows you to ask questions of the most powerful people in the country. i know he's selling a book, and we need the take with a grain of salt maybe what mr. mccabe is telling us, but he went on national television and made an accusation that floors me. you know, i can imagine if the shoe were on the other foot, if we were talking about getting rid of president clinton, it would be front-page news all over the world. well, we're going to find out what happened here. the only way i know to find out is to call the people in under

oath and find out through questioning who is telling the truth, because the underlying accusation is beyond stunning. >> brennan: i want the play another clip from that interview for you. >> what was it specifically that caused you to launch the counterintelligence investigation? >> it's many of those same concerns that cause us to be concerned about national security threat. and the idea is if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the f.b.i. to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of russia's maligned activity possibly in support of his campaign, as a counterintelligence investigator, you have to ask yourself: why would a president of the united states do that? so all of those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder, is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection

between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of russia? >> brennan: senator, you voiced support for the mueller probe in the past. listening to what mccabe just described there, a troubling pattern of behavior that he, as a lifetime investigator, saw as a troubling fact pattern, led him to open a counterintelligence investigation into the president of the united states, can you understand why he came to that conclusion? >> i can understand that the american people will get an answer to the question from mr. mueller. what i can't understand is why mr. mccabe would meet with page and struck to discuss their hatred for candidate trump, talking abtaking an insurance policy out in case the election went different than they want. so mue a what trump did or didn't do. i'm going to tell the country about mccabe and the people at the department of justice and how they behaved.

did they take the law in their own hands? did they abuse the fisa warrant process because they had a political agenda? did the hatred of trump go so far that they abandoned their role of being law enforcement agents and become advocates for a political cause? we're going to get to the bottom of that. >> brennan: but you recognize that mccabe is laying out the grounds of what he saw as an obstruction of justice attempt? >> mr. mueller will look at that, but i think mccabe, struck, and page had a political bice, a political agenda, and i find it odd that the dossier we used to get the warrant against carter page, prepared by a foreign agent, paid for by the democratic party, that they knew to be unreliable, was used on four separate occasions to get a warrant. i want to know why comey told the president, here's as the yea, we've got it, we can't verify any ofe you tobout ind t. and department of justice under oath to tell the court, this is

reliable information, give us a warrant based on this document. i hope your viewers understand that the rule of law works both ways. somebody's got to watch those who watch us. and i intend to watch what mccabe and his crowd did during the 2016 election. >> brennan: the president just declared national emergency with regard to getting the funds for his border wall. in teúms of getting those funds through this emergency action, there are about $3.6 billion of it. that could come from military construction efforts. including construction of a middle school in kentucky, housing for military families, improvements for bases like c pendleton and hanscom air force base. aren't you concerned that some of these projects that were part of legislation that you to possibly be cut out? >> well, the president will have to make a decision where to get the money. let's just say for a moment that he took some money out of the military construction budget.

i would say it's better for kentucky to have a school border. we'll get them the school they need, but right now we have national emergency on our hands. opioid addiction is going through the roof in this country. thousands of americans died last year. they're dying this year because we can't control the flow of drugs into this country. all of it is coming across the border. >> brennan: through ports ofen try according to customs and border patrol, though. >> both. it's both. it's not just one. for every one we get, god knows how much we miss. >> brennan: don't you think congress has ceded too much power to the executive branch? do you think you need to more sharply define what constitutes a national emergency so future presidents can't interpret it as they like? >> i think every member of congress has watched three presidents send troops to the border, bush, obama, now trump. not one of us have complained about deploying forces to the border to secure the border. it's pretty hard for me to understand the legal difference

between sending troops and having them build a barrier. what disappoints me is on president obama's watch, as a republican, i voted for a $44 billion border security package, $9 the billion of which included barriers. in 2006, all of us voted for the secure fence act. we're talking about steel barrier, not a concrete wall, and unfortunately when it comes to trump, the congress is locked down and will not give him what we have given past presidents, so unfortunately he's got to do it on his own. i support his decision to go that route. >> brennan: perhaps in the future we can talk about sharpening what constitutes an emergency, but before i let you go, you made a pitch from the stage at munich for foreign troops to be commitsed to syria alongside american forces. how many u.s. forces are needed to stay there and has president trump actually made that commitment to you? >> well, thank you for asking, margaret. the islamic state in iraq and syria has been destroyed.

it has been defeated. all the work is not yet done. remnants of isis are lethal. we need a presence post-caliphate. we can do this with a faction of the american forces we've had in syria in the past. the real good news is europeans are willing to contribute because their cities have been attacked from syria. the caliphate in syria -- >> brennan: how many u.s. troops? >> the caliphate has caused thousands of deaths. i think a couple hundred compared to 2,700 would be enough to get europeans to contribute to the stabilizing force the make sure isis doesn't come back like it did in iraq, to make sure that turkey and the kurds don't go to war to keep them apart. and to make sure that iran doesn't come in and take over when we leave. so i have never felt better about the outcome in syria with a small contingent of americans, a lot of europeans will come in and help fill in the gaps. a very small down payment to

ensure isis never comes back. we've gone from thousands of troops in iraq and sear yaw down now to a couple hundred. congratulation, mr. president. the job is not yet done, but we've didn't a hell of a job destroying the caliphate. >> brennan: senator graham, thank you. we want to turn now to another attendee at the munich security conference, delaware democrat chris coons. you now have heard the former acting f.b.i. director come public after leaving office about what he saw as grounds for discussion of the 25th amendment. what do you think of making those details public now? >> well, margaret, as you heard from senator graham, this will almost certainly be taken up by the senate judiciary committee. but what is striking to me about this conference and frankly around the world is the way in which president trump's abrupt decision to withdraw from syria has unsettled our core allies because he did so without consulting from any of our allies.

candidate donald trump ran as someone who would be unconventional, who would break the mold and be unpredictable. he's certainly overperformed in that category. but what is striking to me about the "60 minutes" reporting, about the conversations that are alleged to have happened at the highest levels of our law enforcement community, is that folks who were career professionals were troubled enough by what they saw in terms of president trump's actions with regard to russia that they felt compelled to open a counterintelligence investigation. i think that should give all of us pause. >> brennan: mccabe himself has been questioned in terms of his own personal behavior. he was fired after an i.g. investigation found that he lied or lacked candor four times under oath. so do you question the credibility of his claims? >> look, the most important thing in my mind is that robert mueller be able to complete his investigation without interference. if we also need to have some sunshine, some disinfectant here

about everything that led to the beginning and the pursuit of that investigation, that strikes me as appropriate. >> brennan: so to be clear, when your colleague senator graham was talking about wanting to on the judiciary committee investigate things like abuse of foreign surveillance and the grounds under which warrants were obtained, do you support all of that? >> my hope is that chairman graham will be open to calling a number of witnesses who based on previous testimony also need to come in front of the senate judiciary committee. we should not be pursuing just one theory or one line of investigation here. we should be looking at all the matters that are appropriate for oversight by the senate judiciary committee. >> brennan: from what you heard from mccabe himself, the pattern he was describing, is that an appropriate response or an appropriate potential use of the 25th amendment? n hea the entire

interview. it is alarming that there were apparently folks at the highest levels of our government considering whether or not our president is unfit to serve. i don't think that this frankly rises to the level of some deep state conspiracy or a serious attempt at what senator graham called an administrative coup. i suspect that once this is fully discussed it will be clear that this was a brief or passing conversation that's been taken out of context, but it does deserve scrutiny. >> brennan: do you think there should be a joint resolution, an attempt by congress to stop the president from going forward with with this emergency declaration? >> well, given that what president trump is trying to do, to build a big wall between the united states and mexico to meet a campaign promise, something that congress considered and rejected, that the president was not able to secure over two years when republicans controlled the congress, i do think, margaret, we should take action to disapprove of this excessive use of executive

power, and make it clear that the article 1 branch, the congress, is going to gelly is defend our right to be the body that decides on federal spending and not let the president use this extreme measure as an end-around our appropriations process. >> brennan: do f you do see a democratic president in that office, would you share the concern? do you think congress now needs to put some restrictions on the executive's ability to declare a national emergency? >> i do think that we should not set the terrible precedent of letting a president declare a national emergency simply as a way of getting around a congressional appropriations process. presidents do have emergency powers. they can declare national emergency, but if you look back at the history of that over the last four decades, they have nglydon the face o legat security threahe waso o means addressing them. >> brennan: i want to ask you about a foreign policy issue, as well, and you brought it up at the beginning of our conversation.

that's syria. senator graham just made a pitch to our allies to commit boots, troops to syria, and promised that u.s. troops would stay alongside them. what do you make of that pitch? >> well, this is where senator graham and i agree. the delegation in the meetings that i've been in has been speaking up with one voice, saying that an abrupt and total withdrawal of all american forces from syria would have a terrible consequence of handing our allies in the fight against isis the kurds over either to iran or to the turks. and that we should be working in partnership from our allies to make sure we don't allow isis to reemerge and that we don't allow iran and russia to dominate syria. i'll join senator graham in fore isis caliphate, but i think for us to pull all of our force, literally every american soldier out of syria, would be a disastrous end. it would have consequences, not just for syria's security, but

for our allies. >> brennan: how many should stay then? >> at most a few hundred to secure both the base that is blocking iran from having a highway right into and across syria, and to secure a buffer zone between our kurdish partners in the fight against isis and the turks. >> brennan: all right. senator coons, thank you for joining us. >> thank you, margaret. >> brennan: we'll be back in one minute with a lot more "face the nation." texas republican congressman texas republican congressman will hurd is standing by. don't go away. go ahead, ask it a question. tecky, can you offer low costs and award-winning full service with a satisfaction guarantee, like schwab? sorry. tecky can't do that. schwabbb! calling schwab. we don't have a satisfaction guarantee, but we do have tecky! i'm tecky. i ca... are you getting low costs and award-winning full service? if not, talk to schwab.

>> brennan: we're back with texas republican congressman will hurd. he joins us from his district in san antonio this morning. congressman, you are directly border since about 800 miles of it are in your home district. how is this emergency declaration going to impact your constituents? >> well, i have 820 miles of the border. i'm the only republican that represents a border town, and i spent almost a decade as an

undercover officer in the c.i.a. chasing bad guys all over the world. how is this going to impact my district? first and foremost, i don't think we needed a national emergency declaration. that is not a tool that the president needs in order to solve this problem. this is a problem that has existed for before ronald r. rod reagan. what we need to be doing, and remember, we just passed a piece of legislation that adds more technology, that has physical barriers in order to solve this problem. and i was just down on the border. i was in the del rio sector of the border. it's broken up into sectors. i was specill the city of eagle pass. and then i crossed the boarder into mexico. they are dealing with a recent caravan. and guess what? there was unprecedented cooperation between the u.s. government and the mexican government. we have to remember that most of the people that are coming here illegally are coming from

central america. they are not mexican citizens. in this one sector i visited, 92% of the people that are coming there illegally are from central america and 80% of that is specifically from honduras. so this is a shared problem with us and mexico. and then this new administration in mexico, we've seen this level of cooperation to deal with this shared problem. we need to address things like border patrol pay. there's a reason that border patrol has a retention problem. we don't have enough border patrol officers. we need additional technology. everybody thinks that there's the latest and greatest technology along the border. there isn't. this bill we passed last friday or this friday recently that got signed into law has a program called "the innovative tower initiative," which is what i describe as the smart wall and it uses technology to figure out what's going back and forth across our border. >> brennan: but what about the private property that is going to be seized to build the wall that the president is saying

he's going to do? that must impact your constituents? >> oh, absolutely. and in the great state of texas, we care about a little thing called private property. there will be over 1,000 ranchers and farmers potentially impacted if the government comes in and takes their land. and this is how they do it. they say, hey, we need this land. here's what we're going to give you, and they get to automatically take it, and the rancher or the landowner has to go in and fight in court to make sure that they're at a minimum getting what they are owed because of the price of the land. in some places, in a part of where the wall is being designed or they think they want to build the wall, we're going to be cedin g 1.1 million acres of arable land. >> brennan: that's tremendous. >> that's crazy. that's crazy. >> brennan: congressman, i have to take a break here. we'll continue it on the other side. ignition sequence starts.

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>> brennan: we'll be back with more of our conversation with will hurd. >> the 2019 pbr cont.

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