WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, on Wednesday joined MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports to discuss his sweeping, bipartisan legislation to overhaul Congress’s role in national security and the arrest of former 2017 inaugural chairman for then-President Trump, as well as infrastructure and the January 6th commission in the U.S. House of Representatives.

On the National Security Powers Act, Murphy said: “Senator Lee, Republican, Senator Sanders, and myself have introduced a bill rewriting the national security powers of both Congress and the executive branch to shift more power to the legislative branch. I've just seen this country get into too many wars in my lifetime that weren't debated by the American public, starting with Vietnam…up until…the war in Yemen that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Yemen that never had a vote in Congress, despite potentially billions of US dollars being spent in that engagement.”

Murphy continued: "I just want to make sure that my constituents get a say in when and how the United States goes to war. I think that we would be much more careful about committing our troops overseas if the Congress had to vote every time.”

On former inaugural fund Chairman Tom Barrack illegally lobbying former President Trump on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and how his legislation might prevent such instances from occurring in the future, Murphy said: “We just had news within the last 24 hours that the Emiratis, the UAE, was secretly funding members of the Trump administration. Congress should be able to weigh in on whether we should continue to sell arms to a country that's trying to secretly influence our politics here at home. Those are discussions the public and the United States Congress should be having. Our bill would make sure that that debate occurs.”

Murphy continued: “We now know, through reporting, that his friend Mr. Barrack was being paid by the Emiratis and one of their asks was to keep the United States out of that rift between the Gulf countries…This strikes a blow at the heart of democracy, the idea that a foreign country could be secretly paying a close friend of the president, and the public—and potentially not even the president—know the nature of that financial arrangement. I hope he goes to jail for a long time. But I also hope we asked some questions to the Emiratis. Didn't they know that he wasn't registering as a foreign agent? Didn't they tell him he should get in compliance with the law? I think there's a lot of unanswered questions right now."

On Tuesday, Murphy along with U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the National Security Powers Act which would safeguard congressional prerogatives in the use of military force, emergency powers and arms exports. Murphy detailed the specifics of the legislation in a War on the Rocks op-ed. You can read more about the bill here.

You can watch Murphy’s full interview here.

###