Washington, D.C. — Today, Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos to discuss President-elect Trump’s plan to pardon January 6th insurrectionists, his choices for cabinet picks, and more.
Key Excerpts:
On Trump’s promise to pardon January 6th insurrectionists
First of all, that he could pardon people that beat police officers, gouged them, bear sprayed them. But also, even beyond that, just the general message it would send, George, that his first pardons are going to go to people who saw it through the use of violence at the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power that played some role in that. Really? That’s who he wants to pardon?
The American people, I think, voted for him in part because they wanted something done about crime. Not because they wanted to see him pardoning criminals, attacking the government. They want something done about fentanyl. They want something done about California. Smash-and-grab robberies. This is not what they had in mind.
Not political revenge, not rewarding people who participated in an insurrection to stop the transfer of power.
On the nomination of Kash Patel to lead the FBI
Well, let me just say, with respect to some of the nominees, like Kash Patel, this is someone, in my view, who is not qualified to be FBI director and someone who claimed, for example, that he wanted to shut down FBI headquarters, early in his tenure and open a museum to the deep state. So this is a conspiracy theorist.
It’s also someone, I think, who demonstrated, sadly, a principle of the first Trump administration. And that is, you rise to the level of your sycophancy. And the bigger the sycophant, the higher you rise. He’s risen pretty high. But that’s not what we’re looking for in an FBI director.
On the dangers of Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence
It is a concern to me. I have a couple concerns with Tulsi Gabbard. The first is a complete lack of experience, never worked in an intelligence agency, never even served on the intelligence committee. There is a very steep learning curve in trying to understand what the intelligence systems do, the role and the interaction between them, not something you want learning on the job.
But also —and this gets to the point about her comments about Bashar al-Assad or her echoing of Kremlin talking points about the origin of the war in Ukraine— you want someone with good judgment in that position because they may very well be whispering in the ear of the president, this is how we should interpret this intelligence, these are the steps that we should take. This is our friend, this is our enemy. Someone who had shown that kind of poor judgment is not necessarily someone you want advising this president.
Watch the full video of the interview here.