Washington, D.C. — In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell yesterday to discuss the incoming Trump Administration’s attempts to prevent the public release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report into Donald Trump’s incitement of the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Key Excerpts:
On Trump efforts to block the release of Special Counsel Smith’s report:
[…] I suppose at one level, it’s not surprising that they should try. They have no shortage of chutzpah. No shortage of nerve. But for the Attorney General to grant it, I think, would be indefensible for the reasons that you mentioned.
Historically, these reports are made public. These reports and the investigation underlying them are funded with taxpayer dollars and the public has a right to know. It is astonishing to me as we sit here, Lawrence, the crime was committed four years ago, and in four years’ time, the Justice Department could not bring that offense to trial, not as against the main perpetrator in Donald Trump.
If the attorney general were to decide here to allow this report to be buried, the lack of justice would be followed with a lack of any kind of accountability by the Department of Justice for those most responsible for inciting that violence.
On the need to prevent evidence from being destroyed or manipulated:
[…] I would hope that the Justice Department, in addition to publishing this report, is taking whatever steps it can take to give legal protection to that evidence, the evidence that they have gathered. Whether that means providing that evidence to the archives or making some other public record of it so that it can be preserved. Use of the grand jury to do so. Whatever the mechanism may be to protect that evidence that is to raise the bar for those who might otherwise seek to bury or destroy it. The Department should be undertaking those steps.
Watch the full video of the interview here.
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