Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace to discuss Rep. Mike Turner’s removal as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, concerns about a second Trump administration, recent developments with the Los Angeles wildfires, and his takeaways from Pam Bondi’s confirmation hearing.
Key Excerpts:
On the urgency to help communities rebuild and recover after the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles:
[…] What I’m hearing from constituents is both heartbreaking and at the same time, heartwarming. The heartbreaking aspect is all around us, people who have lost their homes. Some have lost family members. They have lost all their cherished memories that were in those homes. They lost their pets, they lost their neighborhood, their church, their synagogue, their local grocery store. They are living in hotels. They are surfing on friends’ couches. That is all so very heartbreaking, and the scope of it is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. And we are not unaccustomed to fire in Los Angeles. But at the same time, I have been really inspired by the firefighters and the risks they are taking by their inexhaustible energy to keep up the fight, and those fires are still not out. The degree to which people who have lost everything are nonetheless very positive about their own future, their plans to rebuild. We’re going to have to move the urgency on that rebuilding process.
On Donald Trump’s influence over the House GOP:
[…] [Speaker] Johnson is here doing the bidding of Donald Trump — removes Mike Turner. We already saw in some of the other choices for appointment to the Intelligence Committee that the Speaker made last session, putting people like Scott Perry on the committee, like Ronny Jackson on the committee, not folks that we can have a lot of confidence in upholding that responsibility on that committee, that Trump has really already had his way in choosing to change the character of that committee. So, I think we’re seeing Donald Trump, both as President-elect and in some sense, as an alter ego for Speaker, exerting extraordinary influence over the House.
On Pam Bondi’s inability to serve independently from Trump:
Wallace: Even if she’s not telling the truth, why, if you’re about to go lead the Department of Justice, and if you’re — again, I take her at a word that she cares about crime in California and other places — why not affirm that she has that there’s no predicate to investigate Jack Smith or Liz Cheney? That feels like a really distant leap that she’s asking again, not democratic Senators, but the DOJ workforce to take before she’s even there.
Schiff: It really wasn’t a hard question to answer. She could have simply said, “No, I’m aware of no factual predicate. I’m not a member of the Justice Department. I wouldn’t have access to information.” So, it wouldn’t be hard to answer that question, shouldn’t have been hard to answer that question. What made it difficult for her is she was terrified, I think, of contradicting Donald Trump in any way, saying anything to displease Donald Trump. And the problem with all of that is, if she doesn’t have the independence, even before she’s in that job to answer a simple question to Congress as the questions I asked, or another question I asked her about whether she’ll commit to preserving the evidence of the January 6th investigation, she can’t answer those questions for fear of Donald Trump — what will she do when she’s being pressed by him? And of course, none of this is in a vacuum. It all takes place in the context of a Supreme Court decision that gave Donald Trump absolute immunity to commit crimes using the Department of Justice. So more than ever, you need an attorney general willing to say no to an unlawful or immoral request of the President. She did not demonstrate yesterday any willingness or ability to do so.
On Trump’s nominees serving as his loyalists:
Wallace: […] It’s not a matter of if, but when you’re asked to do something unlawful, as Jim Comey was, as Bill Barr was with the election denialism that Trump trafficked in at the end of his term. What does it say to you that in relative terms, Pam Bondi is viewed as a sure thing for confirmation?
Schiff: It tells us how the bar has so dramatically changed. That someone who can’t even vouch for the independence of that office in any meaningful way is considered a shoe-in and people that are so plainly disqualified from high office, like Kash Patel, would be even under consideration. Someone who has said they want to shut down the FBI headquarters and open a museum to the Deep state. How is it possible that someone who is kind of internet trollish like that, someone of poor judgment, a poor character, could be considered, like Kash Patel. But we are where we are. There is, I think, such fealty to Donald Trump, not just among these nominees, but among many in the Senate. I hope I’m wrong about that. I hope we see some rigorous questioning, and not just from Democrats, of these nominees.
Watch the full video of the interview here.
###