Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper to discuss top priorities in the aftermath of the Los Angeles wildfires, the confirmation hearing of Pam Bondi and the unfair attacks on the Justice Department, and the likelihood of other Trump Cabinet nominees to be confirmed.
Key Excerpts:
On his top priorities to help Los Angeles recover from ongoing wildfires:
[…] The first is to get the fires put down. That’s the urgent priority. But immediately, thereafter we need to begin the cleanup. We’re going to need a lot of help with that, the massive quantities of noxious and hazardous materials. And then we’ve got to speed up the rebuilding process. We can’t let this linger for years and years and years. We’re also going to need, ultimately, a post-mortem of what happened here. I favor an independent commission that can look at this objectively from start to finish and make prescriptions for what we need to do to better protect ourselves and make us more resilient against these fires in the future. And of course, overlaying all of that is the reason for these mega fires, and that is climate change, and we can’t take our eye off that for a minute.
On the Republican attempts to discredit the Justice Department:
[…] I think the responsibility goes to those who have been trashing the Justice Department, and that’s what the Republicans have been doing ever since the investigation of Donald Trump by the Justice Department began. They wanted to discredit the FBI, discredit the Justice Department. No, I think Jack Smith did what he should do, which was follow the facts. Indeed, if there’s a criticism I have of the department, it was that they took too long to follow those facts where they led. That is also a criticism I have of the courts that willingly allowed President Trump to delay. But in terms of Bondi’s testimony, the concern I had, and you got a sense of it, there is her unwillingness to answer very simple questions. The question I was asking her there is, “are you aware of any factual predicate to open investigation of Jack Smith?” It should have been an easy answer no. I similarly asked, “are you willing to commit to not destroying evidence in his January 6 investigation?” Unwilling to even make that commitment, unwilling really, to say anything she thought might offend Donald Trump’s sensibilities, and if she can’t answer those simple questions for that fear, then what do we assume she will do when Trump asks her to do something immoral, unethical, or unlawful?
[…] But nevertheless, I think the discredit that has been brought on the Justice Department has been the product of a multi-year campaign to discredit the department as some kind of warfare, law-fare vehicle, as some kind of deep state, which is deeply damaging nonsense. So I think that’s what’s really discredited: the hard working people in the Justice Department. Now they’re going to have one of the leading conspiracy theorists of the deep state, Kash Patel, potentially running the FBI, if he’s confirmed. And all I could say is, God help us if that’s the case.
Watch the full video of the interview here.
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