“If [Republicans] are not going to … do any kind of oversight, if they’re going to essentially be supine for the whole Trump administration, someone is going to have to do this oversight —we’re going to do it on the Democratic side of the aisle.”
View the full interview here.
Washington, D.C. — Last night, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell to recap the bicameral spotlight hearing he led in the Senate with Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.-08) on President Donald Trump’s attempts to tear apart the rule of law and his promise to hold the Trump administration accountable.
Key Excerpts:
On continuing to stand up to the Trump administration’s intimidation tactics:
[…] It was quite reminiscent, Lawrence, of when we were doing the Ukraine hearings prior to the impeachment of President Trump over his effort to extort Zelenskyy, because similarly, the Justice Department — not so thinly veiled — tried to threaten witnesses that came before our committee. Well, they’re back at it again, different cast of characters at the Trump Justice Department Part II. Frankly a worse, set of characters with no limits on what they do, but the same kind of scare tactics, intimidation tactics.
You asked at the outset, what do we need to do? And frankly, we need to do a lot more of this. If they’re not going to — they being the Republicans — do any kind of oversight, if they’re going to essentially be supine for the whole Trump administration, someone is going to have to do this oversight — we’re going to do it on the Democratic side of the aisle. When the Republicans wake up and are ready to do their jobs, we will welcome them to the hearings. But until that happens, we’re going to bring forward witnesses like this and expose these abuses of the administration.
On those who bravely stand up to the Justice Department’s blatant corruption:
[…] We held that hearing — I invited Jamie Raskin to do it jointly with me, along with Senator Dick Durbin — because the Republicans won’t do these hearings, because they won’t do oversight, because there are really bad and corrupt things happening throughout the administration and in the Justice Department that they’re unwilling to put a spotlight on. So, we’re going to do it for them. And what was really so impressive to me about these witnesses is they had the guts to come forward. One of the attorneys that you just profiled, Rachel Cohen, she’s a third-year associate at a major law firm. She resigns rather than going along with this capitulation to the Trump administration. While you have very successful, much more wealthy and further along in their career, lawyers essentially capitulating, she says no.
And these other lawyers were either fired at the Justice Department or quit because they wouldn’t go along with unethical actions. In the case of Liz Oyer because she wouldn’t approve the restoration of gun rights to a friend of the president, Mel Gibson, she’s fired. She’s marched out of the building in front of her coworkers. It’s just appalling. But I will say this for those of us that have wondered, what would we do? What would we have done in the McCarthy era? Would we have stood up to Joseph McCarthy, a bully like that, or would we have named names? Well, those witnesses that we saw today don’t have to ask themselves that question, because they stood up and defied these bullies at the Justice Department and in the administration.
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