“The questions first are who knew about the abrupt change that Donald Trump was about to make in tariff policy, and did they trade, did they enrich themselves?”
View the full interview here.
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace to demand answers from the Trump administration on White House officials’ knowledge ahead of President Donald Trump’s changes to tariff policy including whether financial transactions were made by officials with non-public information.
Key Excerpts:
On uncovering the truth behind the White House officials’ insight into Trump’s tariff pause:
[…] The questions first are who knew about the abrupt change that Donald Trump was about to make in tariff policy, and did they trade, did they enrich themselves? There’s a related question of course, in one of Trump’s tweets in which he encourages people to buy stock and then uses his own ticker as a plug to buy stock in his own company, whether he was also manipulating the market. These are just some of the questions. But I think your two questions are really interwoven in the manner you describe, and that is there is a culture of impunity in the White House. They basically have defanged the Justice Department of any meaningful oversight by installing his criminal defense lawyers to run that department. They fired the truly independent inspectors general. They’ve done away with all the safeguards. And so in that environment, you have these people of very dubious morals who are essentially told, “There’s no one watching. You can do whatever you want. No one’s going to hold you accountable.” It is an invitation to corruption. With the president trading in his own meme coin, for example, can we really expect that people around him aren’t also trading to their personal benefit? And that’s what’s driving these questions and the need for an investigation.
On urging Republicans to speak up against Trump’s tariff policy:
[…] Had [President Trump] continued, and if he does continue along this tariff destroy our economy, this self-inflicted wound to our economy, Republicans are going to abandon him like rats off a sinking ship. It’s unsustainable. You already saw Republicans start to abandon him. We brought up a resolution, Tim Kaine did, got four Republican votes — enough to get it passed in the Senate to try to stop these destructive tariffs on Canada. That was Republicans not just speaking privately, not just speaking publicly, but actually voting against the president. And you’re going to see more and more of that the more destruction he brings to our economy. Just watching this display in the administration as the president’s aides were out there after this latest flip flop, saying, “It wasn’t a flip flop. It was planned that way. You’re just not smart enough to see the president’s brilliant strategy. His art of the deal.”
And that president saying, “I don’t know what these guys are talking about, I’m just shooting from the hip here.” Sadly, I think people believe the president. He’s just shooting from the seat of his pants, and he’s hitting everybody in the worst of ways. So, if he keeps that up, and he is probably just too capricious not to, I think you are going to see Republicans abandon him as they fear their own constituents more than they fear his wrath.
On accountability and transparency over potential insider trading ahead of Trump’s tariff pause:
What should happen in a normal world? I think what would have happened in a pre-Trump normal world is it would be both parties asking the questions. Democrats and Republicans would come together to say, “Hey, why is it that the administration figures are not posting their transactions publicly the way they’re supposed to?” Because that’s not happening. Was there trading going on? Why did we see this spike in activity right before the president’s announcement? What accounts for that? Republicans would be joining and asking the questions, and frankly, there would be some independent body to ask those questions too.
The last time I wrote a letter, as I did in the case of this insider trading issue, to the head of the Office of Government Ethics, he was fired before it could get an answer. And the problem is, who’s there now that is going to be truly objective and do that oversight at the Justice Department, which is run by his criminal defense lawyers. We can’t hope they’re going to do any scrutiny. If they’re not going to hold people accountable, then somehow it has to get done. But in a normal world, the president would fear, and his people around him would fear going to jail if they were insider trading. They have none of that fear. Chief Justice Roberts, in his immunity decision said, “Mr. President, you don’t have to worry.” It’s why Chief Justice Roberts got thanked by Donald Trump at the State of the Union. It’s because he’s gotten a get out of jail free card. And the people around Trump feel they’re going to get a pardon the day he leaves the Oval Office. So, they’ve got to get out of jail free card from the Justice Department. So, it falls on the rest of us in Congress to do something. And we’re going to have to do the oversight that a normal world would be very bipartisan, where there would be people in the executive doing it. We’d be doing it in Congress. But it’s just not happening.
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