Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes to demand that Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, explain his financial ties to foreign companies supported by the Chinese Communist Party. Today, Schiff led colleagues on the Senate Judiciary committee in sending a letter to Patel expressing concerns over his work for and payments from foreign entities. During the conversation, he also discussed his support for aid for Los Angeles in the aftermath of the devastating wildfires.
Watch the full interview here.
Key Excerpts:
On Kash Patel’s questionable payments from foreign companies supported by the CCP:
[…] Here’s a guy who made millions doing some kind of consultation, some kind of work for this Chinese Communist Party backed business entity. And we don’t know what he did, what he’s getting paid for. That’s a lot of money. And not just this Chinese Communist Party backed company, but he also did consulting work for something called the Czechoslovak group, which has done propaganda for the Kremlin. So, how much did he get paid by them? And what did he do for them that he got paid for? These are the kind of things you would hope to know about a nominee for high office, particularly the director of the FBI, that might be asked to look into Kremlin propaganda operations in the U.S. or Chinese Communist Party-backed firms employing forced labor or child labor. So, we ought to know the answers.
[…]
The FBI is our preeminent counterintelligence agency. They are our eyes and ears on foreign spies operating in the United States. So, should this company be deploying people in the United States through its auspices? Can we really count on Kash Patel, with one to five million at stake, to approve an investigation of this company or its agents in the United States? I don’t have that confidence. But this is the caliber of person that’s been nominated for this high position.
On the important efforts to oppose any conditioning of aid to California:
[…] I’m not sure how much progress has been made on it, because they may endeavor to tie this all to the debt ceiling or a budget package, or if Donald Trump gets his way to some voter ID law or some release of water from some magic valve that doesn’t exist. But I will say this, in the private conversations I’ve had with Republican senators, most of them, not all of them, but most of them have essentially said, “We’re going to take care of California. We’re going to take care of this.” But I’ve seen time and time again, and you have too, private attestations don’t amount to a lot when push comes to shove. But I am going to, obviously, vigorously oppose any effort to condition aid. We’re the biggest donor state in the nation. We’ve never tried to condition our support of other states after their tragedies. This is not the time to start.
###