“The longer we allow this to go on, the more we confirm people who will not recuse themselves, the more we expose ourselves and our very democracy to a president with no respect for the rule of law, empowered by a Supreme Court that has given him no reason to fear the law. And I can’t tell you where that will lead, but I can tell you it will lead to a place that will not look like a democracy.”
Washington D.C. — Today, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) warned of President Donald Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department and the role of the Supreme Court in aiding Trump after the dangerous presidential immunity decision.
Watch his full remarks here.
Key Excerpts:
On the Supreme Court enabling Trump:
Is this where we are now, where the Justice Department can be so blatantly used as a mode of intimidation, as a mode of control, as a mode of making policy? Now, what is empowered all of this is a decision by the Supreme Court that gives a president immunity from criminal liability, but most particularly says in certain core areas of responsibility, the immunity is absolute. And here, the Supreme Court of United States said that when the president uses the Justice Department, he is absolutely immune. There could be no more frontal assault on the post-Watergate policy of having some division between the White House and the Justice Department than the Supreme Court of the United States saying, “Break down that wall. Use the department any way you wish. Create cases where there’s no evidence. Dismiss cases where there’s plenty of evidence. And you will never face accountability. No matter how corrupt a motive. You will never face accountability.” You could pay the president of the United States to drop a case against the foreign national. You could pay him directly. You could buy his meme coin. You could do whatever you want, and he would be immune from criminal liability under the Supreme Court’s decision.
This has turbo charged the ability to weaponize the Department of Justice by a president who wishes to use it for that purpose.
On top Justice Department officials’ unquestioned sycophancy to Donald Trump:
[…] The first three top appointments all go to the president’s criminal defense lawyers. Pam Bondi, who represented him. Todd Blanche, who represented him. John Sauer represented him. Many who still represent him. Many who cannot distinguish between representing him personally and representing the United States of America. I asked Mr. Sauer about his ethical obligations. I asked Mr. Blanche the same. These were two at the time of the questioning, current lawyers for the president. Well, when they’re the former lawyers for the president, they still have a continuing ethical obligation to their former client not to injure the interests of the former client. That would demand recusal, but none were willing to commit.
The most they would be willing to do is say that they will consult with the career ethics lawyers at the Department of Justice. But they’re gone. They’re now fellow criminal defense lawyers of Donald Trump. Inspectors General are gone. The head of the Office of Professional Responsibility gone. The career national security professionals gone. Lawyers who won’t bring cases where there’s no evidence gone. Lawyers who won’t dismiss cases where there’s plenty of evidence gone. And what is taking their place, but people who don’t understand where the representation of the person of the president ends and the representation of the country should begin.
Read his full remarks below.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to begin by setting the backdrop for the nominees we’re considering today. And the backdrop is the creation of a narrative around the weaponization of the Department of Justice. The reason for this narrative is the need by the president to explain why he’s the first president in history to be indicted multiple times. The most significant indictment, of course, was the president’s role in the January 6th insurrection. The additional indictment on the sequestering of boxes of classified documents in Mar-a-Lago. The obstruction of that investigation cumulatively required the president to have an explanation for why he’s the first president in history to be multiply indicted. And not just the fact of the indictment, but the fact that multiple grand juries reviewing the evidence found probable cause to believe the President of the United States had committed many, many crimes. In order to explain that the president has to create this narrative that the Justice Department was somehow improperly weaponized against him.
Because he’s the only president in history to be indicted multiple times, what other explanation could there be? Well, sometimes the simplest explanation is the most accurate. And the simple explanation here is he’s the first president to commit these crimes while in office. And nevertheless, this narrative that has been created around the weaponization of the department, the fact that the department, far from weaponizing the use of justice, chose to treat the president like any other American. Neither better nor worse, that is, they didn’t give him immunity to violate the criminal laws. Had they decided that they would indict the people who attacked the Capitol and beat police officers, the people who conspired to make it happen, but give a pass to the one who incited it. Had they decided that if other employees in the intelligence community elsewhere brought boxes of classified documents home, that they would be prosecuted. But if a president did it, they would be treated differently. It would have meant the renunciation of the whole idea that no one is above the law.
So they followed the law, and the law led to Donald Trump. But this narrative they have created also serves another purpose, and that it is, it allows them, in Orwellian fashion, to do what they have accused others of doing, but have accused falsely. And that is, it allows them to weaponize the department. To use the department as a sword and as a shield. Now, as Sheldon Whitehouse has so ably described, they’re using it as a sword to try to create criminal cases where none exists, as a predicate to in the case of this environmental fund, to try to shut it down, to go after it. Where there is no probable cause, they asked multiple prosecutors and multiple magistrates to open an investigation. And finding no probable cause, they did their ethical duty and said, “No, it simply doesn’t exist.” And so they’re fired, and the case is shopped from prosecutor to prosecutor to prosecutor, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, in an effort to use the department as a sword to go after either programs the president doesn’t like, or political enemies. We have seen letters go out from the acting U.S. Attorney in DC, to Democratic members of Congress intended to chill their speech, intended to use the department as yet another vehicle of the president’s power.
But of course, they’re not just using it as a sword, but they’re also using it as a shield. And here we see that on graphic display in New York, where the Justice Department has intervened in a serious, serious criminal case involving the mayor of New York, a corruption case, a bribery case, and moved to dismiss it. And why? Because the mayor is useful. He’s useful to them in an unrelated policy matter, and that is immigration. So, they moved to dismiss the case, and not just dismiss it, but dismiss it without prejudice, meaning they want to keep that case hanging over his head like a sword of Damocles that should the mayor stop doing the president’s bidding, they will let it drop.
Is this where we are now, where the Justice Department can be so blatantly used as a mode of intimidation, as a mode of control, as a mode of making policy? Now, what is empowered all of this is a decision by the Supreme Court that gives a president immunity from criminal liability, but most particularly says in certain core areas of responsibility, the immunity is absolute. And here, the Supreme Court of United States said that when the president uses the Justice Department, he is absolutely immune. There could be no more frontal assault on the post-Watergate policy of having some division between the White House and the Justice Department than the Supreme Court of the United States saying, “Break down that wall. Use the department any way you wish. Create cases where there’s no evidence. Dismiss cases where there’s plenty of evidence. And you will never face accountability. No matter how corrupt a motive. You will never face accountability.” You could pay the President of the United States to drop a case against the foreign national. You could pay him directly. You could buy his meme coin. You could do whatever you want, and he would be immune from criminal liability under the Supreme Court’s decision.
This has turbo charged the ability to weaponize the Department of Justice by a president who wishes to use it for that purpose. Now, we enter these nominees and others before them as the instruments of that ability to use the department. The first three top appointments all go to the president’s criminal defense lawyers. Pam Bondi, who represented him. Todd Blanche, who represented him. John Sauer represented him. Many who still represent him. Many who cannot distinguish between representing him personally and representing the United States of America. I asked Mr. Sauer about his ethical obligations. I asked Mr. Blanche the same. These were two at the time of the questioning, current lawyers for the president. Well, when they’re the former lawyers for the president, they still have a continuing ethical obligation to their former client not to injure the interests of the former client. That would demand recusal, but none were willing to commit. The most they would be willing to do is say that they will consult with the career ethics lawyers at the Department of Justice. But they’re gone. They’re now fellow criminal defense lawyers of Donald Trump. Inspectors General are gone. The head of the Office of Professional Responsibility gone. The career national security professionals gone. Lawyers who won’t bring cases where there’s no evidence gone. Lawyers who won’t dismiss cases where there’s plenty of evidence gone. And what is taking their place, but people who don’t understand where the representation of the person of the president ends and the representation of the country should begin.
And I would just say that for any of us that might think that we are immune because of our positions in this body or any other. The longer we allow this to go on, the more we confirm people who will not recuse themselves, the more we expose ourselves and our very democracy to a president with no respect for the rule of law, empowered by a Supreme Court that has given him no reason to fear the law. And I can’t tell you where that will lead, but I can tell you it will lead to a place that will not look like a democracy. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
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