MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Adam Schiff

Interview

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HAYES: Joining me now, the top Democrat in the House Intelligence  Committee, Representative Adam Schiff of California. I'm not sure where to  start mu start. Maybe we'll start with this that the chair of your  Committee Devin Nunes despite the fact that I think independent folks who  have read through this who have followed this story say this sort of knocks  down a lot of his series. He released this statement, the newly released  documents confirm the Intelligence Committees long-standing argument than  unverified information from the Steele Dossier formed an essential part of  all the FISA application to Carter Page. It proves the FBI used outright  political propaganda to spy an American citizen during the election. What  do you say to that?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, there were  certain fundamental claims that Nunes made in the now discredited memo  which we can see in the FISA application were simply not true. They  claimed first of all that the investigation began with this FISA warrant.  It all goes back to the taint of this FISA when of course the investigation  began with Papadopoulos, began with the FBI learning that the Russians had  approached one of the campaign foreign policy advisers and told them that  they had the stolen e-mails, that they prepared to release them anonymously  as they would later do.

But they also went on to challenge whether the FBI revealed to the court  that Christopher's Steele disrespected British intelligence officer, former  officer, whether his bias had been disclosed to the court that he had been  doing this work on behalf of the law firm retained by the DNC. They  claimed that there was no disclosure to the court when in fact now you can  read the application and you can see they did disclose this bias. So point  after point, basically the Nunez memo has been discredited but that doesn't  stop either Nunez or the President from saying otherwise.

HAYES: I want to just hammer on that point because it's been such a key  part of this sort of counter-narrative (INAUDIBLE). The idea is that this  sort of deep state conspiracy gets the dossier goes to the court and  doesn't tell them the origin at all. It's a -- it's a hustle, it's a con.  If they have this political oppo document, they go to the judge and say  well, we just found this you should really surveil this guy. Here is what  the FISA shows from Charlie Savages' New York Times piece. The application  contains a page length explanation that does alert the court that the  person who commissioned Mr. Steele's research was -- and I quote here --  likely looking for information to discredit Mr. Trump's campaign. That was  like the whole thing. That was hours of television programming.

SCHIFF: Well, you're absolutely right. And you know, of course, they  embellish it by saying there's no mention of Clinton, there's no mention of  the DNC. Well, that's because in FISA applications you minimize the names  of U.S. persons and organizations so as it appears in the FISA application  its candidate one and candidate two but there's no disguising the fact that  court was informed of court of the political bias and you know judge after  judge, four judges appointed by three Republican presidents, all four have  found probable cause for the original warrant and the extensions and that's  -- that speaks to the support of the evidence supporting those  applications.

HAYES: There's this weird through the looking-glass arguments about  disclosure through all this in which you have House Intelligence Committee  members from the Republican side sort of kind of you know collaborating  with the White House to push for certain kinds of disclosure. They want  access to certain documents. They want to see stuff at DOJ. There's a  concern from DOJ and I think from House Democrats that will compromise the  investigation. In this case, my understanding is that you were opposed to  release of this document but I have to say as a reporter or someone who's  followed FISA for a long time, it seems to be a good thing Americans have  access to this document and sunshine is a good disinfectant.

SCHIFF: Well, look, you know, at this point, after you had the Nunes memo  essentially cherry-pick information, mislead the public and we had to issue  our corrective a memo, then there's little additional damage that's done in  issuing a redacted version of the FISA. But we should have never gone down  this road, to begin with. It was all a bogus trumped-up effort to validate  something Donald Trump said in a tweet, that is I was illegally surveilled  by the Obama Administration at Trump Tower. Now that is nonsense and has  been declared to be nonsense by both the former director of the CIA as well  as the Director of National Intelligence, Director of NSA, but nonetheless,  this effort by Nunes and Gowdy and others has been an attempt to try to  somehow justify that blatantly false statement by the President.

HAYES: Your colleague Jerry Nadler was straightforward today, he's said  Devin Nunes lied. Is Jerry Nadler correct? Did Devin Nunes lie?

SCHIFF: Well, yes. I mean, this is a false -- patently false, provably  false statement but not just by Nunes. Others signed off on it too like  Trey Gowdy and indeed the entire majority signed off on that Nunes  memoranda. Now, Nunes hadn't read the FISA so he signed off on it blindly,  but Trey Gowdy had read it. Trey Gowdy knew it was false these arguments  they were making but nonetheless pushed forward. Now he sounds a bit  different now that he wants to be a judge but that's no forgiving those  misrepresentations and the denigration of the Justice Department, of the  Intelligence Community all in this misguided effort to defend the President  whatever the cost may be.

HAYES: All right, Representative Adam Schiff, thanks for being with me  tonight.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

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