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

Interview

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HAYES: The president`s own lawyer, Jay Sekulow, on his radio show giving  away the game today on what they hope would be the outcome if, in fact,  deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein  loses his job. As Sekulow puts it, a time-out on the Mueller  investigation.

For reaction to those comments and to Rosenstein`s uncertain fate I`m  joined by Congressman Adam Schiff of California, ranking member of the  House Intelligence Committee.

Let me start with that, the president`s own lawyer on his radio show saying  a time-out, a step  back. What does that mean? What is your reaction to it?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF, (D) CALIFORNIA: Well, this is certainly the Trump  lawyers giving away exactly what this is all about. They want to get rid  of Rod Rosenstein. They want to make a halt to the Mueller investigation.  They call it a pause, but they want to see the Mueller investigation go  completely away.

And they think the opportunity of getting rid of Rod Rosenstein, putting  someone else in his place, the president`s own personal version of Roy Cohn  who will do his bidding is exactly what they are after. And I think under  no circumstances should Rod Rosenstein play into those aspirations by  resigning. If the president is going to obstruct justice, he needs to own  it, and more than that, congress  needs to step up and take up legislation to protect him now and not wait  until there is a catastrophe.

HAYES: Are you -- do you remain confident in Rosenstein`s integrity,  competence, independence and ability right now?

SCHIFF: Look, I haven`t always agreed with Rod Rosenstein and for months I  have urged both he and the Justice Department to stop providing materials  to congress in a pending investigation that we have no business reviewing,  and that they are merely going to provide to the Trump legal defense team  from his allies in congress.

I haven`t always agreed with the judgments he`s made about this, but I do  believe he has the best interest of justice at heart, that he is protecting the Mueller  investigation to the best of his ability, and that is exactly what he  should be doing.

And I can understand the pressure that he`s under and wanting to -- if he  is to leave the Justice Department -- not go out in the middle of a spat  with the president. But the higher obligation here is to the constitution  and the interest of justice, and that means that you do not resign. If the  president is going to order you to do something unethical, you refuse, and  you allow yourself to be fired, but you don`t create a vacancy under the  Vacancies Act that will allow the president to circumvent the rule of law  by putting a crony in that position.

HAYES: So, it`s a crucial distinction to you whether he resigns or is  fired in terms of how he were to depart if he in fact is going to be taken  out of his job?

SCHIFF: It`s crucial in two respects. It`s crucial in that if he resigns,  as opposed to being fired, then the president gets to replace him on an interim basis with somebody who will simply do his bidding. But it is also 
important in the case that Bob Mueller may be putting together on the issue of obstruction of justice. In that case, the firing of James Comey is exhibit a, and the firing of Rod Rosenstein would be exhibit b. If he resigned, that makes it more murky as to whether this constitutes a further act of obstruction.

HAYES: What`s your worst fear about what happens if Rosenstein were to go?

SCHIFF: My worst fear is that the president puts someone in that position that will essentially tell Mueller to stop the investigation, that will tell Mueller with respect to anything further that they might do, that you will not look at this, you will not look at that. Those conversations would all be private.

One of the things that Bob Mueller, I believe, needs to do, to do a  thorough investigation to determine whether the Russians were laundering  money through the Trump organization, whether that is the leverage the  Russians may have over the president of the United States.

Well, Rod Rosenstein makes that decision now. If he is replaced, someone  else would make that decision.

HAYES: Do you have -- sorry, let me just stop you there -- do you have  reason to believe that`s the case the Russians were laundering money  through the Trump organization as the leverage?

SCHIFF: Well, there are many serious allegations about this and we can see  in statements that the president`s own sons have made at a time when they  were buying properties like golf courses with cash and they were asked  where are you getting all this money? And one of the sons said we`re  getting it from Russia. We get all the money with we need from Russia. We  don`t basically need to deal  with American bank And at any other time one of the other sons said, we  get a disproportionate share of our assets from Russia. And then you see  that there is certainly evidence of the purchase of properties by Russia,  the flipping of those properties.

Of course, the most egregious example is that residence in Florida that was  purchased by  Trump for something in the neighborhood of 40 million and sold a few years  later in a declining market for about double that price.

HAYES: Right.

SCHIFF: Purchased by a Russian oligarch.

HAYES: So what do you expect -- how are you preparing yourself for the  sort of Thursday meeting between Rod Rosenstein and the president?

SCHIFF: Right now we need to be sounding the alarm and we need to be  calling out the Republican members of congress who have been all too timid  and at times complicit with the president`s attacks on the rule of law.  The speaker and the senate leader cannot plausibly claim any more, if they  ever could, that the prospect of interfering with the special counsel is  theoretical.

HAYES: Yeah.

SCHIFF: It`s real. And they can`t stop -- they can`t continue to hide.  They need to do their jobs. We should take up legislation if they`re serious about protecting the rule of law and the integrity of this investigation that protects Bob Mueller.

HAYES: All right. Congressman Adam Schiff, thank you.

SCHIFF: Thank you, Chris.

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