MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Adam Schiff
Interview
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MADDOW: After the new letter from Attorney General William Barr tonight saying he intends to release some version, some redacted version of the Mueller report in mid-April, if not sooner, we got this response from Chairman Adam Schiff, who is the head of the House Intelligence Committee. He says tonight, quote: Congress has asked for the entire Mueller report and underlying evidence by April 2nd. That deadline stands.
In the meantime, Barr should seek court approval just like in Watergate to allow the release of grand jury material. Redactions are unacceptable. Release the report.
Joining us now for the interview tonight is Congressman Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Chairman, it`s good to have you here tonight.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Thank you.
MADDOW: I know you`ve had a heck of a week being pilloried by the president and your Republican colleagues in the House. Has this been a tough week for you?
SCHIFF: You know, it started out as a tough week, but the encouragement around the country has been much more than I ever expected, so it ended much better than it started.
MADDOW: Yes. I got to ask about this notice from the attorney general tonight. I asked you to come on the show tonight and be here tonight because I knew you were going to be in New York and I wanted to talk to about you about what happened over the course of this we`ve. I didn`t know we were going to get this notice from the attorney general.
I want to ask you about the unexpected nature of how he is handling this. It strikes me that the attorney general is sort of freestyling, sort of ad libbing what he`s trying to portray of what`s expected of him in this moment.
Do you know of anything that sort of governs or dictates the way the attorney general is supposed to behave here that might explain his behavior?
SCHIFF: No, I don`t, and almost none of what he is doing is required by law or by the regulations. He certainly didn`t need to provide that summary/non-summary. Presumably in a 400-page report by the special counsel, the special counsel wrote his own summary, and there would have been nothing to preclude Bill Barr if he wanted to give a forecast of what was to come in releasing the summary. I have to think that Bob Mueller wrote his report knowing because he could hear it all around him that the public was going to demand to see it. So I think it likely, as you suggested, that there is a classified annex.
When we introduce the intelligence bill every year, we have a classified annex and we have a part that we know is going to be made public, so nothing that Barr is doing is required, except for the most minimal notification, and I thought the most problematic part of this summary/non- summary by Bill Barr was the suggestion that because Bob Mueller chose not to make a decision on indictment on obstruction of justice that somehow he was compelled to. That was the flimsiest part of that memo because, of course, he wasn`t required to opine on that at all. And presumably if bob Mueller thought that should have been done, he would have done it himself.
I think far more likely he expected that to go to Congress. That he didn`t want to put his hand on the scale because if he said notwithstanding Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president, that this president if it weren`t for that policy, I would say indict him, he would basically be saying, Congress, you need to impeach.
MADDOW: Mmm-hmm.
SCHIFF: I think he decided, no, that Congress, like in Watergate, should go to the Congress. Bill Barr decided, no, that question should not go to Congress without my opinion. And I`ll add this. It is even less likely that Bob Mueller knowing that Bill Barr applied for the job by sending this unsolicited memo talking about how Bob Mueller`s obstruction theory was bogus, what are the odds that bob Mueller would say, yeah, let`s let that guy decide about my two years of work product?
MADDOW: And you`ve worked in the Justice Department yourself. You were a former assistant U.S. attorney. You were a former federal prosecutor.
Does it -- I mean, my understanding in the way things work here, just as an observer and a person who reads the news is that it never works in the way where a prosecutor leading an investigation considering potential criminal charges against somebody assembles all the evidence and then punts, and then the attorney general decides without any recommendation from the prosecutor whether or not those charges will be brought. I mean, is that -
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SCHIFF: You know, it is -- I think maybe not that simple because in a normal circumstance where you have let`s say a U.S. attorney or assistant U.S. attorney with a high-profile case in some part of the country, they`re not conflicted. They weren`t chosen because the attorney general had a conflict or some other reason. So, if it`s of national significance, you might go to Main Justice and they might weigh in in terms of how it might reflect.
Like if you were going to prosecute a journalist for not disclosing their sources, that decision is not likely to be made in a field office. It might go to Main Justice.
MADDOW: With a recommendation?
SCHIFF: With a recommendation, yes.
MADDOW: Yes.
SCHIFF: But here where the acting attorney general had opined bias and the ethics lawyers said you should recuse yourself and Bill Barr would likely get the same advice from the ethics lawyers because he showed a bias. And the whole point is to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. He should not be the one putting his hand on the scale.
MADDOW: Mmm-hmm.
SCHIFF: That report, that Mueller report should have already been produced to the Congress without his commentary. But clearly, you know, Bill Barr views his role in the unitary executive theory as being the hand of the president, the president`s Roy Cohn, there to do the president`s bidding and his will. And he`s doing it just as expected.
So he was a brilliant hire for the White House, but the long-term consequence of this is that in the future, any president under investigation if he doesn`t like what the attorney general is doing will fire him and find another that`s more suitable to his liking because that`s the precedent here. And as much as I blame Bill Barr for not recusing himself, I hold the Senate more responsible for confirming him without getting a commitment of recusal.
MADDOW: Is that precedent less dark if Congress figures out some way to release this report, even despite his efforts to apparently keep it in his drawer?
SCHIFF: We`re going to compel the release of this report. This report is all going to come out and it`s just going to reflect more poorly on the attorney general if when it does come out and we look at the difference between what he redacted and what was under those redactions, it shows an effort to cover up or conceal either evidence of impropriety or evidence of a lack of morals or ethics or judgment and -- that is shy of criminality, or in the case of obstruction of justice is criminality.
So we`re going to -- we`re going to compel this. This is a fight that is worth going to the mat on. Bill Barr in his confirmation said I will be as transparent as possible, as much as the law or policy would allow. If he was true to those words, as Jerry Nadler said, he wouldn`t be saying I`m cutting all the grand jury material, he would be saying, Congress, I`m going to the court tomorrow to seek their permission to send it all to you.
And I`ll tell you this, the other areas that he wants to redact, information about -- classified information, we get that all the time.
MADDOW: Mmm-hmm.
SCHIFF: Information about pending investigative matters. They go -- gave hundreds of thousands of pages that were both open investigation and investigatory material that reflected on the privacy of third parties. And if you don`t think so, ask Peter Strzok or Lisa Page how they feel about that.
MADDOW: In terms of the attorney general saying that the he wants to redact intelligence information specifically out of this, as the intelligence chairman, I have some specific questions for you on that. Can you stick with us?
SCHIFF: Sure.
MADDOW: Congressman Adam Schiff is our guest. We`ll be right back.
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MADDOW: We`re back with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Adam Schiff of California. Mr. Chairman, thank you for sticking around.
Let me just ask you about a few things that I really have no idea whether we`re going to get these are not. The scoping memo that described what Mueller was allowed to investigate. Part of the Manafort investigation. We got like big long redactions and then you can look at whether Manafort did this bad thing and then big long redactions.
Will we ever get documents like that unredacted so we can see what Mueller was asked to investigate?
SCHIFF: We should. I would think that that would very well be part of his report. The introduction says this is the charge we were given, we were supposed to look at this, but not this, we therefore didn`t consider, you know, these other issues. It may innumerate them or it may not.
But it looks like -- again, reading the summary/non-summary, the social media operation the Russians were running, the hacking and dumping operation the Russians were running, those two areas squarely within the special council`s counsel`s jurisdictions.
Other things like Moscow Trump Tower, which don`t fit in either bucket, may only have been viewed from the perspective of does it tell us something about the obstruction case? Because the president`s lawyer lied to the Congress about it. But that Moscow Trump Tower, which holds the potential of dangling money in front of Donald Trump, could be far more compromising than some of these other issues, which is part of the reason why we in Congress need to get the report on the counterintelligence part of the investigation, not just the criminal part.
MADDOW: Do you think that would be a separate report or do you think that would already have been -- that would have been part of what was already given to Barr?
SCHIFF: I don`t know, but I suspect that it is really not in this report.
MADDOW: Hmm.
SCHIFF: And I think that the report was designed to be about these are the prosecutorial decisions we made to prosecute these folks, not to prosecute these folks, here`s the reason why. It`s a prosecutorial memo.
It isn`t really this is what we found, these are the risks of compromise, this is what the Russians were trying to do. Now, some of that`s going to be relevant to the criminal case, but a great portion of it may not.
MADDOW: If there were findings by Mueller that were of the type you described there, money being dangled, somebody taking action that is beneficial to Russia because they were hoping to get something from the Russian government, if that`s in the in the Mueller report, how are you ultimately going to get briefed on that? How will the American people find out about it?
SCHIFF: By statute, the National Security Act, the Intelligence Committee is required to brief Congress on any significant intelligence or counterintelligence activity, so there has been no more significant counterintelligence investigation, that is an investigation into what a foreign power may be doing covertly to influence Americans. There`s been no more significant counterintelligence investigation than this one in my lifetime, and so we will be briefed on it because they`re required to be.
What format will take, we don`t know. We`ve already begun outreach to the intelligence community and the FBI to find out. But that has always been really front and center of the intelligence committee. We don`t have a criminal charge.
Our investigation from the beginning to present has always been predominately concerned with is a foreign power exerting influence over the president, people around him, in such a way that it would warp U.S. policy in a way that was not in our national interest?
MADDOW: Do you think that we`ll also get a list of the people who talked to Mueller? Will we get the witness list?
SCHIFF: I don`t think he will give us a witness list. And, again, this is obviously guess work at this point.
MADDOW: Yes.
SCHIFF: I think what we will have is a narrative --
MADDOW: Yes.
SCHIFF: -- about different parts of the investigation and who the players were. If there are people that they brought before the grand jury or interviewed who really didn`t have something all that valuable to share, I don`t think their name is going to appear just to have a comprehensive list, but I would imagine a 400-page report has exhibits far more than 400 pages. Whether one of those exhibits is a list of everyone they talked to, every search warrant they executed, every subpoena they issued, I suppose it`s possible.
MADDOW: Congressman Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I would keep you here for longer but I know you have to go because you have to travel. Please come back and talk to us and, and I congratulate you on having more nicknames from the president than anybody else. None of them are sticking thus far, but I think if you stay in this job, ultimately you might hit the record.
SCHIFF: It`s a badge of honor.
MADDOW: Yes, thank you, sir.
SCHIFF: Thanks.
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