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

Interview

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HAYES:  Among the interested parties watching today`s hearing was the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Adam Schiff who shall we say was less than thrilled by what he heard from Attorney General William Barr.  Schiff noted on Twitter that Barr still won`t commit to giving Congress the full unredacted Mueller report.  They won`t request court approval to give us grand jury material and that Barr won`t even say if the White House has seen or been briefed on the report leaving Schiff to conclude that Trump got his Roy Cohn.
 
To explain what he means by that, I`m joined now by Congressman Adam Schiff, Democrat from California, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.  What did you mean when you say the president has found his Roy Cohn?
 
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE:  Well, let`s look at what`s happened just in the two years of the Trump presidency when most of the post-Watergate reforms have been essentially eviscerated.  The President now is if you`re a president under investigation, you can fire the FBI director who`s conducting that investigation.
 
If you`re Attorney General not ignore the advice of ethics lawyers and intervene on your behalf, you can fire the Attorney General.  You can then hire a new Attorney General who`s written to you about how he thinks the case against you is bogus and then that person can get confirmed by the Senate of your party even without requiring that that attorney general recuse themselves.
 
And then in place, that attorney general can do exactly what he was hired to do and make the obstruction of justice case go away and also prevent the Congress from seeing the results, the full results of that investigation.
 
That`s what I mean.  That`s what Roy Cohn would do.  And sadly this is where we are only two years into this presidency.
 
HAYES:  What is your understanding -- so there`s a fundamental dispute here of a conflict which is that Barr has arrogated to himself the role of screener for what material Congress can and cannot see.  And my understanding is that as your position and Jerry Nadler`s position that he does -- he does statutorily and constitutionally does not have that role.  What is your case for why the law says that Congress gets to see all of the material?
 
SCHIFF:  Well, first of all, it`s important for people to realize what Barr did today and that is he made a choice.  And answering the question and saying that he would not seek court support to release this material, he made a decision not to share grand jury material with the Congress.  That was not inevitable and indeed it betrayed I think the commitment he made during his confirmation to be as transparent as law and policy allow because law and policy would allow him to go to the court and seek permission to provide that material.
 
But here`s the thing.  We`re going to insist on it.  We have a right to see that information.  We can subpoena if necessary.  And Chairman Nadler has made it very clear that he will do so if the Attorney General is not forthcoming.  And at the end of the day there is a provision within the grand jury rules to provide that to Congress.  We have seen that provision used in the past.
 
We`ve seen this same Justice Department just last year decide that the interest of transparency outweigh the interests of third parties who are not indicted.  They gave us 880,000 pages of information about people who were not indicted in the Clinton e-mail investigation.  They gave the GOP Congress information on pending investigations I.E. the Mueller investigation.
 
They gave the Congress classified information.  They declassified information.  So they have demonstrated as recently as last year that all of that gives way to an interest in transparency.  And so we are going to insist on that and we have every right to and we`re going to do whatever is necessary to make that happen.
 
HAYES:  There`s some question also about a provision of the Patriot Act that would allow you in your capacity as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to get some of the underlying information should Barr try to block you.  This is from a former general counsel on the Senate Intel side is this federal law requires that the Attorney General provide to the Director of National Intelligence any foreign intelligence information collected during criminal investigation, then the director must by law provided the Intelligence Committees of Congress are there by sending a notification or acting in response to a request from the committee`s.
 
Is that something you`re considering as an avenue to pursue?
 
SCHIFF:  Well, we have considered that already and made a request sometime in the past -- in the recent past for that information.  And the heart of the matter is that under the National Security Act, the Intelligence Community, the Department of Justice are required by law to fully briefed us on any significant intelligence or counterintelligence activity and findings.  And I don`t think there`s been a more significant counterintelligence investigation in my lifetime.
 
So they are required to brief us.  Now they have not done that yet.  And so we wrote to them to demand that they do so and we will insist upon it.  And moreover, there is in addition to everything else an exception to the grand jury secrecy rules where if it involves counterintelligence information, that also can and I think must be shared.
 
So we will press this also.  But our first priority is getting the fully unredacted report because the counterintelligence findings may not even be covered in that report and I think it`s most essential that the public get to see the product of Bob Mueller`s work.
 
HAYES:  Do you have a timeframe in mind for that process?
 
SCHIFF:  Well, you know, we will I think very soon after we see whether it`ll be necessary for the Judiciary Committee to subpoena the report move forward with our own demand that they comply with the law.  So we will await the conclusion of the Judiciary Committee and the outcome of the that redaction process.  But we are proceeding along a parallel track.
 
We want to be sure that we`re informed of the full scope of the counterintelligence investigation and findings which as I say may not even be discussed in the Mueller report.  But the priority right now for both of our committees is making that report available to the public.
 
HAYES:  Quickly, on a scale of one to ten, how much trust did you have on William Barr when he was nominated and how much trust you having him now?
 
SCHIFF:  Well, look, you can`t place trust in a man who applied for the job by saying that he thought the case against the President was bogus because he came in with such an obvious prejudice.  One of the questions I would like to ask, and I hope you will be asked is did you seek the advice of ethics lawyers and did you follow it?  Because it`s hard for me to conceive that advice would have been any different than the advice given to Matt Whittaker for exactly the same reason.
 
So you know, this doesn`t give the trust in someone who`s not willing to follow ethics advice and who had such an obvious bias against the investigation.
 
HAYES:  All right, Congressman Adam Schiff, thank you so much for making time tonight.
 
SCHIFF:  Thanks, Chris.

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